On the way to Kyungsoo’s car to drop off my duffel bag of clothes, he asks me what kind of breakfast food I am in the mood for. When I respond that I really just want a latte, a killer slice of lemon pound cake, and some good company, his cheeks pink and he says that his friend owns a great café nearby that would fit the bill. We have walked halfway out of the parking garage when he stops abruptly.

“I just had a thought,” he states.

“Um, were you going to share that thought, or…?” I question him.

“Right. Are you comfortable with going out in those clothes? I mean, you slept in them last night, and…well…they’re mine. Did you want to stop by your place to change?” he explains. I honestly hadn’t given any thought to the clothes I am wearing, because they are actually very similar to what I would normally be wearing on a Saturday anyway: athletic shorts and a shirt. Granted, if they were my own clothes, the shorts would cut off higher than my knees and I would be wearing a racerback tank top instead of an over-sized t-shirt, but essentially the same outfit.

I shrug and respond, “Eh, even if we stopped by my place, I would probably walk out wearing something pretty similar anyway. I’m fine with not changing, unless it will embarrass you to be seen with me.” He sputters something that vaguely sounds like ‘how could I possibly be embarrassed of you’ and starts leading the way towards his friend’s café. It is only a few blocks away from Kyungsoo and Jongin’s apartment, which, Kyungsoo explains, may or may not have been a determining factor in their apartment-hunting process.

“Minseok hyung, our friend that owns Haven, has been our friend for years. He is a couple years our senior, but was part of a couple extracurricular clubs with us, and grew up in the same neighborhood,” he explains, filing me in on all of details about the café owner before we arrive at its front doors. My first impression upon stepping inside is that it feels very cozy and homey.

“Wow,” is the first word out of my mouth, marveling as my head swivels left and right, trying to soak in everything around me, “this place looks great! It feels like a home away from home; a place you can go to escape the real world—“

“So, kind of like a haven?” a stranger’s voice interrupts me. I bring my gaze back to normal level and am greeted by the sight of a friendly looking, puffy-cheeked young man in his mid-twenties.

Laughing, I respond, “I guess that’s where the name comes from, huh? You must be Minseok!”

He holds out his hand for a shake and jokes, “The one and only! And you came here with Kyungie, so that must make you his—“

Before Minseok can label me, Kyungsoo envelopes Minseok into a bear hug and greets him a little louder than necessary, proclaiming, “MINSEOK-I HYUNGGGGGG I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER HOW ARE YOU IS BUSINESS DOING WELL IT SEEMS LIKE YOU HAVE A LOT OF CUSTOMERS AS USUAL.”

Minseok and I both raise our eyebrows at the sudden display of aegyo and affection. He gives Kyungsoo a tight squeeze and ruffles his hair before pulling away and admitting, “I missed you, Squirt. So, are you going to introduce me to your—“

“PERSON!” Kyungsoo exclaims loudly. “This is Riyoung noona, a, uh, person that I hang out with sometimes. Mostly just on Fridays.”

With a large smirk on his face, Minseok interjects, “Friend; I think the word you are looking for is friend, Kyungie.” The years of friendship between them means that much like Jongin, not only does Minseok know all of Kyungsoo’s buttons, he is also not afraid to push them. “You know,” he continues wryly, “Today is Saturday.” Kyungsoo’s cheeks become slightly pinker. “Also, you are always hanging out with Jonginnie, Yeollie, and Baekkie—Riyoung has got to be the prettiest friend I’ve ever seen you with here.”

Kyungsoo finally snaps and slaps Minseok on the arm, begging him to stop. Quickly changing the subject, he asks if the ‘VIP lounge’ is available, whatever that is. Minseok grabs a tablet off the main counter and pulls up a calendar. “Yep,” he responds, “looks like it is all yours until 11!” Kyungsoo gives a quick thanks and motions for me to follow him to a spiral staircase in the far corner.

“I have never heard of a café having a VIP lounge,” I muse, “what is that even?”

