Last Night at the Café

25 | Tteok Guk

His skin was warm through her shirt. He pulled her close to peer up at her.

"I'm being serious too. I'm not letting my girlfriend work my shift. I'll close the café today."

"You can't close the café all of a sudden," she said. Then she cast the clock a glance. "Jieun is probably already there. If you want, you can pay me later."

"Of course I'll make up for it." Then he cast a glance around them, to the unmade bed. "What about here?"

She hurriedly pulled away, her face red.

"Rest up! I'm going!"

~

"So?" Jieun asked the moment they had a breather. Her eyes crinkled with a smile as she let out a laugh. "How are you?"

Home saw a middling crowd tonight, one they had barely been able to manage with Jieun behind the coffee machine and dishing out desserts, and Seollal manning the cashier and clearing tables. They had recently changed out the flowers, replacing the pink muhly grass with stalks of wheat, while bright yellow canolas dressed the windows, and pops of pinks and reds and whites of other buds she could not put a name to stuck into mismatching vases all around the café.

Yet the table she always occupied, the lone two-seater in the corner, remained devoid of embellishment. She hasn't asked Jieun, but compared to the rest of the shop, it was quietly subdued with a sole chrysanthemum in a vase. Few customers chose to sit there, she realised. It was taken only when it was the only table left behind.

Perhaps it was too plain, perhaps it was too close to the buzz and hiss of the coffee machine. Anyhow, a part of her had started viewing that table as hers.

Seollal turned to the girl with one brow raised, her hands in the midst of squeezing a cloth out. The rush of voices seemed to have subsided all of a sudden, leaving her to stare wonderingly around the homely space. Their guests were served, the delivery app had stopped ringing, and the door had not been opened to allow more customers in, according them some time to breathe.

"I don't miss working in a café," she admitted. "But I'm enjoying it."

She pulled her mask down before taking a long sip of her diluted hazelnut latte. Jieun had fixed it up for her during a lull earlier before a crowd came.

"Sajangnim should have asked Anna to come. You didn't have to come down yourself, unnie."

"It's no big deal. Besides, it's Anna's birthday. How can I let her work on her birthday?"

"You and sajangnim should be having date night," she muttered sourly. "He'd better be paying you."

Seollal let out a laugh, her brows rising in amusement.

"It's just a couple of hours. Are you annoyed on behalf of us?" she teased. "Why are you so angry?"

"I feel frustrated for the both of you," Jieun complained. She took the cloth that Seollal had squeezed out, then proceeded to scrub at a stain on the counter with some ferocity. "Don't you wish to get more time to spend with him too?"

"Of course I do," she said quietly. "But I also like seeing him do what he likes to do. This café is like his baby. How can he not care for his baby?"

Jieun nodded slowly as she tossed the cloth aside.

"If he's already treating Home like that, I wonder how he will be like with a real baby?"

Her eyes grew wide as she faced the girl. She was glad for her mask, for it hid the growing heat on her cheeks. A real baby?