ALWAYS SMILE CAFE (GirlxGirl Romance)

Chapter 6. Let's start this new day together!

Nicole was stretching to remove the knots on her shoulders and back from all the baking. She has just gotten the third batch of cookies from the oven. She stopped when Seungyeon came in from the backdoor.

"Picking up Hara has become a routine, hasn't it?" She said with a teasing tone while handing her a cookie.

"Better than her using up her salary to fix dents and scratches in her car. It's already a hand-me-down car to begin with. Seriously, she needs a valet to park."

"What was that?" Hara popped into the kitchen and tightly backhugged Seungyeon.

"Your timing is impeccable," Nicole commented with a laugh.

"I heard my Ham's voice, I couldn't resist."

"Ham?"

"Other people call her Hammie for Hamster coz she looks like one," Hara said poking Seungyeon's cheek. Seeing her eonnie eating the cookie with her cheeks puffed, she did resemble a hamster. "But to me she's my Ham, so delicious I wanna eat her." She grabbed one of the other girl's arm and mockingly pretended to bite it.

"That's enough," smiling Seungyeon pulled her arm away from the barista's grasp. She did not, however, move away from Hara's embrace. "You seem busy today," she observed Nicole to change the topic. "Stressed?"

"Me? No, I'm not particularly busy. Why do you say that?"

"You don't usually have this many cookies lying around in the kitchen." She pointed to the five trays of cookie sheets on the kitchen table. Three of which contained baked cookies.

"She has been baking cookies for hours," Hara said finally releasing her Ham. "I mean baking and decorating cookies. It's the first time I've seen her put designs on her cookies." Hara pointed out two trays with such cookies designed with a thin layer of sprinkled powdered sugar and drawn on with thick chocolate syrup. The drawings varied from hearts, stars, but mostly smiley faces. "I think she's inspired by those cute oranges drawing on the fridge door," Hara added.

"Yes! That's right. I am," Nicole earnestly said. "It's for an order tomorrow. I need it to look like that."

SeungYeon looked from the cookies to the drawing. The emoji cookies were cute, but the drawn oranges were cuter. She snickered when she saw one design, the smiley face with a circle around it, a sprig and leaf on top. "This looks like an apple, not an orange," she teased its artist.

"That's not an apple, eonnie! An apple looks like this," gesturing in the air with the apple shape, "that's an orange."

SeungYeon just laughed at Nicole. "What is this?" she asked pointing to another cookie with caret eyes and squiggly mouth. "It looks like it has a moustache."

"Stop teasing!" Nicole was now frowning like a kid. "I really don't draw well and the piping bag isn't easy to manage." In truth, she was starting to feel confident in her designs, but the other girl crushed it back down to reality.