Chapter 2: The Coffee Conspiracy
The rain had stopped, leaving Seoul scrubbed raw and gleaming under a tentative afternoon sun. Inside the café, the air was stale with yesterday’s grounds and lemon-scented cleaner. Soojin was elbow-deep in the pastry case, rearranging macarons into precise color gradients, when the bell chimed.
Her body went still before her mind caught up. That little ping Bora had accused her of. She didn’t turn.
Bora, refilling sugar jars, gasped. A soft, sharp intake of breath that spoke volumes.
Soojin heard the footsteps. Not the rushed clip of a businessman, but a slower, more measured tread. They stopped at the same booth by the window. The vinyl seat gave its familiar sigh.
She finished a row of pistachio green before wiping her hands on her apron and turning around.
He was there. Same booth. Today his hair was dry, a dark, artful mess, and he wore a black cap pulled low. A simple grey t-shirt under an unzipped hoodie. He looked like any other handsome young man trying not to be noticed, which, of course, made him more noticeable. He had a small notebook open on the table and was scribbling with a cheap biro, head down.
“I’ll go,” Bora whispered, vibrating.
“No. You’ll squeak. I’ll go.” Soojin said it more firmly than she felt.
She walked over, her sensible rubber-soled shoes silent on the tile. He didn’t look up as she approached, his hand moving quickly over the paper. Up close, she could see the writing wasn’t Korean. It was English, a tangle of lyrics and half-formed thoughts.
“Black coffee?” she asked, her voice neutral.
His pen stopped. He looked up. The weary shadows were still under his eyes, but his gaze was clearer today, less fogged with exhaustion. He gave a single, small nod. “Please.”
She made it carefully. Measuring the fresh beans, grinding them finer than the manager’s cheap blend required, watching the water temperature on the digital display. She poured it slow, letting it bloom. The result was still bitter—the beans were what they were—but marginally better. She placed the mug before him, the ceramic meeting the wood with a solid thunk.
He glanced at it, then back at his notebook. “Thanks.”
She lingered for a second, watching his poised hand hover over the page. Then she returned to the counter.
Bora was a hawk, eyes glued. “He wrote something. Did you see? In the notebook?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“Everything is my business.”
They watched as he took a sip of the coffee. He didn’t wince this time. He took another, longer pull, then set the mug down and went back to writing. He filled a page, then another. The café filled and emptied around him—a pair of students, a woman with a sleeping baby in a stroller, an old man reading the paper. He became a fixture, a statue with a moving hand.
After an hour, he closed the notebook. He stood, pulled some won from his pocket, and left the exact change on the table. He didn’t look toward the counter as he left, just slid out of the booth and walked into the bright, cool afternoon, his cap shielding his face.
The moment the door clicked shut, Bora pounced. She snatched the mug and plate from the table, her eyes scanning the surface like a forensic investigator. “Nothing. No note. No doodle. How disappointing.” She sounded genuinely put out.
Soojin went over to bus the table. The money was neatly stacked. The notebook was gone. But as she lifted the heavy mug, she saw it. A small, crumpled square of paper torn from the notebook, damp from the condensation of the mug.
Her heart did a stupid, clumsy thump against her ribs.
She palmed it, feeling the fragile pulp of the paper, and walked calmly back to the counter, slipping it into her apron pocket. The faint grease stain from the cinnamon bun she’d given him yesterday bloomed there. A strange connection.
In the quiet lull thirty minutes later, she ducked into the small, mop-closet-sized bathroom. Locking the door, she unfolded the paper.
The handwriting was rushed, jagged, as if written in a single frustrated burst.
‘Tell me how to make it drinkable.’
That was all. No name. No greeting. Just a command, or maybe a plea, masquerading as a question.
She leaned against the sink, staring at her own reflection in the smudged mirror. The paper felt alive in her hand. This was a line being crossed. A direct, private conduit opened between the fantasy on Bora’s phone and the tired man in the alley. She should crumple it. Throw it away. This was complications. This was staring into the sun.
