Sae's Slow Burn

Day 1

It was just another exhausting evening as Sae lazily settled into her apartment. Ever since she left the District Attorney’s office and went into business for herself it’s been one stressful day after another. She knew the life of a defense lawyer would be demanding, but she figured that after working for the SIU she would be prepared for it. But nothing could have prepared her for this. If she thought the SIU director was unreasonable, he had nothing on her average clients.

It wasn’t even that bad until these past few weeks. It was as if suddenly people started going crazy! Her routine remained the same each night. Wake up, go to work, deal with clients all day, come home, have dinner, go to bed, and try to get some sleep before doing the whole thing all over again. That last part was especially difficult. She was always so preoccupied with how to solve her many work problems that she thought about work into the long hours of the night, make her half dead when she went work only making everything worse.

She tried finding a cure for this insomnia, ASMR, self-hypnosis, her mind just refuses to quiet. And then today, completely out of the blue, she ran into Akira Kurusu. They caught up for a spell during lunch, and Akira told her that his latest project was that he was working on a special tea remedy to help with sleep loss. She was still pretty tired and her annoyance got the better of her. All she did was make one off-handed comment about how she could use some more sleep, and suddenly he was insisting on coming over to her apartment to make it for her.

She heard a knock on her door, looked through the peep hole, and let Akira in.

“Hey Sae, I already made a whole bunch of the tea at LeBlanc. Here, I’ll pour you some.” He started pouring the tea.

“You know Akira. I really don’t see why you had to trudge all the way out here to my apartment at night when you could have just as easily given me the recipe.”

“No offense Sae, but you don’t really have the meticulous crafting experience that I do. I really think it will be most effective if I make the tea personally. Now drink up.”

Sae took one sip and immediately, she started to feel sluggish. Maybe Akira was right. She wasn’t sure if she could make something this fast acting on her own. Akira told her that for full effect she needed to finish an entire cup. She did so, and afterwards she felt like she was moving through Molasses. Akira was saying her name. He had to say at least two or three times to fully get her attention. Good, it must be working already.

She turned to him and suddenly she noticed his eyes. His deep, beautiful, all-encompassing eyes. Sae heard the vague mumble of words off in the distance. Somehow, she knew she didn’t really need to pay attention to them. If they were anything important, the eyes would et her know. The eyes were her whole world.

*snap* fingers snapped in front of her face. She blinked heavily. Wait. What was- Was she looking at something just now?

“There I hope that helps. Now this stuff is very difficult to make, so I was only able to bring you enough to last until the day after tomorrow. I’ll bring you some more after that.”

“Mmm, Thank you Akira, I’m practically asleep al- *yawn* ready.” With that Akira headed home and Sae headed to bed and got her first full night sleep in weeks.