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It’s a certain thing, that Choi Soobin is uncertain about something.
“Are you sure that he’s even into guys?” he asks with furrowed brows, narrowing his eyes at his friend and coworker, Beomgyu. It’s a good thing that at the moment, no customer is coming in, because Soobin has his mind set upon his own curiosity.
Beomgyu just looks at him, emotionless—and in this instant, Soobin understands why some people think he’s intimidating.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Beomgyu says, his long hair shielding half of his dollish face as he ducks to take another bag of ground coffee up to the countertop. “No straight person looks that cool and is that fashionable. Honestly, I’d expect your radar to be a bit more polished after all these years, I swear to god. If that motherfucker turns out to be queer, just like I said by the way, we have to get that Shrek couple tattoo.”
Soobin just sighs, the tip of his index finger tapping against the diamond-shaped handle of a glass covering that protects a tray of cheesecake from the outside air. The weather is nice today, but Soobin notices that he isn’t here yet. The sun streams through the wide windows that overlook the bustling streets outside, complexions bright from the unusually sunny weather. The black-based interior of the cafe exudes warmth now, and some of the light reflects off the spines of hardcover books with golden embossed lettering.
The weather is perfect.
But where has perfection gone, for he is not there, sat perched in front of the city scenery—where is he?
He knows that he is being irrational. It’s an attraction that cannot be denied, one that begs for progress that might make or break it. But it’s the consequence to his disposition, this fear of touching or becoming so close to something so beautiful.
It’s rare that he’s ever certain about something, but this attraction shakes him to his core. His curiosity eats him up from the inside, the dulled edge of his sanity screaming at him to simply talk. One word could lead to another, and another, and another. Rejection could happen, but god, isn’t that so terrifying.
He’s rarely ever certain, but his attraction for Choi Yeonjun is a truth set in the rigid stone of his beating heart.
☆
Soobin first saw him on his third week as a barista.
It had been difficult, adapting to an entirely new working environment when his previous job was as a convenience store cashier. But the position is similar, regarding the place in which he is situated. Behind a counter, eyes casted downward as he bows his head with an amiable smile. Familiarity—what a beautiful word. He has such a fondness towards the feeling; it’s warm and tangible, almost like an old friend. It’s there , always, and Soobin just has to go on his way to seek it. Take it within the desperate grasp of his hands and familiarity will once more greet him.
This was familiar.
He wiped his hand on the brown leather apron over his uniform—crisp white shirt and black trousers. Simple. Sensible.
He had been relying the past few weeks in his apprenticeship to the younger yet more experienced barista, Kai Huening. The other boy had been nothing but perfectly kind, and Soobin was positively transfixed… he would admit that much.
Kai had something that he envied (or perhaps envies with a pointed, sonorant S, the sound hissing violently at the warming tips of Soobin’s ear as if it is the ruthless reminder of what he should be, could be, can be… if only he weren’t so blinded by his own doubt) and that something was the lack of doubt. From the first moment Soobin met the other boy, the latter already treated him as if they had been old friends, tracing far longer than their residences in the city. Kai’s eyes were massive, bright and glittering, and Soobin had to force himself to return the gaze. It had been difficult, but in that moment, he realised just what could happen when you let cowardice cower. He abandoned it for a brief moment, and at this point, he had Kai’s phone number on his phone.
“ Eh, hyung, no need to be so uptight with me—just do whatever!” Kai had said with his cheekbones raised up high, a youthful flush on his skin bright and ruddy and eyes so mirthful and confident and Soobin was so fucking jealous.
He wanted that so badly. He wanted it, wanted to have it, wanted to be it. To be confident, careless, casual. Comfortable, in every sense of the word, with anything in the world. He wants to go up to new people and flash a smile up at them, lips already pursed to form his own special kind of greeting. He wants to know his classmates, wonder what they’re up to when they’re not busy sitting through a lecture just like he usually does. He wants so, so badly to be liked—yet the prospect of achieving that sort of amiability is a gamble worthy of his strange fear. He isn’t ready, no matter how badly he wants to be.
(It’s a battle he fights with himself, and he is slowly losing.)
So that day, he flashed a smile and called the other barista by his name—“Thank you, Kai-yah.”
He managed to let the words tumble out of his trembling tongue without a stutter. Kai’s expression remained open and accepting, like it always was and is.
For the rest of his days working at the cafe, days which precedes the present, Soobin had found himself throwing his entire focus on honing his skills. It was new to him, the art of coffee making, and no matter how simple it appeared to him when he used to watch them make his drinks, the real thing was more challenging than it appeared to be. Just like everything else, as expected. The tips of his fingers burned, and his neck was always damp with sweat. From extortion, from nervousness, and from hesitance—the last one being the biggest offence to his countenance.
