chapter.9  »  day has come.

The day of my training at Sweet Swirls arrived the next morning.

I woke up just in time, about two hours earlier.  After stretching in bed, I sat up and rubbed my face, slapping my cheeks to wake me up fully.  I looked back and saw Prince still sleeping, but he wasn't laying in his bed anymore.  My mouth was a perfect circle as I stood up and walked around the bed to check if his bed was somewhere.  I found it on the ground.

A small smile formed on my lips as I shook my head and exited my bedroom.  Dust on the furnitures in the living room were suddenly evident as sunlight shone in the room, making everything obvious.  I placed my hands on hips and stomped to the kitchen where I prepared my and Prince's breakfasts.

A strange feeling took over me, kind of like the feeling I felt whenever I was alone.  I got scared and woke up, standing on top of Soojin's bed.

Then I realized why I had that feeling.  She was no longer on the bed.  I started barking and jumped off of the mattress, running outside.

The living room was also empty.  The atmosphere became heavier and darker.  I panicked again.

“Good morning, Prince,” someone sang from the kitchen.  I ran again, faster, and found Soojin cooking something.  On Earth's technology was very different, but I could tell she was cooking food from the smoke and the smell coming out of a black pan.

I barked up at her and she turned around, picking me up.  She sniffed me, tickling me a little bit.  I cooed in her arms as she set me on the table.

Minutes later, Soojin placed her plate across from me on the table.  It was decorated with a small hill of rice and on the side were strips of... meat, was it?  I couldn't tell, but each strip was about seven inches long, very thin and meaty-looking.  It was still sizzling.

After that, Soojin set my plate in front of me.  It was filled with almost the same food Soojin had, but it was probably made solely for dogs.  On Earth was so sophisticated compared to Under Earth.  Lastly, she placed our drinks in front of us and sat down on the chair opposite of me.

We both started eating.  In silence.  Only the clanking of her fork and spoon and her chews were the sounds in the room altogether.  And my eating, too, probably.

“Prince, I'll be gone today again, okay?”  Soojin spoke, my ears paying full attention.  “I have to do some training over at my new job because I got hired!  That's why I was happy yesterday.”

I kept on eating while listening to her talk.  Now that I had found out why she was happy, I felt happy as well.  As if I actually had the right to be happy at all.

“Anyway,” she laughed at herself, “I don't know how long I'll be gone, but I'll leave some food and water out for you just in case you get hungry.  I'll also have your toys out so you don't get bored.  I can trust you to take care of the house for me, right?”

She smiled at me, her eyes crinkling at the end, and rubbed my head.  We continued eating in silence, just like it had been, save for the drumming in my ears I had no idea where they were coming from.

Right after I took my shower and changed my clothes, I took out extra food and water for Prince just like I had told him during our meal.  I also set his toys by the coffee table so he could have fun while I was away.  A going away wouldn't officially be a going away for me if there was no Prince-Jinki-whine involved, and so after I had told him that I wouldn't be gone for too long, he accepted hesitantly and I left.

When I arrived at Sweet Swirls, there was something different.  There were more people outside, all of them teen girls.  They were crowding outside with phones and cameras in hand as if a celebrity was inside or was about to arrive at the café.

I squeezed my way through them.  “Excuse me.  Pardon me.  Oops, sorry!  Excuse me, employee coming through!”

Successfully I reached the door and pulled it open, some girls behind me whining.  I quickly closed the door again before some of them got in.  The door locked automatically.  I turned around and saw Mara coming out from the back part of the café, pulling me quickly to where she came out from.  She had a look of panic in her eyes as the girls pounded on the mirror walls and the door itself.  They couldn't push through because the door was locked firmly.

Mara and I ended up in what I assumed was a storage room.  There were boxes everywhere piled atop each other; there were also kitchen equipment and machinery inside.  It was semi-storage and semi-kitchen.

“Tell me, are you hurt?  I'm sorry you had to go through all of that!”  Mara quickly closed the door, locking it and checking if it could be unlocked.  She exhaled and wiped an invisible sweat from her brow.

“N- No, I'm good.  But who are those people outside?”

“Oh, they're just...”  Mara sighed again, obviously tired probably from trying to keep all those people out.  “Every time we hire a new person here, customers come in to gawk.  Apparently, one of those customers is... Do you remember that guy yesterday?  The one that was staring at you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”  Mara gulped some air before resuming.  “Well, one of those customers that come in every time there's a new employee is him.  Those girls?  They are in love with him.  They're waiting for him to come here now that they know there's someone new working in this café.”

I was taken aback by that.  There was definitely no commotion like this back at my previous job.  Employees and customers just came in and out, and decided if they will ever come again or never at all.  I guessed it was different on this side of the neighborhood.

“Anyway, we'll get right on your orientation today.  But we'll have to be extra careful.”  Mara handed me an apron and a cap which had Sweet Swirls Café's logo on both of them.

“‘Extra careful’?  Why?  Are those people that dangerous?”  I let out a nervous laugh as I took out a pen and a small journal from my backpack.  It was better to be safe than sorry.  I was also curious.

“No, they're not that dangerous.  It's just that we want you safe before your first official day tomorrow.”  She replied, taking a clipboard and a pen from one of the plastic baskets mounted on the wall.  “But the thing is, those girls are already wondering how you look like.  They're going to try to see if that guy will have any interest in you or not.  Their words cut, believe me.”

I chuckled.  “Well, they can be sure that I won't have any interest in him.”

“That's what the past employees said, too,” Mara said almost warningly as we walked further into the storage-kitchen room.  I frowned a little.  “But those girls are just a bunch of... girls.”

