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In December, the snow collects thickly along sidewalks and roads, collects atop street lamps and overhangs that dot themselves over business doorways. Piles deceptively higher than the amount of snow that has fallen from the sky, shoveled repeatedly and pushed to the side so that people can more easily make their way through.
December is off-season, as well.
Yunho isn't dressed warm enough for the brisk wind that rushes down the road. He still isn't used to checking the weather before leaving the house, too many years under his belt being cooped up in one place most hours of the day, delivery drivers supplementing his need for meals and managers aiding in ensuring any of his other human needs are met.
Only a few months now, being thrust out into the real world again.
Wrapping his hand around the door handle, he pulls it open and glances around himself briefly, wonders if anyone will see him—recognize him—and stop him before he carries forward. Even just today and during his journey to this place, he has signed three autographs. Shocking to him, considering the outcome of his career thus far and the spectacular fashion in which it has all gone up in flames.
The headlines were all far from favorable, as far as his involvement had been concerned.
Regardless, Yunho slips in through the crack of the doorway without further bother, and hurries himself down the cold, dark hallway to the destination that he already knows. Granted, it has been a few years since his last coming to this place, and it hadn't meant much to him back then, but it meant something to his partner.
It meant something to Wooyoung.
Cafes are a dime a dozen as far as Yunho has ever been concerned. Coffee and caffeine are a means to an end; a thing that exists only to grant him the ability to grind harder, log more hours into solo queue, pay more attention during draft meetings and VOD reviews with his coaches and teammates. It all tastes the same to him, but it didn't to Wooyoung.
And even then, it was less about the taste or particular brand of coffee to Wooyoung than it was about the destination or ambiance of any given place. The calming atmosphere, the charming surroundings of a cafe that perhaps wasn't as frequently traveled by passersby compared to bigger, more well-known chains. The joy of a tall, grandfather clock probably passed down generations and just a little off, the beauty of worn upholstery and wooden table tops that have seen their fair share of visitors as told by the knicks and wounds carved into their bodies.
Wooyoung could wade through it all to find the splendor in anything; his greatest success being Yunho, himself.
clang-dong
The sound of the heavy bell overhead surprises Yunho at first, but quickly he comes to remember it. With little need to dwell on this particular detail, he looks ahead and towards the counter, then at his surroundings. A man sits at one of the tables, by himself, with a paper in hand that he appears to be reading. His age could not be much different from Yunho's own at a glance; soft skin but sharp, narrow features that make him look cold, a prominent nose, and a little freckle under his right eye.
A few more steps into the cafe are taken, and Yunho's eyes slip ever so slightly to the side and towards a table that he knows is always occupied. He gives little time to this and tries to shake off the nervous shiver that snakes up his spine and nestles under his skin.
This little cafe has something of a reputation, and Yunho knows it all too well.
He believes it, too. The topic isn't one that comes up with any sort of frequency in his experience, but the few times it has—when Wooyoung would bring it up—most meet the thought with abject rebuke, a complete unwillingness to consider the possibility.
But Yunho always believed, maybe because of Wooyoung, or maybe just because it serves as the one remaining chance to not have to remain in the reality he has crafted for himself.
"Welcome."
A woman's voice says the single word, and Yunho isn't expecting it when it comes. He looks up suddenly, meeting her gaze, and tempering the shock that almost certainly grips his features.
He remembers her from last time. Her hair is still the same, short and black and quite typical in its styling for this sort of job. No intent to impress, and if his memory serves him well, her personality offers something quite similar.
"Thank you," he says, moving closer to the counter. "Kazu, right? I remember you from the first time I came here."
Kazu does not react to this, standing there in her apron and with a rag and mug in hand. Yunho shifts his weight a little awkwardly at that fact, and then soon comes to the realization that the onus of moving the conversation along is still very much left on him.
"Anyway…" he says, slow and muted, "I sort of came here today for a reason. A particular reason. Not related to coffee, necessarily."
"Suppose it is still quite closely related to coffee, though," Kazu replies, and her hands go back to tending to the task of drying porcelain.
Yunho chuckles under his breath. His familiarity with Kazu's dry demeanor is something that he is only moderately aware of from the past, but now starkly surprising to him once more now that it is firmly placed before him.
"Yes, suppose that's the case then." He shifts his feet again as if trying to find the footing that will give him the sort of confidence he truly needs to embark upon this endeavor, the stature that will quell his nerves and fears, that will stifle the anxiety beginning to rumble inside of his chest. "I need to see someone," he says, "I need to see someone that I can't see anymore."
