Heartbreak Cafe

Chapter One

Junkyu loved the novelty of working at a cafe. Sure, he liked to complain about having to manage his family business, but the cozy little cafe tucked behind a small university wasn't the worst place to work at all. It was calming and warm: the scent of freshly brewed coffee wafting through the air, the quiet bustle of brain-dead college students trying to make it through the day, and, of course, the wildly sobbing girls getting their hearts torn to pieces.

Okay, maybe not the last one.

"B-but, I don't understand why? Please, can't you give me a chance?" the girl wailed.

She was pretty; Junkyu could tell even though the tears smearing her makeup were making her look like a sad circus clown. The guy sitting in front of her awkwardly tried to hand her a napkin which she just swatted away.

"Why can't you like me back?" she wailed again, making the said guy cringe.

Junkyu rolled his eyes as he pressed the expresso for his next order. He had long crossed the threshold of feeling bad for these girls. The first couple had his sympathy, sure, but after around the 7th round of this exact scenario, Junkyu was just annoyed.

You'd think people would learn that to maybe avoid getting your heart broken, you should avoid confessing to a guy infamous for doing just that, but of course, no one is asking for his opinion.

He's just the barista that has to deal with this charade twice a week: three times on holiday weeks. And every time it happens, the cafe loses a customer- because no girl wants to go back to the cafe where all the staff has seen her get rejected.

Five bucks that the asshole is gonna say 'I'm sorry, I'm not looking for a relationship at the moment,' Junkyu thought in his head.

"I'm sorry. I'm not interested in dating anyone right now."

Junkyu pouted. He should still get credit for that one right? It's close enough is it not? But then again, who was he betting against?

"Junkyu! Stop daydreaming and watch the coffee," his brother yelled, shaking him out of his thoughts.

Oh shit. Junkyu looked down to realize that he was royally fucking up whoever's drink this was. "Ah, Jihoon. Can you buy me a minute? I need to remake this drink," he called to his brother.

"Seriously? Gosh, where's your head these days?" Jihoon called back from behind the register. He turned towards the counter and started to apologize to an annoyed middle-aged man in a suit. The man tsked, checked his watch, and stood there tapping his foot like he owned the place.

Junkyu fixed the drink and handed it to the man a couple of minutes later with an apologetic smile. The man snatched the drink from his hand, grumbling under his breath.

Asshole, the barista thought.

"ASSHOLE," someone shouted. For a second, Junkyu's face fell when he thought he had accidentally said his thoughts out loud, but he quickly realized that the shout had come from the sobbing girl from earlier.

"You have no fucking heart!" she screamed, kicking her chair into the wall. It crashed into the brick with a thundering 'crack.' She picked up her drink and poured it all onto the guy in front of her, who just sat there paralyzed with shock.

Then, with all the elegance of a raging velociraptor, she flipped him off and strutted out the door.

Junkyu stared at the scene with eyes wide and mouth agape. Fuck, that has never happened before. Usually, the heartbroken girls just cried for a little bit, ate horrendous amounts of cake, and then left.

Not, you know, commit property damage.

He turned to Jihoon to see the same expression mirrored on his brother's face.

The older man broke out of his daze first. He clicked his mouth shut and disappeared to the back of the cafe. A moment later, he returned with a mop which he firmly pressed to Junkyu's chest.

"You're cleaning that up. And while you're at it, tell the pretty boy that he's paying for that chair."

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Haruto has no idea what just happened. One second, he is being dragged into a cafe against his will by a girl he barely knows, the next, he's wearing a cup of iced americano like a party hat.

Then again, maybe he should have seen this coming. He saw the confession coming, of course, since that's the only reason random girls tend to drag him into quaint cafes, but the meltdown that happened afterward was definitely a surprise.

But, no, he should have seen that coming, too. Jeongwoo had warned him that one of these days one of his heartbroken fangirls would go crazy. Though the magnitude of crazy Haruto was imagining was more along the lines of secretly sniffing his used napkins rather than publicly turning him into a human coffee fountain.

Haruto heaved a sigh and plucked the cup off his head. He spotted a trashcan off to the side and shuffled over to throw the cup away. The boy could feel the stares of everyone in the cafe digging into him like needles as he moved, but he couldn't work up the energy to care.

Actually, he couldn't work up the energy to do much of anything. Why was he throwing away this cup again? Shouldn't he go get napkins and clean himself up first? He wasn't exactly an expert in the field of getting drinks dumped on him in public places.

Haruto turned around to get said napkins, deciding that was a smart, intelligent thing to do, but stopped dead in his tracks.

The first thing he noticed was that he had dripped a whole trail of coffee from his seat to where he was standing.

The second thing he noticed was that there was an employee awkwardly mopping up the trail.

Haruto felt bad for making a mess and was about to mutter an apology but fell silent as he realized that the employee seemed keen to ignore him as he mopped up the little dotted line of coffee.

Finally, the man met the end of his trail as the head of his mop bumped into the tip of Haruto's sneakers. He looked up at him and they locked eyes: warm brown on deep black. Time seemed to freeze as the two silently stared at each other for a moment that could've lasted for an eternity

"Hey, umm. Can you move? Not to be rude, but you're dripping a puddle of americano behind you."