Seven o'clock for Seo Woojin is about breathing the air in the tavern, serving drink and collecting bills. Sometimes, they ask him to nurse a lilting tune with his string instrument. Cheerful piece during happy hour, or mesto blue to dot a broken soul.
Every night, from Monday to Friday, he let his soul dissipate into drone of drunken chattering, three sheets to the wind. Champagne taste, beer wages. But not all people come there to get drunk, some of them sit down to muse, for the sake of artistry of their poetry with a company of muted bottle and sip of bourbon whiskey.
As night deepen, the chattering will turn to murmuring, and sometimes, Woojin has to embrace more boozed chaos. Loud thwack and whack, bruises and blood.
Tonight, Woojin wish he can come back home in one piece. He has an upcoming exam tomorrow. Steps of code blue response, his team assigned him as the first responder; the one who will call for help and start the compression when carotid artery isn't palpable.
"... manage the airway and switch places with the first responder if..." he recites the steps, hand busily wipes the table. That is when he notices scratches on the paper left by the clientele. String of digits and words, nearly illegible. The only word he think he can read is 'perish'.
The bell chimes and another guest comes in.
A girl with dandelion fuzz of beautiful coiffure, wrapped in a long brown coat, looking soulless as she enters the room.
It's her.
It's almost as if he was a watching a scene from an old fable leaping out the page.
How can she come here?
Does she probably know that he is working here?
The bartender from behind the counter gestures him to welcome the guest and he is doing so.
At first, their gazes collide, then, maybe they exchange smiles, Woojin isn't too sure because the room is dimly lit and he can't focus.
And she sits at one of the empty table near the entrance.
"Is it possible to have a cup of coffee here?" she puts down her bag on the table. Unpleasant visage along monochromatic mien.
Something is wrong.
It's funny that somehow he can read her like a book. He knows when she is sad, mad or have something to say. And tonight, she is as pale as silver-gray of the moon; clair de lune.
But he doesn't think she will like it if he asks why or what's wrong, so he just offer her a mix of Amaretto with coffee, he remembers what the bartender said during their break, that a mug of Amaretto-spiked coffee can be a soul-restoring treat. And she says yes.
Sweet nutty liqueur round the bitter beans, topped with a fresh whipped-cream; Woojin is sure that he notices smile on her lips when she looks at her dark-amber liquid.
"I didn't expect it to look like this. It looks like a dessert."
A dessert melt into the smell of stale ale, peanut and chips? She should've gotten herself a scoop of strawberry ice cream somewhere else.
How he wish he could take her out of this smoky cavern;
out of this hurly-burly of bruising life.
'Cons of dropping out medical-school : Mom will be sad.' is probably the reason why she is here, but he could be wrong too.
"Do you need something else?" he asks.
"Can you sit down here for a while?" she answers.
Following that is a long silence swirl in a stuffy air, before she finally says something again.
"I'm tired." she murmurs.
He knows.
"You know that I hate being the second. Can you slow down in tomorrow exam?" she shifts her gaze from her mug to him.
Her eyes are more like an espresso than hazel tonight. She can hide the upset in her tone, but not the truth revealed in her eyes.
"You are on my team, and I will be the leader of this Code Team. Don't you think that a leader should shine brighter?"
Cha Eunjae is like a rolled wizard-blue crashing against a rock with its swell and sigh. He knows that she is not doing her best but rather enduring.
"You should go home now. It's going late." he says.
And again, another silence fill the abyss between the two. A fine-dust speckled light above gleams off of something on her eyes. Sphere cracks and leaks, a tiny drop ready to fall but she holds herself. And he thinks, it's much worse to see her like this than seeing her actually crying.
"Hang in there, Cha Eunjae." The words roll out perfectly from his tongue and she slowly land her eyes again on him.
"Sorry, what did you say?"
"Hang in there. At the end of the day, whenever you feel tired, you can tell yourself to hang in there for one more day..."
She scoffs.
"...You will find a way." he adds.
"Are you lecturing me now?"
"No. I am just telling you my way of surviving. That is all."
She takes a sip of her amaretto.
"You know nothing, Seo Woojin."
"I know."
"What do you know?"
"That you want to be the first."
'That you don't want to make your Mom sad', he actually wanted to say.
She lets out another scoff.
"You are really bothering me, Seo Woojin. Don't you know that?" another sip and she looks hollow, "We are not even friends. Yet I still sit here and really not sure about what I am doing right now."
"To have a drink." he says.
"and a 'friend' to talk to..." she traces the rim of her mug with her finger, "...maybe."
"I heard you can play violin." she suddenly says and the topic quickly changes, "Can you really play one?"
"Sorry?"
"A violin. You can play it, don't you?"
"Y-yes but..."
She raises her hand, asking for another waiter to come. And the other guy hurriedly walking to their table.
"I can ask him to play a violin for me, right?"
The waiter looks confused at first but then the guy nods.
Soon, Woojin find himself on the stage, holding the instrument, making sure the tuning pegs fits the scroll. He places the violin on his shoulder, hold the bow and curling his fingers around the wood.
Nocturne from Chopin, C sharp minor.
On her seat, as he drags the bow across the strings, she starts crying.