Saying the words aloud only serves to fan the flame of his discomfort, however. Yunho watches Kazu's face like he hopes for her to silently give him something more than what he seeks. A proper answer to his problem. A truer, more realistic fix grounded in the world that he knows, rather than the one that he has found himself here for.
"I see," Kazu says, "do you understand the rules already, or should I explain them to you once more?"
"A refresher might be nice." Yunho chuckles nervously again, perhaps in hope that Kazu will soften in the aftermath of it, though he knows this to be something of a fleeting wish. "I mean, I don't know if what I'm here for is even within the bounds of how this whole thing…works," he says, "I think usually people come here because they want to meet with a loved one who has died. I just want to see an old teammate, is that allowed?"
"Allowed?" Kazu questions, and her tone makes Yunho feel just that much more strange about the whole thing. "The rules are only in conjunction with the act of traveling back in time, I am not entirely sure what you mean by allowed," she says. "Shall I explain the rules to you, then?"
When Yunho first came to this cafe, he found Kazu somewhat off putting, but now that he is placed before her again and for a very particular reason—perhaps it is because of his necessity in doing so—he cannot help but uncover a sort of charm that has been buried inside of it. Wooyoung always liked her, he remembers that especially right now.
"No, I just thought…" Trailing off, Yunho chews on the inside of his lip for a quiet moment before continuing on. "I came here a couple of years ago with a guy," he says, "a friend, a teammate. Well, he wasn't just a friend and a teammate, which I guess ended up being part of the problem. There were a lot of problems…" Yunho drones on, all of his thoughts coming out through his speech without a modicum of editorial finesse, "most of them because of me."
"You're regretful of the way that your relationship with this person ended," Kazu concludes decisively, and though it's obvious enough through what he has presented to her, Yunho feels a weight lifted from him in hearing it from the mouth of someone other than himself.
"Yeah."
"And you are unable to apologize to him through normal means, despite him still very much being amongst the living."
"Right, pretty much," Yunho admits. "I know I can't change anything, you know, by going back." He pauses, then makes eye contact with Kazu again and says, "but he should know, or hear it from me somehow, in some way…that this isn't how I wanted things to go, and I guess that…even though my actions never matched my words, he was always more important."
"I see," Kazu says, and setting the items down onto the counter, a lithe hand comes up to smoothly gesture towards the always-occupied table, where the ghostly visage of a woman with a book sits.
"Then when the woman takes her leave," she says, "once a day, and for only a brief time; then you may sit there and perhaps find your peace."
⛾⛾⛾
Yunho hears the sound of keys jingling just outside the front door well before the lock clicks, or the light from the streets begins to filter in through the widening crack.
His chair is turned away from his computer monitors, facing towards the entering body as it quietly tries to sneak inside without being caught. A fool's errand, unfortunately for them, because it's almost three in the morning and with summer finals just around the corner; longer, later hours spent on solo queue are something of a normality for a team slated for a potential shot at Worlds.
But Wooyoung is an anomaly, the type of player that is naturally gifted with a talent for the game that less hours spent timing Baron steals or dodging skillshots can barely be felt in the intensive scrims leading up to the event.
Squandering talent, is how Wooyoung often gets described. Words that Yunho hates to hear about his teammate, his partner, but words that hold truth to them nonetheless.
"We have scrims at 8am," Yunho says quietly. His voice is tempered, the rest of the team is home and asleep after a long day's work. Dinner was ordered in, shared among them as they crowded around a computer manned by their coaching staff to go over the events of the games earlier played. "How many times are we going to have to have this conversation? How many times do I have to catch you sneaking back into the house like this, like nothing is happening, like you're not fucking up all of our chances at Worlds like this?"
The illumination from Yunho's two monitors is enough to light the room, and as a result, cast a brightness on Wooyoung's face as he looks towards Yunho and slumps his bag down from his shoulder and onto the floor. He huffs out a sigh, indignant, and Yunho knows that he's just as tired of hearing about it as Yunho is of saying it.
For different reasons, however.
"We shouldn't start this now," Wooyoung says, only slightly more than a whisper given the distance that exists between them. "You know how we tend to get about it."
"Maybe I should let everyone know," Yunho says firmly, unmoved by Wooyoung's hopefulness, "our teammates, the coaching staff, analysts; everyone. Is that the only thing that's going to get your head in the game? Fuck man, we're one best-of-five away from making Worlds and you're out all night doing who-knows-what on scrim nights."