But she thought of his hands, trembling around the mug. The way he’d said ‘It’s easier to just drink the terrible coffee.’
Back at the counter, with Bora busy alphabetizing the tea canisters, Soojin found a pen. On the back of a discarded receipt—‘2 x Americano, 1 x soy latte’—she wrote her reply. Her handwriting was neat, precise, the opposite of his.
‘Water: 96°C. Grind: slightly finer than sand. Ratio: 18g coffee to 300ml water. Steep: 4 minutes. Our beans are cheap and over-roasted. Sorry.’
She folded it into a tight, small square.
The next day, at 2:17 PM, he returned. Same booth. Same order, given with the same quiet nod. This time, Bora was serving a table, so Soojin brought the coffee over. She set it down. As she did, she let her hand brush against the table’s edge, the tiny folded square of paper dropping silently from her palm onto the vinyl seat beside him.
She didn’t wait for a reaction. She walked away.
She didn’t watch him find it. She wiped counters, steamed milk, laughed at something Bora said without hearing it. When she finally allowed herself a glance, the paper was gone from the seat. He was reading it, the receipt unfolded on the table beside his notebook. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. Not the dazzling stage smile. Something smaller. Real.
He took a sip of the coffee, looked directly at the back of her head as she worked the grinder, and gave a slow, considering nod.
Her face grew warm.
He wrote for an hour again. When he left, he placed his used mug right on the edge of the counter where she was stacking clean cups. Underneath it, another scrap of paper.
Bora materialized the second the door closed. “Was that… was that a note? Did he give you a note?”
Soojin slid the paper into her pocket, the ceramic of the mug still warm against her skin. “It’s a tip.” She walked away, feeling Bora’s desperate, curious gaze burning into her back.
In the bathroom, she unfolded it.
‘96° is too hot. Burnt. Try 92°. Grind like sea salt, not sand. Your instructions are bad. But thank you.’
A laugh burst out of her, stifled by her hand. He was criticizing her coffee advice. Arguing about grind size. After everything, this was what he chose to communicate.
She wrote back that night at her tiny apartment, surrounded by her own sketches of city streets and half-finished clay sculptures. She used proper paper, a thick card stock she saved for her art.
‘92° will under-extract cheap beans. Makes it sour. 96° is a compromise. If you want better, go somewhere else. – Your Barista.’
She slipped it into her apron pocket the next morning, a hard little rectangle of potential energy.
He came in at 2:15 PM, as if they’d scheduled it. He saw the determined set of her shoulders behind the counter, the jut of her chin. He didn’t smile, but something sparked in his eyes. A challenge accepted.
This time, he paid at the counter. As she handed him his change, his fingers brushed hers. The note passed from his hand to hers, a sleight of hand perfected in plain sight.
Bora, restocking lids, saw it. Her eyes went wide. She mouthed ‘OH MY GOD’ silently, clutching a handful of plastic lids to her chest.
Soojin ignored her. The note was heavier. She waited until her break, sitting on the metal steps behind the café, the smell of garbage from the dumpster a familiar companion.
It was a page from his notebook. On one side, the English lyrics continued, scratched out and rewritten. On the other, a new message.
‘I don’t want better. I want this. The sour, the burnt, the compromise. It’s honest. Why do you draw on the steamed milk sometimes? I saw you do a leaf for the old man.’
He’d been watching. Not just hiding in his booth, but watching her.
She felt exposed. Seen in a way that had nothing to do with cameras or fansites. It was a different kind of lens.
She didn’t write back that day. She needed to think. To rebuild the walls his simple, questioning notes were disassembling brick by brick.
He came in the following afternoon. She served him his coffee, her movements sharp, her eyes avoiding his. No note was exchanged. He sat for only twenty minutes, his writing slow, distracted. He left looking like he had when he first arrived—draped in a quiet disappointment.
