-

Eunji gasped as soon as she arrived at the café for her last performance of the week; her glazed look turned into a quizzical one in a split second. The café she had been working in for the past year was, for the first time without prior notice, closed. Worry started to rise inside her.

“Oh no . . . ,” she muttered under her breath, only for her to hear.

Chanyeol, who had been standing beside her, stared at the shut glass doors slack-jawed. The lights were switched off and the building was dim.

Manager Nam was nearby and he called out to her. Now he understood why she seemed restless and troubled the whole evening just yesterday. “What’s going on?” he inquired right away, not knowing the question burdened the manager even more in a way that she only could feel.

This wasn’t the first time a staff asked what’s in occurrence. And she was getting pretty fed up. After a deep sigh, she answered, “Sajang-nim decided to close down the café while its ownership is being discussed.”

“What!?” Eunji responded, already jumping into her own conclusion that was the worst scenario possible.

Chanyeol exchanged one glance with Eunji before he went to ask again, “So they’re passing this café to someone else in the family?”

“It seemed so,” manager replied before she buried her face in her palms. When she looked up, she looked around her. Several waiters and kitchen staffs working the evening shifts were either sitting on or standing at the curb. They weren’t aware of this as well.

With a nervous chuckle, Chanyeol went on, “At least this place isn’t going to be closed down, right?”

Manager Nam puffed out. “If no one in the family thinks it’s worth saving, they’d probably close it and lay everyone off.”

Eunji begun to think that maybe—an Italic and bolded ‘maybe’ which means extra emphasize—she was the reason why this place was in the brink of being closed.

Her eyes watched over the quiet and dark building for a while and thought, ‘This must be the result of what happened that night.’ She came back to the day she crashed Junmyeon’s engagement party.

Regret would definitely run over her if this place were to be closed down for real. The employees were her biggest concern; they’d lose their job because of her selfish deed to just save this one girl. And to satisfy her desire to bring the person she despised down.

Chanyeol took her hand when he caught sight of a distressed look she had on her face. “Don’t worry. They won’t close this place. It’s too good to be thrown away,” he assured her.

She was still too surprised at today’s turn of event that she couldn’t answer him with anything.

“Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

Eunji nodded.

-

Now that the two were currently unemployed, they sat leisurely on the ground by Han River while drinking canned beer that was once cold—now slowly getting warmer and warmer by the second they spent staring blankly onto the other side.

“What should I do?”

The question wasn’t meant for anyone, not Chanyeol either, but he answered, in a joking manner, “Maybe we should start looking for a new job.” That was actually the only right thing to do at the moment, especially for Eunji.

The café was the only place where she’s required to work for merely three days per week and sing a few songs for a few hours and then get paid a great deal amount of money—because her boss just doesn’t know where to spend his over-flowing cash in or on what.

That job was the thing that made her stop asking her parents back home for allowance since she can afford a living in the expensive metropolitan Seoul city on her own already.

“Damn right we should,” Eunji eventually replied.

“Should we get dinner?” Chanyeol suggested. She responded with a slight nod of her head and then accepted the hand he offered her to aid her getting on her feet.

There was a small noodle shop just on the outskirts of the river’s area so they stopped by.

It seemed like Chanyeol was the only one enjoying the food as he was eating is scrumptiously whilst Eunji, on the other hand, was only poking her chopsticks around in her bowl while spacing out—watching a mass of humans accumulate and dissolve by the crossing.

“Eunji-ya . . . ,” the guy tried to reach out for her consciousness. “Jeong Eunji . . . ?”
Chanyeol dropped his spoon and gently patted the back of her hand that was on the edge of the table. Only then she realized someone was trying to communicate with her.

“Hm?” She finally returned his gaze. Though, for him, despite her eyes were already on him, her mind wasn’t.

“Are you thinking about the café?” he asked regardless of knowing what the answer to it was, “About it being closed down?

The girl just nodded. Before she could drown in her own thoughts and he los