"Every night is a scrim night," Wooyoung says, "if I waited for one that wasn't then I'd never go anywhere, never do anything, just be cooped up in this tiny fucking apartment eating shitty take-out everyday, miserable like—"
"Like me, right? Like us?" Yunho interrupts, a mocking nod accompanying the words. "I don't know if you've noticed, but that's the fucking job, that's what you signed up for when you slapped your signature on that million dollar contract and hefty bonus deal, right? You weren't too upset about it then, if I remember it correctly. It's not like you didn't know…didn't know what being a pro-player meant, what kind of sacrifices came with that."
Wooyoung stands in the foyer for a moment, arms carelessly dangling at his side and a frown curling into his lips. Yunho hates this conversation, hates watching the way the game and everything that comes with all of this destroys Wooyoung with each and every passing day. He hates watching Wooyoung shy away from the cameras and the lights, the way he turns down interview opportunities with more and more frequency, hates the way the once bright and hopeful exuberance that existed in his eyes dims just that much more from one day to the next.
And hates the way that it is all his fault.
But because Wooyoung is who he is, and loves Yunho the way that he does, it's such a pertinent aspect to all of this that he never once shines a light on. The fact that Wooyoung never wanted this, the fact that Wooyoung only ever agreed to this because of his willingness to do any and everything for the person that he cares for the most out of them all.
Yunho waits for the day that the words finally slip from between Wooyoung's broken down, regretful lips: I'm only here because of you, because you asked it of me, because you wanted me to be and you needed me. I hate this, I never wanted it, I only ever wanted you.
"We're so close," Yunho says then, the desperation in his voice hanging almost tangibly in the air between them. "So close to Worlds, to a championship. We really have a shot at this, at being world champions, at having that cup and hoisting it up together at the end and making history—the craziest Worlds run—they'd remember us forever, and after that you can quit. Never play professionally again, go back to streaming or just give it up completely. I'll never ask you for anything ever again, we can just be…together. After this one thing."
"Why do you think I'm still here," Wooyoung says, finally taking strides across the apartment and towards the other. Yunho watches him weave through cardboard boxes of merch and team jerseys and peripherals to get there. For a moment, it all feels so stupid. So unimportant; their love existing only between mountains of keyboards, headsets and cans of energy drinks from their latest sponsor.
Wooyoung finds his way, though. His hands grip at Yunho's, their fingers intertwine and Wooyoung falls to his knees between long legs, as if begging for forgiveness that the both of them know he does not truly seek.
Yunho looks down at Wooyoung, cheek pressed to a thigh, and he pulls free a hand so that he can slide his long, thin fingers through Wooyoung's messy, unkempt black hair.
"Only a few more months," he says, pleading, "a few more months, and then this is all over. I know you hate it, I know you want out and to forget about this and never play another scrim again, never sit on that stage, never face another crowd…and soon, you won't have to. But please, just a little bit more."
After the words come out, a memory comes to him: The two of them seated on the balcony one night a couple of months prior and a few shots of soju too many down. When Wooyoung first started showing the outward signs of his discontentment. When Yunho knew that it was so heavily weighing on him that he could no longer feign the disposition of acceptance and joy from being in Yunho's presence alone.
"I love you so much," Wooyoung had said that night. Yunho glanced towards him for just a second, but did not speak, knowing more was coming. "But sometimes I think that you love a championship title more."
It was absurd then, and it is absurd now.
"I love you," Yunho whispers. He hears a ping from his game client—a message coming in, likely asking to play. He wants to ignore it, Wooyoung's pleading eyes beg him to, but with every game played Yunho can't help but feel as though he is just that much closer to the goal.
He looks at the message, and though that's all he does, he can feel the shift of Wooyoung's weight from his legs, the motion to pull away. An unspoken understanding of where he exists on the hierarchy of Yunho's love.
"I love you," Yunho says again, holding on tightly to a hand that now tries to untangle itself from him. "I love you more than anything else, I know you can't see it, but I swear to you that I do." He holds on tighter, and Wooyoung casts him a look that is both disbelieving and displeased in the aftermath of all of this. Yunho says, "I'll show you, I promise. I'll show you everyday, forever…" he trails off, there's a pause, and then he clarifies, "once this is through."
⛾⛾⛾
"Are you familiar with LoL esports at all?" Yunho asks, a shyness sneaking into his voice as they wait by the table.
"No."
