[ cof·fee drink·er ]

To start with, he looked nothing like Edward Cullen.

The only two things he pretty much had in common with the guy is that he can walk around in broad daylight without combusting into flames and that he too is a vampire.

A 370-year-old living vampire.

Well, maybe not living. Cause technically, he isn’t even really alive.

However, Kim Jinwoo has managed to experience and see a lot during his 370 years of existence. From war outbreaks, severe famines, men landing on the moon, people coming alive inside a tiny box, a huge chunk of metal flying in the sky, spiffy ‘flushing’ toilets, and his absolute favorite...the internet.

Jinwoo could spend hours on it and never get bored. Social networks like twitter, instagram, youtube, and facebook allowed him to easily interact with everyone in the world. It was so very different from the era when letters would take weeks and even months to arrive. Also, it allowed their kind to not only blend in well with humans but also survive. ‘Special’ online communities made blood distribution and dispatch to their kind more easier than ever. Now that Hollywood has capitalized on them and glamorized them, gone are the days when they were viciously hunted down.

For someone like him who didn’t age, human interaction has always been a very fleeting thing. The people he encountered grew older and older until they eventually perished while he remained young and did not. It happened to him one too many times before, meeting someone that he thought he could trust only to realize too late that he got deceived. Things then escalated to getting chased out by a mob of angry villagers who threatened to burn him alive, to getting hunted down in the dark and barely escaping getting staked.

From then on, Jinwoo greatly reduced his interaction with humans to the bare minimum. It was better that he did not catch their attention. Not only was it less trouble for him but in this way, he would not have the chance to get attached to anyone. For someone like him to continue to co-exist with humans, he needed to not exist. Doing so made it easier for him to leave existence after existence behind and assume a new one.

This time around, he decided to try his hand at writing novels. With internet speeds faster than ever, watching Korean and Japanese dramas online has encouraged him and greatly inspired him. In his life before this one, he worked at a warehouse. He took care of shipping and receiving goods. There was barely any human interaction at all since he had his own work area and his co-workers communicated with him mostly through email. The only times he really had to talk with someone was when truck drivers came by and he had to load or unload pallets, but even then it only lasted for a few minutes and most of the time it was just about the weather that day.

Jinwoo knew he had to leave that life behind that one winter morning a few years back when he saw a mutt cross the road with a car speeding towards it. Without much thought, he immediately leaped right in front of the oncoming vehicle and was struck. Knocked out and profusely bleeding, he was immediately taken to a nearby local hospital in that area, only to wake up to a doctor in the ER who couldn’t detect his pulse. Jinwoo figured it was best to just go along with it and play dead, taking his chance to escape soon after he was wheeled into the morgue.

The sound of someone clearing their throat pulled Jinwoo out of his reverie. Glancing up from his open notebook, his eyes land on a young man with almost white blond hair wearing an apron around his waist and a sunshine bright kind of smile. The smell of coffee permeates his clothes. Jinwoo watches him hold a coffee cup in his left hand and a small metal pitcher in his right. He lifts the pitcher up, tipping from above the cup, pouring and dragging slowly with practiced ease then carefully placing the cup down before him.

A latte with a perfectly shaped ‘heart’ out of milk foam.

“Um, I didn’t order this.” Jinwoo says, his voice muffled by the face mask he wore that half covered his face. 

The young man wasn’t deterred. His hand moves to push the cup closer to him.

“I know. This one is on me.”

Jinwoo awed by the mellow tone of his voice, sets his pen down on the table.

“You should try it while it’s still hot.” with a fond smile, the young man gestures towards the cup, leaning closer to him.

“It looks so good.”  Jinwoo tells him, earning him another sunshine bright smile. “Can I take a picture?”

He takes a hurried shot with his phone, focusing on the milk foam. Turning away, he took off his face mask and took a small sip. Jinwoo’s lips couldn’t help but curve into an instantaneous smile as the robust taste of espresso burst into his mouth, mellowed out with delicately sweet milk, its warmth spreading into his whole being.

“How is it?” the young man interrupted him softly.

“It’s perfect.” Jinwoo manages, brushing a few strands of loose hair away from his face, literally perfect.

“Are you a university student?”

Jinwoo shrugs, laughing a little and taking a longer sip this time. He’s over 300 something years older than this guy, but of course, he doesn’t know that. Maybe he should go back to university life in his next life, it has been quite a while.

A beeping sound breaks out and as if on cue, the young man’s hand dig into one of his apron pockets fishing out his phone.

“Looks like my break is over.”  he says, looking at him as if considering something.

Jinwoo averted his gaze, choosing to glance down his cup, “It’s delicious. Thank you.”

“I can make it for you again.” the young man says, his stare unwavering, “The next time you come by.”

Jinwoo bites into his bottom lip reminding himself not to get too close. It never ends well, not for him, not for his kind. He should draw a line between them now while he still can. The sooner, the better.

“I almost forgot.” he lies, making himself appear nonchalant, “I’m meeting someone so I better get going.”

He covers his