[Short Short] Life Hack Miscalculation

I love coffee more than three meals a day. When I searched for ways to make use of the mountain of coffee grounds I produce every day, I found the knowledge that they make good fertilizer. I kept scattering coffee grounds in my garden.

Several years later, my garden was covered in coffee grounds instead of soil, becoming a coffee garden where the scent of coffee always drifted.

As I sat in my chair enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee today, the ground in the garden began to bulge up. A man poked his head out from there.

""--""

We stared at each other in silence. The man was the first to break the silence.

"You're the person who lives here, right?"

"That's right... but who are you?"

"I'm the one who lives under here."

Staring intently at the mud-covered man's face, I realized one possibility.

"An underground dweller?"

"Well, some people call us that. Anyway, the area under your garden is my home, but I've been sleep-deprived lately."

"That's..."

"I drink the water that comes through the ground, but for some reason, the water has been brown lately, and when I drink it, I can't sleep."

"I see... that must be because of the coffee."

"Coffee?"

I knelt down by his face and brought the freshly brewed coffee to his mouth. He held the liquid in his mouth with a suspicious look on his face.

"............Not bad."

Saying that, he returned to beneath the ground.

A few months later.

"How are you doing with your lack of sleep?"

"Oh, I've been sleeping soundly thanks to the pillow you gave me."

"That's good to hear."

The subterranean dweller began visiting my garden regularly.

"Lately, everyone has been gathering to get our water. Perhaps because there's no light underground, we naturally get sleepy quickly. Those who want to work longer are working hard by consuming... caffeine?"

"Don't you work?"

"I'm making a killing selling water. I'm sleeping soundly with my head held high."

The laughter of the two echoed in the coffee garden.

The subterranean society, awakened to a desire to work by caffeine, would develop at a tremendous pace, and it would be a little while longer before they clashed with the surface world.

End

It might be Long Coat Daddy's fault that the subterranean dweller appeared.

I participated in Tarahakani-sama's weekly short short.

The previous theme is here

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