"Right." The answer is obvious, he reckons after the fact, then continues on. "Well, we bombed out of that series, the one that would have sent us to Worlds. Wooyoung played what ended up being historically the worst showing he has ever had on stage, I didn't play much better. There were a lot of tears, a lot of yelling and regretful things said by everyone once we got off that stage," Yunho recalls, "I think the press conference was like, the nail in the coffin for him, he was a wreck with all the attention and questions and everything. He left separately from us to go home, we wanted to drown our sorrows in some drinks at least, try to look at the positives of a good run up until completely going up in flames when it mattered the most…"
He pauses, staring at the woman sitting in the seat he hopes to soon reside, then says, "I don't know. Maybe I should have fought harder, made him go out with us, but I felt guilty, like I'd forced him into doing so much for me against his will already, so I just let him go. Some people just want to be alone after a big loss like that." Another pause, and then Yunho says, "but he wasn't there when we got back. He wasn't anywhere. He was gone, nobody's seen him since."
It is at that moment that the book the woman is reading is shut with a loud thump, and she begins her motion up from the chair, and away from the table entirely.
Yunho looks at Kazu and offers a solemn smile, "My words and actions never matched, so I don't know, maybe for once they actually can."
The chair is small, Yunho finds, and it reminds him of how much larger his stature tends to be when compared to many others. He scoots it back, then forward just enough to grant him the space that he needs, and by that time, Kazu is already setting a perfectly shined mug down in front of him.
"I will now go over the rules once more," Kazu says, meandering back tableside after fetching the coffee pot, "given you are familiar, I will be concise."
Yunho's nerves begin to stir once more at the promise of what awaits him. He wonders what version of Wooyoung will meet him in this place; if the same anger, regret and resentfulness sits on the other side.
"You are not permitted to leave this seat once you have traveled back in time, else you will immediately return to the present day," Kazu says, "Nothing that you do in the past will change the outcome of the future, and you must finish drinking your coffee before it gets cold, or you will find the same fate as the ghost that currently resides here."
"Maybe a lifetime of purgatory is what I deserve," Yunho says through a chuckle, but Kazu does not respond with amusement in kind. As a result, he sits himself up straight and nods to the woman, accepting the terms of his travel. "I understand," he says, "I'm ready."
Leaning forward ever so slightly, Kazu tips the coffee pot stem down towards the mug and the steaming, brown liquid begins to paint the white porcelain below. Yunho watches it, revels in the way his limbs begin to feel light and his head slightly fuzzy; as if slowly ceasing to exist, at all. Finally, he thinks to himself, no matter what happens, I have to make this right.
The steam from the coffee appears as though it is encompassing him entirely, and before losing grasp of his consciousness in the present day, he hears Kazu's voice one last time:
"Remember," she says, "before the coffee gets cold."
⛾⛾⛾
"I knew you would come."
Yunho hears the words, but they sound muddled and dreamlike, echoed and uncertain as if everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. An airy voice, soft and gentle. One that he very much knows.
When the steam dissipates and Yunho gathers his wits enough to focus on his surroundings, he wastes no time beginning the act of searching around himself, only to find that the source of the voice is already seated right in front of him—a glass of juice perched on the table between them.
Hands folded and a wry smile, Wooyoung looks at Yunho as if he has won an unspoken bet. Yunho's breath hitches in his throat, unable to meet his old partner's enthusiasm just yet; a chest that feels heavy with all of the pain and sorrow that has taken place between this particular version of then, and now.
When they had come here together that late spring day, the circumstances of their professional careers together had not yet become so dire. Wooyoung's unhappiness was still a demon that he was capable of battling, of reigning in and caging so that it could not interfere in the ever growing lust of Yunho's immense desires. He still smiled, and it was not forced. He still believed that Yunho loved him, and not what his existence could mean come October.
Wooyoung's eyes narrow, a sly sort of look upon his face and he says, "When we came here, I knew you'd come back like this. I remember seeing you then and you just had that look about you…the kind of look you always got when you saw something that you couldn't quite let go of."
That makes Yunho chuckle in spite of the immenseness his feelings have taken on. He shakes his head—somewhat in disbelief of it all—and then says, "Suppose you of all people know that look, don't you?"
"Reminds me of the first time we watched Worlds finals together, when you were just starting your career and we watched Faker hoist that big ol' cup—the thing's almost the size of him—and you were watching and smiling and had that twinkle in your eye like you knew someday that was going to be you, no matter what." Wooyoung's lips thin into something halfway between a smile and a frown, a straight line that's neither one way or the other and says, "I guess I kind of knew then…how this was all going to play out in the end."
