Kris, his name was Kris.

That’s what the bartender had been trying to tell him.

Although he was slow in every other regard, Zitao took to that piece of information quickly, memorizing it and keeping it dear to his heart for reasons he didn’t understand.

Because, at that point, he hadn’t yet known that he was falling fast, and falling hard, for a man nearly a decade younger than him.

Suho always offered to bundle their clothes together into the wash, so it was the least Zitao could do to offer to hang them up to dry.

He spent the next half an hour slowly clipping items of clothing onto the line outside of his balcony, occasionally shifting the line over for more room.

He did this while his laptop, balanced precariously on the railing, was playing La Lengua de las Mariposas for the Nth time that week.

Zitao muttered to himself occasionally, repeating the words he heard from the movie out loud as they played out on the screen, biting his lip and closing his eyes as he struggled to figure out what each word meant.

If he was honest with himself, Zitao probably only understood maybe one of every ten spoken words, but the language barrier didn’t stop him from recognizing his favorite scene in the movie as it came up.  Zitao hurriedly set aside the dress shirt he had been trying to hang up, folding it over the balcony rail as he pulled closer to the laptop in preparation.

« Y como dijo el poeta, dejó desierta cama, y turbio espejo y corazón vacío. »

Zitao rewound the scene, playing it just one more time.  Then, he closed his eyes briefly, clutching the still damp dress shirt to him as he sounded out the words slowly.

“Y… co…mo… dijo… el po..eta…”

What he didn’t notice was the tall, handsome young man standing in the streets below who had been listening to him the entire time, staring up with a small, charmed smile.

The next day, Zitao tries again for the university, and gets lost once again (…although this time perhaps on purpose). 

He found himself in front of the same café as the previous day, pushing up his glasses as he stared up at the sign.  His thoughts trailed to the handsome stranger he had met the other day.

I wonder if he’s...

For some reason, he felt as if he was at a middle school dance again, standing in a gender-segregated line and being forced to gather his courage up to ask a girl to dance. 

But he was 29, not 13, and besides, it wasn't as if he had intentions of any sort for the young student.  Zitao mentally slapped his own face, clearing his throat and straightening his back before opening the café doors and taking slow but decisive steps inside. 

The first thing Zitao did was to sweep the room with his eyes as quickly and discretely as he could, feeling both a sense of relief and disappointment when he noted that the student wasn’t there.  Letting his posture slump naturally, he stepped up to the bar, coughing quietly to get the bartender’s attention.

The bartender, the same as before, turned, a question on his lips that died upon seeing Zitao.  His eyes lit up in recognition instead, holding up his hand in a welcoming gesture.

Zitao nodded back, wetting his dry lips as he stood up to the bar, determined this time to do what he had failed to do previously.  He slammed a fist down on the counter, making the bartender jerk in surprise, clearing his throat as he prepared himself.

 “Quiero….”

The bartender leaned in closer, eyes widening at Zitao’s improved pronunciation.  Zitao tried again, this time speaking slowly, methodically sounding out each vowel.

“Quiero… una taza… de cáfe.  Por… favor…?”

For a second, Zitao saw an impressed expression flash on the bartender’s face, before the man’s eyes flicked to something beside him.

«…Café.»

Zitao’s heart skipped a beat.  He spun around, only to come face-to-face with the young student who he had been trying to avoid.  When had he…?!

Kris chuckled, a deep, throat-rumbling sound that sent a pleasurable chill down Zitao’s spine.

“Idiota.  It is not cáfe, but café.”  The man repeated, drawing Zitao’s attention to him.

“There is an accent on the ‘é’, so you must not forget to emphasize it.”

Zitao stared, processing the information robotically before turning slowly to face the bartender again. 

“…Quiero una taza de café, por favor.”

After a second of consideration that had Zitao sweating, the bartender clapped his hands, which in turn had Zitao beaming to the man beside him.  Kris looked at him with an expression of pride, reaching over to gently pat the back of Zitao’s head.

“Good job.”

Zitao froze, unable to hide the expression of joy that came onto his face at the man’s praise.  He stared down at his feet, bashful, looking up only when he heard the clinking exchange of money.  He blinked.

Kris handed over several coins to the bartender, grinning over at Zitao.

“Consider it a reward for a job well done.”  With that said, the man clapped a hand on Zitao’s shoulder as he walked by, returning to his regular seat by the window and setting his textbooks down.  Zitao shuddered at the other’s touch, barely able to contain his surprise and glee.

When the bartender finally set his coffee down in front of him, he found it in a cup and saucer, rather than the Styrofoam cup that he had been given yesterday.  He made a questioning noise, only to see that the bartender was leaning on his hands, shifting between staring at Kris’ table and the cup of coffee in Zitao’s hands.  Pointedly.

« What are you waiting for? »

Indeed, Zitao thought to himself, unable to understand a word, but more than able to read the man’s message from his impatient tone and raised brow.  

