Chapter Text
17:25
The caffe latte was exactly where it was supposed to be; neatly placed on a small wooden table in the corner of a tiny coffee shop that barely held any customers.
Eyes focused on his feet, Minho walked inside, hearing the familiar sound of the bright bell by the door that announced his arrival to the old woman who owned the place.
She greeted him softly, just like she always did, not moving from her spot behind the counter. It was best like this. Minho though as he made his way to his usual seat, acknowledging the prepared caffe latte with a gentle nod.
Slowly, not to damage his leather bag, he placed it on the vacant chair right next to his, pulling out the required reading for his courses.
He had never understood what his peers meant when they complained about not being able to keep up with the reading assignments. To him, it was rather the opposite. Following the courses and the mandatory reading wasn’t something he had never had any problems with following the courses. The mandatory reading, he usually finished in less than an hour each day and spend the remaining time working on additional material he got from the professors.
He has always been told he was special, ever since his childhood days when he preferred to be reading inside while his classmates were playing out on the streets. The older he got, the more people noticed that he was different. His parents who had had four more children after Minho, barely had any time to take care of their oldest son. But unlike what others might think, Minho was happy being alone. He was uncomfortable sitting at the table with his siblings and his parents. He loved predictability.
And people were not predictable. There would always be something that disrupted routine, something Minho wasn’t prepared for, something that left him utterly confused and made his mind shut off from the real world, floating away.
In moments like those, he was in his safe space. He was talking to people like George Orwell about his utopian vision of the future or to Jane Austen about her life as a female writer in Victorian England. He was happy, reciting works of authors in his mind. The problem was just that people did not understand. They tend to pull him out of his safe space, want him to interact with other human beings - for his own happiness they said.
At an early age, his parents taught him how to talk to people, how to look at people while he was talking to them, something he was especially uncomfortable with. Ever since he can remember, he had never looked into another person’s eyes. Instead he looked at the bridge of their nose
Through practice he was able to speak without pausing every few words. But he still needed more time to respond than the people around him – this wasn’t because he didn’t know answer but simply because he just needed to prepare the sentence to be said aloud. What he had noticed throughout his life was that most people don’t have the patience to interact with him.
Ever since he was studying at the university in the city nearby, he had found it the most comfortable to come to this little café in the outskirts to study. At home it was busy, and he barely got a quiet minute. He preferred to be in quiet places. Therefore, he visited every single day, always at the exact same time: 17:25
The very first time he came, he asked the old lady to get his caffe latte ready at 17:20 and put it on the table, so it would be ready and a little cooled down when he arrived. For over four years now, she has done so, never messing up the balance of milk and coffee or leaving it too hot or too cold on his table. Sometimes, Minho even talked to her for a few minutes. He knew she was lonely – her whole family lived in Seoul – and even if he didn’t feel what others call empathy, he had been taught that people need human interaction to be happy. Thinking of this, he knew that she wasn’t feeling well and loved to have someone to talk to. So, every Friday, she was sitting on the opposite chair, looking in another direction, waiting for Minho to arrive.
She was the closest thing to a friend he had. Somehow, she has found a way to talk to him without making him feel like he was doing everything wrong. Their conversations didn’t last longer than a few minutes as Minho got tired easily, but they were precious to the both of them.
Sitting in his chair, with his head held up with one hand, he followed Derrida’s principles of deconstruction, as he was analysing the literary text in front of him with ease. That was until his routine was interrupted by the arrival of a new variable in the room.
“Halmoni!! I am here!!” A loud voice shouted, making Minho’s bubble burst and he found himself in the uncomfortable place of the real world again. Thoughts were running through his head; what was happening? Why is it so loud? When will it stop?
“Yah” the old woman said, shushing the young man. Minho couldn’t make out anything more than her whispering something like:
“I have told you not to burst in here when you arrive” before the two figures disappeared through the door behind the counter.
He tried to get his focus back on the text he had been reading but found himself unable to do so after being pulled out of his thought by the loud male. But it was too early to go home. He never went home this early.
That is why he stayed seated one more full hour before leaving to his house. But in contrast to his usual time in the café his chest didn’t feel light when leaving the familiar place. It was as if someone had completely changed the café, remodelled it from the bottom to the top. It suddenly felt strange and foreign with the loud voice that became part of it as of today.
A/N
The story is almost completed over on AFF so I decided to finally start uploading the chapters to AO3 as well! Updates will be fairly regular - once or twice a week.
As for visual aid - this is the coffee shop the one in this story was modeled after:
Please do leave a comment if you have any thoughts. Mustering up motivation to write has been tough lately.
Find other works of mine via my MASTERLIST (AO3 links are provided at the top right corner)