~Part Two~

The café is tiny and homely, the pleasant smell of pastries and coffee lingering in the air. Music is playing softly in the background, it may be acoustic or jazz, Hyukjae never differentiates music genres well. Its interior is decorated with pastel blue walls, with soft light litting the whole place, giving off a cosy and warm ambience.

Hyukjae takes in a deep breath, inhaling the smells around him. The feeling of guilt from earlier that has been eating him up is gone in an instant and Hyukjae feels himself slowly relaxing. He longer feels so frustrated and glad that he made the right decision in coming here. He looks around for a seat and finds a small round table at the back. Not many people were in the café at the moment, probably because of the never ending rain.

He settles himself down, putting his briefcase and slightly wet umbrella on a chair before picking up the menu. The pictures of the pastries on the menu all look mouth-watering to him, probably because he hasn’t eaten a bite since morning. Finally, Hyukjae settles on a strawberry flavoured cream puff and a cup of cappuccino, he’s ready to order.

He sees a waiter who is currently backfacing him, clearing some cups from a few tables away.

“Excuse me? Can you take my order please?”

“Alright, coming! Give me a minute, Sir!”

The waiter proceeds to balance the cups and plates on both his hands skilfully and disappears behind the counter. Hyukjae decides to take a minute to admire the rain while waiting for the waiter to appear. A few minutes later, he hears swift footsteps and looks up.

“Sir, what can I….”

.

.

.

.

Those soft brown eyes.

The same pair of brown eyes that Hyukjae thought he had forgotten about.

They both look at each other, stumped. Suddenly, Hyukjae forgets what he is supposed to order or why he is even here in the first place. They stare at each other for like eternity, until a ringtone from far resonates. Hyukjae is the first one to recover and realizes he had held his breath unknowingly. He starts to remember he is supposed to be ordering, and not stare at the same man who had blatantly stared at him a week ago.

“Uhm yeah, I would like to order a strawberry flavoured cream puff and a cappuccino pls.”

The waiter blinks once, twice before seemingly recovering from his trance.

“Oh right! I’ll get them for you instantly!”

He then turns and clumsily knocks into a few tables in the process. Hyukjae looks on in amusement as he tries hard to stifle a laugh. Cute.

Oh wait, he did not just think that. Hyukjae shakes his head as if to shake away his previous thoughts. A while later, the waiter returns with the pastry and coffee he had ordered, hastily placing them in front of Hyukjae.

“Enjoy, Sir!” The adorable flustered waiter squeaks before trying to leave hurriedly.

“I recognise you.”

It has been a normal day for Donghae, as he busies himself in the café like no other day. Business had been slow though, mainly because of the rain. Donghae has always been a rain lover, he fancies reading a book snuggled in his warm bed on a rainy day the most. He also loves walking in the rain and the feeling of raindrops pelting down on him is exhilarating. In short, Donghae loves the rain.

He had been clearing some dirty plates and cups when he heard someone call out to him. Never did it cross his mind that he is that someone. That is because the man has never stepped foot into the café personally before. Donghae surely had not expected this, today definitely is everything but normal.

He was a nervous wreck and surely had made a fool out of himself. This is not what he wants the other man’s impression of him to be. His usually intelligent mind simply shuts down by himself so when Donghae hears him saying “I recognise you.” His whole body freezes. His mind shuts down completely. His whole world stops.

“Hey. Are you okay?” his concerned voice snaps Donghae out of his daze.

“I’m …fine, I’m fine.” Stupid mouth, stupid heart.

“If you say so.”

Donghae dares himself to look up at the other man and finds him smirking ily at him. His heart starts to race and his palms are sweating profusely. Donghae decides the best way out is to escape, escape from the other man who is currently sporting an amused expression.

“I will..I’ll be going!”

“Wait! You are going to just leave?”

The other man looks unbelievingly at Donghae and he knows there is no way out. Donghae secretly takes in a breath and braces himself for what happens next.

“Er, I don’t think I should stay?”

“Well I recall someone with brown eyes boring deep holes in my face a week ago. I wonder why he was staring so blatantly at me. What do you think?”

Now he was definitely mocking Donghae.

“I…I just..… Look, I’m sorry! I’m sorry for staring at you, I totally did not mean to do that!”

“Is that the best you can come up with?”

“Huh?” Donghae answered rather unintelligently.

