Joonmyun was frustrated. Frustrated with the way he’d been tapping his fingers on his desk for the last thirty minutes instead of typing. Frustrated with the unrelenting blinking of the cursor on his still woefully blank word document. Frustrated with his complete and total lack of ability to concentrate in this apartment, especially while his roommate was giggling incessantly from where he was out in the kitchen with his new boyfriend. Frustrated with life.

Joonmyun slumped down a little in his desk chair, glaring up at where the cursor was still blinking mockingly at him from the screen, and thought of what “TheWolf88,” his most passionate internet critic, would say if he could see him at this moment. He thought it was more than likely that he’d say nothing; he’d just laugh.

Joonmyun was rather proud of his latest novel he’d published under his pen name of Suho, and proud wasn’t a word he used often. He didn’t cringe when he reread it, even at the sappier romantic parts, and his readers had lapped it up. But this Wolf person had made a hobby of anonymously picking apart every publication of Suho’s on his (or her, he supposed) ridiculous book review blog he or she had created using that ridiculous username. And he or she wasn’t so free with compliments.

Joonmyun could readily admit that his work was far from perfect, and that not everyone would like it. To anyone who asked, he treated the comments of The Wolf no differently from any others.

But when Joonmyun was lying awake at night, carefully crafting a new storyline in his head, there was a thought that always came to him, a fantasy of sorts, in which Joonmyun would finally write a novel that earned The Wolf’s praise. As many times as he told himself that altering his writing in order to please some faceless online entity was a dangerous path to go down, the urge to make The Wolf chow down on his own words was still there like some tiny, irritating flame that he couldn’t quite stamp out.

He liked to think it was possible, if only the right inspiration would strike him.

A loud, tinkling crash resounded from the kitchen to yank him out of his thoughts, undoubtedly the second wine glass Yixing had broken that week, and Joonmyun sighed. It was clear that the inspiration he needed wasn’t going to come to him just sitting here.

Joonmyun pushed his palms against the edge of the desk and propelled himself backward to wheel across the room in his desk chair. He smoothed down a few stray wisps of hair in the mirror before getting up.

Slipping his laptop into his messenger bag, he grabbed his phone and keys and placed his hand on the knob of the bedroom door. It was now suspiciously quiet throughout the rest of the apartment, and Joonmyun braced himself for the eyeful of his editor-slash-roommate Jongdae and his boyfriend Yixing that he might get when he walked out there.

Luckily, the couple was cuddled together innocently on the couch in front of the TV, Jongdae seemingly asleep leaning against the other and Joonmyun smiled. Jongdae might be annoying and Yixing might be spacey and a bit clumsy at times, but they were both strangely lovable and most days Joonmyun was glad for their company.

He raised a hand in greeting to Yixing before stepping out of the apartment. He hoisted his messenger bag up a little further on his shoulder and inhaled, turning out onto the street. The sidewalk was dappled with damp spots from an earlier shower and the acidic scent of rain still permeated the city, the air misty and warm.

He slowed his steps in front of a small cafe he’d been to only a couple times and peered in the window. That day’s specials and their prices were written in brightly colored marker on the glass and Joonmyun could just barely see inside. It didn’t look to be crowded; it hardly ever was.

Joonmyun mentally shrugged and opened the door, which jingled as he let himself inside. He sat down in a chair by a side window and was greeted almost immediately with a cheerful, “Hello. What can I get for you, sir?”

Joonmyun found himself looking up at a slim young man with his hair dyed a sandy blonde color. He scribbled down Joonmyun’s coffee order and hurried off.

Joonmyun ped his laptop from its case and plugged it in underneath the table before pulling up his document from earlier. It was obviously still blank, save for the few notes at the bottom containing what vague ideas Joonmyun had for storylines, but this change of scenery was nice. Maybe people-watching from this window would help stimulate his flow of ideas.

The waiter set a white coffee mug on the table and Joonmyun looked down at it to see a smiley face drawn cutely in the foam, complete with crescent-shaped, laughing eyes and dimples added to the corners of the mouth. It was a little lopsided, but it made the edges of Joonmyun’s own mouth twitch upwards anyway.

“Thank--” he started to say, but he glanced up again to find that the waiter was already back at the counter at the front of the cafe, rearranging some of the items on display. As if he could sense Joonmyun looking at him, he glanced up and met his eyes with a miniature smile that Joonmyun rely briefly before he felt his cheeks start to warm.

