Chapter Text
Morning crept into Yoonchae’s apartment slowly, as if reluctant to disturb anything inside. The pale winter light seeped through the single drafty window, its outline broken by strips of painter’s tape she’d put up weeks ago to stop the wind from whistling. It didn’t help much. The January air still pushed through the seams and gathered in the corners of the studio like something feral and alive.
Her studio wasn’t small so much as compressed, like it had been shrink-wrapped around her life. Shelves lined the far wall, each crammed with jars of brushes, rows of markers arranged by color family, paints organized by brand and viscosity. Her labels were written in tiny, neat Hangul—Carmine Red, Viridian, Payne’s Grey—each little tag evidence of the order she tried to impose on chaos. Leaning against the opposite wall were canvases in different stages of completion, all facing inward like a semicircle of silent witnesses waiting to be addressed. A strand of fairy lights ran along the ceiling, tied up with clear hooks and bunched in places where the adhesive had given up, though she never bothered fixing it.
A half-drunk mug of tea sat on the floor next to her, the steam mostly gone but still faint enough to curl upward in lazy strands. The air was cold enough to swallow warmth on contact. The radiator hissed and rattled sporadically, sounding—she thought, not without affection—like an annoyed cat warning her not to expect any real heat.
Her tablet lay across her lap, but her stylus hovered above it rather than touching the surface. Her other hand was curled loosely around the edge of the device, fingers stiff, her knuckles faintly swollen. The background noise of the city filtered through the window—a distant horn, a shout, a subway rumble—but everything inside felt muted, suspended.
She breathed out once, softly, and lowered the stylus to the glass.
The stroke came out clean, the arc smooth, the color rich. Good. She could work with this. She adjusted the opacity, zoomed in, switched to a finer brush setting.
Halfway through the next line, her fingers stuttered.
A twitch. Then a spasm. Small, like a hiccup of the hand. The stylus jerked, dragging an ugly mark across the rendering of a storefront where she was designing a mural concept. The wrong line glared up at her, too thick, too harsh, like a crack running through something delicate.
She froze. The pain followed half a second later.
A hot, pulsing throb began at the base of her thumb and crawled outward, settling into that familiar, nauseating ache that made her joints feel packed too tightly together. It wasn’t sharp—not anymore. It was constant. Patient. A slow tightening, as though invisible hands were closing around hers.
“Already?” she murmured.
She shook her hand out, trying to coax the numbness away. The tingling only deepened. She pressed her thumb into her palm, massaging the spot where the pain radiated.
It didn’t help.
She tried again to draw. The stylus was steady for three seconds, maybe four, before her fingers trembled. A full tremor this time. She exhaled sharply through her nose and set the stylus down, flexing her hand in frustration.
Her internal monologue, normally quiet and tucked away, pushed through the fog of focus.
Not today. Not now. You don’t have time for this.
She curled her fingers into a fist. They curled slowly, stiffly, like someone else’s hand attached to her wrist. The panic rose quickly, jutting edges against her ribs.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening. She’d slept, she’d stretched, she’d done everything right. She’d even taken yesterday slower than usual, a rare concession meant to appease her body. But the ache woke with her anyway—no, worse, it grew while she worked, blooming the way bruises bloomed: dark and slow and inevitable.
Her breath fogged faintly in the strip of sunlight landing across her lap. She stared at the ruined mural concept on her screen. The colors looked duller now, like the cold had seeped into the pixels themselves.
She rested her hand against her thigh, letting it go limp, and closed her eyes.
And then the memories came the way they always did—fast, sharp, dislodged by the texture of the pain rather than any conscious thought.
Her mother’s hands guiding hers when she was small, adjusting the angle of a paintbrush so the bristles wouldn’t splay. “Not too tight,” her mother had murmured, her touch warm despite the coolness of the brush handle. “Let the brush do the work.”
The scent of acrylic in her childhood bedroom. A tiny cup of water turning murky with color. The first moment she felt like she created something real.
