Flowers on the Moon ; jinyoung-centric

Chapter 3: lattes & ice-blended mochas

[ TW / referenced self harm ]

"Why did you have to drag me along..." Mark stifles a yawn as Jackson grabs him by the wrist and they continue making their way down the empty street to the cafe the two youngest have been talking about non stop these past few days.

"Don't you want coffee?"

Mark rolls his eyes. "You just want to meet the barista Yugyeom and Bambam's been talking about."

Jackson scoffs, stopping in front of the cafe and letting go of the elder's hand. "Okay, fine. Don't you want to meet him?"

"No."

"Yet you still came with me today."

"You practically dragged me out of bed!"

"What? It's not like you don't have classes today, anyway."

"Yeah, later at 1PM. It's 6 in the morning! I should still be sleeping now."

"It's fine, hyung! Besides, it's not much of a difference."

Mark stares in disbelief at the other. "What do you mean 'not much of a difference'? My class starts in 7 hours!"

"Um, what's going on here?"

The two whip their heads at the voice. Standing beside them, with a watering can in his hand, was none other than the barista himself who owned the cafe. They didn't even notice he was there until now.

"Oh, we're all right, don't worry." Mark smiles at him, moving over to open the door. "We were just about to enter, actually."

"Oh!" The barista exclaims. "You should go inside then, I'll just water these and I'll be there in a bit!"

Mark nods, and the two went on their way to the inside of the cafe. They sat at the seats on the counter, looking around the area.

"Looks to me like you wanted to meet him, after all." Jackson says from beside him, grinning.

Okay, so maybe that was true. Could you blame him, though? After two days of Yugyeom and Bambam continuously gushing about how cute and sweet the barista is here, he found himself wanting to meet him as well. From the way they talked about him and with his brief encounter with said barista just a few minutes prior, he really does seem like a genuinely kind person.

"I still don't understand why you have to wake me up this early, though." He replies, not denying what the younger just said.

Jackson shrugs. "I have a 7AM class."

"Couldn't we have just gone here later after school? Our dismissal time's the same, anyway."

"But I wanna meet him now," the other pouts slightly. "Besides, we're here now, so..."

The sound of the door opening took their small conversation to a halt as the barista entered the shop, fixing his apron. "Sorry if I made you wait. I had to water the plants outside," he says, eyes warm and a smile gracing his features.

"It's all right," Mark reassures, taking the menu as it's handed to him. Jackson leans over his shoulder to skim through it while he silently watches the other boy in front of him. He's going around the counters and shelves, fumbling around with some cups and containers. It's endearing how bright and cheery he is, even at this time of the morning.

"I'll just have one latte," Jackson says, leaning back against his chair.

"One ice-blended mocha for me," Mark adds, and the barista - Jinyoung, that's what his name was - nods.

They quickly paid for it and in just a couple of minutes, Jinyoung returned with their drinks in his hand. "I didn't expect to have customers this early. I just opened about fifteen minutes ago," he said sheepishly, taking the menu and holding it to his chest.

Mark raised an eyebrow, taking a sip from the drink. "Wow, you open quite early. What time do you close, then?"

Jinyoung quickly places the menu somewhere on the counter beside him. "Around 10. My sleep schedule is kind of messed up, at this point," he chuckles, turning the sink on to do the dishes.

"Try to rest as much as you can, still. It's not healthy to get so little sleep." Jackson tells him, eyebrows slightly furrowed with worry.

Jinyoung hums, picking up the sponge. "I try. Sometimes when there's not much people here, I manage to take a nap or just rest."

The cafe was once again shrouded in silence, rays of sunshine streaming in from the open windows. It was a sunny morning, the perfect weather to start the day and to drink coffee. He hadn't been keen about the idea of waking up early today, but after meeting Jinyoung - and seeing his lovely smile in person that Yugyeom and Bambam's been gushing about - he realizes that it was worth it, after all.

He wondered a lot about Jinyoung, from what his interests and hobbies were to everything in between. It must be nice to just sit down and talk with him about nothing and everything at once while drinking coffee and snacking on pastries. To him, Jinyoung was such a mystery. He was like an open book, yet for some reason, he couldn't read him at all, like the lines were blurred and smudged with ink.

"This cafe is beautiful, by the way." Mark said, putting his cup down. A light shade of red dusted across Jinyoung's cheeks as his lips turned upwards at the compliment. Mark smiled, resting his chin on his arm. Cute.

Jinyoung muttered a quick 'thank you', continuing to wash the blender.

"Just like the person who owns it." Jackson says casually with a small smile, watching in amusement as Jinyoung's cheeks turned redder. Mark glanced away and took another sip from his drink to hide the growing smile on his face.

Well, I can't argue with that.

"Th-that's..." Jinyoung stumbled over his words, blushing furiously and looking everywhere but at Jackson. The latter just chuckled.

As Jinyoung finished washing the dishes, his face still flushed a light pink, the sleeve of his hoodie went down ever so slightly. Mark could only stare in horror at the red lines littered across the other's wrist. He glanced over at Jackson, whose smile had dropped and was now looking at Jinyoung's arms with an expression of shock written on his features. Jinyoung didn't seem to realize, and by the time he had placed all the dishes on the drying rack, he turned to the two with a smile.

"Thanks for keeping me company and chatting with me for a while," he says. "It's usually so quiet in the morning here, so it's a nice change."

"Oh, um, yeah. It was nice talking to you as well," Mark replied, trying to appear as normal as he could even as the image of the cuts on Jinyoung's arms continued to bother him.

"The latte was great," Jackson adds, smiling slightly though it looked somewhat forced.

Jinyoung only smiled brightly, his eyes turning into crescents. "Thank you!"

Mark didn't know what the other had been through, but it was just so unfair that someone as cheerful as Jinyoung would have self-harm scars, of all things. Something about seeing the fresh and still red cuts on Jinyoung's wrist and then looking at him to see a grin on his face made his heart twist painfully.

He could only hope that Jinyoung was okay.