“Oh, you’ll see,” he says cryptically while pressing a button on the wall before leading me upstairs. When we reach the top, I gasp in surprise—if I thought the downstairs section was cool, the VIP lounge is WAY cooler. It is essentially a spacious living room and a work room up in the loft of a coffee shop. There is a large open space with a couch and TV, and then off to the side there is also a large work table, complete with an L-shaped bench and chairs around the other two edges.

“Holy. Crap. This. Is. Dope,” is all I manage to spit out. My attention is drawn to a giant timer on the wall above the couch that is counting down from 60 minutes. “What is that for?”

“You know that button I pushed on the way up?” he asks. I nod in acknowledgement. “Well, that activates this timer that counts down from one hour. Essentially, if no one is using the lounge, you (or your group) are entitled to use the room for one hour, until the timer runs out. If another group is waiting to use the room (as a walk-in), you have to leave after your one hour to give them a chance to use it. Or if another group has a reservation starting in the middle of your hour, you have to leave and let them use it. But if after your one hour, no one else is waiting and no one has a reservation either, you are free to stay here as long as you want until another group shows up,” he explains.

I mull that concept over in my mind for a few seconds before questioning, “Wait. So do people actually abide by these rules of when you have to leave? I can see it becoming an issue if people refuse to leave when their time is up.”

Kyungsoo chuckles, “You don’t know Minseok hyung. Nice Minseok hyung is nice; Angry Minseok hyung is scary.”

“What other awesome features does this place have?” I ask, taking a seat at the table.

“Watch this,” he commands, as he presses a touchscreen on the wall next to the table to make it come to life. The shop’s menu pops up on the screen and after confirming what I want to eat and drink, he punches in our order.

“Whoa, is he going to make those and bring them up to us??” I ask excitedly. Kyungsoo holds up one finger while chanting, ‘wait for it, wait for it.’ A loud ding sounds and then the wall next to the screen slides open. My jaw drops as I see two mugs inside and two plates holding pastries; this seems like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie.

“Shut. Up. There is no freakin’ way this is real…” I can hardly contain my excitement. “Is this the year 3000?” I ask, pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. Alas, I am wide awake, and sitting in what has to be THE coolest coffee shop I have ever been to (and honestly, ever will be in) in my whole life.

“Are you just going to stare at it? Or are you going to take it out and have a taste of heaven?” he teases, as he reaches over to move the dishes onto the table. He is about to lift the cup to his lips to drink it when I suddenly reach out a hand to stop him. “What?” he asks.

I rearrange our lattes so they are right next to each other and point out, “Look at the latte art! They each have half a heart on them, so if you put our cups together like this, they make a whole heart!” Kyungsoo looks absolutely horrified and quickly and loudly denies seeing anything of the sort. He reaches for his mug again and I slap his hand away, protesting, “Wait! I want to take a picture of this, it’s so cute!” He mumbles something about needing to talk to his hyung later, and he hastily takes a sip of his drink as soon as it looks like I am done with my photoshoot.

In contrast, I take my time bringing the mug up to my nose, closing my eyes as I inhale the sweet aroma of my caramel latte. I sigh happily and smile before taking a sip and placing the ceramic cup down on the table. I look over and see that Kyungsoo is circling the rim of his mug with his finger and gazing at me expectantly. He quickly looks away when our eyes meet.

“So…what did you want to talk about?” he inquires. Despite the fact that we are here together, he still sounds skeptical that I want to talk to him.

I turn and look him straight in the eyes, stating plainly, “I want to know more about Do Kyungsoo. And if you want, I want you to know more about Jeon Riyoung.” He averts my gaze again and hums to acknowledge my statement, before reiterating that he’s not very good at talking to people. “You honestly aren’t that awful—I’ve been talking to you, however briefly, for six weeks now and I’m not bored yet! Just think as though you are talking to Jongin or Baekhyun or Chanyeol or Jongdae—what do you usually talk to them about?”

“Ummmm ok…so…how is work going?” he asks. Bad move.

“Do you watch Running Man?” I fire back instead of answering his question. He looks at me confused before responding affirmatively. “So…do you remember that episode when they played that game where all of the boys had to try to raise Song Ji Hyo’s heart rate as high as possible?” He nods. “And then Big-Nose kept mentioning her house and her heart rate dropped by like 50 beats?” Another nod. “That’s what happens to me physiologically every time someone tries to talk to me about work outside of work,” I explain, “Literally my least favorite thing to talk about.” He burns red and mumbles his apologies, looking absolutely discouraged.