Then another memory—NYU nights lit by laptop glare and desk lamps, painting until dawn while the rest of her yearmates stumbled in from parties. Her back would ache, her eyes burn, but she’d keep going, the world narrowed to color and shape. She remembered professors praising her discipline in reviews. “You work too hard,” they’d say, but with admiration, not concern.
She learned early that discipline was currency. That overworking wasn’t a flaw if it got results.
And now… now her body was presenting the bill.
She opened her eyes. The ache hadn’t eased. If anything, focusing on it made it grow. She flexed her fingers again and felt a small stab of fear—sharp, quick, buried beneath denial.
She knew what overuse injuries looked like. She’d seen classmates crumble under them. She’d heard professors warn about wrist braces and tendon damage. But those were people who drew wrong, or too fast, or without warming up. People who weren’t careful. People who weren’t her.
But her hand trembled anyway.
She inhaled slowly, trying to keep the breath from shaking.
Her gaze drifted to the rest of her apartment, as if hoping her routine, her space, her own curated world could calm her. The canvases leaned silently. The fairy lights flickered in the draft. The mug of tea had grown stone-cold.
This was her life now—busy, productive, filled with the kind of opportunities she used to pray for. And her hands were failing her right when she needed them most.
She shifted on the floor, pushing her tablet aside as she reached for her planner. It sat half-open beside stacks of color studies and a bundle of palettes. Her to-do list stared up at her, a grid of commitments that felt heavier now:
1) Finalize mural concept sketches for SoHo boutique.
2) Rework logo visualizers for the tech startup by Friday.
3) Finish drafts for the Brooklyn charity event poster.
4) Touch base with the gallery intern about a potential spring showcase.
She traced a line under the mural task, her thumb brushing the dried ink. Pride flickered through her—it wasn’t fake. It wasn’t forced. She was doing well. She’d built something real with her work. People sought her out. Paid her. Trusted her.
But the price was becoming clearer.
Even pride had weight. And today, it felt like it was resting squarely on her knuckles.
Her gaze drifted to the largest canvas leaning against the wall. A swirling abstract piece she’d been nibbling at for months—big, expressive strokes in layered blues and golds. It leaned close enough for her to touch it if she extended her arm. She didn’t.
She pressed the heel of her palm firmly against her forehead, then slid both hands up until her fingers met her hairline. She pressed harder than she meant to, her elbows digging into her knees.
Why now?
Her breath tensed.
Why when things are finally going well?
The loneliness hit next—not dramatic, not overwhelming, just a steady, cold tide lapping at her. The room was quiet. Too quiet. No one knew she was hurting. No one would notice if she took an hour or a day or a week to rest. No one would tell her she was pushing herself too hard.
Her success lived in silence. She did too.
Her shoulders slumped. For a moment she just sat there, breathing through the ache. The radiator clanked again, protesting. A train rumbled faintly underneath the building. A car alarm chirped outside. Her fingers throbbed along with each sound, syncing themselves to the rhythm of New York.
She lowered her hands and looked at her sketchbook lying closed near the mug. She could open it—try to sketch something soft, something small—but she already knew what would happen. The idea of holding a pencil right now made her wince.
Her body was making the choice for her.
She sighed and pushed herself to her feet.
Slowly. Carefully. Her knees cracked in protest, her legs stiff after sitting on the floor for hours. She rolled her shoulders, then cradled her right hand against her stomach for a moment while she regained balance.
She glanced toward the window. The sky had brightened to a washed-out gray, the kind that made the whole city feel muted. Snow had fallen overnight, now melting into dirty slush across the sidewalks below. A man in a suit stepped into a puddle with a curse. A delivery cyclist rang his bell and swerved. A dog, tiny and wearing a puffer vest, hopped delicately around the icy patches.
Life moved with its usual early-morning urgency. She wasn’t part of it yet.
She checked the time on her phone. Too early for lunch, too late to pretend she could still catch the morning. Her hand ached in pulses. She needed warmth. She needed somewhere soft, somewhere predictable.