The silence felt louder than any note.
That night, she stared at the page with his lyrics. The words were raw, about ceilings that felt like walls and smiles that tasted like metal. She turned it over. On the clean side, she didn’t write about coffee.
She drew. A simple, clean line sketch of the café’s window, the view distorted by rain. And beneath it, she wrote:
‘I draw on the milk because it disappears. Nothing is permanent. Not even the bad taste.’
She left it for him the next day, tucked under the saucer.
He unfolded it slowly, sitting alone in the afternoon light. He looked at the drawing for a long time. Then he looked at her, and for a full, breathless second, he didn’t look away. He didn’t hide behind politeness or performance. He just looked, his expression open and unbearably weary.
He finished his coffee in one long drink, stood, and walked to the door. He paused, his hand on the handle, and looked back at her once more.
This time, he left nothing behind.
The silence between notes stretched for three days. The booth by the window sat empty during the usual time, its vinyl untouched. Soojin found herself wiping its table more often than necessary, the cloth moving in slow, absent circles.
Bora buzzed with unasked questions, her eyes darting between Soojin’s closed expression and the empty seat. “Maybe his schedule changed,” she ventured on the second day, polishing a spoon to a blinding shine. “Comebacks are brutal. He could be rehearsing eighteen hours a day.”
Soojin just shrugged. She wasn’t waiting. She told herself she was noting an absence, the way one notes a stopped clock.
On the fourth day, the rain returned, a cold drizzle that blurred the neon signs across the street. The café door pushed open against a gust of wet wind, and he was there again, shaking water from his jacket like a dog. He looked worse. Not tired, but hollowed out, the sharp planes of his face standing in stark relief under the amber lights.
He didn’t go to the booth. He walked straight to the counter, his movements carrying a strained, deliberate energy.
Soojin’s pulse thudded in her ears, loud as the espresso grinder.
He placed a hand on the countertop, his fingers tapping a rapid, silent rhythm. “I need a really terrible coffee,” he said, his voice rough. “The worst you have.”
She blinked. “The cheap blend, then. It’s bitter as medicine.”
“Perfect.”
She turned to make it, her hands steady as she measured the over-roasted beans. The routine was a anchor. “Bad day?” she asked, her back to him, feeling the weight of his gaze between her shoulder blades.
A dry, humorless sound escaped him. “You could say that. The manager said my new lyrics lack… commercial appeal.” The words were bitten off. “He said they’re too complex. People want candy, not a three-course meal.”
She finished the pour, the dark liquid swirling. “Maybe people are hungrier than he thinks.” She turned and slid the mug across to him.
He took it, his fingers brushing hers again—a fleeting, electric contact. He didn’t let go of the mug immediately. He just held it, letting the heat seep into his skin, staring at the black surface. “He’s probably right,” he murmured, more to the coffee than to her.
“Do you believe that?”
He looked up then, his eyes holding hers. The hollowed-out look was still there, but something fierce sparked beneath it. “No.”
He took the mug to his booth. This time, he didn’t take out his notebook. He just sat, watching the rain sheet down the window, drinking the awful coffee in slow, deliberate sips.
Soojin busied herself with inventory, counting almond syrup bottles twice. Bora nudged her hip. “He’s staring out the window like his pet just died. Should I go ask for an autograph? For morale?”
“Don’t you dare.”
“You’re no fun.” Bora sighed, then her expression softened. “He looks lonely, Jay. Not famous. Just lonely.”
Soojin knew. She’d known since the first trembling hand around a hot ceramic mug. Knowing it and admitting it to herself were different things.
After half an hour, he stood. He came back to the counter, his mug empty save for a sludge of grounds at the bottom. He set it down with a definitive clink. He seemed to be gathering himself, his jaw tight.
“I don’t have a note today,” he said quietly, so only she could hear over the hiss of the steamer.
