girasol; or, the summer of '95 | chaîne un

IX | 천사 (angel)

 The next day is Monday. He hates Mondays.

It's slightly lessened by the smell of coffee, but he still hates Mondays.

Asa says he'll take the day off, help around today. Jaehyun says his assignment is done and that he'll be sticking around for a week before heading back to Sydney for the new term.

That means Taeil is leaving soon too.

He hates Mondays.

✾ 

Monday rolls around like a pig in the mud: glorying in its filth and taking much too long to end.

It's a surprisingly laid back day. The few businessmen that always get their lunches here come through, zip out. The plumber who always stops by for a meal in the middle of the day. The young college student—he thinks her name is Valentina—that snags a drink when the day is done, bidding him farewell with the customary promise to come back tomorrow.

The end of Monday comes around slowly. Asa has disappeared on an emergency call to the hospital, Jaehyun is out on his dispatch to buy more cabbages for kimchi, and he is alone.

There's a knock on the glass door just as he is about to close up and he looks up, expecting it to be Jaehyun. But it's not, it's a short silver-haired man who taps his foot impatiently on the concrete. He swings it open to let him in.

"Uh, do you need something?"

"Just a drink," Westin says with an easy smile, but a deceptively easy one. Jaehwan knows from enough experience. He's hiding something. He has something to tell Jaehwan. "Maybe a couple shots of tequila? Or soju. I'm feeling properly Korean tonight."

"Don't you have a store to manage?"

"Not today. My dad's running it for the night."

He takes a moment to process that, and then—"Oh, that's awesome, he's feeling better now?"

Westin hums in assent, a lazy grin stretching across his face. "He said he wanted to try to help out more, make more money so I could go back to music school."

"That's—that's great." And it really is. "You composed—you composed that song that Taeil sang, right? At the bar last night."

"A little beat I mixed up over the last couple of days." He shrugs like it's not big deal, that he just wrote a song in a matter of days when Jaehwan can't even sing on key, as he accepts the glass from Jaehwan and motions that he'll pour the drinks. Jaehwan relents and surrenders the bottle. "But he wrote all the lyrics. And about that—" The smile morphs into a sneakier one.

He's not enjoying this, even if the younger is. "What?"

"Those were some pretty deep lyrics, even if no one else at the bar understood them."

"And?"

"I wouldn't just, well, ignore them if I were you."

He scoffs and takes the glass of alcohol that Westin offers to him. "It already took enough out of me to forgive two idiots. The third is going to be a piece of work."

"Would you forgive him though?" Westin raises his glass.

"I...don't know. Cheers—"

And for the second time in as many days, the room goes black.

"Jesus, Westin, if this is a prank, it's not funny—wait, where are you, I need to call the electrician—"

And then the dusty spotlight appears again, illuminating the boy in the wheelchair, but today only for an audience of one.