Chapter 37

Coffee Prince

Wearing a silly smile on her face, her palm curled over her cheeks, occasionally tapping following the jazz music playing from the speakers, her eyes were glued on the person sitting opposite her, Sooyoung was in cloud nine and there was only one reason.

Jessica Jung asked her out for a morning coffee.

Sooyoung took a deep breath in as she enjoyed the atmosphere around her. The light brown wood front porch with four rectangular columns, three long steps and a railing on either side of the steps; there are dark green vines curling with tiny multi-color flowers blossomed. A couple of small potted plant sitting in the corner and a few more greens hanging from ceiling, overalls it gave off this vintage and fresh feel, Sooyoung remind herself to praise the shop owner’s taste in decoration.

Ahh… what a good weather today. Sooyoung couldn’t help but silently exclaimed.

“Hey, Sica-yah… Did you bring your umbrella? It seems like this rain is gonna last for hours.”

Sooyoung immediately whipped her head toward the direction where the voice was coming from. Throwing a cautious look at the owner of the voice, squinting her eyes as she took in the appearance of the person in front of her. That person was wearing a white shirt with the top two buttons left opened, sleeves rolling up to her elbows, black skirt that hugged her beautiful legs with a small apron on top and her hair was pulled up into a small bun behind as she let a few strands dropped to the side. A person who managed to look stunning in typical waitress uniform. A beauty with a baby face. But who cares?

Who was this person to address her goddess in such a friendly way?

“I don’t but I’m not planning on going anywhere soon. Maybe later, during rush hours, I can help you waiting at your shop.” Jessica generously offered.

Aigooo… Jessica even offered to be free labor. How close would they be?

“That’s awesome. My shop is short on employees these days. Now that you mention, I do miss your hand-crafted coffee.”

Jessica and Taeyeon were so engrossed in their own conversation that they missed one individual’s nasty looks constantly sent in Taeyeon’s way. They only direct their attention back to the tall girl when the obvious sound of someone clear their throat was heard.

“Ah, right… This must be the first time you two seeing each other. Taeyeon, this is Sooyoung. Sooyoung this is Kim Taeyeon, my best friend also the owner of this cafe.”

Best friend, huh? Another Yoona? How come there are so many dangerous threat around her? Kim Taeyeon? Why did she find this name incredibly familiar?

“That Choi Sooyoung?” Taeyeon repeated, excitement was clearly heard in her voice which earned a nod from Jessica to confirm. It was nice to add an image into those stories that Jessica was telling her.

Still wearing that wary look on her face, Sooyoung noticed a small amused chuckle escaped the girl with the baby face. She was sure that if she wasn’t present here, that would have been a laugh out loud moment. So, Jessica mentioned her to this short person and she seemed to know a lot about them. Well, they are “best friends” after all.

“Yah, just… how many best friends do you have?” Sooyoung directed her question at Jessica even though her eyes still on her possible rival.

“Yah… Won’t you stop looking at her like that?” Jessica pulled on Sooyoung’s sleeves, ignoring her question as she started to feel uncomfortable for Taeyeon.

“Well, I can answer that question for you. This Ice Princess only have two friends, also her best friends, me and Yoona.” Taeyeon replied Sooyoung’s question which earned a hiss from the questioner.

Ice Princess… She even gave her goddess a codename. Either she just addressed Jessica by that name due to habit or this girl was trying to show off her close friendship with Jessica. Must be the latter, Sooyoung assumed. Wait, only her and Yoona? Did it mean that they live in the same house?

A mischievous grin appeared on Taeyeon’s face, if this girl was as entertained as her best friend always told her. It would be fun to play with her a little bit.

“By the way Sica-yah, now that silly head is out of the picture, when will you accept my feelings?” Taeyeon turned to Jessica, batting her eyes at the girl like crazy.

See? See? She knew it. Sooyoung knew it all along. How could this shorty just be friends with a goddess who was this beautiful? Best friend? Best friend her . What did she mean by ‘out of the picture’? The silly head here must be Yoona, right? Did this mean Yoona and Jessica already break up? There was no way… But Sooyoung didn’t care about that part, she only cared about adding one more rival into her black list. One Im Yoona was already bad enough, now she had to deal with a coffee shop owner who has flawless skin, soul-soothing voice and a charming smile. How come her goddess only hang around pretty people?

