“Hyuk, wake up already,” a finger jabbed me in the side. “Seriously, you fell asleep not even 10 minutes after class started.” The finger turned into a fist and shook my shoulder. It continued until I opened my bleary eyes and spotted Sungjae looking at me with an unimpressed expression upon his face. “You’re going to fail this class if you don’t pay more attention,” Sungjae dropped his hand from my shoulder and began to gather his stuff.

                “Hey,” I said, sitting up straight, “at least I came to class today right?” I grabbed my books from the table (they weren’t even opened) and threw them into my bag. Zipping the pouch up, I easily slung the bag around my shoulder and waited for Sungjae to finish packing up his things.

                “Attendance won’t help you on the exam Hyuk,” Sungjae replied. He led me out the door and pulled out his phone. “You barely passed the last assignment remember?”

                “Psh, I wasn’t trying that time. It wasn’t worth much either, so why even bother?” I stated, watching as Sungjae’s fingers flew across the screen of his phone. “Any luck?” I asked when he looked up from his phone a couple minutes later.

                “Well, yes and no. Minah said that Sojin noona has a free period right now and that we can go talk to her, but she also won’t tell me where she is,” Sungjae replied, his eyebrows furrowing in annoyance. He huffed in irritation before slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Well, she gave us a hint at least. Apparently Sojin noona likes coffee? Do you know any good places to drink coffee?” Sungjae turned to me and quirked an eyebrow.

                “The cafeteria has coffee but honestly, it’s not the greatest,” I said, thinking. “If she really liked coffee she’d probably go to some cafe right? I don’t know any good cafes around here though.” Sungjae looked slightly disappointed but he dragged me outside nonetheless.

                “Well then, I guess the only thing we can do now is look!” I groaned as we started to walk around the campus. Haepari University, while not the largest and most famous institution, was still a notable school. This meant that the campus was quite large and pretty much expanded across a good portion of the city. I did not want to walk all around Seoul looking for a simple cafe. Even if it was for a good cause, I hadn’t exercised in months.

                Sungjae had other plans however, as despite my constant complaining, we still spent a good hour and a half walking around, ducking into every cafe in sight. It was now getting dark and we had yet to find Sojin and even with Sunjgae’s initial enthusiasm, even he was starting to think that Minah had been playing with us. With a sigh, we entered the latest cafe and sat down. I was about to get up to order a drink when Sungjae gasped.

                “Holy , there she is!” he said excitedly, pointing at a girl sitting across the room. I turned to see two girls sipping coffee. “And freaking Minah is there too! I swear to God,” Sungjae muttered before standing up and stalking over to the two females. Following him meekly, I managed to see Minah look up and smirk as Sungjae and I approached.

                “Sungjae! You found us!” she giggled and took a sip of her coffee before waving her hand at the other girl. “This is Sojin unnie! Unnie! I told you they would find us!” The other girl, Park Sojin, turned to look at us as well. I gulped as she glanced at me and smiled before turning back to see Sungjae arguing with Minah. Seeing as they probably wouldn’t stop arguing for a while, I took a deep breath and stepped towards Sojin.

                “H-hi,” I said, hating myself for stuttering, “Sungjae, I mean, Minah noona, uh, well, basically Minah noona told Sungjae who told me that you knew where I could get a job...?” Sojin seemed amused at my stuttering before she pulled something out of her purse.

                “Yeah, my good friend recently opened up a cafe near here and he’s in need for some help,” Sojin handed me what seemed to be a business card. “He’s looking for a barista but he said he could give you some training if needed.”

                “A-ah, I know how to make coffee. The basics at least,” I replied, looking down at the card. My ex-girlfriend had taught me how to brew coffee and I had grown to like homebrewed coffee more than the ones bought at stores.

                “That’s good, you can pop in the cafe anytime, there’s not a lot of traffic there just yet, but I’m sure it’ll get more customers soon,” Sojin smiled at me before standing up. “Come on Minah, stop bothering the poor kid, we have to go now anyways.” Minah looked up from her argument with Sungjae and nodded. She grabbed her purse and gave Sungjae one last insult before leaving the cafe with Sojin.

                “What a little,” Sungjae muttered under his breath. Unfortunately, actually, probably fortunately for me, I couldn’t hear the rest of his sentence as I was too busy looking at the business card Sojin had given me. “What’s on the card?” Sungjae asked after he finished mentally cursing at Minah. He looked over my shoulder and studied the card. “Cha Hakyeon huh? I remember Minah saying that Sojin noona met Hakyeon when she was filming for some drama. They both had small side roles or something,” Sungjae shrugged his shoulders before checking his phone for the time. “Oh , it’s late. We should probably head home.”