He took a sip from the mug and the foam from his lips as, suddenly, a sentence finally came to him and his fingers began moving over the keyboard, seemingly of their own accord.

Joonmyun returned to the same cafe the next morning, eager to continue working on his novel. Working somewhere other than at home had seemed to do the trick in curing his writer’s block, and he’d gotten several pages written as well as a bare-bones outline drawn up yesterday, before Jongdae had called and asked him to pick up something for dinner.

The cafe was slightly busier in the morning hours, but not by much. Still only a couple of employees were needed, and he recognized the sandy-haired waiter from yesterday, who gave a nod to Joonmyun as he came in.

He felt a tiny blip of disappointment when he found the foam in his cappuccino to be undisturbed by any designs, but he felt silly for admitting that, so he tried his best to just concentrate on his writing.

By mid-morning, most of the other customers had cleared out on their way to work or to wherever they were going, and Joonmyun was wrapped up in the rhythm of his fingers on the keyboard when he was brought back to the real world by the clink of a plate on his table.

He looked from the plate, containing a single muffin, to the sandy-haired waiter named--Joonmyun squinted at his nametag--Luhan.

“Blueberry-lemon,” Luhan offered, smiling with his upper row of teeth showing.

“But I didn’t...order anything?” Joonmyun said, his sentence coming out like a question.

“I know.” The waiter shrugged with one shoulder. “You’ve been here a while and you look like you’re working hard on something, so I thought you might like one of these. And don’t worry, it’s already paid for.”

Joonmyun stared at the deep cupid’s bow on Luhan’s upper lip. “You mean you...I...wow, um, thank you,” he stammered.

“It’s good, you should try it. It’s a new recipe,” was all Luhan said before he went to greet another customer.

He nibbled the muffin and watched Luhan walk away before his fingers were typing again.

-

“What can I get for you today? The usual?” Luhan asked, just as Joonmyun was ping his laptop for another day of work in the cafe.

Joonmyun tossed his bangs out of his eyes to look up at him. “Have I really been coming here often enough already to have established a ‘usual?’”

It had been about three weeks since Joonmyun had taken to coming into the cafe to write. He wasn’t there every day, and Luhan didn’t work every day that Joonmyun was there. But on the days that the stars aligned and their schedules overlapped, Luhan had always made sure to get to Joonmyun first if there was another employee also working that day to compete with.

He had only seen Luhan about four or five times before the waiter had asked his name. “Why do you look so surprised?” Luhan had asked, laughing, and Joonmyun hadn’t realized he must have looked shocked. He’d tried to school his face back into a neutral expression. “I like to have a name to put to a face I see often, don’t you?”

Sometimes, if Luhan took a break while Joonmyun was there, they’d sit together while Joonmyun’s fingers click-clacked away on his laptop keys. If they talked, they mostly talked about Luhan, because Joonmyun had a lot of questions. Something about the innocent-faced waiter made him want to ask how long he’d been working at this cafe, where he grew up, if he liked cats, and anything else he could find out. Luhan answered any question he threw at him openly, seeming as if he had nothing to hide from Joonmyun, who he barely even knew.

In the present moment, Joonmyun realized that his phone was vibrating on the table, and seeing his publicist’s name on the screen, he snatched it up before Luhan could do more than smile in response to his remark about how often he’d been coming in.

Sorry, he mouthed to Luhan, who whispered, “Be right back with your usual.” He winked before turning around and Joonmyun felt disoriented enough that he had to ask his publicist on the phone to repeat what she had just said.

“I emailed you the details for that magazine interview next week. Did you receive it?” she asked.

“Oh...oh yeah, I did,” Joonmyun answered distractedly.

“So it all looks okay to you?”

“Uh-huh,” he affirmed, now staring at his document on the screen again. She talked on some more about next week’s schedule that he had already written down, and Joonmyun switched to navigating aimlessly around his internet browser.

He abruptly halted the movement of the mouse on the screen as he found himself looking at The Wolf’s blog. At the very top of the page was a large photo of Joonmyun’s entire collected works and, beneath it, the title of the blog’s most recent post:

Rookie Novelist Suho: An Author Analysis

He stared speechlessly for a moment as his eyes landed on the opening paragraph:

His name is “Guardian,” so what is it that he’s guarding, if not his readers’ delicate hearts from anything other than a happy ending? In this post, we explore the formulaic love stories that Suho’s growing audience has come to adore...

