Wobaozhewo
Pairing: Blohyuk
Summary: After three years of college, Hyukjae decided to take a year off to "find himself." It wasn't long before he started questioning what it was he really wanted to find.
-------
The day started with a cup of coffee.
Americano. Double shot.
The man appeared, as he did every morning with the tinkling of bells signaling his entry, a messenger satchel sagging against his hip. The man with thick-rimmed glasses and bed hair that came in for one cup of hot Americano. Double shot. One of the first customers that Hyukjae saw every morning shift since he was hired at the Coffeehouse Cafe, served with a hesitant smile and as steady a hand as could be mustered.
Hyukjae had taken to not looking this man in the eye for the sole reason that he had look of an emotionless sociopath.
Customers that Hyukjae liked the most were the kinds that smiled and maybe said a few words of acknowledgment. It added enjoyment to a tiring job. Sadly, those types were few and far between during his assigned shift, the earliest and ungodliest of them all; the only surety during these hours were those grim eyes darker than pitch, until he got that cup of joe in his hands and down his esophagus.
"Americano. Double shot," he'd grit out, the sleep not yet worked out of his vocal cords.
No small talk, no niceties. No room at his usual table in the corner by the window but for papers and one steaming cup of strong caffeine. Why double shot? Why not call it a Large like a normal person? To ensure that there were two shots of espresso? Hyukjae had to ponder.
It was a dismal way to begin a long day of work.
Nevertheless, he still did his job with a smile, no matter how much strain it put on his cheeks. He didn't think about who these people were, or where they had come from. Only that they wanted a pick-me-up in the form of liquefied coffee beans. Nothing like that generic tasting brand name crap. Hyukjae brewed honest to god coffee served in an honest to god mug. Of course, there were the occasional to-go cups, but those orders were usually of straight coffee and not artfully crafted lattes.
Not that he drank any of it. No one could get his taste buds near the stuff even with a ten-foot-pole attached to them unless the java was infused with sugar, cream, and multi-flavored syrup. Truthfully, if his best friend, Junsu, hadn't nudged him to apply for this job, Hyukjae probably wouldn't even have considered it.
Their employer was their sunbae, only a year older, and treated them well even if he was never there (and barked around useless orders in excess whenever he decided to bless them with his presence). Even so, this job was really was one of the better things to have happened to him. He had a purpose and more importantly, he had an income to pay for living away from home.
His future was still as directionless as ever, but at least for the present, he had this.
-
"Aren't you supposed to be at work right now?" Jungsoo asked, eyeing to the clock as he yawned, his slippers patting on linoleum flooring.
Hyukjae grunted, still in his pajamas, and a bit of the rice he was shoveling into his mouth dribbling back out. "It's Sunday. We open later."
Jungsoo made a sound of disapproval and reprimanded, "Don't talk with your mouth full."
Hyukjae might have rolled his eyes a bit, but stayed silent, hurrying to finish and get ready. He liked having roommates for the cheaper rent and the late night gaming partners, but if he had wanted a mother hen to peck at him, he'd have stayed on with his parents.
"I went to the shopping district yesterday. Bumped into your mom and sister," Jungsoo said, scooping himself some rice.
Hyukjae's motions slowed but didn't stop, his spoon tentatively scraping the last bit of food from his bowl.
"I told them that you've been working hard and eating well."
"... Thanks," he replied, getting up to put his dishes in the sink, just as Jungsoo sat down.
"You should call home more often," Jungsoo said. "They worry, you know."
Hyukjae paused at the hall. "Yeah, I know," he said quietly, and went to put on his work clothes.
-
It wasn't that Hyukjae didn't want to keep in touch with his family; it was just that he never had the time. How could he when he was working almost full-time to keep up with payments and things? And not to mention, they were all ramblers--especially his sister, as he was being reminded.
"No, noona, I'm not just playing around. How do you expect me to pay rent if I do that?" he said.
He held the phone with a shoulder as he unlocked his bicycle from the rack.
A long chattering list of illegal activities spurted into Hyukjae's ear and he rolled his eyes. "Noona, my supplier is here, I have to go," he joked, climbing onto the bike. "Calm down! Calm down! Noona! It's 7 in the morning, no one deals drugs this early. What do you mean 'how do I know'? I have to go to work now, okay? Yeah, you too. I love you, too."
Hyukjae ended the call and took a deep breath, ready to seize the day.
-
Hyukjae worked five days a week, four of the five three-hour shifts, except Mondays and Tuesdays when he worked only two, with Wednesdays and Thursdays off.
