Chapter Text
For the fourth time that week, Daniela found herself at Southfield mall. Her day had started out as usual: wake up, go to class, go to class again, get lunch, go to class again again, and then scrounge around in the conservatory library for a spot to work. But since the library was a cramped building so small that no donor wanted their name attached to it, she more often than not couldn’t find a seat.
It wasn’t that there were no open tables. It was just that all of the open tables were meant for more than one person, and she felt bad about occupying them just for herself. She could have studied with other people. She had a few friends, but she didn’t feel close enough with any of them to study together. Her closest friend was probably her roommate, Manon, but since Daniela was studying dance and Manon was studying theater, they operated on very different schedules.
She left the library and headed towards the mall, her backup-but-becoming-primary study spot. It was only a few minutes away from the small but sprawling campus of Kats conservatory, the only need-blind dance conservatory in the entire country.
“They should all care more about talent than about money,” her mother had said sharply when they’d researched schools together only a year ago. “It doesn’t make any sense.” Her father had just tutted his lips and walked away.
That was why she ended up in rural Minnesota. It wasn’t so bad, she tried to tell herself. Yet as she walked down one of the only two streets in Southfield, hugging herself tight due to the chilly air despite the fact that it was only early October, she found herself missing home. She missed Atlanta, she missed her parents, and she missed her friends. She was getting to live her dream - she was learning to dance, to become a professional, so she could do it for the rest of her life - but it was lonely. The graying sky didn’t make her feel any better.
Roots had ingrown into the path leading up to the mall, and Daniela nearly tripped on them. It didn’t help that it started to drizzle, making her run because she wasn’t sure she wanted to test how waterproof her backpack was. So she arrived at Southfield mall with damp hair and slightly out of breath.
The mall was a small building - everything in Southfield, it seemed, was small - and every time she entered it made her miss Atlanta more. It only had five stores. There was the general store that took up most of the space, a smoothie place, a candy store, a Chipotle, and a tech repair shop. She’d eaten at the Chipotle a few times, but other than that hadn’t explored much. She mainly sat in the common, the mall’s central area. It had a lot of seats, most of which were unoccupied during the week. The mall’s main inhabitants were Southfield locals, who were mostly the kind of families who stayed in on the weekdays and only went out for lunch on weekends. Sometimes, Hybe university students came too; that was the big university on the other side of the mall. But almost no one was there that day. Daniela set her back down and sat.
The common’s defining feature was the carpet. It was a simple design of cartoon flowers atop a black surface, but the kids loved it. They would always jump from flower to flower, pretending that the rest of the floor was lava. Their giggles filled the space. Daniela thought that it was one of the nicest things in Southfield.
There were two kids jumping around, and Daniela watched them before she started working. Their parents trailed behind them, carrying smoothies. The kids laughed until they reached the mall’s exit, and then silence overcame the space again.
Daniela sighed. It was more quiet there than almost anywhere in Atlanta. ‘This is life now,’ she supposed. She had better get used to it, especially before it snowed. She was really nervous about the inevitability of snow. It almost never snowed back home, and the few times it had she had - luckily or unluckily - been out of the country, visiting family in Cuba or Venezuela with her parents. Her first snow would be in Minnesota, all alone.
The sun fell and the sky darkened as she worked. Daniela didn’t really notice. She was too busy working on an essay. Yes, for some reason she still had to write essays. She thought she had escaped that particular cruelty after graduating high school, but it seemed knowing dance history was an emphasis of Kats conservatory. Her fingers actually ached from typing by the time she stopped for the night.
It was well past eight, meaning the dining hall would be closed. Her stomach grumbled as she rose and stretched. The mall would be closing soon too, and though the bright lights of Chipotle enticed her, she had eaten there two days ago and just finished the leftovers last night. No, tonight would be an instant ramen kind of night.
Her stomach growled again, and her eyes wandered the space. Chipotle was no, smoothies sounded good but were too expensive, so the only food option there was the candy store. It was called ‘Candy Candy’ which Daniela thought was both silly and direct. It was the only place with food options cheaper than two dollars though, so she went in.
It was bright pink, and it smelled like sugar. Those were the first things Daniela noticed, because they were impossible not to notice. The walls and ceiling were a neon pink that may have made her eyes hurt if she stared at them for too long. The floor was gray tiles that did little to reprieve the over-stimulation. And in tiny cabinets lining almost every inch of available wall space was candy.
It was very overwhelming. Her eyes found two employees behind a desk at the back of the store. They were girls who appeared to be around her age, and they were wearing matching oversized shirts that were a similarly bright shade of pink. In black cursive were the words ‘Candy Candy: Sweet Deals and Sweet Candy’ in the center. They were chatting while occasionally glancing at her as she wandered. Daniela wondered if she was the first person into the store that day.
