The Leisure of a Cup of Coffee
How should a person live if they want to live like a human being? The thought had drifted into my head one day out of nowhere.
Was simply eating and surviving enough to make you human? No. Eating and surviving mattered, of course, but just scraping by for your next meal didn't automatically qualify you as a person.
The cats that yowled around my house every night managed to eat and survive, after all.
What about leaving offspring behind through reproduction? Unfortunately, that didn't quite cut it as a condition for humanity either.
Producing descendants was just another biological instinct, right up there with eating to stay alive.
In other words, having a lot of sex and a lot of kids wasn't what made a life human. If that had been the metric for proving your humanity, then neither I nor the vast majority of my viewers would have qualified.
This wasn't some lofty philosophical meditation on where I came from or how one defined the human condition.
It was less a grand existential crisis and more a bit of idle fluff that snagged on the stream of my consciousness as my thoughts wandered.
So, to put it simply—
"Hmm…."
I'd been rolling around in the corner of my room watching Vtube when the thought hit me.
But even the silliest idea that floated up through free association had roots somewhere. There was a reason I'd started thinking about humanity in the first place.
What made a human more human? Hobbies.
Activities that had little to do with making a living — sure, sometimes they did, but even then, things you did purely for the joy of it.
That was the kind of behavior that set humans apart from every other creature that only ever acted on instinct to survive. A truly human thing to do.
It wasn't as if I had no hobbies at all. I did have one. Just the one.
Need I even say it? Playing Abyss — playing Camilla, the character everyone else wrote off — had been my only hobby.
With a wallet that thin, I couldn't afford hobbies that cost money, and I barely left the house anyway, so Abyss had been a pretty solid fit. I'd even made a bunch of internet friends through it.
But these days, I couldn't enjoy Abyss with that pure, uncomplicated heart anymore.
I'd been playing the game so long I was a little burned out, and more than that, once I started streaming, the game had stopped being a hobby and become half a job.
They say that when a hobby becomes your livelihood, you can't enjoy it the way you used to — and that it's like losing a hobby altogether. They were right.
I couldn't pure-heartedly delight in Abyss or blow off steam with it the way I once had. It wasn't my hobby anymore.
Which meant I needed a new one.
And the craving for one had only just been stoked. On an ordinary day off, I'd been zoning out watching Vtube when I stumbled across a video and watched it through.
Somehow I'd ended up watching a hand-drip video — the kind where you grind the beans yourself and brew the coffee by hand.
And once the algorithm got its hooks in me, I watched every related video it threw my way.
"Now, when you pour the hot water like this, the grounds swell up a little and the bubbles start to fizz out."
"Ooh…."
It looked just like a science experiment. The water wasn't fully boiling — just cooled a bit to around ninety degrees Celsius — and the grounds actually puffed up when it hit them. It was genuinely mysterious.
The more videos I watched, the more confident I got. It didn't look all that hard, which meant the barrier to entry didn't seem very high either.
I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured it. Me, up early, grinding beans and brewing coffee. The house filled with a deep coffee aroma as I carried a freshly poured cup over to the window.
And then I'd stand there in the morning sunlight, savoring the leisure of a single cup of coffee. Maybe even skim the international news like some proper businessperson.
…That was romantic. That was good.
My appetite thoroughly whetted, I dug up a few more Vtube videos and started figuring out what I'd need.
A kettle for pouring the hot water, filters for the grounds, a grinder to turn whole beans into powder. Just a few pieces of gear, plus the beans themselves.
There was a bit of startup cost, but it was more than manageable. Manageable and then some.
I wasn't the broke girl I used to be, you know. These days I ate out often enough, and if I saw a cute outfit I'd buy it without a second thought. And more than anything, I was a boss with two employees under me — I wasn't supposed to be poor in the first place.
Overspending was still a no-go, but this much should be fine. People around me kept saying I lived way too frugally for how much I earned, after all.
So, yeah. I figured this much would be okay.
🔴 Kayak is now live!
The Leisure of a Cup of Coffee.
Seven-thirty in the morning. The sun was up, and a few people were starting their day.
But most of the people who watched streams were evening creatures — late afternoon at the earliest.
Kayak's streams usually went live around then too, matching her audience's schedule. Today, though, she'd flipped the switch at a decidedly early hour.
The stream feed still hadn't come up. Just a black screen and the clatter of something being set down.
Hearing those sounds, the viewers figured Kayak was prepping ingredients again like last time — setting out cookware for another cooking stream.
But when the pitch-black screen finally brightened, what filled the viewers' eyes was something quite different from what they'd expected.
"Good morning, everyone. Nice morning, huh? Like streamer, like viewers — you all take after me. So diligent."
Contrary to the viewers' assumption that she'd be busy prepping ingredients, the only things in front of Kayak were a few tools whose purpose wasn't immediately obvious.
A metal kettle with a long, thin spout. A transparent vessel with a wide base. And so on.
The category was cooking, and she was streaming from the kitchen, so cooking still seemed like the plan.
So why hadn't Kayak prepared a single ingredient?
The viewers' confusion was cleared up by what she said next.
"The reason I went live in the morning for a change is so we can have tea time together."
Leaving the puzzled chat behind, Kayak reached back and pulled something out.
"I've actually picked up a new hobby. That's right — coffee beans. You recognized them. Yes. Today I'm going to brew my own coffee."
"Look, I was watching Vtube and making coffee yourself didn't look that hard, and it looked fun. So I bought a whole set of tools… It's not that expensive. A rich-person hobby? Real rich-person hobbies are golf and stuff like that. This is totally doable."
A moment later, the stream feed switched. The camera that had been showing Kayak flipped to a first-person view from her perspective.
"Alright, anyway, I'm going to brew one myself. It's not that hard, so if you want to follow along, feel free."
From there, Kayak got busy. Setting up the tools, installing the filter, boiling water, grinding beans, pouring water….
And at last, the finished product emerged.
"Tada. This is how you get the concentrate, everyone. Doesn't the color alone look killer? It smells amazing too, but unfortunately the smell doesn't come through on stream."
"Different beans have different flavors and aromas, you know? What I just brewed is Ethiopian… Anyway, I'll explain later — first, let's taste it."
Kayak had somehow produced a proper coffee cup as well, and poured the brew into it.
Then she took a refined little sip. Eyes closed, lips to the rim, savoring the coffee.
That alone painted a remarkably convincing picture. Even the viewers who'd been sniping negative comments let out a collective sigh of appreciation for a moment.
But the atmosphere shattered the second Kayak reacted.
"Hmm…."
Her previously smooth brow furrowed just slightly. She pulled her mouth from the cup and peered into it with a dubious look. Anyone could tell something had gone wrong.
"Heh heh heh…."
All Kayak could manage was an awkward smile aimed at her viewers.