It's all about balance when it comes with school work, work, and social lives. We work a bit in the mornings too, when others are too lazy to prepare breakfast. It opens at 7am.
Our café closes at 8:30am, and school starts at 9am.
We live really close to Hetalia High, so transportation isn't an issue.

Right after school, our café opens from 4-8pm.

Recently, I've noticed that our customers are very limited lately.
It at least gives us enough for our meals, and just enough for showers at on-peak times. Those times are a lot more cheaper.
I was putting the 'Sorry, We're Closed' sign, and walked back inside.
Emil was doing the cleanup this time
He wiped the tables, sweeped the floor and moped it.

He just finished washing the dishes too.
I grab a paper towel and wiped the dishes clean, putting them back up on the cupboards.
I wrapped up the garbage and tossed it out into the cans outside.
The leftover pastries were wrapped up, and put in the fridge.

As usual our clean up finished at 8:30pm.
That left fifteen minutes for showering and fifteen minutes for eating.

Plus the hour of homework and studying.
My brother and I sleep at 11pm, and wake up at 6am for our café. A solid seven hours of sleep.

I'm just trying to figure out Algebra at the moment.
Like, when are we ever going to find 'x' in life?
Ugh don't even get me started on finding the roots of K.

After I finished my homework, hoping that it was correct, I checked up on my brother to see how he was doing.

"Emil, it's 10:30, you should be sleeping." I knocked on his door before entering.

He seemed to be working on cutting up a bunch of plastic water bottles in half.

There were recycled crafts everywhere, from newspaper garbage bags to plants growing in egg cartons.

"Whoa." That was the first thing that came to mind. I never thought my brother was this creative.
It's great.

"I'm making a more comfortable place for my carrot seedlings and tomato plants. Ah, and Kale as well. People are crazy with kale nowadays."

"Little bro, It's nice that you're doing all this stuff to save money... but know that you need to take care of yourself too."

"I know... Good night, Lukas. I'm going to sleep now."

I huffed.
"When are you going to call me big brother again? It was so cute!"

"Never!! Lukas, that was ages ago. Ugh, let me sleep now."

"Alright. Night then." I chuckled, heading out the door.

School time. Aren't mornings great?
We were just cleaning up after the café.
Elderly people seem to like this time the best for their coffees and teas.
My brother and I dashed to the school as soon as we were done, not bothering to pack lunches.
They had this program where if you forget your lunch, you can have lunch in a paper bag at the office.

We rely on this for lunch, but not always.
I've seen students who used it too much and had a call home.
They were worried about their welfare.

I didn't want them to contact an orphanage, so we made sure to have it twice or three times a week.

I paid attention to the lectures as usual, jotting the notes down.
Thanks to constantly jotting things down at the café, I was able to memorize things faster for a longer period of time.

It came in handy while studying.

As I watched the teacher demonstrate algebra because over half of the class was failing... I was not one of them, thankfully. Passing with a 75. Wish it was better though.
I've noticed that 'Bringing it to the other side' meant that
the variables who aren't like terms must be separated.

I like to think that the equal sign is a mirror.
If I'm bringing over a positive number, it becomes a negative on the other side.

Wow. I think I finally get it.
It makes sense.

The bell rang, and everyone scurried to their lockers for lunch.
I headed straight towards the office.

Emil was there, and he was reading one of the posters about a meeting.

"Hey, Emil. What are you up to?"

"This poster is an information about the newspaper club.
I'd like to join it to get free coupons, and offers. That's what they're offering."

"As long as it doesn't get in the way of school... How was Science?" I asked.

"Good. It was boring, but I liked learning about renewable energy."

"That's good."

I grabbed two paper bags and checked our names out for them.

I don't get why people complain about school lunches so much.
It's still food.

"I'm going to go study now. See you later, Lukas."

I waved back, and sat beside my usual lunch buddies, Arthur and Vladmir.
Arthur had messy greenish blonde hair.
He's going through a punk phase but now he's slowly getting out of it.
He wanted to dye his hair blue but it ended up green. His hair roots are blonde already and gosh, he needs to get a small trim.
My other friend, Vladmir has chin length brown hair and burgundy red eyes.
Everyone mistakened him for a vampire because of his appearance, but personally, I think its really cool.

"Hey, bagged lunch again?" Vlad chuckled.

"Yup. I don't have it everyday or too often so its fine."

"Hmm... How's the café doing?" Arthur asked.

"Decent. Not well but not badly either."

"So, Arthur and I wanted to help out at the café for a few days in exchange for some tutoring. Is that okay?" Vlad asked.

"Of course! I'd love it if you guys can give a hand, much is appreciated."

"Sweet."

I pulled about five items from the bagged lunch.
An apple, a juice box, a cheese bread, a yogurt tube and apple sauce.

Classic.