“What time is Seulgi on again?” Gunhee asked, his voice carrying a nervous pitch as he eyed the clock on the register’s screen.

Irene’s eyebrow twitched. She knew it was the barista’s first time dealing with this sale, and she knew everyone in the store had been doing their best to rehash every horror story from sales past to freak him out. And she knew none of those stories had been exaggerations, based on her own experiences.

But that didn’t mean they needed Seulgi! Irene was a formidable barista in her own right. She realized how little her crew had been able to witness this, however, since she was often stuck in the back room, left to pour over reports and audits and charitable pet projects left to her by Kyuhyun. She had to put all of that aside, however for the next three hours, because it was going to be ‘all hands on deck’.

“We’ll be fine. She’ll be here before it starts,” Irene said, masking her irritation with a veneer of bossiness. “Gunhee, you’ll make extra whipped creams, Wendy will restock the undercounter fridges, Joy can hide extra syrups over there by the cups in case we need them…” Her crew obediently scurried about, preparing for the three hours of hell they were about to endure. She didn’t have the heart to remind them that this was only the first day of the ten-day sale.

“Where’s Eunae?” Irene asked, looking around. She heard a muffled thwack as Wendy knocked her head against the top of the undercounter fridge she had been stocking. Irene burst out laughing.

Everyone paused and turned.

Irene blinked at them. “I’m sorry, didn’t I give you all jobs to do?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. The activity immediately resumed and she left the floor to go look for the borrowed barista. She found Eunae sitting at the desk in the stockroom, which reminded her she had sent the girl on break a little while ago.

Eunae had her earbuds in, listening to something while she used a pen to tap out a rhythm on a piece of scratch paper in front of her. As Irene walked up to her, she could hear the barista mumbling to herself. Irene quieted her steps and crept closer. She could see lines written on the paper, some crossed out, some with additions in the margins. Lyrics? She remembered Eunae mentioning that she had gone to school for production, but did she compose, too?

After witnessing that rather telling interaction between Wendy and Eunae, Irene no longer considered the latter a threat, even though, she supposed with a haughty frown, there wasn’t anything to actually threaten. She had rejected Seulgi pretty firmly, at least in her opinion, and was strengthening her resolve against any further advances from the ‘Legendary Barista’.

But every time their shifts had overlapped the past few days, she couldn’t help taking note of everything Seulgi did: where she was, who she was speaking with, what kind of look she was giving them, if she seemed pensive, or bubbly, or frustrated, or content. She wished she hadn’t put that wall between them. She wished she could do more than just watch.

Her reverie was broken by the sound of Eunae scrunching up her page into a ball and chucking it into an empty box in the recycling pile. She sighed loudly and slumped in the desk chair, letting her head hang over the back. When she saw Irene she quickly sat up, painfully straining her neck.

“Ah-!”

Irene gave her a small smile, then calmly walked over to the box to retrieve the paper Eunae had discarded.

“That’s…” Eunae began weakly, simultaneously frustrated with her work and embarrassed at the thought of Irene reading it.

“You write?” Irene asked quietly, carefully unfolding the paper and smoothing out the wrinkles between the palms of her hands.

Eunae nodded shyly. As Irene walked back over to the desk Eunae tried to grab the page, but Irene turned out of her reach and took a breath as if she was going to begin reading.

“Don’t-!!” Eunae said scrambling out of the chair to make another attempt for the paper. Irene danced away from her, waving it out of her reach with a playful smirk. Eunae could have easily picked Irene up and taken it if she had wanted, but despite the manager’s tiny size, Irene’s presence was too imposing. Instead Eunae settled on trying her best to reach around Irene, her long arms almost closing the distance, despite Eunae’s best attempts to not invade her personal space.

Seulgi cleared , causing the two girls to freeze.

Irene straightened up suddenly, almost knocking Eunae in the chin with the top of her head, and stuffed the paper in her apron pocket. Eunae gave an embarrassed laugh under Seulgi's bemused gaze, and excused herself. “I think my break is over,” she claimed as she left with a small wave.

Seulgi leaned up against the dish machine with her arms crossed, waiting until she was gone. It was incredibly strange to see her boss and ex-girlfriend getting along so well, but she supposed the situation could be much worse. “Having fun?”

