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chapter iv. mortals
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"Welcome to Cinnamon Bliss."
Nari's cheerful voice continues to fill the whole cafe for almost the entire afternoon. Even the whole vibe within the shop feels heavenly today. Inside, the atmosphere feels so light and warm despite the intense cold weather going on outside. You are pleased to find your co-workers showing their smiles constantly as they tend to the customers, and there doesn't seem to be a sight of unhappy patron sitting in your cafe everywhere you look.
If only you could share all the excitement instead of feeling like you are in a constant slump. It is something that you call your 'holiday mood', where you find yourself constantly in a somber mood that doesn't fade so easily even as the holiday season comes and goes. It had been this way last year, and the year before, and you still have no idea just how much longer this feeling would last. Even the calming scent of baked goods and sweets that have brought all these people together to your cafe does nothing to you when it would have been your remedy against your sorrow. Today, however, they are not doing you any good, except for the fact that they simply make you feel like there is a part of you that is missing and the things that you normally treasure could no longer help elevate your mood.
Sitting behind the counter, you look around the seating area and find something else that is missing from the scene, making the void inside your chest feel cavernous. The booth at the side of the room is currently unoccupied, a sight which shouldn't be so surprising for you to find when you realise what this week entails.
This week marks the first anniversary of Seokjin's wife passing. And it is more than enough to explain their absence for the entire past week. You can understand their need to have some privacy, to share this moment with their family instead of hanging out in public, no matter how much Soojin loves to spend her time here with you and how much she truly loves her favourite desserts.
Because you had done the exact same thing just two weeks ago, locking yourself up in your tiny, lonely home until your family came in to whisk you back out into the real world.
It had only been one year since the day Seokjin had lost his wife and for his daughter, Soojin, to say goodbye to her mother for eternity.
It had been exactly three years and two weeks since your loss.
Sucking a deep breath, you rub a hand over your aching chest, willing the void inside to fade. Everyone had told you that time would heal, but nobody knew just how good you have become to just simply hide everything underneath the facade that you have put up ever since it happened.
Closing your eyes, your fingers drift towards your left forearm, rubbing the skin that has always been hidden beneath your long-sleeved tops. Your breath hitches as you find the long scar that you have always been hiding for years, the remainder of what you had lost and the life that you still have left. Sometimes, you could still hear them—the sound of the metals crashing against metals, the sound of breaking glass, your voice screaming in fear. Sometimes, you could even still feel the pain and the nothingness that had engulfed you right after, how it felt when time stood still while your world was falling apart.
Time may have passed since then, but your memories remain. And it had always been so easy to come back to those moments when they had seemed to be engraved so deeply on every cell in your body and within every nook and cranny of your mind.
Your body shudders as you take a deep breath, and you open your eyes while snapping out of it, suddenly feeling angry at yourself for letting your mind drift away into the shadows of your past. It is not often that you find yourself dwelling too much into the past the way you do during these times, but the anguish sure feels stronger this year around for some strange reasons that it keeps making you feel restless to think about it.
When your eyes fall on the empty booth once again, you begin to wonder if it has anything to do with Seokjin and his little girl being gone. You realise just how different your life had been for the past year since you met them.
If you had only been living as if you were floating in space, existing without actually being present at the moment, their presence in your life had changed all that. You had started hoping again, to look forward to the day they would come in with their warmth and joy as they sit together, telling stories between their cinnamon buns and hot drinks.
You had thought that the reason why you had grown so attached to them had only been for the fact that you wanted to help them heal while giving you some sort of redemption for what you had failed to protect in the past. But what if they had been healing you at the same time in return without you realising it? That it had been them helping you heal slowly, and not the other way around?
Having these thoughts only makes you feel more lost, and you find yourself missing them even more. Pulling at your waist apron, you begin looking for a reason to step out for a short while, just to clear your mind before you would start breaking down.
