Work Text:
Jeon Wonwoo, assistant manager of Midnight Muse night café and business major, lover of chocolate éclairs and introvert extraordinaire, has just been assigned to set up shop to prepare for the Friday night student rush. The café’s location minutes away from the busiest student halls on campus brings a plentiful crowd of overworked and underpraised college students to the night café where they can enjoy reasonably priced hot beverages and fresh delicacies along with a sympathetic smile. The café is a hot point for the students who prefer hiding with their laptop and homework to getting drunk each weekend with their peers.
According to Wonwoo, it’s the fact that every staff member at Midnight Muse is either a college student working part time or fresh out of college with empathy for those with more work to do than one human can shoulder, that’s what makes the café popular. If you’d asked his co-worker Seokmin, he’d say it’s the charming good looks of their leading cashier frontman, but they’ve left it to opinion.
Their first customer, a regular to the café, is inside minutes after they open. An environmental humanities major, Chan is often found curled up on a beanbag with some large volume on ecocriticism and a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. Wonwoo often finds himself chatting to Chan before any other customers show up, and has learnt that he enjoys dancing when he isn't studying climate change and urban sustainability. Wonwoo likes the idea of people with hobbies polar opposite to their main direction in life. He himself is studying to become an entrepreneur with his own business, but gets paid to make and sell pretty cupcakes. Nobody has yet to tell him that his groundbreaking business can't be a pretty cupcake selling business, so he pursues it.
A couple hours into their working day (or rather, working night), a new customer enters the café. The bags under his eyes dragged his expression to the floor. One exchanged glance with Seokmin, and Wonwoo approached the front counter. There was an unspoken agreement between the two that Seokmin would handle the enthusiastic, “learning is a joy!” customers who would greet the café smiling and be greeted by a smiling Seokmin, and Wonwoo would take the customers who were halfway to tears from the amount of work they had, and would glare at anyone who attempted small talk. Wonwoo had a talent for not getting on people’s nerves, and probably made dozens of students’ days slightly better with his trademark “I know, college is cruel” shrug and half smile. Between the two of them, the customers seemingly never stopped coming.
This customer, clinging on to his rucksack along with his last strand of sanity, mumbled an order for a peppermint latte and slice of blackberry pie.
“Can I take a name for the order?”
“Junhui.”
Wonwoo gave him an extra large slice because he looked like he needed it.
Approximately fifteen minutes later, Wonwoo is floating around the café cleaning a couple of tables while Seokmin takes over the till, to find Junhui’s head in a notebook of what looks like a colour coded essay plan, fast asleep. Junhui looks a lot less grouchy and a lot more baby-faced asleep. Wonwoo then realises that it’s very rude to watch strangers sleep, especially when those strangers are customers in the restaurant that he’s supposed to be cleaning tables in and if this was in any other situation and it wasn’t past midnight it would probably be a lot weirder. Once Wonwoo collects himself and straightens his apron slightly, he turns his back to the dozing customer, to make instant eye contact with Seokmin from behind the counter who is giving him the dirtiest look.
“What have I told you about watching customers sleep, hyung?” Seokmin gushes with a near vicious smirk.
“What? You say that as if you never put extra marshmallows on that Jeju guy’s cinnamon mocha” he shoots back under his breath, but Seokmin catches it and giggles as he serves the next customer.
///
The following nights Wonwoo doesn’t work; they have a rota where, since the majority of the staff are college students, nobody has to work on a school night, so they only work nights when they don’t have class three hours after the café closes. Jisoo, their manager, graduated three years ago, a business major like Wonwoo, who set up the café for students like himself who needed somewhere to study away from the halls that didn’t close before 8.
Seokmin and their other co-worker, Seungcheol, were both eager to inform Wonwoo of “his pretty peppermint latte boy” returning each night to the café. It seemed that Seokmin had somewhat exaggerated in his gossip to Seungcheol over the time Wonwoo had been off. Apparently Seokmin had got it into his sunshine-filled brain that Wonwoo spent every minute of every day dreaming of the customer who Wonwoo had insisted that he had literally only seen once and thought he looked cute sleeping is all.
“Ah! So you do think he’s cute!” sang Seokmin, leaping up from his seat in the tiny staffroom. There really was no winning with his selective hearing. Wonwoo sighed, something Seokmin had probably heard more than enough times from him, but still didn’t seem to understand the meaning of.
Sure enough,Junhui turned up again that night. He ordered the same peppermint latte and blackberry pie as before and crawls into the same sofa chair at the back of the café, under a painting of a purple and blue sunrise which matched Junhui’s pale blue sweater under his black coat.
Wonwoo doesn’t know how Seokmin twisted him into doing it. It was a really dumb idea. The dumbest of the dumb ideas Seokmin tried to get Wonwoo onboard with. How Seokmin got Wonwoo to do it perplexed him for the rest of the week.
Somehow, Seokmin had convinced Wonwoo to go up to Junhui’s table and blurt out the worst pick-up line known to humanity.
“H-hey, whydoyoualwaysorderpiewhenyoumakethatessaylooklikeapieceofcake?”
Every siren in Wonwoo’s brain screeched at him that he’d made a mistake. Everything about this had been a mistake and he wanted to disappear into the nearest black hole and never look anyone in the eye again. Maybe that was the introvert in him speaking, though.
“I’m sorry?” Junhui gave Wonwoo a look that Wonwoo wouldn’t mind if he never saw again. Junhui positively glared at him, eyes saturated with tiredness which Wonwoo would later overthink as judgement and disappointment.
“You always order the blackberry pie.” Wonwoo’s voice became weaker as the opaque embarrassment settled in.
Junhui nodded numbly, prompting Wonwoo to explain whatever he was going on about in a language his 11pm caffeine-fuelled brain might recognize.
“So… but you’re making that essay look like a piece of cake. As in… you’re smart? I don’t know, Seokmin made me say this and it wasn’t a good idea so I’ll just go away now.” Words were doing pratfalls out of Wonwoo’s mouth as he attempted to escape the situation with an ounce of dignity. As he bowed gently and hurried away from Junhui’s table, leaving the latter dumbfounded and slightly… flattered? he thought, he was sort of cute. That was the thought he left the matter on, turning back to writing his essay conclusion.
“Of course it went badly!” Wonwoo howled at Seokmin, “I couldn’t even look him in the eye! I just stared at his notebook and- Seokmin he was studying child mortality rates and I just went up to him flouncing around about how it must have been a piece of cake and-“
“Nice, so he’s a med student”
“Seokmin!” Wonwoo was a shrivelled mass of cringe in the corner of the staff room.
Their manager, Jisoo, came in the room with an unreadable look on his face. “Wonwoo-ah. I reckon you ought to clean the table of that boy you attempted to flirt with.
Seokmin’s eyes flashed amusement, motioning his older co-worker towards the table. Wonwoo didn’t want to look at whatever horrific complaint had been filed by the customer.
On the cedar wood table, there lay a plate with crumbs of pie crust and a fork, as expected. From under the plate peaked a paper table napkin, pale green which complemented very well the purple ink with which Junhui had written his phone number.
Hi, call me with the rest of your lame jokes some time. -Junhui :)