There was too much candy for her eyes to truly search for what she wanted, so eventually she approached the desk.
“Excuse me,” she said. Both workers looked towards her, smiling brightly like they were probably trained to. “I was wondering if you had any caramel things.” Her stomach growled again then as if to punctuate her words.
The taller of the two workers chuckled. “Go show her, Yoonchae.”
The shorter, Yoonchae, stepped around the desk and led her back towards the entrance. “We only have one caramel option. It’s here.” She pointed to a cabinet tucked away, somehow knowing where it was among the chaos. “It’s mostly kids coming in here and they don’t really like caramel so the owners stopped buying it. But this one is shipped in from New York City. There’s only one store that makes it.”
“Oh,” said Daniela, who was not expecting to learn candy lore in the candy store. “Cool.”
“Yup!” Yoonchae exclaimed before skipping back to the desk. Daniela saw her exhale when the other worker gave her a brief nod of approval, and she chuckled to herself.
She picked one of the caramel candies from the drawer. It was light and just what she needed to power through the walk back to her dorm.
The other worker smiled as she brought it to the desk. “Anything else today?” she asked, her voice steady in the way any rehearsed phrase was after awhile. Daniela shook her head. “Great, that’ll be 88 cents.”
“Oh that’s not too bad,” Daniela replied. “I thought most candy stores upcharge by more.”
The worker tilted her head, and Daniela noticed that the worker was a few inches taller than she was. “I mean, you’re getting one piece of candy. I’d hope it’s not much more than this anywhere.”
“That’s fair,” murmured Daniela as she handed over her card.
“Oh, sorry,” the worker said, going back to her practiced cadence. “We only take Visa or Mastercard. Also, we don’t take cards for purchases under 4 dollars.”
Daniela frowned. She only had that one card. Not that it mattered because she definitely wasn’t going to spend more than 4 dollars on candy. More importantly, she didn’t have any cash. “Uh…”
The worker smiled, and this one looked different than her practiced ones before. Her eyes turned to crescents, and her entire face seemed to brighten. “It’s alright though, you can just take it.”
“Oh, are you sure?” The candy suddenly felt hot in her hand, and she became acutely aware of the wrapper scratching against her skin. “I can just not get it.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” She leaned forward as if to emphasize her point. “It’s less than a dollar.”
Daniela, for some reason, continued arguing. “Everything is less than a dollar if you split it up enough.”
The worker blinked, and her mouth thinned as she turned over the jumble of words Daniela had just thrown at her. “What?”
“I don’t need it, actually.” Daniela placed the candy on the desk in front of the worker, as if it was hers. “You can keep it.”
The worker’s eyes moved slowly between Daniela’s eyes and the candy that now sat crumpled between them on the bright pink desk. They were such a deep shade of brown that Daniela almost thought they were black. But inside of them were flecks of brighter color that painted constellations in her irises.
Daniela blinked, and suddenly a smile was on the worker’s face. “Let’s play a game.”
It was Daniela’s turn to be confused. “What?”
“Point a gun at me.”
Daniela nearly choked. “Huh???”
“Please, just do it.” Then she chuckled. “A finger gun.”
“Oh, right, that makes more sense.” And for some reason, Daniela did it. She shaped her fingers into a gun and aimed it at the random candy store employee whom she had never seen before. Her body acted before her mind could stop her.
There was an instant when the thought ‘what am I doing?’ flashed through her mind, but it was quickly overcome by the worker’s loud gasp. “Oh no,” she exclaimed with feigned surprise. “She has a gun. Surely she can take the candy, right Yoonchae?”
Both her and Daniela then looked at Yoonchae expectantly, as if she were the reigning authority in the store, as if she wasn’t likely the youngest of the three of them. They probably looked ridiculous. Daniela was pretty sure her face was scarlet from embarrassment - maybe even the same color as the bright pink walls - but she kept the gun pointed at the worker.
Yoonchae rolled her eyes and sighed, like this wasn’t the weirdest thing she’d seen happen at this store. “You’re so weird, Sophia,” she muttered. Then she turned to Daniela and with the straightest face possible, said “you can take the candy.”
The worker, Sophia, turned to her and beamed. When Daniela remained standing there wondering what had just happened, she gestured to the candy lying on the table between them. “All yours.”
“R-right,” Daniela murmured. “Okay then.” She scooped up the candy and shoved it in her jeans pocket before she could second guess herself. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, take it. You’ll enjoy it, so you should have it.” Sophia turned away like it was a done deal and began fiddling with the papers behind her, humming to herself. Yoonchae continued to glance between them before she sighed and also walked toward a different section of the store, pretending to reorganize the candy there. And Daniela just stared into space.
She felt for the candy in her pocket once before leaving. It was there in its crinkled glory, and she was glad she had it. Something in her heart warmed over.