Coffeehouse Cafe usually only had two people working at one shift. Three, tops, but never when Hyukjae was in because Junsu, who was in charge of the work schedule, liked torturing him with a trillion back ordered drinks.
Only one of the many reasons he cherished his altogether too short breaks. Hey, three hours could be considered short between two six-hour shifts.
He sat leaning back against the wall, sipping his iced hot chocolate and twiddling a black ballpoint pen between his fingers. The pen, he'd found left on a random table. Hyukjae did not make it a habit of touching what did not belong to him, especially others' left behind, contaminated, remnants, but he found its clear sleek hull alluring and demanding to be used. The clean napkin that he had lain on the table, all off-white and barren and slightly crinkled on one edge, was looking like an itch he needed to scratch.
The pen warmed, snug in his grip, settling against his writing callus. He drew chocolate chunks into his mouth through his straw, jotting some random phrases down. For such a worn looking thing, the tip glided extremely clean and even over the coarse texture.
I want to dream the rest of my life with you,
I'll leave my heart by you now.
Hyukjae smiled to himself. It was a nice sentiment, strangely befitting the easily disposable square.
"Hyukjae, break's over," Junsu crowed from the counter.
"Coming," Hyukjae said, dropping everything and hauling himself to his feet.
"Here, take this over to that table," he ordered when Hyukjae had finally trudged over.
"Why aren't you doing it?" Hyukjae complained. But somewhere between looking forlornly at his drink still on the table and grudgingly taking the tray, he fumbled backward. Everything went crashing to the ground. Curious eyes shot to where he landed rear first by the side of the counter.
"Are you okay!?"
"Yeah... I think so."
"You have no coordination, I swear."
Hyukjae grimaced. "It wasn't my fault. You handed it to me wrong!"
"Who was holding it when it dropped!? Clean it up!" Junsu said, half joking, but mostly serious.
"Shut up. You're not the manager." Hyukjae grinned, and headed back to get a mop.
"You're right!" Junsu shouted as he flipped switches to run the espresso machine again. "I'm your supervisor!"
-
Cake crumbs littered the table next to him. A small coffee spill was visible a few feet from his well-worn sneakers. And all the chairs had yet to be put up.
"Ugh..."
Hyukjae leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He could have finished wiping the tables and gone home by now, but his feet hurt. An abnormally long line of coffee-addicts threading out the door took hours to die down. Every barista's nightmare, he was sure.
"It's closing time, not naptime. Get up, slacker," Junsu said, waving around an accusatory finger.
Hyukjae groaned, sitting up straight. "I don't see you doing anything."
"I'm telling you what to do. That's something," replied Junsu, taking out the broom from behind the counter.
Before he could think up of a witty comeback, Hyukjae stopped to stare at the table that still held his drink from the last break. Something... was missing.
He looked around the table and on the floor. "Hey," he said, still rummaging the area, "Did you see a pen around here?"
"A pen? Oh," Junsu remembered, "Yeah, a guy came back for it while you were out back this afternoon. Crazy. Acted like it was the last pen left on earth."
"Oh." What a shame. It was such a nice pen, too. Hyukjae frowned, stilling, but his eyes continued to roam. "What about the napkin I had here?"
"I don't know. Maybe the guy took that too?"
"But... it was used. Why would he take a used napkin?"
"Maybe he thought it was trash and threw it away."
"But my drink is still here." Hyukjae, easily slipping into annoyance, gestured at it with an outstretched palm.
"True. The wind? I don't know," his friend shrugged.
"Who would take a used napkin? That's just insane and—"
"It was just a napkin," Junsu said slowly.
"But it was MY—" Hyukjae stopped. Why was it that whenever he was with Junsu, his inner five-year old would suspiciously emerge? He could feel the day's work weighing on his lids and sighed. "I know I need sleep when I'm arguing with you over a napkin."
Clearly, it wasn't just any napkin. It was a napkin he had written on, the first words since he started this whole trek of self-discovery. But it wasn't like he couldn't make up something else. Something better.
"No kidding," Junsu said, and then proceeded to sweep dirt at him.
-
A painfully familiar shattering sound ricocheted throughout the café and every single person in the room turned to stare at Hyukjae. He sighed.
There were bad days. And then, there were bad days.
Something about today just felt completely wrong.
Maybe it was waking up a half an hour late for work. Or the wheel that got hijacked from his bike. Or perhaps, maybe, it was the baby that hurled on the counter, or maybe it was the wet dog that ran in (on this very fine, sunny day) and stole someone's tea biscuit. That customer was, thankfully, very understanding.
Until Hyukjae splashed a cup of scalding-hot macchiato down her back.