                We took the closest bus and arrived home in 15 minutes. Thinking to myself, I walked into the house and spotted Ilhoon in the kitchen cooking what seemed to be ramen. He gave us a greeting and began to talk to Sungjae as I entered my room. Flopping down on my bed for what seemed like the third time that day, I looked back at the card. Glancing at the address, I searched the details up on my phone and saw that the cafe was located approximately 20 minutes away from my house if I walked. That wasn’t that bad, depending on the bus I would probably be able to get there within 10 minutes.

                I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. I could brew coffee, that’s for sure. I made it regularly for Sungjae and Ilhoon and they both liked the taste. I had tried my hand at the more difficult kinds, and I wasn’t particularly bad at it. I even had a chance to try coffee art one summer at my uncle’s place. Despite all of my experience however, I was nervous. Would I be able to make coffee under pressure? Could I handle all the different orders? There would definitely be a ton of new flavours and combinations and honestly, I wasn’t the best at memorization (unless it came to video games of course).

                “Hyuk! Do you want some ramen?” Ilhoon called from the kitchen. I sat up and tossed the business card and book bag on the table. I quickly changed into a comfortable pair of sweatpants and an extra white shirt before exiting my room and approaching my housemates who were sitting at the table. “There’s an extra bowl on the counter,” Ilhoon pointed at the tabletop before turning back to focus on Sungjae’s story. I grabbed the bowl and a pair of chopsticks and filled it with ramen from the pot that was still simmering on the stove. Walking back towards the table, I sat down just as Sungjae finished telling his story of how we found Minah and Sojin.

                “So are you going to this place tomorrow?” Ilhoon asked after a moment of silence. He looked at me as he finished his bowl of ramen.

                “Maybe, I’m not sure yet. I’ll probably just go in for a look; I don’t even have my resume prepared,” I slurped my noodles and drifted out of the conversation as Sungjae began another story about some group called Beast. Or was it B2ST? I wasn’t sure, things like that confused me. I preferred to just listen to music without caring who the group or singer was. It was too much trouble to get to know all the members and their story only to become extremely sad because of a scandal or something.

                I finished my noodles quickly and placed the bowl in the sink. According to the schedule Ilhoon had drawn up that was placed on the fridge, it was Sungjae’s turn to wash the dishes. I walked back into my room and turned my computer on. Taking my books out of my bag, I yawned and flipped to the notes I had taken (read: stolen from Sungjae) today and tried to catch up on what I had missed due to my nap.

                Yawning, I idly checked my social media feed before logging onto the university website. Clicking through my course sites, I took note of the upcoming assignment in one of my classes before exiting the browser. I looked back down at my notes and sighed, it wasn’t like I was bad at academics. I was actually pretty high in rankings back in high school. I just disliked studying; I never understood how people could study in a library for seven hours straight. The material just either got in my head, or it didn’t. If it didn’t, I’d just have to take a break and try again later. Most people don’t study like this, I’ve realized, but my way of studying was often looked down upon. People (like my mom) would call me lazy while others would look at my marks in envy saying things like, “he doesn’t even study” behind my back.

                Looking at the clock, I saw that it was close to midnight and decided to call it a day. Closing my books and turning my laptop off, I washed up before turning off the lights. As I slid beneath the covers, I studied the ceiling above me and thought about what would happen if I did get the job. I’d be a lot busier, that’s for sure, but it would be a nice change of pace. I had friends sure, Ilhoon and Sungjae were always there for me, but they were busy with their own activities, as well as the other classmates I called friends. It would be interesting to meet a new group of people and hopefully, they’d be able to keep me amused so I wouldn’t have to resort to video games and cheap pleasures.

BABAM. Here's chapter two everyone!! I actually finished this a couple days ago but I got busy 'cause I went to camp and IT WAS FREAKING COLD AND RAINY LIKE WHY IT WAS WARM THE ENTIRE WEEK? Anyways, thanks to juanamoose for pushing me to write. You’re a little . YOU’RE NOT EVEN PHYSICALLY HERE RN.

And it’s agonizingly painful to not know what freaking courses Hyuk and the others are taking. I’m being so vague with this but I seriously dunno. Should I make them go into art or music or something? IDK bruh.

Also there’s a lot more dialogue in this chapter, sorry about that. I like to write dialogue but sometimes I get too carried away with it. >_<

And yes, Hyuk plays video games and watches an anime (basically he’s a weeb) because he’s bored and has no good friends other than his buddies from BTOB. THIS IS WHERE VIXX COMES IN. Whoop.

Also Hyuk is shy around Sojin cause of this. That was adorbs. XD He's seriously so shy omo. >///////<

Okay sorry, I think I’m a bit hyper rn because I've been consuming an entire bag of chocolate almonds. Thanks for reading and once again, I do not own anything in this story other than the idea and plot, any similarities to other works of fiction are purely coincidental or have been used as sources of inspiration. Please do not repost this anywhere without my permission; plagiarism isn’t nice!

Hope you’re smiling!

~ Alateni

Ahh, I forgot to mention this but thanks to kyutesomate and gemuboy for upvoting!