Owning a café usually comes along with some regular customers. They get to know the staff and pretty soon, everybody forms this friendly and caring bond. For example, Choi Yuri here is a university student. She comes to the café and finds the seat at the far end away from the window to study. Before I had passed her off as just a regular kid, but there was a reason for her to avoid the windows. She hated to be found by anyone she knew, may it be other peers (she’s antisocial) or people working under her father. Yeah, that’s right. Her father owns the most luxurious five star hotels, and she wants nothing to do with it. She has learned from an early age that most people just befriended her because of her wealth rather than herself, hence her lack of friends. She’s studying harder to not inherit the business, but to get away from it. She plans to be a lawyer and prove to her father that she’s better than what her grades foretold before. He took up on her academic challenge, but nonetheless, henchmen were released to find her and spy on her wellbeing, finding any chance to expel her from her dreams. But once you get to know her, she’s actually not so tense and is pretty funny.

            Unlike her, was Park Yoochun. He has inherited his family’s big corporation and has made his father very proud. He comes into the coffee shop once in a while—but a lot more now—to relax from all the heavy work. And also very much unlike Yuri, he loves the seat besides the window. Yoochun doesn’t talk much, but he enjoys people watching and observing everyone’s little actions. I was intimidated by him at first, but I slowly warmed up to his charming smiles and hearty laughs. But then again, I shouldn’t let my guard down so quickly, because he easily caught up with the whole mess of me liking Jaejoong and him liking Ae Ri and her in absolute bliss with Tae Hyun. Bleh, it was a mindful, and Yoochun just loved sitting there and seeing it all unfolded to him like it was a movie. He and Yuri were the last to be friends among the group. Obviously, because she despised his views as much as her father, but in the end they could be in each other’s presence without a problem. It may still feel uncomfortable at times for Yuri, but Yoochun was a gentleman and ignored the tension like there was none. In this way, everyone could talk normally.

            And then there was Kim Junsu. Junsu was…is…Junsu’s a mystery still. He’s a very private man despite his energetic outbursts. He was flexible with all sorts of situations and loved to sit smacked dab in the center of the café. I’m not quite sure of what he does or who he is, because most of the time he just dozes off and looks around in all directions. I was never sure if he observed people like Yoochun or spaced off into his own little world. He didn’t have papers strewn across from him like Yuri and occasionally Yoochun, so it was hard to tell what he did. But either way, he was easy to get along with and can talk almost about anything. He was usually the conversation starting in the group.

            Those three were the regulars of the shop, plus Jaejoong and Tae Hyun. Every break Tae Hyun could get from work he would come over to see Ae Ri. With him, business has boomed too for sometimes we had to cater for the entire police department. And Jaejoong, of course, came to visit me every day (he really came to worship Ae Ri) and would find a spot somewhere, scribbling on music sheets for his daily Friday night music performances.

            Life in La Maison was full of joy despite the super underlying emotions of love we all felt for one another. The group had gotten rather close and instead of being strangers and leaving at one’s convenience, everyone now usually stayed until the shop’s closing time. Sometimes on Friday nights after Jaejoong’s spectacular performance and the doors are locked to outsiders, we will have a party. Of course then I always ended up dispersing out hot coffee on the house in th