He didn't know how he had tripped on the chair that was five feet away, he swore!
It was just... some days, you couldn't fight. Those kinds of bad days.
"Maybe, I'll let you off early," Junsu spoke, very slowly, examining the pieces of cup broken on the floor – the third one that morning.
A very somber Hyukjae stood next to them.
"No, if I go home now, I might get hit by a car," he moaned pitifully.
"That's... possible," Junsu sighed. "Why don't I clean this up, and you can... rest in the back. For a bit."
Hyukjae shook his head. If Junsu was showing signs of being nice only two hours into his shift, the day really couldn't get any worse.
The door swung open, bells tinging.
It was one of their regulars. His hair was uncombed but looked fingered through, high tops dragging across the dark ceramic flooring, with a rigid no-variety rule on his caffeine intake. The Americano double shot.
Automatically, Hyukjae greeted him, voice weary, but still congenial. "Good morning, sir. The usual?"
The grim man nodded and continued his way to his usual seat in the corner, unloading his bag and laying out stacks of papers.
Before Hyukjae could start on the order, Junsu put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," he answered, grabbing a cup.
Junsu frowned. "Okay... You know all this damage is going to be taken out of your paycheck, right?"
A glare.
"Just sayin'." And he walked off to get a broom.
Hyukjae finished and brought the drink to the customer, an "Enjoy your coffee, sir," on the tip of his tongue, but as he set it down, something caught his eye.
A pen. The pen. The look of it was undeniable. In a moment of utter insanity, lines danced into his brain, strings of poems and laments of wasted days. With them, the impossible thought of the napkin being hidden in the man's bag crossed his mind, those words he had lost only days before.
"Is... something wrong?" the man asked. The pen stopped moving.
He hadn't realized that he was still holding onto the cup and he let go, but when he moved to apologize, his hand knocked the cup over, spilling the hot liquid onto a pile of papers.
"Oh shit!" the man hurriedly gathered the now coffee stained papers, shaking them off frantically.
"AH! I'm so sorry! So very sorry!" Hyukjae flailed about uselessly for a second before exclaiming, "Oh! Let me get a towel!"
He ran to the back to grab a clean towel. As he was running back out, Junsu was walking away from the mess, whispering, "At least the cup didn't break."
Hyukjae ignored that and went to clean up the accident, apologizing profusely the entire way through. The customer only stood looking embarrassed at the groveling, while repeatedly assuring Hyukjae that "It's okay. It's okay. No really, it's okay."
-
The man had been very forgiving and somewhat apathetic to the matter, proving him to be less of a sociopath than Hyukjae had originally imagined.
He had tried to comfort him, the hysterical café waiter, by saying that it was just short essay assignments and most his students didn't care enough to come to him to pick them up anyways. So the papers looked as if they'd been dipped in the toilet--that was okay, "the stuff was shit anyways," the man joked.
Hyukjae had laughed as if that excuse made him feel better.
After he finished cleaning up and re-serving the drink, Junsu forced him to go home and told him to take the day off, come back the next day. Maybe his luck would be better by that time. Until then, he'd call one of the other part-timers in to cover the shift.
Yeah, better, Hyukjae sighed to himself, shrugging his backpack straps to keep them from slipping further down. He plodded down the block, his apartment building finally in sight. He'd definitely try to get his bike wheel replaced soon, but to get a quality durable tire was so expensive; it would take him a month or so to save up enough for that and the rent. And food. He almost forgot about that.
The stop sign at the end of the street had a whole line of cars waiting impatiently for pedestrians to walk off the road and there were no cars coming his way. Hyukjae took a couple swift looks before stepping out onto the small street.
"Hey!" a cry came.
Hyukjae only barely turned his head to see a bike zooming full force at him and next thing he knew, all he could see was the top of his apartment building edging partly cloudy skies.
He blinked and quickly tested his limbs before clamoring to his feet, looking around in a daze. To his right, he saw a person checking his arms as he picked up his bike. Hyukjae ignored the eyes that looked as if they were squinting curses at him.
"Are you okay?" the biker asked, with his mouth hanging open like he wanted to laugh at the bizarreness of this... this... whatever this was.
Looking down at his pulsing arms and knees (despite falling on his back), he nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm so sorry though. So sorry," Hyukjae blurted out, continuing the long string of apologies with a few low bows. He didn't even give the man a chance to speak as he hurried away, as briskly as possible without attracting more attention. The distraught gazes of onlookers were hard to avoid as they prodded "Are you okay?"s and "Oh my god!"s at his hunched figure walking past.