As if fated, you glance out the full-sized window at the front of the cafe just in time to see Minhyun walking past, throwing a smile at you as he makes his way to the front door. He has always been the only one in your life who can truly understand your loss, and all about the pain that you still feel and how you would normally seem to others at this time of the year. It is no doubt has been one of the reasons why he has been coming to see you a bit more often, making sure that you are still holding it together.
On previous occasions, you have always felt like he was nothing but overbearing as he dotted you like you were a fragile little thing that could break apart anytime he looked away. This time, his presence is more than welcome. Seeing him entering the cafe with a mischievous glint in his eyes feels like a breath of fresh air and you simply cannot help but welcome him with a smile of your own.
Rising up from your seat, you rest your hands on your hips just as he walks up to the counter. "And what are you up to this time?"
"I'm here to bring you—" he stops to make a dramatic gesture of raising a bag of packed meal for you to see, showing you a big grin as he presents it to you by saying, "—lunch."
You raise your brows at him. "You do recall that it is my job to sell food, don't you? We do have plenty of delicacies here for me to pick."
"Ah, but do you have these juicy cheeseburgers? And how about your favourite fries?" he teases you while waving the bag right in front of your face, and the delicious scent of your favourite burger wafts through the air. "I even have a few cans of cold beer back in the car. I just figured I should keep it hidden from your customers. We don't want to have them steal your customers' attention from your mighty hot chocolates, do we?"
"You got some valid points there," you tell him, leaning forward to take the bag from his hand. "Aw—And you picked them from my favourite place."
Minhyun simply responds to you with a chuckle, though he does seem proud when he realises that you are smiling. You have to admit that thinking about him driving all the way downtown to fetch your favourite meal before coming to share his lunch break with you makes you feel better already.
Leave it to Minhyun to know exactly what you need at times like this.
"Nothing like eating unhealthy junk food with high calorie and fat to cure a broken heart," was what he had taught you back in high school, when he caught you crying in your bedroom after you broke up with your first boyfriend and he came in bearing a full package of big macs with large fries and two bags of popcorns. He even stayed to join you watching some lousy chick flick movie through your crying fest, something which he had made you swear to never bring up in front of his friends.
"We can eat in the back so you can bring out the beers. You can enter from the service door on the side. I'll unlock it for you from here," you offer him as you point out the way.
"You got it, Sis."
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It is late at night as Seokjin sits in the silence of his study room with a glass of drink in his hand.
It has been a long time since he had let himself drink anything with alcohol. He had only been nothing but a social drinker, only taking a glass of alcohol during special meetings or any gathering held with family and friends, but never in the dead of the night like this when he is sitting all alone in the darkness.
But the night serves for a little change of pace. The past week has been a long one, spent with his family who had come to visit him and his daughter for the holiday. Even his in-laws, the family of his late wife, had been here for a while, as they had wanted to spend the anniversary of their oldest daughter's passing together with him and Soojin. Then, after bidding goodbye to every single one of them at the end of this long day, he found himself both physically and mentally exhausted that he decided to settle down for a nightcap before heading to bed.
The desk in front of him would normally have either his paperwork scattered on top or his laptop resting there for whenever he stays up late like this to do some work. This time, he had put aside every single thing related to his work and covered the desk with various photos, both old and new, which he had gathered earlier after tucking his daughter to bed.
He had set them out on display and arranged them specifically so he would be able to take a good look at how his life had come flashing by. His hand trembles as he brings his glass to his lips. Even as he has all these photos right in front of him, he still finds himself unable to lay his eyes on them without feeling the tight grip inside his chest clenching and twisting.
Releasing a shuddering breath, he summons all the courage he could get and reaches out to pick up one of the old photos laid in front of him. His breath is soon caught in his throat when he realises that he is looking at one of his wedding photos. The sight of him in his wedding suit with his wife smiling beside him took him back to that day, when they had big dreams and had high hopes for their new beginning.