Thankfully, he never managed to upset a customer, but he would never imagine what predicament he would be in once that actually happens. (He could never. He would never let himself go through that.)
Focus was guaranteed, and success, no matter how mediocre, was something he always managed to have within the grasp of his shaking hands.
But the moment he laid eyes on him, Soobin wondered if consistency and comfort and predictability were the only things the world would want him to experience. They rob him of beauty—of the beauty of new-ness, the charm of serendipity and the bliss that follows it. They drag his body, tug him away from ever encountering the unexpected chances that lead him to another door, one that opens to an entirely new orbit. Ordinary, extraordinary. Mediocre, spectacular; he wants them all. He wants to see the ugly parts and the beautiful, he wants to be loved and get his heart broken to fucking pieces.
But he knows that he will never let himself.
Maybe it’s the way the universe manages to keep itself balanced for so long in a world so arbitrary. It moves when it needs motion, it forces when it craves change.
And Soobin wonders if he could ever forget.
The instant attraction—so superficial and surface-level. But it is an attraction nonetheless. Childlike and full of wonder, wide-eyed over a figure so beautiful you’d expect something akin to it to be conjured up by a memory, an imagination, a fantasy.
That day, Soobin met Choi Yeonjun.
(Met, what a ridiculous word. So short and so insignificant. The way your lips move when you utter the three-letter curse is a wonder in itself—a wonder so damning Soobin could laugh. You would let your lips make contact with one another, feeling the warmth graze itself like a lonely lover. It feels beautiful, doesn’t it? It teases you, makes you wonder about what could happen. What it would feel like to have someone else utter the words between your lips in a maddening interval. How beautiful, to say the same word at the same time, the way both of your lips will meet the moment they flutter at the behest of the formation of the word— Met .
I met you, Soobin would say.
And you met me, he imagines the other would utter. Mumble. Just to feel the way the consonant would press against his.
Such a ridiculous fantasy—the allure of impossibility far too tempting to resist.)
Soobin never met him.
He simply took his order.
“Hi!” Choi Yeonjun said, cheerful as ever as he looked up at the menu board above Soobin’s head with those feline eyes narrowed. Such a mindless move, uncalculated in its fascinating shift. Those eyelashes, impossibly darkened by mascara and framed by dispersing black eyeliner. Dark irises cornered by the greyish remnants of cigarette smoke curling upon cold air—lingering, warm, fiery. Smoky, familiar and foreign at the same time. Despite the darkness of his gaze, Choi Yeonjun’s eyes were wide and glittering.
(It must have been the overhead lights, Soobin thought. But then he realised that it was sunny, and they had turned off all the lights in the room.)
Those glistening pupils reflected the effortless wonder of thinking, the questioning of choices and which one to make.
Soobin’s eyes traced the stranger’s figure as if he were a painting. So… weird. For the lack of a better word, Soobin thought the boy was so fucking weird. It was that weirdness, however, that became the catalyst of Soobin’s endless wonder. His mind became bombarded with questions, with curiosity, with the options of probability. What he could do, what he might achieve once he does. What could happen if he doesn’t—which was perhaps the most expected option of action.
That day, Soobin’s eyes were laid upon a stranger. A stranger with pink hair so bright it undoubtedly demanded his attention. The strands laid over the smooth plane of his neck, wispy and warm against his tanned skin. He had it partly slicked back with some strands tumbling over his forehead, revealing the openness of his facial features, the way each contour is perfectly tailored to fit his small face. Soobin’s throat closed upon itself when his eyes caught the way the stranger’s ear piercings glinted beneath the sunlight, shyly caressing his skin from behind the gentle shield of the cafe’s big windows. It dared to touch his skin, and Soobin wondered if this person was actually real.
(He was . And that was the truth that set Soobin’s heart ablaze, weakening when the realisation towards the impossibility begins to sink in, little by little. It breaks him to pieces slowly, even though he’d rather it ends Soobin as swift as the way he fell for Choi Yeonjun.)
The stranger was dressed in a black and white striped turleneck, but Soobin’s eyes lingered on the way his right shoulder was widely exposed. The top itself had a little cut-out square—what a weird piece of clothing, but good god, did it suit Choi Yeonjun well.
That day, Soobin found himself transfixed. His hands were frozen by his sides, and he wondered if perhaps he should…
(No, you fucking shouldn’t —his mind remarked. Are you testing me? )
“Can I have an Iced Americano?”
These words tumbled out of Choi Yeonjun’s lips like a calling.
And as Soobin’s hand trembled over the counter, he wondered if he had been spellbound all this time.