His eyes cast down to the cup in front of Yunho, and he adds: "Don't forget to drink your coffee."
Yunho had forgotten, in fact. He realizes it as soon as Wooyoung says it and quickly takes a sip from the side of the mug to get a feel for the temperature. Warm enough, plenty warm, for now.
"I guess things would have been easier if I had been born with your kind of natural talent," he says.
"Or easier if I just hadn't been."
Silence sits between them then, and Yunho blinks away the tears that begin to threaten the corners of his eyes as he thinks about all of the other outcomes that could have found them beyond the single one that did. A happy life together, a World Championship, an impressive, lucrative career instead of all of the sadness, shame and loss that found them instead.
"Suppose there's no rule about me simply telling you how this all plays out in the end, if the result is going to be the same anyway," Yunho says. The sigh that follows is a kind of relenting one, one that submits to everything that accompanies this. "So…"
"I already know," Wooyoung says, and that stops Yunho fully in his intent.
A hand comes up to cradle Wooyoung's face into the palm, his head cocked to the side just ever so slightly, but he is smiling once again when he says, "I knew when I agreed to it, when I signed that contract. You think I didn't know? Of course I did! I know you, and I know me, and I knew there was no way that we both got what we wanted at the end of the road. Such is life, I suppose."
Yunho sits in shock at the revelation for a moment, though it makes perfect sense now that he hears it straight from Wooyoung's mouth. Perhaps all of this time, Yunho had been the one living in a fantasy of what this could all end up as, and only Wooyoung capable of truly seeing the forest for the trees.
He continues: "I was never cut out to go pro. I mean, sure, from a purely talent-based perspective I was good but I couldn't hang with the stress, the limelight, the attention…you know how they always said I was squandering my talent. I don't know, they were kind of right, but I figured if I could just make it long enough to do this one thing for you, then that'd make it all worth it, right?"
"Woo…" Yunho whispers the shorthand name and reaches a hand across the table to find Wooyoung's. It is met with enthusiasm, the kind of longing that lost lovers might expect to share. The kind of love that lingers still in the fingertips of the people that it is meant to be shared with. "I came here to apologize to you, why are you…"
"Well, I didn't do it, right?" Wooyoung says, and it is posed as a question but Yunho knows that deep down, the answer is already known. Yunho watches features shift on Wooyoung's face, from upbeat joy to something more forced; an attempt to maintain that as best as he can but ultimately succumbing to the sorrow of their reality. "That's why you're here now, because we failed, and I couldn't do it, and everything fell apart as a result."
"I never should have put you in that position to begin with," Yunho says, insistent and firm, "I knew, too. All of that stuff about how you never wanted to go pro, I knew it! Of course I did, we talked about it all the time, you confided in me, loved me, and I guess…" He knows what he wants to say, but has to find the courage to be so painfully honest about himself. It hurts to revisit, and be clear about his faults, but if now is not the time then what purpose did he have in coming here, at all?
Yunho says, "I took advantage of you, of what we had." He quiets, turns his head so as to not face Wooyoung's still admiring gaze and continues to say, "I loved you, I loved you so deeply but I'm selfish, and a part of me did see a means to an end in you. You were so much better than the rest of the team, everyone wanted to sign you and you never gave in but I knew that I could get you to. I knew that you loved me enough to say yes."
"I know that."
He turns back suddenly, and Wooyoung's lips are slightly curved up into a knowing sort of grin. "I knew that, knew you were banking on me loving you, but why wouldn't I do any and everything in my power to try to get you to the top? What kind of boyfriend would I be to not even try? Is that love?"
Remembering his coffee, Yunho quickly takes another sip but finds the liquid waiting inside to be far cooler than he anticipates it being.
"Maybe I don't know what love is," Yunho admits. His throat stings and tightens after the words, his eyes glued to Wooyoung's now because after this, he knows he will return to a future where they will never meet again. "I thought winning Worlds would fix you, too. I thought that was going to be the answer to it all."
"Well, maybe it would have," Wooyoung says, a noncommittal shrug accompanying it, "maybe I'd have stayed." He nods towards the coffee mug again, "drink," he says.
"Maybe I could just stay here." Yunho whispers it, and a part of him doesn't even intend for Wooyoung to hear it, comment on it at all. He isn't sure how much of him believes in the desire to remain like this forever—to never return to the future that exists for them now—to stay here with Wooyoung. Still loved by Wooyoung, still months away from the night that would change everything.
