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Seoul

Summer of 2017

Forehead and back damp with beads of perspiration, making her fringes stick to the skin of the former and her white T-shirt to the latter, Kim Hyuna pushed open the frosted glass door of her favorite cafe in the city.

The sudden blast of the coolness from the cafe's air conditioner made her sigh with relief, providing her instant respite from the sweltering heat of the outside world.

Temperatures were at an all time high that summer, proof of which could be found on sweaty faces of the residents of metropolitan Seoul; including Hyuna herself.

Although now her sweat was evaporating due to the cool temperature inside the cafe.

The Elysium was aptly named, she  decided.

Just like it's namesake, the place was a paradise to her, and not merely due to the fact that no other coffee could rival the cafe's.

It was neither the unique interior design of the place, nor the fact that Elysium had a whole wall dedicated to novels, which the customers could read.

Certainly not the fact that Hyuna's brother was friends with the owner, thus making her the recipient of many freebies.

No, it was because of the much welcome blast of cool air which had careesed her sweaty self the moment she stepped inside.

"Paradise indeed." Hyuna wistfully sighed again.

The cafe was neither too crowded nor empty- just the right amount of people enjoying a cup of coffee or two, a cookie here, a sandwich there.

The Elysium was a place where Hyuna could observe others all she wanted and wonder about their lives all the while not coming off as a creepy stalker.

After all, 'people watching', even though an informal leisure activity, was vital especially to Hyuna, given her career choice.

She proceeded to her usual spot by one of the long windows- a table for one; her laptop bag slung over her shoulder which was previously slumped but perked up as soon as her nose caught the alluring and familiar waft of coffee beans, freshly baked bread and brownies, and a unique homely scent she associated with the Elysium.

She loathed summer season very much, so much that she seldom stepped out of her apartment when the scorching sun was up and high in the sky but then again, an exception could and would always be made for coffee.

Moreover, she liked to consume an awful amount of caffeine while working.

Hyuna being a web novel writer worked from home ; which gave her liberty to set up her little workstation (a.k.a her trusty laptop, the victim of all her fingers typing down the words floating in her head) wherever she pleased- which was the first table to the right the moment you enter Elysium.

Besides, surrounded by cups of coffee, some empty and some half filled while she typed away on her laptop, the soft music from the cafe's stereo serving as the background to complete the picture was true elysium on Earth, in Hyuna's opinion.

Seating herself and placing on her laptop in front of her, Hyuna cracked her knuckles and fished out her big glasses from her bag which made her small eyes appear gigantic behind the lenses, placing them on the bridge of her nose which had a light brown splattering of freckles.

As the device to powered on, she got herself a cup of iced latte with two extra shots of vanilla and one shot of chocolate.

One of the cafe workers, a friendly young part timer who took her order recognised her as one of the regulars greeted her with a warm smile which she returned.

The boy looked no older than a high school senior but Hyuna knew that he was a college student, a first year Journalism major from the esteemed Hanguk University. 

Sipping coffee while words flowed out from the tips of her fingers and wove intricate stories from the thread of ideas floating in her mind was Hyuna's profession and true love.

Yet half an hour and two iced lattes later, the microsoft word document on her laptop was still blank.

The black vertical line of her mouse's cursor on the blank document was flashing incessantly every ticking second, mocking her as she stared at the screen, her mind completely and utterly blank.

This seldom happened for Hyuna's pea sized brain was always consumed with stories, had been so ever since she was a kid.

She was infamously known as the daydreamer in her family and close-knit friend circle, for as long as she could remember. Hyuna was the one who had an overactive imagination, the one whose head was always in the clouds.

However, now it seemed as if the blazing hot summer sun had sucked the creative juices out from her aforementioned pea sized brain, rendering it useless for the first time in years.

Groaning in frustration, Hyuna ran a hand through her already messy and terribly curly shoulder length hair, which had long ago broken free from the shackles of the hair tie which she had used to tie those stubborn locks in a messy bun.