Laughing, I poke him and proclaim brightly, “Hey, chin up, its ok! You didn’t know. That’s why we are here, right? To get to know all of these little things about each other. We might as well get this conversation out of the way now so we never have to talk about it again.” He looks up and returns my smile timidly. “So…I work in the risk analysis department of Daehan Motors; I usually work around 70+ hours a week, and I spend so much time with my team at work that I can tell you specifically what each person will order for dinner from any restaurant within a 5-mile radius of our office. The restaurant owners also greet me by name when I call in the order because they recognize my voice. Is there anything else you would like to know?”

“Yeah,” he says, “why do you do it?”

I chuckle to myself because this is definitely not the first time that I’ve been asked that. It’s sad, but I still don’t really have a good answer. I sit and think about it for a while again, lost in my own thoughts before responding slowly, “Because I don’t know anything else.”

He raises one eyebrow and tilts his head, “What do you mean you don’t know anything else? Like you don’t think you have any other marketable skills?”

I shake my head, “No, not exactly. I guess to give you some more background, I interned with Daehan while I was still in college, and then started working there full time right after I graduated. So my concept of what work is like, and what work-life balance is, is incredibly skewed, right? Because the Daehan work culture is the only frame of reference that I have. My team and I have actually talked about this a lot, because we all have very similar situations. We literally have no idea what we would do for a living if we weren’t at Daehan, because Daehan is all that we know. Sad, huh?”

He frowns and mulls over my answer before asking, “So, are you happy or unhappy?”

“I am happy…I think,” I answer unsurely, “I like my work, and I love the people I work with, I just wish there was…less of it, so I could have more time to do other things that I like doing.” He assures me that as long as I’m happy, that’s what matters, and swiftly changes the topic.

“Oh! You want to know another cool feature about the VIP lounge?” he stands up and walks over to a small railing and motions for me to follow. The railing seems to overlook the rest of the café. “This loft area is completely private from the rest of the café; from here you can see and hear everything that’s happening around the rest of the café, but nobody downstairs can hear or see what is happening up here,” he boasts.

I an eyebrow and ask innocently, “So…what would someone be doing up here that they wouldn’t want anyone else to be able to see or hear them…?” Kyungsoo chokes on his spit and starts coughing uncontrollably, his face turning bright red from the lack of oxygen.

“Game night!” he manages to spit out, “Game nights can get pretty loud, you wouldn’t want to disturb the other patrons!” He turns his attention back downstairs and immediately a horrified expression appears on his face. “No. Nonononono.” He glances at his wrist watch and starts to pace around like a chicken with its head chopped off. “I totally forgot today is Saturday morning, dang it!”

Still confused, I hear a loud “HYUNG!!! WE ARE HERE FOR OUR RESERVATION!” from downstairs and turn my attention in that direction to see what the fuss is all about. I spot four very familiar faces talking to Minseok, and hear Minseok reply, “It’s all yours! Kyungsoo and a friend have been holding down the fort.” All three heads swivel to look in the direction of the loft before turning back towards each other with the same wicked smile on their faces.

“Oh hey, it’s the beagles and Jongin,” I state, looking back over my shoulder at Kyungsoo.

He continues his pacing, “Oh, I know. They’re here. Right now. Coming upstairs as we speak. I know.”

Five seconds later Baekhyun’s voice rings loud and clear, “Well, well, well…what do we have here?”

“Hey, guys,” I greet them as they file up the stairs, “What are you all doing here?”

Jongin smirks while replying, “We meet up here every Saturday morning at 11 to play board games and rid ourselves of our hangovers with Minseok hyung’s coffee. Weird, it seems like Soo hyung forgot about it today.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” I reply, “Well, since you all have plans, I’m going to go ahead and take my leave, I don’t want to impose.”

Baekhyun holds up his index finger to stop me from leaving and asks, “Hm, you know what else is interesting, noona?” He has a glint in his eye that I don’t like at all. “You are wearing Kyungie’s clothes.” FML.