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It was not much later than that when Haechan could feel it.
As he wrote down the orders of the new customers, his pen moving quickly to note them all on time, Haechan felt it, just for a split second. His entire body froze, and the numbness forming on his fingers made him drop the pen onto the floor, but still, the boy felt unable to move a muscle.
Goosebumps littered Haechan's skin while they traveled up and down his spine, as if his sixth sense had somehow activated. He swore he was being observed. Tensing, he could almost feel a pair of eyes focused on him, watching his every movement with overwhelming intensity.
Haechan looked at the side; the upper half of the walls of the small café were made of glass, allowing him to see the street outside. But he did not notice anything strange. There was nobody in particular, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. After a few seconds, Haechan decided to brush it off, blaming it on his imagination.
After all, since the school year began, his paranoid thoughts had played a few tricks on him.
Coming back to reality, he finally crouched down to pick up the pen and apologized a few times to the customers for his odd behavior. After a quick "right away," Haechan made his way behind the counter to get their orders ready.
"What was that just now?" Sungchan asked him, Shotaro jumping into the conversation right after, "what happened? Were they rude to you?" Haechan didn't even realize they had seen it, "what? No, no, it has nothing to do with the clients, and I'm fine." The two eyed him suspiciously, looking for a sign that he was perhaps not telling the truth, and partly relaxing when they found none.
"It was just that I got a weird feeling, but it's nothing, really," Haechan tried to ease their friends' concerns, hating to make them worry because of his antics. When Shotaro and Sungchan seemed convinced enough, they had to get back to their job, the former muttering quick, but still hesitant, "if you say so."
Time passed by. Their work shift continued and it was only about an hour and a half later when the two and Haechan himself had the chance to sit down and relax.
"Thanks for coming, we hope to see you again soon." Haechan had just finished charging a client for some takeaway drinks and sandwiches when he went next to Shotaro and Sungchan to rest behind the counter. "Today seems a bit busier than last Saturday," he observed. "Yeah," Sungchan added right before Shotaro looked at his watch and spoke "thankfully around this hour everything calms down for a while."
The three looked around for a moment, checking one more time that everything was under control. All clients were served, there were no unoccupied tables that remained dirty and all the food and beverages were well placed. They sighed, finally able to breathe.
The next couple of hours weren't as intense as the previous ones. Fortunately, the evening was slowly but surely coming to an end, and it wouldn't be too long until the sky outside started to dusk. The boys had already made it through half the evening, and Haechan himself was going to have his fifteen-minute break in only twenty minutes.
The atmosphere in the cafeteria was quiet. Sungchan, Shotaro and Haechan tried to avoid getting too bored by making themselves useful with any task they could manage to find. Only three tables were occupied, and the clients were either chatting softly or studying in complete silence.
Haechan had a careless smile on his face. It was moments like these that he truly enjoyed. When the world got so still that it seemed like time had stopped, all anxiety disappearing. Of course, he would have preferred to be sitting at a table while sipping on some hot beverage, but right then, he was content anyways.
The boy hummed to some song that randomly popped up in his mind when the doorbell rang again, signaling that someone else had arrived. He was busy cutting a piece of red velvet cake, but slowly lifted his gaze just to check if either Sungchan or Shotaro were free to welcome whoever just entered and get them seated. Haechan saw the latter doing so, and when his eyes reached the newcomer's face, his heart skipped a beat (or maybe more) upon recognizing who it was.
His English teacher, in all his glory, was the one that just showed up.
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