Holding the photo in his hand, Seokjin takes a long, deep breath, which does nothing to loosen up the tight bind in his chest. It feels like it forever ago had passed since his wedding day, and it certainly feels almost just as long since the last time he took a moment to look at this picture specifically. He had kept this photo framed and placed on top of one of his drawers, and yet, this would be the first time after almost a year for him to actually take a good look at it. His wife's passing had been such a terrible blow for him that it had been hard for him to let himself think about her, much less to even come any closer to the things inside this house which would remind him of her.
It had taken him weeks before he even had the willpower to unpack his late wife's overnight bag that he had taken home with him from the hospital after she had passed. It took him another few months before he found the strength to go over his wife's personal belongings and start packing them away, and it wouldn't have even happened if not for the help of his in-laws who had been here to give him their full support and a few pairs of helping hands.
And throughout everything that had happened, these photos had been kept within arm's length but not enough to pull his attention back to them to suck him back into his past memories. That was until earlier in the night, when his in-laws gathered in the living room after dinner and his sister-in-law pointed out at the photos, reminding him that they still existed.
"Sua had a happy life thanks to you. She loved both you and Soojin with everything she had," he remembers his sister-in-law telling him this as she picked up the framed wedding photo to stare at it longingly, before she suddenly turned to him. "She would understand, you know."
"Understand about what?"
There was something in the way his sister-in-law was smiling at him that made him feel odd. He didn't understand what his gut was trying to tell him until she answered, "If you want to carry on with your life. You're young and Soojin is at the age where she would need some extra support. I'm not saying that you should replace Sua or give Soojin a new mother, but our family lives too far away and we can't visit her as often as we'd like to help you with her. And we'd understand if you want to start a new life, a new family."
Seokjin had no answer for her then, not like how he was able to easily respond to Jaehwan when he had suggested the same thing only weeks before. And he had no idea what to feel about it when he looked away from his late wife's sister to avoid her concerned gaze only to find that his mother-in-law was giving him a knowing look, as if she knew what they were talking about at the corner of the room and she was giving her full support on it.
Though he didn't say anything for the rest of the night, her words stayed with him even after they had left his house. Especially her final words that she gave him when she was hugging him goodbye with a whisper, "Please think about it. The last thing we want, and what we know Sua would ever want, is to see you putting your life on hold because of her."
All of a sudden, everything feels a bit too much for him to handle and the loneliness begins to overwhelm him. He quickly knocks down the drink and puts everything away before finally heading out of there. Once upstairs, he stops by Soojin's bedroom before heading towards his own room.
Leaning against the doorway, Seokjin watches as his daughter sleeps peacefully with her hands clutching tightly on her favourite plushie doll and her blanket kicked away to her ankles. Pushing away the thoughts of his in-laws and the messages they had given him before they left, his mind wanders back to the past, to the moment in time where he sat next to his late wife at the hospital only hours after Soojin was born.
"What should we name her?" he recalls his late-wife asking him while she watched her newborn baby sleeping in her arms. Seokjin was a bit too emotional then to think much of it, but he recalls chuckling at her question when he thought about the hundreds of names listed in her journal.
"We've spent too much time thinking of a name, and now we have too many options."
His answer had her laughing sheepishly, before she suddenly looked down on their child. "Soojin. A mix between my name, Sua, and your name, Seokjin," she suggested then, before looking into his eyes and added, "That way, she'll always carry a part of me and a part of yours with her everywhere she goes."
"Yeah," he hummed right then, loving how the name had seemed fitting for the little angel that they had brought together into the world. "I like that."
He closes his eyes and takes a deep, longing breath as he walks up to her daughter. Tucking her gently under her blanket, Seokjin leans down to press a soft kiss on his temple, and he can swear he can still hear his late wife's voice in his head from her final days, when she said to him,
"Take care of Soojin for me. I know you'll do what's best for her."
Looking at his daughter's face which is a constant reminder of her mother, Seokjin whispers softly, hoping that his words can somehow reach her—wherever she may be right now—when he says, "I will take care of her and make sure to give her all the best in life. I promise."
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