+(1)

The streets are empty.

It’s 5’30 and the sun will be peaking out above the high rises soon. Jongin walks with his hands in his pockets, trying to ward off the nightly chill. He’s walking to a convenience store, one that is close to his office but one which he has never entered. His coffee brewer’s busted so he’s forced to cop some there.

The inside isn’t much warmer but it’s something. He heads to the back where he knows the machine should be (all convenience stores are one in the same)—yet it’s not there? He walks up to the register.

                “Hey, do you guys have a coffee machine?”

And the guy behind the counter looks young, with wide and bright eyes despite it still being dark outside.

                “Yeah, it’s back here though,” he gestures behind him.

                “Oh”

                “Yeah.”

                “How much?” Jongin pulls out his wallet.

                “Thirty-thousand won,” and Jongin looks up to a very stoic expression.

                “For—a cup of coffee?”

“I’m kidding,” and the kid smiles with all his white teeth. “It’s really late—or early? It’s three-thousand, really.”

Jongin smiles a bit, and normally this is uncommon at so early a time but the cashier’s smile is so bright that he’s uncharacteristically in a better mood.

He hands the guy 3 crisp, thousand won bills and stows his wallet away. The fluorescent light creates a slight glare on the cashier’s heavy and drooping metallic name pin, but Jongin isn’t so interested in something like that. The boy gets to brewing the surely instant-coffee formula and Jongin decides to wander the store, having been stuck in far too many awkward silences to roll over onto his next lifetime.

Jongin co-owns a software start-up with one of his close grad school colleagues. Currently, there are only 2 other workers under him which is how he finds himself starting the day in early morni