Well, at least the good news was, from what she knew, Jessica only had feelings for Yoona. Right?

“What has gotten into you?” Jessica threw a weird look at her friend as she unconsciously moved back a bit.

That reaction just proved what Sooyoung was thinking. She smirked. No worries. Only one-sided.

Eishh, Jessica just didn’t know how to play along. Before Taeyeon could go on with her scheme, a loud voice coming from behind caught their attention.

“Boo-boo!!”

After announcing her presence, Tiffany ran over and threw her arms around Taeyeon’s neck from behind and simply planted a quick kiss on her cheek.

“Hey yourself…” Taeyeon’s hands holding on Tiffany’s arm around her neck, she turned her head a bit to the side so that they could share chaste kiss on the lips. Tiffany’s sudden presence made her completely forgot about the fact that she just ‘confessed her feelings’ to her best friend who was sitting right there.

There were two bystanders witnessing the whole love scene. One person had her jaw dropped in disbelief, let’s add one more characteristics to Jessica’s friends: not only pretty but also a player. The other one kept her cool as she stirred the coffee with her spoon, casually taking a sip because ever since they lived in the same house, she had seen so much more than this.

“What the? Hwang Mi Young?” Sooyoung exclaimed.

Upon hearing her Korean name, Tiffany instantly sent death glares in Sooyoung’s way.

“Yah! Don’t call me by that name!”

“Do you know what you are doing?”

“I’m kissing my girlfriend. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Yes!”

“How did this happen?”

“Well, you would have known about Yuri’s and my dating life if you weren’t too busy chasing after her.” Tiffany said while gesturing to the quite girl who was comfortably enjoying her coffee.

“Oh yeah? Then do you know that ‘your girlfriend’ had ‘feelings’ for ‘her best friend’?” Sooyoung sarcastically put three air quotes around the important words to create a dramatic effect.

“What?” Tiffany exclaimed in English, the language only appeared when she wanted to act all dramatic, freeing herself from their previous pose.

Okay, this was getting out of hand. Taeyeon didn’t expect her simple joke to turn out this way. Trapped, she sent a ‘help me’ signal to Jessica who was as calm as ever, shrugging her shoulders as if she was trying to deliver the message ‘This is the mess you create. Take care of it yourself.’

“Kim Taeyeon, you’d better start explaining yourself right now.” Tiffany demanded.

“Fany-ah, I was just joking.” Taeyeon let out a nervous laugh. “I was just, just-”

“Joking? You-“

Tiffany’s rage was cut off by the sound of the incoming call ringing tone coming from her phone. Since it was her work, Tiffany had to pick it up.

“Hello?” “It was that serious?” “Okay, I’m on my way there.” “10 minutes.” “Alright, Bye.”

“Thanks to you, we have so much work to do now.” This complaint was directed at Sooyoung. “We’ll definitely talk about this later.” Tiffany hurriedly left for work, but she didn’t forget to leave her girlfriend a warning.

“Fany-ah, I prepared your lunch already. Bring them along…” Taeyeon said as she ran after, “Fany-ah! Wait for me! Fany-ah!” She helplessly called out as the eye-smile girl shown no sign of stopping.

“Wh-what was that?” Sooyoung, who was still confused of what happened, absentmindedly asked.

“A dork who was trying to pull a prank on someone had a taste of her own medicine.” Jessica summed the whole situation up in one short sentence. “By the way, don’t you have work to do? Why is it that Tiffany is so busy, but you seem to have so much free time?”

Sooyoung replied with shrug and a cocky face, “That’s what I called high productivity.”

Came Sooyoung’s phone ringing tone.

Jessica smirked, “High productivity, eh?”

Darn it!

“What is it, Hara Goo?” Sooyoung answered the phone with a not-so-happy voice. “I’ll be there after lunch.” “Hara Goo, who’s the boss here?” “That’s right. I am. So, you listen to me not the other way around, okay?” “Aigoo, I know, don’t keep nagging, you start to act like my grandma.” “I’ll bring you some cupcakes to make it up. Bye.”

“Sounds like Goo Hara is the person who was truly highly productive here.” Jessica couldn’t help but tease, “If you’re busy, just leave. I’m fine, besides there’s Taeyeon here to keep me company.” She thoughtfully advised. Jessica was afraid that Sooyoung might neglect her work just so that she could stay with her. How silly this girl could get, she could never fully expect.