Here, no one knew him.  He could be the extrovert finally, man up and just sit down at the other’s table.  He entertained the idea briefly, imagining how the man would smile back cheerfully, how they would talk for hours and hours until it was dark – and then –

Oh who am I kidding.

The man was just as likely to turn away with a sneer, and Zitao rolled in horror at the thought.

So Zitao averted his eyes, not meeting the irritated bartender’s gaze as he hurriedly sipped his coffee and fled as quietly as he had come.

It wasn’t until the fifth day of coming in and bearing the bartender’s intense gaze that Zitao finally made his move.

Kris looked up to see the tourist he had seen skulk around the café every day for the past week, currently standing before him with a look of apprehension.  Kris leaned back. 

“… Yes?”

There was a few seconds of silence, following the worsening of the shake in Zitao’s hands as they held the rattling cup of coffee.  Finally, the older man in a breath before halteringly speaking the words he had been repeating in his mind for the past minute and a half.

“Can-I-sit-here?”

For a second, Zitao thought that the young man would say no from the way he was staring up at him with raised eyebrows, but the second passed quickly.

Kris wordlessly pulled his bag off the other chair, pushing it out from the table.  When he gestured at it with a smile, Zitao couldn’t help feel his heart fluttering in both fear and excitement as he slowly sat down.

“I thought you would never ask.  …My name is Kris, by the way.”

“… I know.”

“You know...?”

“I’m Zitao.”

Zitao tells him that he’s from America. 

Kris has to ask – why Spain?  Why now, in the middle of the year, with no holidays coming up? 

“No reason.”   Is all Zitao says about the subject at first, and then only giving Kris a, “Spain is a beautiful country,” when the man pushes for it.

Kris can tell from the way Zitao’s eyes begin to glaze over as they talk that there’s something more to Zitao than his hapless, charming idiocy. There’s real pain in the other man’s eyes, and Kris can’t help but be curious as to why.

But he has just met Huang Zitao, and doesn’t want to come off rude, so Kris changes the subject instead.

“Would you like me to be your conversation partner?”

Kris was happy to see Zitao for the fourth consecutive day, already shuffling his bag off the reserved chair to allow for the older man to plop down.

They’d slowly begun to get accustomed to one another – Zitao no longer stuttering as much as he had in the beginning, and Kris starting to fall into an informal speech pattern with the surprisingly childlike older man.

As usual, ten minutes in, they’re back in the swing of things again, Zitao doing his best to speak to Kris in slow, heavily-accented Spanish, while Kris sat back and patiently corrected him, occasionally offering up advice to the man who eagerly awaited his feedback.

“No, you need to roll your tongue more, or else it will become a completely different word.  Look at me – perrrro.  Now you try.”

If Kris sounded like a fierce tiger, Zitao just sounded like a tiny mewing kitten.

Zitao frowned in frustration, eyebrows furrowing in concentration as he tried his hardest to roll his tongue in the way Kris had just shown him.  When he finally got it (albeit for barely half a second), he looked up at Kris with elation, one that only grew as Kris got up, stepping to the bar to buy Zitao his daily cup of coffee as a reward.

Zitao received the cup with glowing cheeks, taking it into both of his hands as Kris grinned down at him. 

Kris’ quiet, glowing praise made Zitao want to die.

Two weeks in and Zitao was rolling his Rs like a native speaker.

Kris was a great tutor, and with his help and Zitao’s renewed motivation, his Spanish had been making small improvements.  He was still down to the basics, but he had finally begun to get the sounds of the language down, picking up uniquely Spaniard accent qualities and steadily adding to his growing list of vocabulary every day.

By chance, when Zitao happened to stare down at Kris’ textbook while winding down from laughter, he was surprised to see that it wasn't an education textbook, as he had expected, but a medical textbook.

“You’re… a medical student?”  Zitao said, staring down at the book in shock. 

Kris looked down at his forgotten textbook, one that had been often neglected for hours on end in the two weeks he had spent with Zitao in the café.

“Oh— Yes, I am.  I didn’t tell you already?”

“No!  I just… assumed you were a teacher from how well you’ve been able to teach me Spanish.”

Kris leaned on his fist with a -eating grin.  “You think so?  I’m flattered, Zitao.”

Zitao made a face, turning away from Kris with a slight flush spreading across the bridge of his nose.  “Don’t get cocky now.”

Kris chuckled, pulling back and looking down at his textbook.

“Actually, I’m really happy that you said that.  I always wanted to be a teacher.”

“So, why aren’t you?”

Kris rubbed a hand down the shiny spine of the textbook as he shook his head.  “My parents told me that it’s worthless to pursue something that does not make money.”

Zitao froze.  “…Surely you don’t agree with that.”

Kris cracked a bitter smile.  “Well, actually, I do.  How could I support the way I live now if I could barely make any money as a teacher?”