Joonmyun stopped reading and groaned.

“Er...Joonmyun?” his publicist said tentatively and Joonmyun startled, having nearly forgotten she was still on the phone.

“TheWolf88 posted something else about me,” Joonmyun told her. “And it doesn’t look like a glowing review.”

“Joonmyun, we’ve been over this before,” she sighed.

“I can’t believe this. The Wolf is practically becoming famous by making fun of me,” Joonmyun continued. “The hit count on his page is--”

“Joonmyun,” she interrupted, “I’m not a psychologist, but your obsession with this Wolf character comes across as sort of...unhealthy.”

“But won’t this hurt sales?” Joonmyun tried, not understanding why he couldn’t seem to get anyone on his side over this.

“Any publicity is good publicity, Joonmyun. If anything, I’d say all this attention he’s getting you might help sales,” she said. “And I think you know that.”

Joonmyun sighed, defeated.

“I have to get going, but we’ll talk soon okay? Take care, Joonmyun.”

“Bye.” Joonmyun hung up just as he saw the waiter hurrying toward him carrying a gigantic mug of coffee. Luhan was beaming when he set it down on the table.

“Luhan, what--”

“I know you usually only order a medium, but you look tired today.”

Coming from anyone else, Joonmyun might have taken that as an insult, but it seemed sweet and caring when Luhan said it.

“Well, you’re right about that.” Joonmyun smiled in spite of himself, fishing around in his pocket for some more change. “Thank you. At least let me--”

“No, really.” In an instant, Luhan’s warm hand was on Joonmyun’s wrist, gently tugging it back up and away from his wallet. “No additional charge.”

Luhan’s fingers slowly uncurled and Joonmyun’s heart was suddenly beating way too fast for someone who’d been sitting still in a cafe. “Thank you,” he said again, taking a long drink from the mug.

Luhan left to help other customers and Joonmyun dove back into writing with new energy.

Jongdae was already home from work when Joonmyun reentered the apartment and he turned down the TV’s volume to greet him.

“How’s the new novel coming, hyung?” Jongdae asked as he did most days.

“It’s coming,” Joonmyun replied happily, flopping down into a chair opposite Jongdae, who was already spread out on the couch.

“How’s your buddy The Wolf?” Jongdae raised his eyebrows. At Joonmyun’s rather stony silence, he added, “Uh-oh. He posted something else, didn’t he?”

Joonmyun let his head fall back onto the chair’s back cushion. “I just told you the new novel was starting to come along. Don’t ruin the mood.”

Jongdae chuckled quietly. “So he did post something else?”

Joonmyun straightened up slightly in the chair. “We keep saying ‘he.’ Why are we so sure it’s a he?” he asked, deflecting the initial question.

Jongdae shrugged. “Just seems like it’s a male, doesn’t it?”

Joonmyun laughed. “I guess so, yeah. Somehow.”

“Huh. Well, it’s great that you’re making progress hyung, let me know if you want me to read it over,” Jongdae offered.

“Will do, thanks,” Joonmyun said before Jongdae turned the volume back up on the TV and he opened his laptop, intending to check his email. Instead, he found himself clicking back on the document containing the manuscript of the novel that had been minimized at the bottom of the screen.

“‘Rookie novelist,’ honestly,” Joonmyun muttered darkly to himself as he scrolled down the page. “My first publication was years ago...and my stories are not formulaic.”

He continued scanning over what he’d written so far and, even though he didn’t want to, started to imagine pieces of it quoted on The Wolf’s blog with sharp, biting lines of criticism underneath. He was feeling less and less confident in his work by the second.

“Hyung,” Jongdae said suddenly. “Stop brooding and come play mindless video games with me.”

Joonmyun decidedly snapped the laptop shut. “Good idea.”

-

“Can I sit down?” Luhan asked one day after they hadn’t seen each other in a while, slicing through Joonmyun’s contemplations. He’d been sitting in the same position all afternoon, endlessly pondering the novel and The Wolf and turning ideas over and over in his head, but not having typed out a single character. He guessed he’d used up his initial motivation for writing this story, as the words hadn’t been coming so easily anymore and now he found himself rather stuck.

“Sure,” Joonmyun chirped, sounding happier than he had felt until Luhan came over. Luhan dragged another chair over from the neighboring table.

