There's this girl, the one with her hair in a ponytail and the giant sketch pad. She comes every day, and she even sits in the same seat, but Heechul hardly ever notices her. He doesn't actually have the time; working as a waiter in a butler cafe, after all, doesn't leave one with time to recognise regulars.

She catches his eye though, one day, during his much needed break period.

She's sitting in a chair by the glass wall, pencil in her hand moving deftly across her sketch pad. Occasionally she glances up, and the look in her eyes reminds him so much of Hankyung that he briefly considers asking him if he happens to have any siblings. But of course not; Hankyung's from China, after all.

Heechul watches her for another day or so before making his move.

He slides into the seat opposite hers as his half-hour lunch break begins. "Hi," he says brightly, "I'm Kim Heechul."

The girl's eyes flick downwards towards his nametag before hesitantly looking back up. His tag reads Kim Youngsoo.

"Oh, that's not my real name," he adds quickly, "I mean, the one on the tag. Working in a butler cafe has its down points, yanno." He waves a hand vaguely in the air to illustrate his point. "Everyone here uses a fake name on their nametags. It's the norm in butler cafes. Irritating and stupid yes, but it saves us from stalkers."

She nods shyly and looks down at her sketch pad, fiddling with the pencil in her hand. "... Min Young." Her voice is but a whisper. "My name is Min Young."

Min Young, he learns, is a Korean American in her last year of high school. It's the school holidays now, apparently, and Min Young has taken up writing in her spare time. The sketch pad is for character designs, she tells him, and she flips it open to show him one of her sketches. Inside is an accurate depiction of Kibum, who sometimes mans the cashier when Kyuhyun isn’t there, in her own unique style.

"I do not have much to work on.... But basing my characters on real people helps... a bit." she mumbles, closing the book.

He's really interested now; most of the other regulars only come to fangirl over the waiters. (Lucky Kyung for working in the kitchen.)

Min Young - Min Young is different. "So you've done characters based on all the waiters here?"

"Well, not all of them... Most of my sketches are incomplete. I cannot draw fast enough to keep up."

"You can't draw fast enough? Are you kidding? I've seen you draw, and -”

She bows her head, staring awkwardly at the table. Heechul realises what she's talking about; being the ones who come in contact with the fangirls most often, the Sapphire Cafe waiters have developed super speed. Whoops.

Then he comes up with an idea.

"Well, I'm sitting here right now, aren't I?"

Startled, Min Young looks up in surprise.

"Can you draw a person in..." He checks his watch, "26 minutes or so?"

She nods uneasily. "I - I think so, but -”

He grins wolfishly. "Well, draw away then. I promise not to do anything drastic 'till my break's over."

She nods again and flips her book open to a blank page; Heechul thinks he catches sight of something, but he pushes the thought away as Min Young puts her pencil to paper.

“So what stories are these designs for? Can I read them?”

The girl flushes. “Um, they’re all in English... I grew up in America, so my Korean is ... bad.”

No kidding, Heechul thinks to himself, but then again, Hankyung was worse.

By the end of the 26 minutes, Min Young has finished a rough sketch of his body and moves on to detailing his face.

“Um, hey, I have to go work my shift now.”

“... Oh.” Min Young falters, putting her pencil down. “... Um, thank you. I... I can work from memory on this.”

“It’s okay. You’re not done, right? I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Heechul means what he says, and he stands by his decision. The other waiters think he’s insane, and Hankyung – who’s lucky enough to know how to cook and therefore on kitchen duty – wonders if exposure to fangirls dumbs down the brain, but Min Young is worth it.

{♥♦♣♠}

The days pass, and Heechul finds himself eating lunch with Min Young even after she’s finished her sketch of him. The girl’s thoughts are deep, and insightful, and Heechul enjoys the time he spends with her. His colleagues – particularly his usual lunch crew – complain that he’s neglecting them, but Heechul thinks that he spends most of his waking time with the Sapphire Café crowd anyway, so what’s the point?

Min Young moves on from calling him sunbaenim to orabeonim, and then to Heechul-ssi, but no matter how hard he tries, she refuses to call him oppa.

“Say oppa.”

“... Oppa?”

He points at himself. “Heechul oppa.”

“No - Heechul-ssi,” she insists, shaking her head. A passing waiter –that Youngwoon; Heechul frowns – snickers.

Heechul glumly wonders if it’s because he’s old.

{♥♦♣♠}

There’s a period of time when Min Young stops coming to the café. The first three days, Heechul thinks that maybe she was caught in the rain and fell sick, but as more days pass and a whole week flies by, he slowly gets more worried for her safety.  It becomes more and more obvious to his colleagues; during his lunch break he glances at the door, as if expecting to see her walk in with an apologetic smile, and he tends to snap at people who ask him why. He feels a twinge of guilt when he makes innocent, naïve Donghae burst into tears, but he can’t bring himself to apologise.