Her gaze drifted to her coat hanging by the door.
Kat’s Eye.
The thought slid into her mind like muscle memory.
She grabbed her coat, sliding her arms in slowly to avoid jarring her wrist. She wrapped a scarf around her neck, tucked her sketchbook under her arm—it felt wrong to leave without it, even if she couldn’t draw—and slipped her keys off the hook.
A final glance around the apartment. The canvases, the shelves, the cold light filtering through the tape-lined window. The undone mural concept is still waiting on the tablet screen.
She turned the screen off.
Her fingers throbbed once in a dull farewell.
Then she stepped out into the hallway, locked her door with her left hand, and began descending the narrow flight of stairs that always smelled faintly of someone’s forgotten curry. The front door of the building stuck when she pushed it, as it always did, and she leaned her shoulder into it until it groaned open.
The city air hit her immediately—cold, sharp, smelling of slush and street salt and stale bagels. Her breath fogged in front of her. Her boots sank into the mushy mix of snow and ice on the sidewalk.
Hands shoved deep into her pockets for warmth, she set off toward Kat’s Eye, hoping the familiar comfort of the cat café would soften the ache pulsing quietly through her fingers.
And maybe, she thought, the warmth would last long enough for her to feel like herself again.
The city greeted her with a blast of air sharp enough to make her eyes water. Her breath fogged immediately, curling into soft ghosts that vanished as quickly as they appeared. Salt-stained sidewalks stretched ahead in patchy streaks, the grit crunching under her boots as she walked. Slush seeped into the seams where the pavement dipped, and she stepped around the deeper puddles with familiar precision.
The ache in her hand flared when a gust of wind sliced through her coat sleeves. She tucked her fingers deeper into her pockets, but it did nothing to stop the cold from sneaking in. It wasn’t a stabbing pain—it was the kind that throbbed in rhythm with her footsteps, climbing slowly up the tendons like it had all morning to get worse.
Manhattan moved around her with its usual layered chaos. A taxi honked even though the street was clear. Someone shouted into a phone about a lease agreement. A pair of tourists argued softly about which direction the Empire State Building was. Street vendors clustered by small portable heaters, rubbing their hands together while their stands exhaled clouds of steam—pretzels, hot dogs, roasted nuts, everything smelling vaguely warm even in the frigid air.
It was the kind of morning where everyone walked fast. Survival instinct disguised as routine.
Yoonchae adjusted her scarf, her sketchbook tucked safely under her arm despite her inability to use it today. As she walked, her mind drifted—not aimlessly, but in that familiar, overloaded way it often did when her body refused to cooperate.
Her schedule came first. It always did.
The SoHo mural needed a second draft by Friday. The tech startup wanted revisions on their branding board but hadn’t clarified what wasn’t working. The charity poster was due in a week, and she hadn’t even settled on a concept yet. She was supposed to reach out to the gallery intern today. She was supposed to respond to that email from the boutique owner asking for updated color palettes. She was supposed to—
Her hand throbbed, interrupting the list like it was cutting off a sentence.
She rubbed her knuckles absentmindedly through her coat pocket, her thumb tracing familiar circles. She tried flexing her fingers again, but they resisted, stiff and slow. The thought she’d been pushing away since morning surfaced again, uninvited.
Maybe she should see a doctor.
The idea hit like a cold splash, jarring her enough that she stopped rubbing her hand. No. She didn’t have time. More than that—she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to be told to rest, to stop, to pull back. Resting meant lost projects. Pulling back meant momentum slipping through her fingertips.
And beneath all that, deeper than she liked to admit, was the fear that something might actually be wrong. Something she couldn’t fix with warm compresses or stretching.
Her shoulders tightened. She walked faster.
Kat’s Eye drifted into her thoughts as the city blocks blurred by. The first time she’d gone was during her last year at NYU—she’d been exhausted, overstimulated, and starving, wandering after a critique session that left her feeling hollow. The cat café had glowed softly on the corner, its neon sign blinking a little unevenly, promising warmth.