She grumbled curses under her breath when her usual to-go cure for writer's block a.k.a people-watching didn't help her in the least because even if the Elysium was neither packed nor empty, no one sparked her interest.

An old grandfather sitting with a newspaper, probably solving the daily crossword as evident from the pencil clutched in his wrinkly hands sure didn't prompt her creative side to return back to normal as did a pair of friends who had obviously skipped school as evident from their uniforms, two brunette heads huddled together in one corner and looking into their phone screens, the duo erupting into giggles every so often.

A woman a few years older than Hyuna donned in a dark grey suit and heels, with a laptop bag similar to the writer's stood at the cafe counter as did another three office workers behind her- all gathered there to buy their daily dose of caffeine, much like Hyuna herself.

Usually when Hyuna looked at strangers going on with their daily lives, it helped her draw inspiration.

It helped her to breathe life into her fictional characters.

However, none of her ways to cure her writer's block seemed to be working. She had already read most of  the paperbacks which lined the cafe's wall and were one of the reason's she loved the Elysium's interior while other ones failed to spark her interest.

 Kim Hyuna had loved to read ever since she learned reading, transitioning from fairytale books to novels as she grew up yet even her most trusty companions in the world, books- even they didn't entice her that day.

Even the stereo of Elysium wasn't cooperating with her mood. Old tunes from the eighties, pop ballads which did nothing to fire up her imagination seemed to be playing on a loop.

"Psst, Park Jihyun."

Hyuna whisper yelled when he passed by her, on his way to deliver a pair of identical looking cold frappes to the two high school girls, beads of condensed droplets already forming on the glass bearing the logo of the cafe, which was coffee beans scattered on a pile of books.

"Yes, do you want another iced latte or should I get you something el–"

He began when he stopped by her table, but she cut him off,

"Is your boss here today?" 

She enquired, knowing well that chances were slim because according to the SNS posts which her brother had posted yesterday. 

Her annoying older-by-one-and-a-half-measly-year brother and his friend had attended a high school reunion the day before and Hyuna knew that they were most probably still hungover.

"When is he ever? You know that my hyung loves to slack off."

 Jihyun rolled his eyes, earning a barely suppressed giggle from Hyuna. 

She had known the aforementioned 'hyung' since forever and thus, knew that Jihyun was merely joking because the owner of Elysium wasn't like that at all. 

He was a hard worker, a diligent person. His personality contrasted her own brother's (and hers) so much that they balanced out each other wonderfully.

Hyuna envied her brother for having a friend like that.

"Don't let him hear you going around saying that." She chuckled, making Jihyun grin. 

"Anyways, " she continued, "if he's not here, can you please change the music? The songs playing right now are a bit..." 

Hyuna trailed off, sinking her teeth on her lower lip to think as to how to frame her words to convey that the pop ballads were simply bullshit. 

Jihyun solemnly shot her a sympathetic knowing look as he sighed,

"Oh, trust me when I say I know. But, hyung has recently developed a taste for them. I swear the heat wave has overheated his nonexistent brain." 

"He has?" Hyuna was a bit surprised as Jihyun nodded.

 Still, she shouldn't have been because she knew he changed his taste in music ever so often. It depended on his mood, which itself was very much erratic. 

Then again, she hadn't visited the Elysium for two weeks and it was probably the longest she hadn't visited the place. 

"I would love to change the song too, but he called a few minutes ago and said that he's on his way. You know how he gets when–"

The chiming of bells over the door of Elysium which signalled the arrival of a new customer made Jihyun stop what he was just about to tell Hyuna. 

He gave her an apologetic smile and went to greet the new arrival who had seated himself a few tables away from her, near the bookshelf.

The customer was tall and young, a black guitar case strapped to his back, earphones dangling in his ears, which also had a flash of silver winking and reflecting the light. 

