Work Text:
Heewon was rubbing an alcohol glass with a rag when he came in.
A lanky man in an oversized suit who wore an awkward upward twitch to his lips, like he hasn’t yet decided whether it was supposed to be a grimace or a smile.
The man was with a rambunctious crowd with other men in company suits, while the women in their group laughed as they moved to sit farther away from the men and closer to each other.
He seems to be in his own little world.
The lights of the cocktail bar brought an artificial dim of sunlight, as the day was brought to a close.
Heewon’s eyes kept drifting to the group table throughout their stay, if only just to make sure no problems were occurring.
The man was still there.
It was a bit hard to tell: He was slouched in his seat, shoved around by the ruckus of the others. He wasn’t quite as lively as the others, but not quite as polite and mindfully quiet as some of the women. Stuck in his mind, not seeming to register the world around him. It reminded Heewon of how her little brother could be at times, as weird as he is.
Except it was only the man there, not her little brother. And you had to search for the man amongst the many.
Heewon’s eyes wanderingly looked for the man again after serving a few customers. He reminded Heewon of her little brother a bit too well, with how lost he seems to be in this place.
Like a little kid.
The man came to the counter after one of the guys bellowed next to him for something or the other.
When he came closer, you just smile the same way you do for everyone else. Except, that’s not quite true, is it? It’s a little too warm, too tilted up on one side.
You do not know this man as well as you want to believe you do. You don’t know anything about him.
And yet, he seems too familiar. Might be just that I see similarities of my younger brother in him.
The man slumps down on the barstool, too tired to go back to the group yet if you guessed. He orders a fancy cocktail and water, though Heewon was sure the cocktail wasn’t for him.
You do not know this man.
You don’t know why you keep repeating it to yourself.
Ever since he came in, the man would do the same choreo, the same steps to a song you aren’t quite as privy to.
He would find some excuse to leave the loud crowd he came in with, he’d read something on his phone with a soft and excited smile, then a particularly loud smack from someone slamming their glass on the table would cause him to look up from the world he was enraptured with. Then he’d leave. Back to the group to mindlessly nod and speak when prompted to, but always with that distance in his being. As if by leaving whatever was on his phone, he’d left his mind vacant of everything as well. An empty husk.
Yet always did he seem to be waiting. To go back to the world on his screen.
What a weird kid.
The night is still young, and it’s not like just looking for him will suddenly do something different.
The man was still waiting for the drinks, so Heewon clears her throat.
”Did your partner send you cute puppies to look at or something?”
Probably not… the best way to introduce yourself to someone.
Heewon purses her lips to refrain from chuckling, and glanced towards the man for a response.
He however doesn’t seem to hide his expression well, with a furrow in his brows so deep, you believed you could stick a pencil in-between and it’d stay.
“No, no. I’m just looking at something.”
“Must be something real interesting then, if it keeps your attention that well,” and Heewon raises her head to properly look at him, a smirk in place and a tone that indicates a space for him to respond.
He looks slightly uncomfortable. You didn’t mean to. Maybe he’s uncomfortable with talking to strangers, or it was the topic that you brought up despite him being vague in the first place.
“Sorry, I was just curious. Don’t worry about it. Your drinks,” she apologetically says. She passes the glasses with a flourish as if to show off, and a physical indicator to move on from the conversation.
He reaches out for them, but perhaps there was a corporate joke too boorishly funny to the group the man was sitting with earlier, because then all you could hear was heavy smacking on the table and loud guffaws equivalent to dying turkeys.
You couldn’t hide the grimace of pain from the way the smacks echoed in your ears with a ringing pain, but that quickly becomes a passing thought when you see the way the man had reacted. It was always the small things that you had to notice on your younger brother. It was the same small things you notice then on that man.
His eyes widened a bit, his hands are shaky though almost unnoticeable, he’s hesitating to move; almost too still and back snapped up too stiffly. If he tried to brush it off as a simple fright, it would simply seem too unnatural to play off if someone saw the almost learnt way he tried to seem attentive.
You squint your eyes, then fiercely glower at the distracting group.
”I’ll be right back with you, sir,” Heewon says as she smiles at the man.