She remembered the surprise of stepping inside and feeling her heartbeat finally slow. The staff had been mostly strangers back then, faces she didn’t know from classes or clubs—people she would’ve remembered if she’d crossed paths with them before. But even as strangers, they were kind in that gentle, steady way that asked nothing of her. They didn’t know her, not really, but they learned her order quickly and name even quicker. They never asked why she was there so often, never pried when she sat with her headphones in and sketched for hours.
It wasn’t home—not in the way Seoul would always be—but in her last year of college, when her dorm felt suffocating and her studio rooms felt competitive, it was the closest thing she’d found.
She pulled her scarf up against her chin as the wind pushed at her again. Her fingers belonged to the ache now—tight, pulsing, uncooperative—but the thought of Kat’s Eye waiting for her brought a slow exhale from her chest.
Another block. Then another.
She turned the corner, and the café finally came into view. The pink-and-gold neon sign flickered faintly in the morning cold, stuttering once before holding steady. A few cats lounged behind the front window, one paw pressed lazily against the glass, condensation forming around its toes. Someone inside moved past with a tray, though she couldn’t see who.
She slowed her steps.
The ache dulled—not gone, but softened, like her body recognized the destination before her mind did. She lifted her right hand from her pocket, flexing the fingers as best she could. They didn’t move smoothly, but they moved.
Her other hand reached for the café door.
The metal handle was cold, shockingly so, but the moment her fingers wrapped around it, a breath she’d been holding without realizing eased out of her. Her shoulders dropped. Her heartbeat steadied.
She pulled the door open.
Warmth washed over her like the beginning of spring chipping away the chill of winter.
Inside, the café was its usual soft chaos. The windows were so steamed-up that the city outside had melted into vague shapes—color without definition, motion without edges. Soft indie music pulsed from the overhead speakers, something with breathy vocals and a guitar line that looped like it was trying to keep the rhythm of the room steady.
Cats owned every surface. One sprawled dramatically on a heated window seat, a sleepy king in a patch of weak winter sunlight. Another trotted across the counter with the confidence of management, flicking its tail at a pair of customers who tried (and failed) to discreetly take its picture. A fluffy calico leapt from a shelf onto the back of an armchair, startling the guy sitting in it. Someone laughed. Someone apologized to the cat.
It was the midday lull, the kind that never fully emptied this place. Too many students, freelancers, and tired locals used Kat’s Eye as their unofficial living room.
Near the espresso station, Lara, Yoonchae noticed, was locked in combat with the machine.
“Come on—don’t do this to me today,” she muttered, elbow deep in the portafilter. When the pump sputtered instead of humming, she snapped something sharp and melodic in Tamil, then declared loudly, “If this thing breaks one more time, I’m breaking up with it. I deserve better than this.”
The customers closest to her laughed nervously, unsure if they were meant to hear that. Lara didn’t notice them; she was too busy smacking the machine like she was checking for a pulse.
Across the room, Sophia cradled a long-haired tabby who was meowing with the indignation of a tiny emperor being removed from his throne. She murmured apologies to both cat and customer despite having done absolutely nothing wrong. Her expression was soft, serene, the sort of face that made people confess things without meaning to.
“I promise he’ll calm down the second he remembers he loves people,” she said, and sure enough, the tabby nuzzled her chin a moment later, dramatically reformed.
A few feet away, Daniela was sweeping up stray cat hair near the lounge area. She was half-bent forward, AirPods in, stretching her calves in slow, dancer-precise movements as she guided the broom along the floor. Even the motion of sweeping looked balletic on her—shoulders relaxed, spine straight, weight shifting like she was marking choreography. When she noticed the door had opened, she straightened and gave Yoonchae a bright wave, her smile warm enough to cut through any leftover cold that clung to her coat.
And behind the pastry counter, Manon was icing pastries with the exactness of someone who would defend her bakery box with violence if needed. She pressed a swirl onto the top of a cinnamon roll, brow furrowed in quiet concentration, then glanced up. The smile she gave Yoonchae was small but real—steady, sisterly, reassuring.
