T/W: Some mentions of gore/violence

The topmost leaves on the oak trees lining the path Bae Joohyun walks on are a pale yellow. They are not the type of yellow that marks the start of the change of seasons but the scorching heat of the sun that increasingly plagues Seoulites. News anchors have dubbed it the “Heatwave of the Century” - a forecasted week long period of 36-degree highs that have already taken the lives of the weakest in the country. Yet, Joohyun recalls how her father had labelled it a “blessing in disguise”. An odd perspective on such a unanimously awful event. Her father is an odd man. Lovable, yes, but more often than not, odd.

Though, today, she manages to find a sliver of truth in his madness. 

The sweltering heat of Summer arrives with a honey-golden sunlight that infiltrates and diffracts along the leisurely waters of the Han. Rainbows appear amidst mist sprayed from nozzles lining Banpo bridge like bleached white linens hung out to dry. Her eyes are as drawn to their brilliance as a child would an iridescent bubble. Undoubtedly, if it were any other Saturday, Joohyun would have preferred to take a seat on a nearby bench to observe the confluence and divergence of tides, or perhaps what lies in them. 

But today isn’t any other Saturday. 

According to Joohyun’s calculations, she would arrive at the Ichon branch for her date approximately ten minutes late, at the very least. Joohyun winces, her plump lips painted a too-feminine, too-youthful shade of pink twisting into a scowl at the thought of breaking her pristine reputation of being consistently punctual. Even if it is to meet a man she’ll hesitantly, rudely admit would disappear from her line of sight in a crowd of strangers he’s so forgettable. 

Joohyun’s same Tory Burch pumps she’d worn for most of their previous seven dates click against concrete tiles and she straightens her blouse. But, she pauses at the entrance to the cafe. Wordless, Joohyun feigns fixing the stray strands of sable hair that frame her face as she looks at her reflection in the glass door. She notes only the matteness of her eyes - how they lack the lustre of the excitement a date with a man as accomplished, as objectively handsome as Jomyeon should bring, how they are tainted with the poison of obligation. 

Her mother would have loved Jomyeon. 

She should’ve left her apartment on time. 

The door’s handle is cold to the touch, but from what Joohyun has gathered from her bi-monthly checks, Salon de Thés have always been notoriously excessively air-conditioned in the summertime. Her coworkers joke about how it's a tactic to persuade customers into purchasing the more margin-friendly hot teas. She simply views it as a waste of electricity. 

Handle still grasped tightly in one hand, a heaviness forms in the back of . Joohyun can’t quite pinpoint when she’d begun to feel as needlessly hopeless as she does now whenever she has to meet him. Perhaps it’d spiralled after their first date, or maybe it was after he’d gently pulled her chin up and asked if he could kiss her, and she had politely agreed (and had felt nothing but flesh against her lips). Either way, Joohyun brushes off the guilt, swinging the door open and heaving a sigh to the jingle that sounds throughout the cafe as she enters. 

“Welcome to Salon de Thé!” the baristas exclaim, in a decently pleasant, sing-song tone. That, I’ll have to remind myself to commend the branch manager for come Monday, she thinks. 

Before she can thoroughly examine the cleanliness and upkeep, the number and expressions of customers, and the quality of the branch’s service, a man appears before her. The report she’s mentally typed out is replaced by expressions of pity for the exquisite refinement in his appearance. She quirks an eyebrow. 

Jomyeon is, for lack of a better word, perfect. His hair is trimmed, styled, and gelled, his shirt is tucked in and well-ironed, and his lightly musky eau de cologne isn’t overly nor under-applied. If Jomyeon hadn’t pulled her into a hug, Joohyun would have had the time to apologise to her former self. To apologise for feeling so impossibly unattracted to a man forged as if in the image of her twelve-ye