They sat in silence for a few moments before Luhan said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something. What is it that you’ve been working on?” He inclined his head toward Joonmyun’s laptop.

“A novel,” Joonmyun answered readily.

“Wow, really?” Luhan confirmed with an almost childlike enthusiasm. Joonmyun nodded. “What’s it about?”

“Well, it’s...” Joonmyun trailed off, suddenly self-conscious that he was an adult man writing semi- romance novels for a living. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of what he wrote, but he preferred to keep the details of his work within only a small circle of friends. That was one of the reasons he’d decided to go with a pseudonym, after all. “It’s sort of difficult to explain,” he decided to say, even though it wasn’t really. “I’ve actually been thinking of scrapping the whole thing and starting over.”

A crease formed in between Luhan’s eyebrows. “Could I...would you let me read it? Before you do that?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh, um.” Joonmyun stalled. It felt like a rather personal thing to show someone he didn’t know all that well. Sure, Luhan seemed like a fairly kind and open-minded person, but he wasn’t sure how he’d react to Joonmyun’s work. He was especially unsure how Luhan would react if he noticed that the main character resembled him...quite a lot, now that Joonmyun was actively thinking about it.

Many of the tidbits he’d found out about Luhan during their conversations had woven their way into the story somewhere. Even the character’s physical appearance could have described Luhan, Joonmyun realized with a jolt.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to show me,” Luhan was saying, and Joonmyun became aware that his hesitation must have made it look like he was trying to think of a way to tell him no. Luhan’s tone was conversational, but Joonmyun thought he could sense some disappointment in it too.

“No, no, it’s fine, you can read it,” Joonmyun heard himself say.

He immediately regretted it a little, but he felt like there was no turning back after the way Luhan perked up again. “Really?”

Joonmyun nodded, rotating the laptop around to face the other. “It’s just the beginning, but yeah. Have at it.”

Luhan’s eyes scanned the page and Joonmyun felt uncomfortable just staring at him as he read, so he looked out the window instead. After a few minutes, he chanced another look at Luhan and tried to gauge his reaction to the story so far, but his expression was unreadable. Joonmyun bounced his knee under the table, trying to disguise the fact that he was shaking. He took out his phone and fiddled with it as if he wasn’t that incredibly nervous.

“Wow,” Luhan said after a while, looking up from the screen, apparently finished. “Thanks for showing me.”

Joonmyun tried to smile. “Yeah, no big deal.” He held himself back from asking what he thought of it. If Luhan thought it was terrible, he didn’t want to make him feel like he had to lie.

“I like it! It’s a nice start,” Luhan offered, and all the air whooshed from Joonmyun’s lungs as he turned the computer back around.

“Really? Thank you.” Joonmyun couldn’t hold back his smile. “There’s nothing you would change?” he asked, suspicious that Luhan was just being polite.

“Yeah, really.” He crinkled his eyebrows. “If you want me to be really picky, I guess you could speed up the pacing a little?” He chuckled.

“Were you bored?” Joonmyun asked.

“No no, not at all, quite the opposite,” Luhan said. “It was quite interesting. You made me want more.”

They exchanged smiles and Joonmyun suddenly felt like they weren’t talking about the story anymore. Or maybe he just wished that. He tried to stop the fantasies his mind was creating, because it was really awkward to be thinking about leaning over the table and kissing Luhan on the lips when the other was sitting there so innocently, no idea what was going through his head.

But then Luhan said, “Hey...do you want to hang out tonight?”

Joonmyun blinked up at him from his laptop screen.

“Somewhere...not here?” Luhan elaborated.

“What did you have in mind?” Joonmyun asked in a measured tone.

“Will you let me take you out to dinner?” Luhan asked, and Joonmyun felt breathless again, but he managed to gather himself. Luhan seemed far from the innocent waiter he had taken him for just a moment ago, and it was undeniably attractive. His voice was so confidently smooth and practiced that Joonmyun felt a sudden, uncharacteristic urge to throw him for a loop.

“No,” Joonmyun replied, then felt a little bit guilty at the surprise and disappointment on Luhan’s face. He finished quickly, “But I would love to go out to dinner with you, as long as I’m the one paying. You’ve given me enough freebies already.”

He smiled as Luhan gave a short, relieved laugh. “Oh, fine. Just this once.”