“You like her,” decides Hankyung one day, on their way back to their apartment. Heechul chokes on the water he’d just raised to his lips.

“What,” he says flatly, “the hell are you on?”

Hankyung falters, so Jungsoo picks up right after. “Well, it is really obvious. Ever since you started eating with her you perk up whenever lunch time comes. Don’t think that I’m blind, Chul.”

Heechul scowls and tells them to shut up. Min Young is like a little sister to him, he insists. Not that they believe him, anyway.

It’s not much of a surprise, really, that Hankyung and Jungsoo grin wickedly at him when Min Young finally reappears.

She’s changed her hairstyle, he notes unconsciously. Her hair is out of its usual ponytail, and it’s shorter now; it falls to her shoulders, and it appears to have been layered.

He is about to stand and move to their usual table, but it is she who approaches him, to his great puzzlement. “Sunbaenim,” she tells him, “can we talk outside...?”

‘Sunbaenim?’, he echoes mentally, but he agrees to her request.

The moment the glass doors swing closed behind them, Min Young turns around and begins to talk. “My father... has decided to... to move back to America.” She swallows, and her shoulders droop. “He... he says there are more opportunities there. He - He’s inheriting a business from my grandfather.”

His mind is blank. “You’re moving back? When?”

“I... We... Later this evening.  Father... He is relocating the whole family. My brother and I – he wants to train us to be his successors. ” She shifts uncomfortably. “He says I have to give up writing to succeed in business.... So, I – I wanted you to have my sketch pad.” Min Young smiles sadly, but her newfound fringe obscures her eyes. “I... I won’t need it anymore.”

Before he can protest, Min Young has pushed the giant sketch pad he’s come to associate her with into his hands. His fingers glance over the rough cardboard backing, and the cover made of equally rough paper.

Min Young bows her head slightly, looking at the concrete pavement beneath her feet. Then, she takes a deep shuddering breath, and bows.

“Goodbye,” she sniffles. “Goodbye.... Heechul oppa.”

He’s too shocked to register that Min Young has finally called him oppa, and he only comes round from his stupor when Min Young has gotten back into the car idling on the road and the silver sedan has driven far away.

Fingers trembling, he slowly flips the sketch pad open. On the very first page is a detailed sketch – of himself. It isn’t the one he posed for, and he realizes that this was the picture he’d gotten a brief glimpse of, the first time he’d sat with her.

Heechul finds himself crying, and when he re-enters the café, Jungsoo takes one look at him, deems him unfit for work and sends him back home.

Heechul is twenty-five before he sees Min Young again.

{♥♦♣♠}

Kibum’s gone to visit his relatives in America or something, and about 3 days into the visit, he’s invited all of his hyungs and Kyuhyun and Henry to join him. Heechul and Donghae are the only ones who take him up on his offer; Donghae because he wants to go sightseeing, and Heechul because he’s promised to look after Donghae.

When they get off the plane, Donghae is half asleep, and as such Heechul is the only one who’s actually trying to distinguish Kibum from the crowd. As a result, when he finally locates him chatting idly to a girl of all people, he’s irritated, and tired from having to drag Donghae around wherever he goes.

“Yah, Kim Kibum!” he growls, “you’re the one who invited us here – why the hell are you not looking for us?”

“Hi Kibummie,” yawns Donghae sleepily.

“Heechul hyung, Donghae hyung,” greets Kibum sheepishly.

The girl with him shifts nervously and reaches up to pull the baseball cap on her head down, obscuring the top of her face. Her black hair is down; it cascades down around her shoulders. The style looks familiar somehow, but Heechul knows that there can be many people with the same hairstyle in a city, let alone a country. “And she is?”

“Oh, this is my uncle’s business partner’s daughter. She’s supposed to be our tour guide or something.”

Donghae butts in with a cheery “Hello, my name is Aiden Lee!” in English before Kibum can say anything else. The girl tries hard to stifle her laughter; Heechul can tell because her shoulders are shaking slightly underneath the light grey jacket.

“Hyung,” deadpans Kibum, “Min Young is Korean.”

Heechul doesn’t notice the embarrassed frown on Donghae’s face. He doesn’t notice the ridiculous smirk on Kibum’s. His brain tunes out any background noise, focusing on one thought; “Min Young?”

The girl looks up, angling the bill of her cap slightly before deciding to pull it off. Heechul sees her face for the first time.

Nothing much has changed about her. Her brown eyes are deep and insightful. Her fringe falls into her eyes, and her hair is long enough to tie back into a ponytail – a combination of two different hairstyles. Sure, her face is a little more refined – more elegant – but Heechul is sure that she looks pretty much like she used to, back when they ate lunch together at the Sapphire Café.

“Heechul oppa,” she greets quietly, and then she smiles, “annyeong.”