“Yes! I’ve got a date next week!”
Donghyeok, a part-timer at Tesoro, shot one arm out and pumped his fist. Lately he’d been sneaking looks at his phone and grinning to himself — it seemed things had finally progressed on the romance front. Hyoseong, the other part-timer, perked up with interest at the sight. The two were the same age and had gotten close quickly while working together.
“What date?”
“Come on. The flowers are in full bloom — how can you just let that pass? When the flowers are out, you date.”
“Shut up. Don’t you know cherry blossoms mean midterms? Go study, you idiot. You’re talking about that girl, aren’t you? The one you met at the library. She’s clearly not interested in you.”
“I was going to set you up with someone if things worked out for me.”
“I fully support your romantic endeavors, brother.”
Huiwon watched the two of them from a comfortable distance, quietly. When they’d both started working around the same time, they’d been a little awkward with each other — but within a few weeks they were clicking like old friends.
‘Wait, you’re the owner?’
Their reactions during the interviews had been similar. So had the other afternoon and weekend part-timers. Huiwon had smiled awkwardly and said, “Baby-faced, right?” All the part-timers he’d hired were one or two years older than him. Donghyeok and Hyoseong standing in front of him were also a year older.
Huiwon was watching the ordinary conversation people his age had when he opened the showcase and started rearranging the cakes. He was filling in the gaps and taking stock of what was running low when Donghyeok and Hyoseong drifted over.
“Leave stuff like this to us.”
“No, I was just checking to see what else I should make……”
It wasn’t exactly hard work anyway. Huiwon said he was more or less done tidying, closed the showcase door, and straightened up. Donghyeok and Hyoseong smiled warmly at him. Huiwon smiled back awkwardly and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Huiwon always found it difficult to know how to act around the part-timers. There was that nagging feeling of concealing his age, and on top of that, building rapport with people was like a daunting assignment for Huiwon.
“Hey, do you ever go on dates?”
Donghyeok asked Huiwon with a casual, probing look.
“No girlfriend.”
Huiwon shook his head. Hyoseong elbowed Donghyeok in the side and scolded him for being oblivious.
“College students must be busy. Dating, studying……”
“You’re way busier than us. You’re at the café every single day. No days off either.”
That’s true. Donghyeok nodded, rubbing his side where the elbow had landed. Making cakes is my day off. Huiwon had nothing to do on his days off anyway, didn’t want to be cooped up alone in his tiny room, and needed to keep making money. More than anything, the hours he spent making cakes without a stray thought in his head were the best hours of his day.
“If you ever feel like getting some air, you should try this place. Apparently it’s really popular right now.”
Donghyeok quickly opened his phone’s photo gallery and flicked through pictures with his thumb. Huiwon wasn’t particularly interested, but out of consideration for the effort of being shown, he looked over at the gallery. Donghyeok seemed to be putting a lot of thought into the date — there was a long string of screenshots. True to his words about dating while the flowers were out, most were photos of nearby flower spots.
“Lots of flower photos.”
“I’m not usually into that kind of thing, but weirdly, when flowers bloom along the main road, I kind of float too.”
“Same. When I’m walking and I see cherry blossoms, I just slow down for no reason.”
Really? I thought you were too emotionally dead to feel something like that. Donghyeok and Hyoseong bickered and giggled again. Huiwon stared quietly at Donghyeok’s photos and thought of the street he’d walked down with Kang Hyeonho a few days ago. Even along that short stretch, people had been swarming to see the flowers.
“Ah…… You two can manage the counter, right? I’m going to go bake some cakes. It’ll probably take a while, so call me if it gets busy.”
Huiwon did a quick sweep of the shop floor, then went straight into the workroom, pulled out the flower photos Hyeonho had sent him and his sketchbook, and started sketching. On the side, he jotted down every ingredient that came to mind.
Huiwon focused so intensely that he couldn’t even register the small noises around him.
In between, he paused the sketching, baked replacements for the existing lineup, occasionally helped out on the floor — but his mind was busily working away at the shapeless cake taking form in his head. Like a heat haze, something kept hovering just at the edge of appearing.
Huiwon stayed holed up in the workroom long after closing, working late into the night.
The next day, he was back early in the morning — baking cakes and picking up where he’d left off on yesterday’s concept. For the first time in a while, Huiwon’s eyes were bright. There wasn’t a trace of fatigue to be found.