"Why? There's nothing for you here," Wooyoung says. He grimaces at Yunho's suggestion as if it is the most absurd thing he has ever heard, and that brings a smile to Yunho's face, however brief. "Here, as you're experiencing it right now, doesn't even exist. It may as well not even be real. It is, but it's kind of not, ya know? You can't stay. Just because of me. I bet you're already signed to a new team, and scrims start soon, and before you know it you'll be too busy to even think about me or how close you were because you're already right back in the same position, close to another qualification. Esports just keeps moving, ya know."
"Yeah," Yunho says, and despite his best efforts, the tears find him anyway. He squeezes Wooyoung's hand tightly, takes the mug into his other hand and brings it up off of the table with intent. He says, "I just wanted to say I'm sorry, about everything, and I know it always seemed like I loved the chance of winning Worlds more than you, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Nothing I ever did showed it, I don't blame you for not believing me; I just hope coming here like this now does."
"Oh god," Wooyoung whines, and though Yunho can see the moisture glistening in his eyes, he chooses not to comment on it. "You've always been so dramatic," he says, still clutching Yunho's hand tightly, "you were selfish, sure, but you've got to forgive yourself and let that hurt go. You're never gonna be able to win a championship like this, man! And if you don't do that, then all of this really was for nothing, huh?"
Somehow, Yunho smiles. An effortless sort of magic that exudes from Wooyoung in all situations, the kind of beauty that buried itself into his entire being and ultimately wound itself around Yunho's heart, manifesting into love.
There is a part of him that worries that the Wooyoung of today does not quite understand the turmoil that awaits them in the future, but he quickly shakes the thought away, because Wooyoung has always been perfectly capable of calculating the most realistic possibilities.
Besides, he had already fully understood the reasoning for Yunho's coming here today.
For one last time, he has simply got to trust him.
"Okay," Yunho says, simple and relenting, "I'll go, and I'll win."
Wooyoung smiles big and bright for the first time since their meeting that day. Yunho shoots back the remaining coffee sitting at the bottom of the cup—a large amount, given the ease of forgetting about it. They hold each other tightly until one of their hands no longer has the capability to continue to do so, but their words to one another do not stop until the very last moment of Yunho's being there.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
⛾⛾⛾
His hand grips nothing when he comes to once more.
For just a moment, Yunho flexes his fingers into the empty space where Wooyoung's resided just prior, as if hoping to render the familiar feeling of skin back into place once more. When it does not come, he swallows hard and resigns himself to the rules of such a remarkable kind of thing and pulls his hand back over to his side of the table.
It takes a few seconds for him to notice the looming form of a person standing beside him, and when he does, his eyes widen with a double take; the ghostly figure of the woman whose seat he is very much sitting in angrily awaiting his departure.
"Sorry," he says, shuffling to his feet. He does not quite know if she understands his words, but his politeness comes through in spite of that wonder. Instead, he carries himself towards the counter where Kazu once again resides, and begins to fish his wallet out from his pants pocket.
Yunho glances up at her as she stands busy with her menial tasks, a question lingering on his tongue, unsure if he wishes to broach the topic. Ultimately, he supposes there is no reason not to and shatters the quiet ambiance that hangs between them.
"How is it," he begins, muttering under his breath, "that the words said just now will have no bearing on the outcome of the future? How is it that knowing what he knows now, nothing can be changed?"
Kazu looks up, her eyes taking him in for a second before she presses keys into the register as if not having heard his question at all. He considers that she has no interest in engaging in the logistics of such a thing, but eventually, she does reply.
"Sometimes you might find that individuals are so set in their ways, that no amount of foretelling can stray them from their intended path. Suppose, in a sense, we can call this fate."
Yunho hands her the money across the counter, and Kazu takes it from his hand to then count the change.
"And sometimes, visitors find that the thing they seek to tell the person they hope to visit is not unknown to them at all," she says.
Wooyoung knew the future that awaited them as soon as he agreed, the only person unwilling to accept their fate being Yunho, himself.
"Would you like your receipt?" Kazu asks then, and Yunho pulls himself from the trance of his own memories quickly to acknowledge her.
"No, thank you," he says, but then a thought strikes him. "Actually, could I trouble you for a coffee to-go?" he asks, a newfound determination coursing warm and abrupt through his veins, "Turns out I have a long day of scrims ahead of me, after all."
He thinks of Wooyoung, and as hopeless a consideration as it is, wonders if he might be watching from the crowd on the day that Yunho finally does raise that championship trophy to the glittering lights and confetti-filled sky.