Can We Love?

00

I was always surprised to find people who took interest in me. Whether it was romantically or platonically, I could never just understand why anyone would want to be with me. In a way to get to know me, and indeed it was interesting for a young woman to move to the most rural part of the country, but other than that, I wasn't anything special.

And maybe someday I'd break free from running away and learn how to love.

But that would be until the twenty-four hour clock would strike to the twenty-fifth hour.

___

"Would that be everything?" Jupin ask the customer of the early hour, giving a small smile to the middle aged woman as she wrote what the lady seated wanted. The middle aged lady nodded and as Jupin walked back to the kitchen, she took noticed that the previous table before left with the money placed on the table.

Going to the take the money and putting it in the cash register before going back to the kitchen, it was a busy morning for her. Like always, living in the country side for five years now while taking care of her business, she learned a fact or two. The locals are always hungry and they are always coming back for more. However, Jupin didn't mind at all, she found it glad that she herself could feed an entire village.

Jupin also learned that this is what she loved, even if she couldn't pursue her dreams of becoming a doctor, she was happy.

As she cooked more of her special pancit that everyone adored in this village, she had a small smile on her face that made anyone around her fall in love.

The bell ringed above the door, signalling Jupin to know when someone came in or left, as she raised her head up from the stove, her gaze caught with a man. With whom she had never seen before, she was sure he wasn't from here because she would've known.

The way Jupin noticed how pale his skin was compared to others, she wasn't quite sure if he was a foreigner from some other Asian country or he was from here.

Apart from that, Jupin wasn't fixated on that at all. As her eyes gazed upon him, she saw how his eyes were. Somewhere in those eyes, there was a war she could see in him and that was something he was running away from. Lonely, is what she perceived in him.

"Hi," she greeted with her smile, "please take a seat anywhere." And so he did, while Jupin finished cooking, she served the lady her food going to him now.

Pulling the notepad from her deep pockets of her apron along with a pencil, she walked over to his table. Sitting at the spot by the window that overlooks the rice fields and houses.

"Do you have any balut?" He asked, breaking the silence between them first. Jupin nodded her head. "I'd like five, and maybe what you were cooking earlier when I got here." He said, as Jupin wrote all what he asked down, she noticed how deep in contact he was with her. As she nodded walking away back to the kitchen, Jupin couldn't help but blush a little.

It wasn't new for her of course, to act this way at all. Because Jupin knew anyway, she found it funny herself.

"Here you go," Jupin says softly while placing the bowl full of her special pancit. "Call me over if you need something," she adds with a smile before going over to the kitchen. As she walks back, Jupin hears a muffled 'thank you' from him, finding Jupin to mouth a little 'you're welcome' to his response.

As Jupin continued her job, making sure the customers are alright, greeting her kuya's and ate's as they came to visit her while they were on break from working in the rice fields, Jupin let them have a treat for free.

While the man who seemed to have a special liking with balut watched her, staring at her back as she faced her front with customers.

The man who sat and ate while staring at the restaurateur with his eyes that could tell a million stories to how dark they were.