Zitao frowned, feeling an ugly emotion begin to surge within his chest.  “You’re becoming a medical student, not because you enjoy it, but… to continue to be able to buy clothes and style your hair?”

Kris snorted.  “I’ll have you know that the way I look isn’t easy to maintain on a small budget.  Besides… I need to start thinking about the future – I might as well make as much money as I can now, before I get old and poor.”

Zitao slammed his cup back against the saucer, causing Kris to jump.  When he looked at Zitao, the man was gripping the cup tightly, jaw clenched tight as he stared at the textbook in front of Kris.

“…What about your dreams?”

“…What about my dreams?  I dreamed I was going to be superman.  No matter what I do, that’s not going to happen, is it?” 

Zitao was silent for such an uncomfortably long period of time that Kris felt obligated to fill the silence.  Not knowing what else to say, the student was only able to mechanically recite the phrase that he had come to know so well:  “… Besides, mother and father always told me that money makes the world go round.”

“You think money is what will make you happy in the end?”

Zitao was turning to Kris with an expression so full of bitterness that the younger man could feel it seep into his own mood. 

“When you’re young, you think you’re making an investment for your happiness, selling your soul to the devil for material wealth.”

Zitao felt tears come to his eyes.

“But then in a flash, you’re thirty, with all the money in the world and nothing worth wasting it on.  Somewhere along the way you’ve lost the hope you’ve had as a child and it hurts, because maybe you’ll never get it back.  Have your parents told you that?”

Kris sat in stunned silence at Zitao’s uncharacteristic outburst, only able to speak up a few seconds later.

“… Zitao, I’m not… dismissing your comments, but… I’ve worked hard to come this far.  I’m not going to switch majors now.”

Zitao stood so quickly from his chair that it scraped against the ground, the entire café turning to them in silence as they watched the scene in front of them unfold.

“You fool.”  Zitao says in a biting tone, a tone that would have been scathing if not for the fact that he was crying.  Zitao hurriedly grabbed his coat, stalking out the door in tears.

Kris watched him leave with a hand outstretched toward the door, not quite understanding what had just happened, but heart aching all the same.

What’s wrong, Suho keeps asking him in the days that passed afterwards, when Zitao locked himself in his room, not coming out except for when Suho pleads him to take something to eat.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

But that’s not true, and they can both hear the blatant lie in Zitao’s voice.

Zitao can’t help but replay the scene, over and over in his head, shuddering upon realizing what a fool he must have looked like – an old man shedding tears over something, which, in the end, had been so trivial.

Besides, Kris didn’t need his pity, or his worry, because Zitao could take one look at the man and just know that no matter what the man would end up doing in the future, he would undoubtedly end up rich, with a beautiful wife, with beautiful kids, living in a beautiful home. 

It isn’t Zitao’s place to try to shape Kris’ life in order to make up for what has failed in his own, anyway.

This time, it’s Zitao who buys Kris coffee and not the other way around.

‘La región dorsal del tronco incluye la parte posterior…’

Kris sighed, rubbing his eyes as he struggled to read the text in front of him.

He had been in a strange mood all week, coming to the café expecting something each day, only to leave alone, confused, sometimes even morose.

Where had that idiot gone? 

Was he still angry? 

...What for?

Kris wished he knew what exactly had upset Zitao, just so that he could have been able to find some way of remedying the situation.  Not because he liked the man that much, Kris reassured himself, just that it was impossible to try and focus on his studies without the bumbling idiot at his side, speaking Spanish in a choppy, slurred accent.

Without even realizing it, he’d been staring at the same page in his textbook for almost two hours before he heard the rattling of cups and saucers by his ear and happened to look up.

When he finally realized just who he was looking at, Kris stood up so abruptly that the notebook and pen in his lap fell to the floor, forgotten.  

“Listen, I’m… sorry, I didn’t mean to yell the other day.” 

Zitao pressed the cup forward quietly as a peace offering, looking down at his hands the entire time.

As Zitao began to pull his hand back, a tight hand grabbed his wrist and Zitao looked up, realizing that the other was smiling – small and slow at first – before breaking out into a wide, gummy smile that was just so bright that it made Zitao’s knees wobble beneath the table.

“It’s okay.  It’s okay.  Don’t worry about it.”

Kris leaned back, laughing as he pushed the bangs of his hair out of his face.

“Truthfully, I’m just— I’m just glad you’re back.  I… missed the company.”

Kris had to stop himself for a minute, for some reason feeling such a deep sense of relief that it left him momentarily stunned at the realization.

“I… really did.”

The older man smiled hesitantly at Kris, and Kris found himself holding onto Zitao’s wrist for much longer than he should have.

Zitao found himself waking up every day with a smile on his face, and with real anticipation for the day that lay ahead.

The days passed by too fast, and Zitao spent them all under the sun, walking down picturesque streets with a song on his lips and just one person on his mind.

It had been a long time coming.