“It’s nothing I’m sure they can handle everything by themselves. Hara Goo is just being herself, making a big deal out of nothing.” Sooyoung took a sip from her coffee in relax mode. She needed caffeine to stay awake. Don’t get the wrong idea, it wasn’t that she didn’t care about STS. In order to have free time to spend with her goddess during daylight, she stayed up late almost every night, until three last night for example, arranging her work and email it to Hara telling her to act accordingly. Still, even if Hara could handle Sooyoung’s work based on what she was told, it wasn’t the best idea for STS’s CEO, the face of STS, to be absent all the time during work hour. That was why the poor assistant kept nagging Sooyoung, asking her to be present at the office no matter what.

“If you say so…” Jessica decided to let go of this subject.

Naturally, a comfortable silence filled the air as they both went back to what they were doing before. Jessica let her mind wander, staring into space while Sooyoung watched her doing so.

“So, what happened at the family dinner last night?” The tall girl decided to break their silence after a few minutes.

“Not much… Yoona’s cooking, Yuri’s awkward look, Yuri’s mom’s unexpected hospitality and… Yuri’s father’s talk.” Jessica listed everything she remembered from last night.

“I noticed that you still address him as Yuri’s father.”

Jessica shrugged, “I don’t know, I’ve lived my life without a father for too long and then suddenly someone told me that not only I have a father but also a family which included a half-sister and a stepmom. Even though this is the situation I have to face sooner or later, it’s just too much to get a grasp of right away.”

This was one of those rare moments when Sooyoung couldn’t say anything. It was hard for her to relate to what Jessica was feeling at this moment. She was the kind of person who was lucky enough to grow up in the love of both her parents and her protective brother, an enviable typical family. Sooyoung could become this unique, bright and exceptional type of person all thanks to the influences of her happy family. So, she didn’t dare to imagine a life where one of them was missing, let alone all of them which was the life that Jessica had had before.

“Before I met him, I prepared this list of questions that I’ve always wanted to ask. Why did he leave me? Didn’t he need me and my mom? When my mom passed away, I was all alone and needed him the most, where was he? Why could he be so cruel, so selfish? All of my childhood misfortune, I used to blame it all on him. At one point in my life, I thought that the rest of my time would only fill with hatred and loneliness until… I met her.”

No need further explanation, Sooyoung knew for sure that Jessica was referring to Im Yoona.

“She was the first person to make me feel like I was needed in this world. The first ever who wanted to be friend with me, an orphan abandoned by her own her father. She broke down my walls and pulled me back from the hate pit that I was about to fall in. More than that, she taught me how to love and to forgive. Gradually, she helped me turned my hatred toward my father into comprehension. She convinced me that my father left me for a reason, that no father would want to leave their daughter behind.”

Sometimes, life was all about timing. That one person came at the right time, in a right situation and did the right thing could easily change someone else’s life. To Jessica, Im Yoona was this special person. Listening to Jessica’s story, Sooyoung should feel jealous of Yoona, like she would always do when Jessica mentioned her in their conversation but this time, there was this strong feeling of compassion slowly building up inside her instead, almost like how she would feel when someone talking about their first love for the last time before they decided to let go of those special feelings toward that person.

“When I finally knew that the reason why he ‘left me’ was because he never knew of my existence, that I was a child resulted from an unintentional affair, a sad-ending unrequited love, I was lost for words. Those questions I prepared to ask him became meaningless. All of a sudden, I’ve got no one to blame. I can’t blame him for what he didn’t know, and obviously I can’t blame my own mother who risked her life giving birth to me and raising me. I still didn’t know what to feel until the subject of my last name was mentioned.”

“Your last name is your mother’s last name, right?”

Jessica nodded.

“Yeah... he wanted me to keep it.”

Flashback

“Ah, there’s one more thing I want you to know before you left.” Hyesung softly said.

“What is it?”

Clearly, it was something hard to say since Hyesung hesitated quite a few times before he decided to speak up.

“I want you to know that even if in the future, you’d ever accept me as your father officially, I want you to keep your last name as it is.”

Jessica had been thinking about this too. She had always had her mother’s last name since she was born without a father. Now that she had one, should her name took after her father’s last name? Became one of ‘the Kwon’? But now that Hyesung wanted her to keep her last name, did it mean that he didn’t want her to be part of their family, part of ‘the Kwon’?