“I noticed.”
“I have this instead.” From the pocket of his damp jacket, he pulled a folded sheaf of papers—lyric sheets, covered in his frenetic script and red pen marks. He slid them across the counter. “You critique coffee. Would you… could you look at these? Tell me if they’re just sour and burnt, or if there’s something there.”
She stared at the papers as if they were a live wire. This was different. Notes about water temperature were safe, a shared joke. This was the raw interior, the stuff his manager wanted to sand down and polish into candy.
“I don’t know anything about songwriting,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Good.” A faint, tired smile touched his lips. “You know about honesty. You said so. On the milk.” He pushed the pages an inch closer. “Please.”
The word hung in the air between them, fragile and immense. She looked from his weary, hopeful face to the pages, filled with his private anguish and doubt. Bora was watching from the pastry case, her pretend-work forgotten.
Soojin reached out. Her fingertips touched the edge of the papers, feeling the texture of the ink. She didn’t pull them fully toward her, but she didn’t push them back.
“I’ll read them,” she said finally, the commitment settling in her stomach like a stone. “I can’t promise anything useful.”
The relief that washed over his face was profound, loosening the tension in his shoulders. “Thank you,” he said again, the words thick. He paid for his coffee, hesitated, then turned to leave.
“Jay.”
He stopped, one hand on the door. He hadn’t told her to call him that. She hadn’t asked. It just felt right in the moment.
She held up the lyric sheets. “How do you take your notes? Red pen? Margin scribbles?”
This time, his smile reached his eyes, a slow, genuine unfurling that erased the hollows for a second. “Surprise me.” Then he was gone, swallowed by the grey drizzle.
Bora was at her side instantly. “What. Are. Those.”
“Homework,” Soojin said, carefully folding the pages into her apron pocket, next to the old, grease-stained note about coffee. It felt heavy, a tectonic weight.
That night, under the single lamp in her apartment, she read. The lyrics were a storm—of confinement, of a smile that cracked like porcelain, of singing until his throat bled for an audience that only saw the glitter. They were angry, sad, disjointed, and beautiful. He was right. They weren’t candy.
She picked up a pencil, not a red pen. She didn’t correct anything. Instead, she found a line near the end: ‘The ceiling is a sky of nailed-shut stars.’
Beneath it, on a fresh sheet of her own drawing paper, she made a sketch. Not of a ceiling, but of the café window at night, the rain streaking it, the world outside distorted but full of blurred, beautiful light. She wrote nothing else.
Two days later, he came in. She saw the nerves in him before he was fully through the door, a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. He went straight to the booth.
She brought his coffee over without being asked. She placed the mug down, and beside it, her folded drawing.
He looked at it, then up at her, a question in his eyes. She gave a single, small nod and walked away.
She watched from the counter as he opened it. He studied the drawing for a long, silent minute. His fingers traced the lines of the window frame she’d drawn. Then he flipped the paper over, looking for her critique, her notes.
He found none. Just the visual echo of his own words.
He looked toward the counter, his expression unreadable. Then he turned the paper back over, staring at the drawing again. He pulled out his notebook, placed her drawing beside it, and began to write. Not lyrics this time. A letter.
When he left an hour later, he left the coffee mug, the saucer, and a single folded page on the table.
She didn’t wait for Bora. She walked over and picked it up. It wasn’t his notebook paper. It was thick, her own drawing paper.
It said: ‘The barista is right. Nothing is permanent. Not even this version of me. Can I see you? Not here. Somewhere the ceiling isn’t watching.’
Beneath the words, he had drawn something too. A simple, wobbly circle. A terrible sketch of a cinnamon bun.
Her breath caught. This wasn’t a note. This was a door swinging open. She closed her fingers around the paper, the edges digging into her palm. Outside, the city lights began to flicker on in the dusky haze, each one a nailed-shut star he’d written about, waiting for someone to pry them loose.