“Yes. Have a good day.”
Why won’t he smile at me.
Hyeonho watched the part-timer give a small nod and turn away, and the brief hope he’d held for a little warmth crumbled into something flat and disappointed on his face.
It was nothing, really, but it stung. I’m a paying customer too. Maybe he hadn’t spent enough? He’d paid well over 30,000 won between the cake and the coffee. Not his money, of course — but still.
And then the next day, on his way home from work, Hyeonho passed by Tesoro and stopped dead in his tracks. He stood there, peering in through the glass. The feeling that the boy was specifically unfriendly toward him had been nagging at him in a strangely irritating way.
More than that — the boy had left such a good first impression with how hard he worked that Hyeonho had even thought of him when stress started to pile up.
Maybe he’s just standoffish because I’m not a regular. He didn’t particularly like cake, but the café was close to the station and the coffee was decent — he’d been open to becoming a regular if it came to it. A petty, pointless stubbornness began to simmer. Hyeonho lingered in front of the door for a moment, then pushed it open firmly and walked inside.
“Hello.”
The café was quiet. As Hyeonho took in how unusually empty it felt, he spotted the boy in the corner pulling off rubber gloves with a small bow of his head, and realized the café must be close to closing.
Coming in at the last minute — he’s going to be grumpy. Hyeonho braced himself and studied the boy’s face, but contrary to his expectations, his expression didn’t change much. The boy wiped his damp hands on a dry towel with casual indifference and came to stand at the register.
“Do you go to a university nearby? You’re always here whenever I come.”
“…….”
The downcast gaze made it clear he had no intention of answering.
“The cakes here are really good.”
Hyeonho quickly changed the subject, complimenting cakes he’d never even tasted. Whether the topic shift worked or not, the boy lifted his head and looked directly at Hyeonho. The moment those dark eyes met his head-on, Hyeonho found himself blinking instinctively.
“Cake. Do you like it?”
“……Uh……”
The boy’s question came in suddenly, catching Hyeonho off guard, and he let the word trail.
He hated anything sweet enough to make his tongue tingle. To Hyeonho, cake was the kind of thing you ate out of obligation when someone brought one from a bakery on your birthday — because it would be rude not to. And even then, he’d barely touched it, put off by the heavy, sticky cream.
He stalled for a brief moment, then gave a small nod. Such a tiny lie, and yet it pricked at him somewhere — but he’d done it hoping the boy might recommend a cake to him the way he’d done for those customers yesterday, and maybe get a conversation going that way. The boy raised both eyebrows at his response as if mildly surprised.
“As you can see, we’re sold out of cakes for today.”
The boy tilted his chin toward the display case. It really was completely empty. Since Hyeonho hadn’t been interested in cake to begin with, he simply held out his card.
“Okay. Coffee is fine, right? One iced Americano. To go.”
The boy took his card, processed the payment, handed it back, and gave Hyeonho a once-over as he did.
His gaze felt a little sharp, somehow.
“The cake you bought yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Hyeonho cheerfully replied as he shoved his card and receipt back into his wallet. He was glad the boy had brought it up first. Even more so — the fact that the boy remembered him buying cake yesterday left him quietly pleased. It seemed like the sense that the boy was specifically unfriendly toward him had been a misunderstanding after all.
“It had Earl Grey cream in it. How was it?”
Did it? He’d handed it over to Kim Jaeho still in the packaging, so he could barely even remember what it had looked like. Out of the three cakes the boy had pointed to in order yesterday, he had no idea which one he was referring to. Still, Hyeonho wanted to meet the interest being shown in him.
“It was alright.”
He had no idea what Earl Grey cream even was, but Hyeonho picked an answer that would do. It was vague enough to work both as a comment on the taste and on the ingredient itself. At his response, the boy let out a soft pfft — a small, deflating laugh. Oh. He was finally smiling. Seeing the boy who still hadn’t quite shed his youth smile like that, Hyeonho found himself smiling back without meaning to.
He’d just begun to feel like the atmosphere had eased considerably —
“None of the cakes you bought yesterday had Earl Grey cream in them.”
At the words that followed, Hyeonho felt the corners of his mouth stiffen in an instant.
Knew it. The type who’d even tell a lie just to seem like a good person. Huiwon hated this type of person most. Do Huiwon studied Kang Hyeonho’s face as he failed to hide his flustered expression — tracing it slowly from his brows down to his mouth. It wasn’t unpleasant, watching the face that had been presenting itself as upright and warm, like a model student, begin to crack. Like a mask slipping off.