“Yoonchae, hey,” she said softly, sliding the tray aside. “Cold out?”
Yoonchae nodded, unwinding her scarf. “Only emotionally.”
Manon huffed a laugh and reached below the counter. “I just finished these,” she said, and without asking, placed one on a small plate and slid it toward her—the pastry she always got, the cinnamon and citrus one that reminded her of late studio hours and staying alive through smell alone. “You get to be the taste tester today.”
There was comfort in not needing to order. In being known just enough, but not overwhelmingly so.
“Coffee’ll be up in a second,” Lara called without turning around. “Assuming this thing decides it believes in me again.”
“It always does,” Sophia said cheerfully.
“It lies,” Lara replied.
Yoonchae hid her smile and moved toward her usual spot—the corner table near the back, beneath a shelf crowded with cat toys and forgotten mugs. She eased into her seat, placed her sketchbook on the table, and took a slow breath, letting the warmth sink into the places her body resisted.
She flexed her fingers once. Twice.
Still stiff. Still clumsy. But here, the pain felt less personal. Less accusatory.
A ginger cat hopped onto the chair across from her, peered at her as if evaluating her emotional stability, then curled up without a word. A smaller gray one hopped onto her lap like a creature claiming a heating pad. The staff swore cats gravitated toward calm people, but Yoonchae wasn’t sure she was calm—just quiet in the way that animals seemed to trust.
She opened her sketchbook.
Not to work. Not really. Just to test the feeling. Pencil in hand, she tried a soft line—an arc, a suggestion of shape. Her fingers trembled, but the line came out cleaner than she expected. The ache flickered, noticeable but not enough to stop her.
She took another breath. Felt the room settle around her.
From her corner, she watched the café move through its rhythms—familiar, worn-in, like watching a family she wasn’t part of but knew well from a distance.
Sophia drifted back toward the counter with the now-pacified tabby in her arms, its purr rumbling like distant thunder. Lara glanced over just in time to see the cat nuzzle under Sophia’s chin.
“Oh my god,” Lara said, slamming the espresso button with the force of someone fighting for her life, “he behaves for you but not for me?”
“He just needed reassurance,” Sophia replied, voice a gentle hum. She passed the cat into a customer’s waiting arms, then added, “Maybe if you didn’t glare at him like he stole your lunch—”
“I don’t glare,” Lara snapped, right as the espresso machine sputtered, wheezed… then miraculously produced a perfect, golden shot. She pointed at it triumphantly. “SEE? It loves me. We’re in a committed relationship.”
Daniela snorted from a few feet away, still sweeping. “You’re in a toxic situationship with an appliance.”
“Oh, bold words from someone getting bullied by a six-pound kitten,” Lara shot back.
Daniela glanced down at the tiny gray fluffball draped dramatically across the broom’s bristles. “She’s not bullying me. We’re negotiating.” She gently tried to coax the kitten off, only for it to cling harder.
Manon, carrying a tray of pastries toward the display case, paused just long enough to arch a brow. “You could pick her up, you know.”
“I don’t want to disturb her artistic process,” Daniela said solemnly.
“She’s sleeping,” Manon replied.
“Exactly.”
Sophia laughed softly, stepping in to scoop up the stubborn kitten with practiced ease. “Come on, sweetheart. Let Daniela do her job.”
Daniela sighed with exaggerated relief. “Thank you. I was seconds away from losing that fight.”
“You already lost,” Lara said, pouring the shot into a cup. “Publicly. With witnesses.”
Manon slid the tray into the display with the precision of a surgeon. “At least she lost gracefully,” she murmured. “Unlike some people.”
Lara put a hand to her chest. “Wow. Betrayed by my own friends.”
“You’ll recover,” Sophia said soothingly, handing her the kitten for a moment just to watch Lara panic as it tried to climb her apron.
Daniela laughed so hard she had to lean on the broom.
