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Ever since man has mastered the spoken word stories have been told. From the simple weave of fables to the rich tapestries of epic ballads, all manner of stories have bee told and re-told, re-dressed and re-written. Archetypes and cliches alike brought to life with the colour of language and the brush of the writer's pen.

Yet beneath the dazzling genius of man's greatest works, lay the forgotten stories. Those unassuming re-tellings of small moments that, to but a handful of people, mean nothing. Snaps shots of life witnessed through the fourth wall without the varnish of presumption, stories with no purpose but to capture a brief moment and crystalise it.

Stories such as this - an unskilled portrait of a day that for many is forgettable, but for the two it follows - are little more than throw away tales that in great expanse all that has and will be written are destined to be forgotten, leaving barely a mark on the world. The characters, as you may consider them, of this tale merely players on a stage, acting out a moment played a million times over. Each time with a different cast, set and audience, though the theme stays that same.

Of course all stories, including this one, regardsless of how cliche riddled or trapped in the web of trope they may be, have a beginning. Where would a story be without a beginning?

However, as obvious, natural and expected a beginning may be, it so often proves itself the bane of many a writer. Exactly where should a beginning...begin?

Should it begin from the very beginning, where the cogs that will eventually drive the story to its ultimate conculsion have not yet fallen into place?

Or should it begin from that moment when the cogs have just fallen into place and slowly begin to turn?

Or maybe the beginning should begin at some arbitary point somewhere in between.

This story, as have many others, begins at the latter of these, beginnninig on some non-specific day of some non-specific month of a non-specific year.

The only specific is the time, but even then its obscure.

It's late afternoon when this particular story begins.

The sun hanging low in the sky, casting a soft amber glow over the campus of the University of Seoul, while the ebb and flow of students moving between the buildings winds down to a trickle. The start of afternoon classes has left much of the campus grounds empty, save the libraries, of course, and the few student cafes dotted across campus.

EXOtica, one such cafe in the Performance Arts Faculty building, squeezed between the main auditorium and Faculty Office, is the perfect setting for a throw away story such as this.

As usual it's bursting at the seams with hipster wanna-be artistes, musos, and method actors. Discussions about obscure people with outlandish, neu-veux ideas and only one name drown out the self-obsessed bes of some self proclaimed musical genius that no one but EXOtica's regulars know. The heavy aroma of free-trade, third-world French roasts permiating every inch of the place, from the faux retro european decor to the very skin of the cafe's staff. Everything about the place was saturated in the heady smell of coffee.

Rich, dark coffee.

As good a backdrop as any for our players to perform against; rich, atmospheric with a touch of drama to offset the otherwise everyday mediocrity of it.

The subject of this throw away tale, Kris - a sharp faced young man in his mid-twenties with a mid-length shag of black hair (which he is obliged to pull back) - is EXOtica's senior barista and ironically (though predictably by literary design) hates the canvas upon which he's been painted. Unequivocally, without even a ground of hesitation or doubt, hates it. He hates it with such ever growing, ever consuming, passion and loathing that most days it takes him everything he has to show up for work and not take an axe to the place and torch to it all.

Coffee.

Rich, dark coffee

Is Kris’ own personalized torture in his own private hell, one he can't afford to escape. Because unlike EXOtica's patrons his pockets don't run so deep. A perfectly cliche protangonist for any throw-away story; poor, down-trodden, and at odds with the world in which he exists. A relucatant masochist subject to the whims of omnipotent muses. 

Every protagonist, of course, has his own antagonist, his own anti-thesis - the source of conflict which turns the gears that drive a story - and Kris is no exception. There is a yin to his yang, a ghost in the mirror, lerking just behind his reflection, haunting him, tormenting him. This dark figure, this antagonist in sheep's clothing will make their entrance upon the stage in due time, but not before their cue. For now Kris has the spotlight as he presents his opening solilique.

It's the afternoon rush, or the 7th circle of hell, as Kris thinks of it without an ounce of foudness. All the tables are occupied, and the back log of orders yet to be filled has Suho breathing fire down Kris' neck. Though it does little to make Kris work any faster. He is the most experienced, and arguably the best barista on roster. If his best isn't good enough than no one's is. So the salesclerk turn manager's idle threats about having someone else take over if he can't keep up are like rain falling against a duck's back.

Kris, contrary to what one may expect from often intimidatingly cold edge of his stern features, can find little reason to hate his co-workers, regardless of how much he hates his work. It's not their fault that just the very smell of coffee is enough to make his blood boil. In fact as far as the sublty flirty waiter, Lay, knows Kris is a connoisseur, knowledgeable in more roasts, blends, and grade of bean than anyone he knows.

A year ago that may have been true, but it has been a long time since Kris has gotten any enjoyment out of a cup of joe.

It is of couse at this juncture, that this throw away tale may take a moment to pause and rewind. To flip back the pages preiously unwritten and hash out the obvious backstories waiting to be told. But that would give the game away too soon, subvert the tension every story hopes to build. Then again there is much to be gained from looking back on the past. To see the unfold of events that shaped the man that stands centre stage to this story.

Here lies the fault in stories that begin at some arbitrary point in time. So much of the story gets left out, parts of the story that its subject is happy to forget. 

Kris would not be one to say he's had a terrible life, difficult at times, but he can imagine much worse. So he's had little reason to hate the lot he's been dealt. Rather he's used it as motivation to better himself. A challenge to be over come. Never mind the two jobs he has to work to scrape by. Never mind the sleep nights he spends bent over law books, just to maintain grade average.

In the words of his late father all the hardship will only build character, make him a better person, one any father would be proud of. It's his father's faith in him, that has kept him going. Something of which he is always reminded of by the slightly tarnished wedding band on a chain beneath his shirt. 

If we flip back a page or two, to somewhere before this story begins, there is a woman who once commended Kris' nostalia and attachment to the past. That was until she realised that he didn't honour the past, but lived in it. Unable to let go of things that were best forgotten. In her eyes he was walking forward with his head turned back. And that with each step forward he yearned more to go a step back.

Even now, as he works feverishly behind the barista, Kris is thinking of things from days gone by. Of how life used to be simpler, not easier, just simpler. Of how things were as they seemed, and people easier to understand. Of cruel the passing of time was to change things the way it had. The centre piece of Kris' thoughts today, is one that has plagued him of late and is only more inscidious with the heady aroma of coffee hanging around his head.

Time, Kris will conceed, has changed many things in his life for which he is grateful, but there are a handful of things that it has changed which he cannot find it in himself to forgive. The woman of a few pages past is barely a sepia tone photo in his memory, time welcome to take her. But the days that Kris was happiest -those precious days in the autumnn of his youth, when a new life, a new start and the promise of a future he'd only dreamed of kept his face turned forward as he'd run head long into the unknown - had been stolen by time and Kris can't find it in his heart to forgive it.  

Lost in his thoughts and the mindless task of brewing latte, after mocha, after chai latte, after two shots of black coffee, Kris sets aside his newest creation as he looks up to the screen for the next order and he pauses. A quiet numbness falls over his thoughts and his throat tightens. To those around him there is nothing of note about the order, nothing to require pause. But this order has a backstory. One that begins many chapters before this story does. 

A back story that begins where this one should have.