Do Huiwon had seen Kang Hyeonho before. Twice.
The first time was on the street. He’d spotted him grinning like a loose screw in the middle of a group of rough-looking people, and Huiwon had kept his eye on him, wondering if something dangerous was happening. He’d deliberately walked past the group, and Hyeonho wasn’t exactly small either — and for a dangerous situation, everyone seemed to know each other pretty well. Whatever topic came up, he’d been eager to take it on himself, laughing that easy laugh of his. Just some pushover, Huiwon had thought, clicking his tongue inwardly as he walked on.
The second time he’d stumbled across Hyeonho was on his way home after closing up the shop. Hands stuffed into his pockets against the cold wind, he’d spotted Kang Hyeonho at the edge of the neighborhood, pushing from behind at the cart of an elderly man who collected scrap paper, grunting with the effort.
“Grandfather, be careful. The road’s slippery.”
This isn’t some public service announcement commercial shoot. Huiwon had pulled his hands out of his pockets and pressed one to his forehead, looking around. Was there actually a camera somewhere, or was he putting on a show for someone? On a quiet, deserted road — didn’t seem like it.
“Thank you. Every time, every single time.”
It didn’t seem like it was the first time Hyeonho had helped the old man either. Huiwon narrowed his eyes and watched.
Something twisted in his gut. Having grown up under a father who was better off absent, raised on low-income welfare support, Huiwon had seen more than his share of people who acted kind, acted like they were helping the weak, all while looking out for themselves.
People who’d press a box of Choco Pies into his arms and then snap a photo for their volunteer activity record. People who made their presence known by confirming that their life stood on higher ground than his. People who felt a quiet satisfaction at the sight of themselves helping someone unfortunate.
At the end of it, they’d always draw a line — subtly, but surely. You and I are different. As if they were saviors granting generous mercy to someone like Huiwon.
Repeated disappointments had led Huiwon to revise what he believed: there were no truly good people. Everyone was selfish. Probably, the Hyeonho pushing that cart right now wasn’t doing it for the old man’s sake — he’d simply decided on his own to define the old man as someone weak, and was satisfying his own sense of justice at having helped that weak person.
“Here, take this. Eat it.”
The old man pushed a crinkled bag of Choco Pies out in front of Hyeonho.
“It’s okay. I don’t eat sweets… Please keep them for yourself.”
Hyeonho bent at the waist and gently declined the old man’s gesture. Huiwon watched the two of them for a moment, and then the crumpled Choco Pie wrapper caught his eye, and it brought back a memory of himself as a child — he shook his head and quickened his steps again.
A few days later, Hyeonho came into Huiwon’s café and looked around the cake display case from every angle.
“I can’t make heads or tails of any of these.”
Huiwon covertly stole glances at him from the corner of his eye, recognizing him. Hyeonho stroked his chin and deliberated for a long time before picking three cakes and placing his order.
Even in the brief moment of paying, Kang Hyeonho smiled with those curved eyes as he said his greeting. There were plenty of pleasant customers who came and went, but Hyeonho’s eye-smile seemed almost excessive. Does someone need to be managing their image while ordering a slice of cake at a café. Does he really need everyone to think he’s this nice. You could just act normal. Huiwon gave Hyeonho a quick sidelong glance and turned away.
A few days after that, Hyeonho visited the café again and tried to make conversation by asking for a cake recommendation. Huiwon pointed to three cakes in the display case, one by one, in order. Since the display was arranged by best-sellers, the recommendation itself was perfectly adequate in terms of content.
The way he pointed them out without any further explanation must have looked incredibly unfriendly and halfhearted — but Hyeonho just beamed and said it was fine. Remarkably resilient.
“Annoying.”
Huiwon turned around and muttered the insult at Kang Hyeonho’s back. Maybe it was because he’d gotten under his skin. The way Hyeonho kept stubbornly trying to seem like a good person no matter how unfriendly Huiwon was — it grated on him in a specific, pointed way.
He has no idea why someone would live like that, bending over backwards to look like a decent person.
It would have been perfectly reasonable to stay away after being treated so coldly, but Hyeonho came back the very next day, just before closing, and even put on a show of being interested in cake. Huiwon studied Kang Hyeonho again with a suspicious look.
Does he actually like cake and that’s why he keeps coming? He said he didn’t like sweets though. Maybe he’d declined the Choco Pies from that old man in a roundabout way because he felt bad taking them directly.