He dumped his things on the floor once he reached the safe interior of his apartment, collapsing on the couch. A sting of pain shot along his forearm and he cried out.
"Hyukjae?" Sungmin came out from their room. "What's wrong? ... What the heck happened to your arm, oh my god." Sungmin moved to grab his arm, staring at the gash, and clicked his tongue. "Let's get something to clean this up," he frowned, getting the first aid box from the drawer.
"Thanks..."
"Seriously, how did this happen!" Sungmin exclaimed, dabbing at the wound.
Hyukjae repeated the accident for him to hear and nearly tumbled over when Sungmin shoved at his temple with a finger.
"Who taught you to jaywalk? That's dangerous!" he scolded.
"Some deeply hidden section of your brain must have been drunk on your own ability to be so ridiculously clumsy," Heechul said, strolling in from his bedroom.
Jungsoo walked in behind him. "Heechul," Jungsoo said, as a plea for peace more than a warning.
Heechul rolled his eyes, ruffling Hyukjae's hair with a smirk as he breezed past to get to the remote.
"When did you..."
"Junsu called," Jungsoo stated, seeing Hyukjae's perplexed expression, "And told me you might need some cheering up."
Of course. Of course. Hyukjae couldn't bring himself to smile, but he let himself fall back against the couch.
As Sungmin concentrated on checking for more injuries, he said, "You were lucky it was just a bike."
-
Hyukjae came into work the day after sporting only a small gash on his arm, as well as a bruised shin, and soreness only slightly aggravating his hip.
In addition to a very vague limp to his gait that Junsu, very unfortunately, noticed.
With Sungmin, he got off with light scolding and motherly concern, but Junsu could be depended upon to laugh at his misfortunes. He should have known better than to relay to real story to him. Junsu promptly started laughing one sentence into the Great Regalement, shaking his head as if to say "Oh, Hyuk, this could only happen to you."
And he couldn't disagree. For one thing, he was partly at fault, Hyukjae supposed. He was jaywalking.
Hyukjae's brain just did not know when to stop, replaying the previous day over and over and reliving the embarrassment until he could not wonder if it was all just a horrible nightmare.
He took comfort in the fact that he'd never see the cyclist again, but he could not say the same for the café regulars.
Speaking of which, the pen guy had already set up his niche for the morning, tilting his chair back with eyes closed. He was fiddling with said pen against the table's edge.
The pen, in and of itself, held no extraordinary significance to him. Only that he had used it to write words. His words. Words that he had no way of remembering now.
Hyukjae's mind moved on to its peculiar owner.
There was just something about him. The severe expression, and overall unkempt dress, always hovering over some paper or book. The way he had been so unexpectedly forgiving over Hyukjae's fit of distress.
He doubted that the man would be so forgiving if he decided to rummage through his bag. Hyukjae could imagine the skeptical eyes he'd get if he tried to explain.
("I was only looking for a napkin!")
The average undergraduate instructor, he guessed. Or maybe he was older. A graduate student?, Hyukjae hazarded. He couldn't have been old enough to be a professor.
Around this area, there really weren't many other kinds of people.
Aside from the academically unmotivated like Hyukjae, who was stuck in some sort of scholastic limbo.
Half-bitter thoughts stung him.
A year off, he told his parents, after three years studying literature to find himself bored and lacking. Their response echoed in his mind. Why couldn't he be more like his sister and go study economics, if he hated literature so much?
He wasn't his sister, he had said. And he didn't hate his major. He just needed time to think of what he wanted to do with his life. It wasn't too much to hope for, that they would support him in his decision, at the very least.
His father had looked down at him with a stoic face and told him to do as he wished. His mother just worried.
But now, he started to wonder what it was that he was really doing. What was he really looking for?
Hyukjae watched the man in the corner, scratching at his head and tapping a pen on his lip, staring so intensely at the papers he was holding that his gaze might have pierced through.
Was it possible for Hyukjae to do that, to feel something more than just frustration with himself? Maybe, just maybe, he was looking for something that made his own eyes focused, so intensely focused, that his object of desire would blaze in glory.
He didn't know where to even start looking for something like that. If he hadn't found it yet after all his twenty-odd years of living, what made him think he could find it now?
He sighed, slumping against the counter. A pale girl sashayed over, all smooth legs and high-heeled shoes, snapping for Hyukjae's attention and an iced tea. Evidently, she had done so for a whopping ten seconds before he noticed, and he wondered how in all that staring he was doing had he missed that high cut skirt.
Sneaking a glance at the corner table covered in loose sheets of paper, Hyukjae attributed it to the lack of honey thighs.
TBC