☆
The pink-haired stranger started to visit the cafe on a regular basis, then. Every single Tuesday and Friday, at about two to five.
Not that Soobin had been keeping count.
He simply liked consistency.
☆
Sometime along the line, his friend Choi Beomgyu joined to become one of the cafe’s baristas, and Soobin’s misery became acknowledged not only by himself, but also by the biggest loud-mouth he has ever known in his life.
Choi Beomgyu is brilliant.
That is an undoubted statement—and Soobin even dares to be certain in this case.
He’s a social butterfly, the kind that flaps his wings toward every single social circle on campus. And the thing is, everyone loves him. They adore him and his long, black hair. They laugh at the jokes he utters with those lips, they flush under his attention—those darkened eyes, bright with an openness that Soobin could never have. They preen beneath the sweetness of his praises, they lavishly let his charm bewitch them into saying the strangest things.
(That easy charm had been the one thing that managed to make Soobin open his mouth in class, that one day when he happened, by chance, to sit beside one Choi Beomgyu that just won’t stop talking.)
It does not matter if you’re a close friend or an acquaintance, but there is a high possibility that you’d reveal your darkest and deepest secrets to him.
And that , along with his penchant to strike a conversation with everyone that his eyes lay themselves upon, causes him to know everyone and everything. No matter how surface level.
But still, it’s a bit of a surprise when it turns out Beomgyu knows who Choi Yeonjun is.
Soobin widens his eyes, lips parting on their own accord. “You know him?”
“Oh, definitely.” Beomgyu nods, propping one hand against the counter and resting his weight there. “Well, not personally, but I am aware of like, his existence. He’s Choi Yeonjun, third year student from the Faculty of Arts. Majoring in… Dance? Something about performance, I’m not quite sure. But I think Kai mentioned something along the lines of dancing, and I’ve heard some people talking about him and how he’s the programme’s ace.”
“Ace?” Soobin squeaks.
Beomgyu clicks his tongue. “Ah, I don’t know if you remember that dance performance that they showed us during orientation week. But Choi Yeonjun was there, I think he was the lead dancer, actually. But with all the theatrical makeup I don’t think I remember seeing him particularly, y’know.” He shrugs. “One of the best, apparently. The second years kiss the ground he walks on.”
(Great, Soobin muses to himself as the sound of the chiming bell pinpoints the start of his breakdown. He’s so out of my league. )
And as if the universe demands that Soobin realise his reality, Choi Yeonjun walks through that door like a vision.
Beomgyu snickers.
☆
“The same thing for today?” Soobin braves himself to ask. His toes curl beneath his shoes, heart pounding so fast to the rhythm of his attraction that is growing so, so fast. So rapid, when it shouldn’t be.
Choi Yeonjun flashes him a smile, the rise of his cheekbones grazing the surface of Soobin’s heart in a movement so slow it makes him want to drown. There is a slight hint of redness to them, a blotchiness in which the shade spreads beneath the warming skin.
“You know it.”
☆
“Choi Beomgyu-ssi!”
“Oh. Yeonjun-sunbae! What’d you like to have for today?”
Soobin pauses in his steps, fingers tightening its grip upon the rigid sides of his tray. The empty glasses on top of it remain static—steady, stable.
“Iced Americano, please,” he replies. “Okay, just for the record, I think your hair is super cool. I fucking love the highlights, it suits you so much!”
“You’re such a flatterer, Yeonjun-sunbae! But thank you so, so much, I actually didn’t expect it to turn out this well, I mean, not to toot my own horn or anything.”
“Toot it all you want, Choi Beomgyu-ssi, you look amazing. ”
“Ah, thank you so much! By the way, where’d you…”
Soobin leans back against the wall, cradling the edge of the tray closer to his chest.
There is an undoubted feeling within the pit of stomach, one that causes his eyes to be a little unfocused and one that forces his lips shut. He blinks at himself, letting his ivory teeth bite down upon the dryness of his bottom lip as his heart pounds once more at the knowledge that Choi Yeonjun is here. It's so adolescent, this attraction, yet Soobin feels like his head is growing heavier by the pacifying second. The sickening emerald green, it has lacked its lustre, as it seems. The shade's pallor is revolting, and Soobin takes a deep breath.
Envy. The juxtaposition of joy and jealousy, of wishful thinking.
(The easiness in which Beomgyu talks to Yeonjun. As if they had been friends for god knows how long. As natural as the way steam filters itself through the light air, the radiating warmth within the room—easy and comfortable. The effortless exchange, the lilting tone of their voices devoid of doubt. There is no hesitance in the way Choi Yeonjun praises and Beomgyu accepts, the way he takes the lead of the conversation once he deems the timing perfect. Standing there against the wall, pressed against the rigidity so familiar to him, Soobin curses at himself. At his incapability to be, when it is completely within his reach.)