“The reason I mention it now because I don’t want you to take it the wrong way in the future. Being completely clueless about Hyein’s feelings was probably the biggest mistake in my life. I should have taken more responsibility of that night but... Anyway, the reason I want you to keep your last name was I want to keep something belonged to your mother in this world. It’s the least thing I could do for her. Even though your last name is Jung but I want you to know that you’re my daughter. I promise that I will do my best to make up for those days you lived without a father. I’ll take care of you on behalf of your mother. I’ll make sure that there’s only happiness in your life from now on. When it comes to family, title doesn’t matter.”

The amount of sincerity Hyesung was showing moved Jessica deeply. At this exact moment, she felt close to this man who called himself ‘her father’.

Finally, Jessica had something called family.

End of flashback

“I still can’t call him Aboji or Appa though. It’s just too soon for that.”

“Take your time... These things take time...” Sooyoung slight patted on Jessica’s shoulder.

Without replying, Jessica rested her chin in the palm of her hand, leaning forward a bit as she had her eyes fixed on the tall girl opposite her. Then she squinted her eyes in a thoughtful way as if she waiting for Sooyoung to say something. Sooyoung, on the other hand, was confused at first but then eventually got lost in those captivating brown eyes staring at her.

“How come you never ask me about what’s going on between me and Yoona?” Jessica wondered why Sooyoung never asked her anything about their relationship even after hearing that bit of information from Taeyeon.

“Huh? What did you say?” Still lost in her own fantasy from staring at her goddess for too long, Sooyoung obviously missed that question.

Jessica let out a small chuckle when she realized that Sooyoung still had that silly smile on her face the whole time. But that smile quickly dropped the moment she repeated her question to Sooyoung again. It still amazed Jessica from time to time that a person who lived in a business world like Sooyoung could be this genuine, showing her true feelings all the time like this.

“I figure that rather than wondering about what goes down between you and her, I’m more interested in what’s going on between you and me. All that I know is that you’re letting me into your heart bit by bit. I don’t care if I’m your second best, I just want to be with you… to show you how much I care about you. This is the first time that I feel strongly attached to someone.”

It was meant to be just a simple question but Sooyoung, as always, turned it into a sincere confession.

“We broke up. Did you know that?” Jessica changed their conversation subject.

Caught off guard by the statement, Sooyoung had her jaw dropped slightly at the sudden information and how cool Jessica was acting right now. It became clear to her about what Taeyeon said before. Still, she found it hard to believe, Sooyoung knew how much her goddess was in love with Im Yoona. As much as it hurt to admit, but it was a fact.

“Who?”

“Me and Yoona.”

“Who??”

“Me and Yoona.”

“Who??!!”

“You’re seriously asking me that again?” Jessica raised her eyebrows at Sooyoung.

“Uh… I- I don’t understand... You were just... and she was...” Sooyoung uttered, still wasn’t able to drop that disbelieving look on her face. Now she knew why Taeyeon mentioned the ‘out of the picture’ phrase.

“It’s been a few days already. You would have known about this sooner if you asked me.” Still wearing that untroubled expression on her face even though Jessica was enjoying every second of Sooyoung’s reaction inside.

“For real?”

“Yeah…”

It was real then. It would be a lie to say that Sooyoung wasn’t happy when she heard that they broke up but considering Jessica’s feelings toward Yoona, she was worried for her goddess more. How could she let Yoona go? Her burning desire, her first love… Did Yoona did something so intolerable that Jessica had to call it off? Was Jessica hurt? Did she cry? Damn it. She shouldn’t trust someone else with Jessica’s happiness.

Most importantly, why was Jessica acting like nothing happened at this moment?

Sooyoung had her eyes fixed on Jessica, watching her expression as she stayed silent.

“Why don’t you say anything?” Jessica asked, an amusing smile was clearly visible on her face.

“Did she hurt you?” Sooyoung replied her question with another one. This was the only thing she cared about at this moment.

“No, she didn’t.” A certain answer, “Don’t you want to know why? What happened…”

“Are those things still important to you?” The reason, Yoona, feelings and everything in between…

Thinking about it for a while, Jessica replied.

“Not really… Not anymore…”

“Then that’s all I need to know.”

Now, Sooyoung could be happy.

TBC

A/N: Just a quick update. Supposed to be longer but I was kinda busy this week. Hope you guys enjoy it. Toodles!!!