Irene scoffed. “Jeal…?” but the taunt died on her lips as she realized what she had been about to say. She walked over to the sink to load some dishes onto a rack for sanitizing, buying herself some time.

Had Irene almost asked her if she was jealous? Seulgi stood there, confused. Who had rejected whom? Just what was this push-and-pull game Irene was trying to play? Seulgi opened the dish machine and pulled out a rack of dishes, making room for the one Irene was loading up.

Irene gave her a sideways glance. “Are you clocked in?” she asked neutrally.

“Not yet,” Seulgi responded as she began stacking up utensils that needed to go back on the floor. “I’ll take these with me and sign in out there.”

Irene said nothing as she leaned against the sink waiting for Seulgi to leave.  She could hear the crinkle of Eunae’s lyrics in her apron pocket as she shifted her weight.

“... Seulgi!” she called suddenly.

Already halfway to the door, Seulgi looked back at her curiously, arms full of steaming pitchers.

“What kind of art did you study?” Irene asked as she stared across the narrow room at the stock shelves. They held a sorted array of all the different kinds of syrups they offered, each season adding another flavor. It was a kaleidoscope of colors, orange mango, dark red raspberry, golden caramel, cloudy white peppermint.

Seulgi blinked. “Illustration.”

Irene nodded, still not shifting her gaze. Above and below the syrups were cases and containers of other ingredients. Shaved chocolate curls, smokey toasted sea salt, leftover caramel bits from Christmas - they should really get rid of those. “Drawing?” she asked after a delay.

“That’s right.” Seulgi couldn’t help briefly following her boss’s fixed gaze over to the shelves, but ultimately her eyes returned to Irene. She was standing with her back to the sink, her arms folded behind her back. She wore a faint, odd smile that Seulgi could only begin to guess the meaning of.

“... Do you still draw?”

Seulgi wondered where she had gotten this information, or where her line of questioning was heading, but couldn’t anticipate a reason not to answer. “Sometimes. I set my spare room up for art,” she explained. She shook her head, her suspicion finally getting the best of her. “How did you know about my art?” Had Wendy told her?

Irene finally glanced over at Seulgi. The truth? “Your resume,” she confessed. Seulgi had applied to the store so long ago, her resume had listed her college graduation date as anticipated.

Seulgi should have known. It would have been too good to be true to think Irene might have been interested enough to ask about her.

“But Eunae made me think of it. I saw her back here working on her music, and…” it made her wonder if Seulgi also still worked on her art. Too familiar. “... and I just got curious, I guess.”

Seulgi felt a small smile tug at her lips. Maybe Irene was interested after all. “You should hear her perform some time. I think it would surprise you. She's really well-suited to 'spoken word' and stuff like that.”

Irene squinted at Seulgi, wondering if the ‘Legendary Barista’ remembered that Irene had, in fact, already seen Eunae ‘perform’, though she knew a karaoke stage at a restaurant’s bar wasn’t quite what she meant.

“You never seem to have a bad thing to say about her.”

“Who, Eunae?”

Irene nodded, watching Seulgi’s features intently. Suddenly Seulgi wished she was still staring into the middle distance.

She shrugged, shifting the pitchers in her arms. “I mean, I dated her for a reason.” She knew Eunae’s intentions, that she had never really meant to hurt her. They just weren’t meant to be. “I mean, I was in love with her. It just didn’t work out... It was no one’s fault.”

Irene felt her cheeks color. Who was this girl? She had never heard anyone describe their feelings for an ex in such a way. And suddenly she was envious; she wanted that. She wanted this kind, warm-hearted girl to never have a bad thing to say about her, either. But all she had done so far was give Seulgi every reason to grow frustrated and give up on her.

Seulgi was embarrassed at having said so much. She hoped she hadn’t given the wrong impression about her feelings for Eunae. “I… uh, I should get these out there. ‘Happy Hour’ is going to start soon,” she said, mentioning the sale as an excuse to get on the floor.

Irene nodded, but before Seulgi could leave, she called her back yet again. “Seulgi…!”

Seulgi ce again, giving Irene a wan smile. “Yes, boss?”

Irene furrowed her brows. “Don’t do that. Anyway, have you given any thought to what I asked?”

Seulgi blinked at her.

“Who you think we should transfer to the Drivethru store.”