He looked around Hyuna's age but then again, she could never guess the age of anyone correctly. It was a fatal flaw as she prided herself on being a keen observer.

Sighing to herself, she shifted her attention back to her laptop screen, tapping on the mousepad to turn it from black to the blank white word document with it's darned blinking cursor.

Hyuna decided to distract herself by glancing at her old drafts, ones which were lying in a semi-forgotten folder on her desktop, ones which she had given up on halfway. 

But this too didn't cure her writer's block or provide any inspiration. If anything, it made her more frustrated, especially because of the fact that she had had to give up on them, because she had just too much to deal with or had lost inspiration along the way even though she had the stories all mapped out in her head.

 It made her heart hurt but she reminded herself albeit unsuccessfully that she couldn't do everything, she couldn't write everything. 

You win some, you lose some.

Yet this was all easier said than done, especially because the inner perfectionist (at least for writing stories because apart from that, she was far from a perfectionist. She was clumsy and messy and unapologetically so) inside Hyuna never budged. She made life difficult for Hyuna a lot.

Staring out the glass window of the cafe, Hyuna focused on the sun shining blindingly, not even a speck of white fluffy clouds in sight. 

The sky was cloudless and clear blue, the color one of Hyuna's favorites because it was just so soothing. 

Yet nothing about that day was soothing in her opinion, from the blazing hot ball of gas coruscating proudly, assaulting everyone with its heat; to the ginormous writer's block in the guise of a blank mind, making words which usually flowed from her brain to her fingertips as easily as ABC now refuse to do just that.

"Glaring at the sun won't scare it or make the heat suddenly go away you know."

A sweet voice made her head snap up from where she had lowered it dejectedly in her hands; the angelic voice sweetest and softest she had ever heard in her life, sweeter than even honey, sweeter and softer than even the white whipped cream which she loved to scoop up and lick contentedly, gathering it with her tiny fingers stretching inside a coffee cup or stealing the icing from her brother's birthday cakes when she was a kid. 

Heck, Hyuna did the same till date, just that her chubby little index finger wasn't so little anymore and that she had grown more subtle and sneaky to steal her brother's food.

Hyuna's dark eyes met light colored ones, shades grey and blue along with the occasional hazel brown swirling in their depths; the light colored contacts obviously fighting for dominance with the original dark color.

Those dripping eyes with their soft monolids and dark long lashes broke crinkled at the corners when a grin spread across the face in front of her.

 The eye smile which Hyuna was bestowed with was one which she was quite familiar with.

She knew that strong jawline could make ladies swoon,  and that, coupled with the charm in those eyes behind the contacts was a deadly combination. 

A combination which women could never be immune to.

"Maybe it will. You know that my glares are infamous. They can be quite daunting." Her own peach lips uplifted rebelliously in a reluctant grin.

It had been a while since she had last seen him. A couple of weeks to be precise. 

And true to his eccentric nature, he had changed his hairstyle yet again in that short duration.  They were now dyed light blonde, gold hair fading to brown roots; which was the only indicator that the color wasn't his natural hair color. It contrasted well with the silver dangling from his pierced ears.

The golden color suited him well, but then again everything complimented Park Jimin well. 

And she knew that he was well aware of the fact. This knowledge was evident in the spark in those eyes, in the lilt of his plump lips.

"And don't I know?" He winked playfully at her, making her roll her eyes as she took in his appearance. 

Impeccably dressed as usual even though the clothes he wore were casual but no doubt designer, a blue t-shirt and a dark blue pair of skinny jeans which Hyuna knew he loved and was probably the only piece of clothing he wore more than once in public.

Dragging a nearby chair to her table, more precisely right next to her chair, he plopped down beside her. 

His familiar peaches and oranges scent with a hint of baby powder which she knew he used but still denied aggressively invaded her nostrils. It was one of her favorite scents in the world, but she would never tell him that, lest it would feed on his ego which in her opinion was inflated enough.