I shook my head.  What word would be most appropriate to use to describe a group of girls holding cameras and waiting for a guy to enter a café?  Stalkers?  Maybe.

There were even more boxes as we moved even further into the room.  It was an endless maze.  The black-and-white checkered tiles made me feel as if we were inside some sort of a dream circus, as if an illusionist made us think of this setting.  A few more steps and we were a little bit outside of the room.

Mara and I were able to peek through a small opening between two huge boxes to look at the outside.  The girls were still there.  They didn't look the least bit tired.  Another employee came in, exhausted from the crowd, immediately shutting the door behind him.

“Seungpyo!  Seungpyo Kim, over here!”  Mara called out to the person, her voice a raspy whisper.  He turned around and had a confused look on his face, then he saw Mara's face through the opening.  He went around secretly to avoid the girls from noticing, and found us standing waiting for him.

“What are you doing here?”  The Seungpyo person whispered, adjusting his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

“We're trying to hide from those girls,” Mara replied, again in a whisper.  “By the way, here's Soojin.  She's our new mate here.”

“Hi.”  Seungpyo bowed a little at me.

“Hello.”  I bowed back, also trying to keep my voice down.

Mara peeped through the opening.  “I see customers outside.  Seungpyo, I need you to keep those girls out and let only the customers inside.  Can you do that for me?”

Seungpyo nodded.  Mara and I waited, watching Seungpyo herd in the customers and keep the girls out.  He said it was orders straight from the main headquarters of Sweet Swirls to temporarily keep the teenagers out of the café.  I laughed a little.  With Seungpyo's statement, the girls stayed outside helplessly while the customers were welcomed in.

Little by little, the amount of girls subsided and disappeared completely.  Mara and I were able to push through with my training while Seungpyo took and delivered orders from and to the customers.  Some time during the middle of my orientation, the “guy” came in, looking around as if checking if anybody was around.

Mara and I stopped in front of the grinders.  “And these are the coffee grinders.  Each grinder has a special purpose.  They all look the same on the outside, but they're very different if you took them down and analyzed each piece...”

Mara rambled on and on talking about the grinders on the wall while I turned my head now and then to catch a glimpse of the guy.  Shoot, was he good-looking.  It was the first time I had seen him up-close.  I only saw his side profile yesterday, but I was glad I was now able to see the entirety of his face.

He pulled the door open and entered, earning a few glances from the customers inside.  They paid attention to him, too.  I thought I was the only one who even cared.  He was wearing all black: black leather jacket over a black Ramones shirt, black skinny jeans, and a pair of black Vans.  His hair was dyed brown and some strands were spiked up a little.  He walked to Seungpyo and pulled out his wallet to order.

“...Just be careful not to—...Soojin?  Soojin!”

I was shocked when I heard Mara call me sternly.  “Oh!  Oh, I- I'm so sorry.  What were you saying again?”

“Why aren't you paying attention?”  She breathed, almost disappointed.

“I- Uh...  Well, uh...  Y- You know...  J- Just keep talking, I'm really sorry.”  I stuttered through my words.  There was no way to say I was distracted by a customer who was notorious for being handsome without sounding bad.

She sighed.  “As I was saying, just be careful not to get the coffee beans mixed up.  Even if you put just one bean in the wrong grinder, that little bean can jam the grinder and break it.  We do have the budget to buy a new one, but we're always saving up to improve the café.  Understood?”

I wrote the last words of what she said so diligentlythat I almost wrote ‘Understood?’ as well.  I nodded as soon as I finished.  “Understood.”

“Good,” Mara said.  She sighed again.  “Now that we've got all that over with, tell me why you were dozing off while I was talking about the grinders.”

“I wasn't.”

“Stop lying.”

I sighed and lowered my head.  “Okay, fine.”  I breathed in and tried to keep my voice low, “Guy-dude just came in and I got distracted.”

“Oooh, you got distracted.”  Mara cooed as we entered the circular counter where Seungpyo was.  The mysterious man had already paid and was looking for a table to sit at.  “Tell me, are you changing your mind about not having any interest in him?”

“No!  Of course, not!  I don't even know the guy.”  I dropped my journal and pen in the front pocket of my apron.  Seungpyo handed me a small coffee cup filled with regular coffee.  “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Seungpyo.”  Mara took another coffee cup from Seungpyo carefully and looked at me straight in the eye.  Her eyes moved to the side of me, then she stood straight up and walked towards me, standing beside me, whispering in my ear.  “Guy's staring at you again.  This happens once in a blue moon, girl!”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head, taking a sip of my coffee.  For all I knew, that guy could be some sort of a lonely ert.

It was better safe than sorry.

I seriously needed to learn how to stop my panic attacks when Soojin was gone.  Things were starting to get in my system, both my dog and human systems.

I pushed the same red ball around the living room and waited patiently again.

Each day I felt like whenever Soojin left, a part of me was getting sliced off.  Like I was starting to miss pieces of my life.

But maybe that was the thing.  Maybe that was what happened when pets and owners got close to each other.  Maybe that was what always took place.  When either one was gone, they felt too far apart.  But did Soojin feel the same way as I did?

I didn't know, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know.  I just fell asleep thinking, lowered to the lowest of the lows.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

guys, i'm so, so, soooo sorry for not being able to update again this weekend!  i should have since we had a 3-day weekend, but i decided to push it aside until today.  i'm so sorry, guys, please forgive me  ;;  but on a brighter side, SHINee's BACK!  they're all so handsome in the new music video  ;-;  if you guys haven't seen it yet, here's the mv & the dance version.  thank you guys so much for reading & commenting!  i love you aaaaaaaaaaaall!  <3

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