He lets out a sigh, and gets out of the way when a customer walks in front of him.
☆
“Oh, and Choi Beomgyu-ssi?”
“Hm?”
“Where’s that one friend of yours that usually takes my order? Tall, dark-haired…?”
“You mean Soobinie? Choi Soobin? Um, he’s on waiter duties today. I think he’s upstairs at the moment, taking orders cos sometimes people like to sit before actually making their orders, y’know, sunbae.”
“Oh… Alright.”
☆
Soobin knows that he’s contemplating the impossible. Worrying his little head over what could happen, instead of what had .
He has never tried. Not even once.
Maybe it’s just not meant to be, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that… Soobin tells himself.
Hesitance is a dangerous thing.
But it has always been the only figure capable of keeping him out of trouble, out of heartbreak, out of loss, out of hurt. It becomes a shield, one that is so frail to the point that he asks himself—so what if it hurts? So what if it turns out that he’ll be rejected or worse, ridiculed? So what if he’s left with warm cheeks, throat tight with embarrassment.
(So fucking what ?)
It’s so easy to think that. To say that and let the challenging words be written and grazed upon the scaled surface of his heart. It’s so easy to imagine, to wonder—never once being acquaintances with the consequences. But he likes what he is now—he has to. He can’t be picky, not when the tips of his fingers are trembling for someone unreachable. Someone so far away from the narrowness of his orbit to the point that it is simply a matter of time before Soobin’s rationality finally beats his attraction to submission because guess what: ‘It’s never gonna fucking happen!’
So he continues. He wraps his fingers around the lever, feeling himself taking a deep breath as he keeps his gaze fixed onto the steamed milk. The liquid froths and rises to the surface, nearly pouring all over the place, all over him , making a mess out of itself because the one person handling it cannot keep its steadiness in check. Soobin feels exactly like it—feeling too much to the point of spilling over, the hearts on his sleeve weakly shattering to spread sparsely over the ground Yeonjun walks on.
And the worst thing is, it’s not even Yeonjun’s fucking fault.
It’s not his doing—Soobin’s heartbreak is the product of his own predicament.
But why does it hurt so much, when nothing has happened enough to the point that a course of action has become a catalyst to his countenance? It’s a weak thing, his heart. How does he handle it? he asks himself, and truthfully, he doesn’t.
He waits it out, just like every single thing in his damned life.
Hesitance… it keeps you from moving forward, doesn’t it? It holds you back and pins you down by that overbearing, yet invisible grip. You can see it but you can feel it when it’s there. It brushes against your cheek for a brief second, before the coldness finally sinks into your stomach and finally rushes through your blood—its warmth tells you, don’t do it.
So Soobin doesn’t.
Yeonjun is sitting right there.
He’s so close. Soobin just has to walk over and fucking talk to him. Compliment his hair, tell him that his makeup looks pretty today. (Like it always does in any other day.) Tell him that he looks cool in his clothes, because he does. Soobin should just start. His heart pounds.
He can’t do it.
He can’t fucking do it.
As if on cue, or as if the universe itself decides that perhaps the dispersion of Soobin’s self-doubt would disrupt the world’s balance, a customer walks up to him. Her face is bright and her eyes wide—her lips agape, an order gently perched at the tip of her tongue.
“Can I get an Iced Americano?”
His heart halts for a brief second. The familiarity becomes a little overbearing—striking a chord too melodious within the corner of his mind that caresses the recognition. He shakes his thoughts away, and straightens his back.
Soobin nods. “Anything else I can get for you?” he asks. “Perhaps from the bakery?”
She smiles, and he spots a whisker-like line that follows the side of her nose and down the corner of her lips. “Oh! The lemon cake, please.”
Soobin is familiar with this unfamiliarity. (Choi Yeonjun never orders a lemon cake.) The hesitance that eats through his insides begins to stroke his cheek, praising his obedience into believing the impossibility. Into trusting the redundancy of risks, the way it’d just throw him to the ground.
So he continues. Like he does.
Surely. Certainly.
No doubt has a chance to cloud his mind—no greyish haze of the impending danger of the unpredictable. Everything is perfectly in order.
Expected.
Unchanging.
Safe.
☆
(But if only Soobin would, just once , look Yeonjun’s way for a second and keep his gaze there…
If only he could abandon the hesitance gnawing at the pit of his stomach for just a little while—he’d see the other boy staring back at him, a small yet knowing smile gracing his heart-shaped lips.)
☆
Hesitance truly is a curse, and its damned voice is a lullaby.