“Thank you, Sophia,” Daniela said. Sophia startled at the sound of her name, but she turned all the same. Her eyes somehow shone under the overbearing lights of the store that made everything bland. “I… I really appreciate it.”
Beneath the surprise of hearing a stranger say her name, a smile began to form. Her lips widened slowly, and they quirked upward in a way Daniela wondered if only hers did, and then she was smiling again. To Daniela, Sophia’s smile seemed brighter than her bright pink shirt.
“Of course.” It was only then that Daniela realized how long their eyes had been locked, and how short that time had felt. “I hope it’s the best caramel you’ve ever had.”
Daniela was blushing. She was sure she was. Not even her friends at home knew she liked caramel. She didn’t really know why she hadn’t told them. She also didn’t know why something in her was glad Sophia knew.
“Me too.” She let her eyes linger a little longer before turning to leave. Sophia held her gaze until she did so.
The caramel lasted only a few steps after she made it out of the store before Daniela dug it out of the wrapper and popped it into her mouth. It was amazing. She hadn’t had any since leaving home and she hadn’t known to miss it. Maybe ‘Candy Candy’ knew what they were doing, importing it all the way from New York City.
Or maybe Daniela was just hungry, not having eaten since noon.
Even after the candy had dissolved and she was halfway back to her dorm, walking beneath the black roof of the night sky that was dotted with stars, the taste remained in her mouth like a phantom. Just like that, Daniela found herself smiling. She hadn’t done anything but go to class and type on her laptop that day, she’d barely talked to anyone, she hadn’t danced at all, and she was walking back home at nearly nine at night to a dinner of instant ramen, but she was smiling.
She only realized later that it wasn’t the candy that clung to her memory, but the sweetness of Sophia’s smile.
—
It didn’t take long after the girl left for Yoonchae to walk up to her. Sophia was already taking a dollar out of her wallet to slip into the cash register.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know?” Yoonchae pursed her lips. “She would’ve put it back.”
Sophia shrugged. “Yeah, she made that very clear.” She couldn’t fight the smile that crept onto her lips as she remembered the way that girl - oh how she wished she knew her name - had pouted. “But I wanted her to have it.”
Yoonchae sighed and kept staring at her, but Sophia didn’t really care. They had to start closing anyway. She pulled the receipts out of the register and began sorting them.
“Would you have done that for any pretty girl?” Yoonchae asked again while they were sweeping. It was quiet in the mall - they were the last store to close - and their shoes squeaked against the floor and echoed throughout the empty building. It was dark outside, and Sophia could see the stars through the window. Sophia was purposefully stopping herself from thinking about all of the work waiting for her when she got to her apartment. Maybe she was distracting herself with the hazel eyes that had made her waste a dollar on probably-really-old caramel.
‘Hybe is such an easy school,’ she remembered her friends saying the week before graduation. ‘It’ll be a piece of cake for you.’
She almost scoffed. The medical program certainly wasn’t easy, especially with a part time job on the side. But it was what her parents wanted. Deep down, she knew some part of her wanted it too, however hard it was.
She looked up, and Yoonchae had stopped steeping to stare at her instead. “She’s got you whipped, huh?”
Sophia rolled her eyes. “As if. I’ll probably never see her again.”
“She’ll come back,” Yoonchae stated like she knew their destinies. “She smiled at you like you’d given her the moon.”
Sophia leaned her broom against the wall. They had to mop next. “I mean, caramel candy is pretty close.” She dipped the mop in the chemical cleaner and rung it out enough for it to stop dripping before walking to the other end of the store.
Yoonchae tapped her on the shoulder as she was walking over. “When she comes back again, you have to ask for her name.”
“If,” Sophia called as she went. “And I’ll do it if you focus. We can leave in five minutes if you start closing the cabinets now.” Yoonchae did, and Sophia was glad. Because if she got lucky enough to see the girl who had almost fought her over a piece of caramel candy that cost less than a dollar - and who had looked at her like she was special afterwards - again, then there was no way she wasn’t asking for her name. But Yoonchae didn’t need to know that.
“See you tomorrow,” Sophia called as they went their separate ways. The lights were off, the door was locked, and she patted her pocket to make sure the keys were still there. She was glad the owners trusted her enough to have her own pair of keys.
Her apartment was only two minutes from the mall; it was between the mall and Hybe, which made her life very convenient. She gazed at the stars on her walk home, like she always did. But this time, they didn’t seem as wonderful as they used to. Or maybe they were the same, but Sophia was too busy thinking about hazel eyes and caramel to notice how brightly they shone.
Was her life boring enough that a five minute encounter with a random girl was the highlight of her week? Maybe. Was there anything she could do about that when studying and working took up all of her time? Probably not. In fact, she was likely going to have her head buried in a textbook about ultrasounds for the next many hours.
But was she smiling as she thought about the way that girl had smiled at her? Absolutely.