Before long, Heewon had orchestrated a coup against the group. After the group had refused to stop being a nuisance for the establishment, and her coworkers had trouble quieting them down, she had security escort the group out.
Security were even kind enough to hold back some of her coworkers when the group had made scathing comments about ‘compliancy’ and ‘respect’ and let her coworkers go after, so as to not have them get in trouble. The joy of working with people for so long that being known and knowing others as well helps with situations like these.
Aigooo.. the nerve that group had. That took way too long for such cheap suckers.
As you thought about it, you remembered the man who came in with them. The same man who probably had left the place after his group left, seeing no reason to stay.
However, before Heewon could even start to be disappointed, she sees a familiar figure slouched down at the same place she saw him last. Once again scrolling on his phone.
Before you fully think about it, you realize you had already peeked at his phone when you walked towards him, while he was too focused on it to acknowledge the world around him.
It definitely seemed like ‘something’ alright. A book nerd then?
You glanced at his appearance, which seems to anticipating a climax to the story. It doesn’t quite inspire the thought of a nerd, somehow.
Well, everyone needs hobbies.
”You coul-“
The man flinched hard enough for his phone to fly in the air, while he scrambled to grab it while it slipped through his fingers, like a particularly slippery escapee moving through the loose confines of the bars of his fingers.
You couldn’t help but laugh, a sharp and loud sound, to which he startled again. You quickly help grab his phone from crashing to the ground when he became too flustered to.
”My bad, here,” Heewon says, placing his phone on the bar-table in front of him, and still huffing out scattered breaths of laughter. “I wasn’t expecting that, haha.”
The man flusters even more, attention now focused on his hands as he says, “It was an accident.”
You smile at him, moving to rest against the bar-table.
Of course it was an accident. That’s why it seemed funny, alongside the mad scramble.
She chuckles at the thought.
”So, a novel. You’re a reader then? I happened to see your phone screen,” Heewon says, quickly adding an explanation for how she knows after the man raises his brows in tense surprise.
”Ah, yes. It’s just a novel that I read.”
”Well, I’ll be here for a little longer,” Heewon says. Keeping the fact that her shift ended a while ago.
He seemed hesitant, but with a few more words of encouragement, the man begins to talk of his story.
And so you listen. You’re not too sure why at first. It was a simple feeling of curiosity to know this man. Though of what he speaks is not like the usual stories you have read, when you ever do read. You’re not quite sure why you continue to listen, even when some parts become repetitive. Then you register the man’s countenance.
The man isn’t smiling broadly, on that tittering edge as even he still seems conscious of how his face contorts, but his eyes are an entirely different story.
Maybe it were the lights, or perhaps it was just a long night, but it had seemed like stars had found their home in his eyes. Like they were the only place to feel at rest.
Heewon smiles throughout the story, finding comfort in the quiet way the man narrates and the warmth of life in his eyes. She continues to listen, despite the way his main character sounds like a man she wouldn’t be close with in real life.
Maybe two or three hours pass by, the man slowly gets less coherent as he talks, whether that be because you lost focus at some point while staring at the stars in front of you in the enclosed establishment, or because he seemed to be halfway asleep on that barstool.
You feel as if you are squeezed. As if a warm hand had decided to gently squeeze your heart and lungs, until you don’t notice that you had run out of air. A gentle and loving embrace caused by despair.
Heewon realizes she would possibly not see this man again.
”Here, is it alright if I use your phone? I’ll call you a cab,” Heewon says, to which the man nods and opens his phone sluggishly. She quickly adds a new contact and messages herself before opening KakaoT.
The man’s eyes too muddled with blurry and directionless stars now to have truly understood what you had done earlier, distracted and halfway to dreamland.
Heewon huffs a quiet breath of amusement, and helps him steadily stand while you two walk to wait outside for the cab to show.
When it does, and the man leaves, you can only hope.
You do not know this man, not his name nor his anything.
You only know that he houses stars in his eyes, but only during his happiest state of talking about a story he loves.
You only know that he is a lonely man who finds happiness in another lonely man’s journey.
You only know the feeling of gentle despair when you think of how you still do not truly know this man.
Not yet, at least.