They worked around each other effortlessly—teasing, brushing shoulders, passing ingredients and tools like a choreographed dance. Loud. Warm. Messy. Affectionate in a way that didn’t need touching to be felt.
Yoonchae swallowed against the small, persistent ache in her chest that had nothing to do with her hand.
It was a quiet kind of longing—an observation more than a want. The kind that made her wonder what it would feel like to be woven into something like this. To belong in a place where people called out to one another over blenders and cat meows, where inside jokes could live in the walls, where the air felt shared.
But she squashed that thought before it could take shape.
She didn’t have the time nor the energy. She didn't have the bandwidth for anything that required being present in ways she couldn’t consistently sustain.
So she sketched another soft line. Focused on the paper. Let the ache settle where she could ignore it.
But something about the room was different today.
Lighter.
She couldn’t name it at first—just a faint, buzzing undercurrent. The staff moved with a little extra charge, glancing toward the back hallway between tasks, whispering in brief pockets of conversation.
Sophia leaned in toward Daniela at one point, saying something too quiet to catch. Daniela straightened, swept another arc across the floor, then smiled like she was trying not to laugh.
Manon and Lara exchanged a look—a mutual sigh, half annoyance, half affection.
Finally, Lara grumbled toward the room, “If she tries to reorganize the syrup shelf, she’s dead to me—and Sophia, no, I don’t care that she’s my roommate.”
Sophia put a hand to her chest, scandalized. “She’s nice! Don’t be mean.”
“I’m not mean. I’m realistic,” Lara said, finally coaxing the espresso machine into compliance with a pat that looked suspiciously affectionate. “The last person who ‘helped’ me reorganize put the oat milk next to the regular milk.”
“That was you,” Manon pointed out calmly.
“Exactly,” Lara said.
Another round of quiet laughter. Another pulse of that electric anticipation.
Yoonchae furrowed her brow, more curious than she wanted to admit. A new hire, then. That explained the energy—new people disrupted routines, even here. Especially here.
She tried not to think about how often change made her nervous.
She smoothed a hand over her sketchbook page and rested her pencil for a moment as she tried to focus on her drawing again—but her attention kept drifting toward the staff, toward the subtle choreography of excitement and mild exasperation.
A new person. Someone who hadn’t been folded into the rhythm yet. Someone the others were clearly preparing themselves for.
Yoonchae took a sip of the latte Lara had placed beside her without ceremony. The foam heart was lopsided, but warm. Comforting.
She’d just lowered the cup when the bell above the door jingled—bright, sharp, signaling a sudden shift in temperature.
Cold air rushed in, swirling around the room in a quick chill that made the cats lift their heads in mild offense.
Then a bright voice cut through the space:
“I’m not late! I swear I’m not late!”
Every head near the pastry case turned. Even Manon—mid-sip of her iced coffee—lifted her eyes as the door clattered shut behind the newcomer.
The first thing Yoonchae noticed was the pink hair—bangs peeking out from under a knit beanie as if someone had dipped them in strawberry ice cream and forgotten to rinse it out. The woman underneath was all contrast: a too-thin coat completely wrong for winter, cheeks flushed from the cold, and big, bright eyes that seemed to push back the gray January light spilling across the café floor. There was a kind of energy around her, warm and startling, like sunrise after a week of unbroken clouds.
Then she slipped—right on the small puddle of melted snow just inside the doorway. Her boots skidded, her arms windmilled, and she made a sound that was part squeak, part battle cry.
Lara snorted. “Graceful, Megan. Real graceful.”
The woman—Megan—shot her a mock glare, more playful than annoyed, and stuck her tongue out. Sophia immediately reached over to steady her with a gentle hand on her elbow.
“Be careful, sweetheart,” she murmured, naturally maternal.
“I’m fine! I’m good! I’m—” Megan looked down at the wet floor, then took in the whole room as if checking for witnesses. “—not late.”
“Technically,” Lara said, “you’re on time. Barely.”