He kept baking, stirring, mixing, tasting, discarding. Except for the hours spent on the floor, same as the day before, he skipped lunch and stayed shut inside the workroom. Time passed quickly, Tesoro’s business hours ended, and when another two or three hours had gone by with him once again locked in the workroom — three finished cakes stood in a row in front of Huiwon.
Huiwon looked over the three distinct cakes one by one and let a satisfied expression settle on his face. He’d gone the whole day without eating, but the fulfillment left him feeling full. He took photos of the cakes from several angles, then sent a message to Choi Dogyeong first.
— These are the spring new items.
He sent the photos one by one, then added an explanation.
— In order, they’re inspired by magnolia, cherry blossom, and forsythia. The magnolia one is decorated with vanilla mousse made with natural vanilla bean and white chocolate. The pink on the cherry blossom cake is raspberry compote — the decoration is popcorn coated in pink chocolate and white chocolate, with just some of it placed on top. I wanted it to feel like flower buds. The forsythia one…… mango felt too common, so I used kabocha squash and cream cheese for the filling. The target is customers looking for a less-sweet cake or something to give as a gift for adults. What do you think?
Did I ramble too much. Huiwon was rereading the message he’d just sent when the “1” in front of it disappeared. It took a while for Dogyeong to reply — he seemed to be going through the content carefully.
Huiwon couldn’t hide how nervous he felt. It was as if he could actually hear his own heart thumping.
[Curious about the taste.]
Just like Donghyeok had done the morning before, Huiwon clenched his fist and stretched it above his head. Yes.
[Come by the café?]
Do Huiwon. Hyeonho checked the message while stuffing a streusel bun into his mouth. Just say let’s have dinner — what’s with the way he words things.
Hyeonho kept his eyes fixed on the phone screen and took a long pull from the banana milk sitting beside him, pushing past the dryness in his throat.
— I’ll come if I’m done before 8.
That morning, the members of Team 2 had been strutting around the precinct with their chests puffed out. They’d deliberately stood in the hallway speaking loudly — “This case was really rough,” “Hey, good work, you worked hard,” “The chief said to get dinner ready” — and if you were a cop, you knew exactly why. To show off their results.
Having cleanly solved a case that had been drawing media attention, Team 2 was in full celebration mode. Even so, they could at least keep it modest and go make noise in their own office — Hyeonho was quietly seething at Team 2’s insufferable attitude, when sure enough, the team leader, whose mood had soured, slammed his fists down on the desk.
“I can’t hold my head up! I’ve been bowing it so long my neck won’t straighten out, my neck. What are we doing? Still no progress? Slow as turtles. And you call yourselves detectives from the Violent Crimes Unit? What are you even getting paid for? Huh?”
As the team leader’s voice steadily rose, Team 1 grimaced and scattered in different directions. That was also why Kang Hyeonho was currently having bread and milk for lunch.
“This is all the CCTV footage from that day.”
“When does the part-timer who was working that day come in?”
The PC bang owner’s shoulders kept hunching inward despite knowing they were police, flanked as he was by two towering men each close to 190 centimeters.
“The thing is, he quit not long ago.”
“We’d like to ask you a few simple questions — would you be able to connect us by phone?”
Hyeonho asked pleasantly, and the PC bang owner — whose discomfort was plain to see — promptly pulled out his phone and nodded. The owner glanced back and forth between Hyeonho and Jaeho while the call was ringing, then shook his head — no answer. He figured that since they hadn’t been in touch for a while, the kid probably thought he was calling to ask him to cover a shift and was avoiding it.
“Then could you send him a message? We’ll come back tomorrow, so just ask him to set aside some time.”
They needed to show him the suspect’s photo and ask if he remembered seeing them come in and if there was anything notable — so seeing the part-timer in person was the best option. At the mention of coming back tomorrow, the owner’s face fell, but Kang Hyeonho and Kim Jaeho left him behind and headed side by side to the next location.
The last time the suspect had appeared on CCTV was at 2 a.m., so they worked through the motels, jjimjilbang, and restaurants that operated around that time — but nothing came of it. Everyone just peered at the suspect photo with vague, uncertain expressions.
One restaurant owner grumbled that police coming in and out gave the neighborhood a bad reputation, eyed Hyeonho and Jaeho with clear disapproval — and then turned around and pestered them with questions about who they were looking for and whether there’d been a murder. With him as their last stop, Hyeonho and Jaeho finally caught their breath on a dim roadside.