Hyukjae sighs inwardly, this guy is definitely dumb or a hard nut to crack. He personally prefers the latter. Now that he is looking at the other man up close, Hyukjae realises he has big expressive eyes, a cute nose, a pair of thin pink lips and soft black hair. The man is not very tall, perhaps slightly shorter than him but he looks toned, especially those arms. What in the world did he just think?!

Hyukjae gestures for the other to take a seat and the other man hesitates for a while before sitting down timidly. Hyukjae notices suspicious pinkish hues on the man’s cheeks. At the same time, Hyukjae finally notices the name tag on his uniform.

“Dong..hae?”

At the mention of his name, Donghae looks up and blinks.

“Your name. Donghae, right?”

The said man simply blinks and stares, before realizing he had been asked a question.

“Oh yes! Yes, I’m Donghae!”

“Ok, Donghae. I’m curious as to why you stared at me with those eyes that day.”

Hyukjae knows clearly the blunt question definitely will make Donghae even more flustered but he does not care, he just wants to find out why and perhaps know more about this cutie. Did he just admit it inwardly?!

Donghae’s shoulders slump and he starts playing with his fingers nervously. Hyukjae thought he will never answer but then-

“For starters, I have always seen your driver come here to buy coffee which I supposed it is for you, while you wait in the car. Your car looks really expensive, but that’s not the point! I always see you in the car reading god knows what but you look busy and you look so serious every single time. You frown a lot too. Oh and your hair! Your red hair is what attracted my attention! For someone looking so serious, I can never imagine you to have such striking hair colour! Your eyes though, they look too cold. There was once I saw you look at me and I nearly died of shock because man, your eyes look devoid of emotions. But then, you simply looked away, so I knew you did not catch me staring. That day outside the building, I totally did not expect to see you there. I guess my habit of staring at you stuck haha..”

Hyukjae is stunned. To be honest, he is more than stunned. Shocked beyond words may be the right description of what he is feeling right now.

An awkward silence surrounds the both of them as Hyukjae tries to process the information he has just received and Donghae finally realizes he spoke a tad too much. A few minutes later however, Hyukjae’s body starts shaking and Donghae looks confusedly at the other man. Then he realizes Hyukjae is shaking with laughter which said man failing to hold in, until the dam breaks and Hyukjae is laughing so loudly, attracting attention from the few customers around.

Once the laughter dies down gradually, Donghae is sure his face is as red as a tomato right now. He regrets every single word he had uttered but he cannot help it. Donghae always has a bad habit of blabbering non-stop when he gets carried away and this habit tends to show only in front of his family and close friends. So, he does not get why he had chosen to show it in front of a man he did not even know, who happens to be the same man he is attracted to.

Donghae sees the amused glint in Hyukjae’s eyes though. It also hits him that he just made the all-along-seemingly-too-serious Hyukjae laugh that hard. Suddenly, his embarrassment dissipates. Giddiness replaced it and Donghae starts to grin rather stupidly to himself, he just made the other man laugh and it is all because of him!

“You are laughing.” Donghae cannot help but exclaim his surprise.

This time round, Hyukjae is the embarrassed one. He realizes he had just smiled so widely that his eye wrinkles and gums were showing. God, he must have looked ridiculous and ugly.

Hyukjae tries masking his embarrassment by pretending to be busily drinking his half warm cappuccino.

“You look beautiful doing that and your laughter is so cute! I would like to see that again.”

The simple comment made Hyukjae splutter some coffee out in surprise. It also made him feel just a little bit special. No one had told him that before. He’s pretty sure his ears are red now, they turn red whenever he gets embarrassed.

“I’m flattered? No one told me that before.” his voice was so small that Donghae nearly thought he was imagining it.

Donghae gave such a carefree and breath-taking smile before replying, “I’m the first one to do the honour then!”

Hyukjae just realises that perhaps today is not so bad after all.

Perhaps because of someone by the name of Donghae.

~

A/N: So.......... they meet in this chappie! I hope this wasn't boring, I tried to make it interesting ;;;;^^ Just to clarify, I realised I did not mention how long before they met again in my first chapter, it was one week ago and Hyukjae meets Donghae again in the café. The horizontal lines in between the paragraphs actually refers to the POV of Hyukjae and Donghae respectively, hope you guys had realized it XD Do tell me if things are confusing, I will be glad to explain! ^^ Comments are greatly appreciated! :D See you in the next one then! :))