“That’s still on time!” Megan chirped, clearly pleased with herself.
She was halfway through peeling off her gloves when her gaze finally landed on Yoonchae. She stopped mid-motion. Her whole face brightened with a kind of delighted recognition—not of her, but of the sketchbook open on the table.
“Oh!” Megan gasped. “You’re drawing!”
Before Yoonchae could even respond, Megan was suddenly much closer, leaning in with a lack of hesitation that would have been alarming if it weren’t so earnest. The sudden proximity made Yoonchae’s muscles tense—not from discomfort, but simply because she hadn’t expected someone to appear in her space so quickly.
Megan dropped into a crouch beside her chair, eyes shining as if she’d stumbled across treasure. “Is that a—wait, what pencil is that? Graphite? One of those charcoal ones that smudge everywhere? Sorry, I’m being nosy. I just— I sketch too. Well, more than sketch. Constantly. I’m supposed to be a fashion designer one day. Or at least that’s what I went to school for. But none of that matters—I just love watching people draw.”
The words tumbled out of her in an excited rush, like she’d been carrying them around all day waiting for somewhere to put them.
Yoonchae blinked, overwhelmed in a way that felt oddly pleasant. “It’s—uh. A soft graphite. 6B.”
“Of course it is,” Megan said, as if that confirmed a theory she’d long suspected. “You can tell from the shading. Seriously, this is gorgeous.”
She didn’t touch the page, but she hovered close, almost reverent, the way someone might regard a delicate artifact. Then, without even seeming to think, she slid down to sit cross-legged on the floor, angling herself to see the drawing from below like that would somehow reveal more.
“Is this weird?” she asked suddenly, though she didn’t move away. “I can get up. Or back up. I just—this angle looked better. But I don’t want to, like… invade your space.”
“You’re fine,” Yoonchae said softly.
Megan let out a relieved breath. “Okay. Cool. Cool-cool-cool.”
Her gaze returned to the sketch. “Your linework is insane. I try to get hands to look like that and mine always come out like aggressively confused worms.”
Yoonchae let out a small, brief laugh she didn’t expect.
“And I swear I’ve drawn for years!” Megan went on, her hands flying as she spoke. “And I’m still terrible at hands, which is tragic because hands are the most dramatic part of a pose. But yours are—wow.”
Warmth crept up Yoonchae’s neck. She tried not to stare at Megan, but her gaze kept drifting back to her anyway—those messy pink bangs, the big brown eyes full of warmth, the soft-looking hands that were larger than she expected, the brightness in her expression that felt almost unreal in the dead of winter. The combination tugged at something in her chest, something quiet and unfamiliar.
“What’s your name?” Megan asked.
“Yoonchae.”
Megan repeated it immediately, almost tasting the shape of the word. “Yoonchae.” She smiled. “That’s so pretty.”
Unsure what to do with that, Yoonchae looked down at her sketchbook and pretended to adjust a line that didn’t actually need adjusting.
Behind them, Lara snorted. “Dial it back, lover girl.”
Megan flushed a vivid shade of red. “I—I am not—that’s—Lara!”
Daniela leaned across the counter, laughing. “At least wait until your shift starts before you start flirting with customers.”
“I’m not flirting!” Megan protested.
“You’re sitting on the floor,” Lara pointed out.
“Artists do that sometimes!”
“You’re not an artist,” Lara said. “You’re a menace.”
“I can be both!”
She folded her arms like she’d just made an airtight argument.
Yoonchae kept her eyes down, but she couldn’t stop a small, unplanned smile from slipping out.
The playful noise of the café continued around her, but everything felt slightly different now—warmer, softer, more vivid. Something gentle unfurled behind her ribs, a flutter she hadn’t felt in years. Not a crush yet—just the first quiet shift, the way your attention gravitates toward someone before your mind catches up.
She tried to pick up her pencil again and realized her fingers didn’t ache. Not even a little. She drew a testing line, then another. Still no pain.
Megan—still flustered and still sitting on the café floor—didn’t seem to notice what she had accidentally fixed.
From the back of the café, Sophia called, “Megan! Training!”
“Oh shoot—okay!” Megan scrambled up in the least graceful way possible, took two hurried steps toward the employee door, then spun around and waved at Yoonchae in a brief, unthinking motion that was impossibly sincere.
Yoonchae lifted a hand in return before she had time to consider why.
Megan beamed at her, then disappeared into the back.
The café seemed suddenly quieter without her—as if someone had taken a bit of sunrise with them but left the warmth behind
...
Closing time settled over the café slowly, like a warm blanket being folded away for the night. The lights dimmed, the conversations thinned out, and the bustle that had filled the space all afternoon drifted toward the door in soft waves. Yoonchae packed her things deliberately—not because she had much, but because the act of leaving felt like stepping away from a small pocket of calm she hadn’t expected to find today. She slid her pencils into their case, slipped her sketchbook back into her bag, and looped her scarf loosely around her neck as if giving herself an extra moment before the cold outside met her again.
“Have a good night,” Lara called in a tone that managed to be both blasé and genuinely kind.
Sophia stopped her before she reached the exit and pressed a warm cookie into her hand, saying quietly, “Eat something warm on your way home.”
Manon offered a simple, respectful nod—subtle but sincere.
Daniela, of course, wiggled her fingers dramatically and blew a flurry of exaggerated air kisses as if Yoonchae were boarding a ship rather than stepping into a winter evening.
It was strange how naturally they treated her, and stranger still how nice it felt. She slipped outside before it became overwhelming.
The door had barely shut behind her when it swung open again.
“Wait—hold on—!”
Megan burst out onto the sidewalk, still fumbling with the ties of her apron and slightly out of breath. Her bangs stuck out in chaotic little wisps from beneath her beanie, and the cold pinked her cheeks even more than before. She skidded to a stop in front of Yoonchae, looking like she’d run a marathon and regretted none of it.
“I just—um—” She took a breath, her voice softening in a way that felt earnest and unguarded. “Come back soon, okay?”
Yoonchae stopped moving completely. Something in her chest loosened, almost gently, as if some long-tensed knot had finally started to unwind. She managed an “Okay,” though it came out much quieter than she expected, like her voice had been softened by the cold air or the moment itself.
Megan’s smile brightened as if that single word had meant something. Then someone inside called her name, and she hurried back in, the door closing behind her with a quick thud.
The street felt calm once she was alone again, with snow falling in small, almost shy flakes that melted the moment they touched the sidewalk. Yoonchae adjusted her scarf and began walking toward the subway, feeling the lingering warmth in the hand that had held the cookie. It wasn’t really the cookie she felt, though—it was the echo of Megan’s closeness, a subtle heat that stayed in her palm like a physical memory. Her hands didn’t ache at all, not even a faint tightness along the knuckles, and that alone made her steps feel lighter.
By the time she descended into the subway, the city had fully shifted into its evening rhythm. The tunnels hummed with muted voices, soft station announcements, and the familiar blend of stale heat and cold air drifting in from the entrances. She boarded a train, found a seat near the window, and let her shoulders relax as the doors closed and the car shuddered into motion.
For a few moments she simply watched the blurred streaks of light and tunnel walls slip past. Then she reached into her bag again and brought out her sketchbook, opening it to a clean page. Her pencil moved almost before she consciously decided to draw. The image formed naturally:
Messy pink bangs that refused to stay in place, the bright eyes full of unfiltered warmth, the soft expression she’d seen at least three times now and realized she already recognized, the slightly-too-big posture packed with restless energy. Each line flowed easily into the next, steady and confident, without a trace of the stiffness or soreness she usually braced for.
When she finished, she looked at the drawing for several long seconds. There was something alive in it, something immediate and warm, and she closed the sketchbook with care, almost as if preserving something delicate.
As the train carried her further into the city, she leaned back and let the truth settle quietly in her chest.
She already knew she would be going back tomorrow.