"So, what are you up to today, Ms. Writer?" He arched an eyebrow, peering into her laptop screen which she quickly shut.

"What are you up to, Mr. Owner? You're late to work in your own cafe?" She fired back with a smirk, making him remember the massive hangover he was surely sporting and expertly hiding. 

Her words made him scrunch up his nose a little and shake his head, confirming her suspicions that her brother and his best friend must've partied hard like the party animals they were.

"Do you have any iced latte left in your cup?" Jimin asked, but didn't wait for her reply and checked for himself. 

When he was greeted by merely almost-melted ice cubes and not even a little drop of coffee left in the cup, he pouted.

"Surely you can get one for yourself. And I know you don't like lattes. Now please get lost because I am this close to kicking your pretty ass in public." 

"Ah, why the sour mood Hyunie? Still, at least you finally admitted that I have a pretty ass after all these years." 

Jimin bit back a grin as he pushed a stray lock of curl back from falling into her eyes. Her neck heated up even though his touch wasn't unfamiliar.

"What's this I hear that you're into old pop ballads these days?" Hyuna inquired with a grimace, making him perk up. 

But before he could launch into a heated debate about music and his newly acquired taste of lackluster (at least in her opinion, if she put it mildly) songs, Jihyun interrupted them by waving his hands in the air from where the lad stood behind his workstation, gesturing to his boss.

"Your brother is calling you. Go." 

"He can't do anything without me, can he?" Jimin clicked his tongue.

"The poor kid is only in college. At least he's better than you. I remember how you and my brother used to bunk classes all the time back then."

 Hyuna reminded him wryly, making Jimin brush it off by changing the topic to hide his apparent chagrin of his 'wild' youthful days.

"By the way, I recognise that look." He pointed out, making her frown in confusion.

"Yes that frown. That eyebrow scrunch tells me you're annoyed and not only at me," Jimin clarified, making Hyuna let out a defeated sigh.

"It's writer's block?" He guessed and she nodded. After all, Park Jimin knew her as well as her own brother if not more.

"Don't worry. It'll go away when it will go away." As usual, she loved how he didn't downplay or sugarcoat anything so she nodded again.

"Besides," The teasing spark lighted in his eyes again as he said, "I'll help you out by playing out a few more songs from the decade you love so much." 

He knew well enough that Kim Hyuna hated eighties music with a vengeance. 

When she shot him a narrow-eyed glare, he chuckled and held his palms up in a conceding gesture,

"Okay, okay I'll get going then."

After he got up and turned on his heel after one final grin for her, Hyuna decided to get up and check the book sheleves lining one of the walls of the cafe.

She was clinging on that last bit of hope that maybe, just maybe reading a book or two would clear up her clouded mind and fire up the burnt out creativity, even though she had read almost every book in the wooden bookshelf.

It was a last ditch attempt to cure her writer's block.

Examining the books lined up, a wide variety ranging from novels to an occasional children's illustrated storybook and a shelf dedicated to magazines, Hyuna decided to revert back to one of her absolute favorite novels. 

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Just as her hand reached to touch the brown spine of the paperback, she saw another veined hand reach for a the book a couple of books away from the one she wanted, from the shelf above the one which housed A Tale of Two Cities.

It was in the comics section. Hyuna personally didn't really like comics but her brother went through a phase in her late middle school years when he collected and proudly displayed them in the bookshelf both the siblings shared back home. 

She remembered the fights they would get into when she would complain that he was hogging her part of the bookshelf.

The fond old memory made the corners of her lips twitch in a reticent smile.

The Kim siblings shared a sweet and sour relationship, but they loved each other even if they stopped admitting it aloud or declaring their love for each other publically as they stepped into their adolescence.

Shaking her head, Hyuna snapped out of her mini-flashback and instead, her eyes landed on the young man next to her. 

It was the same tall stranger who had entered the cafe earlier, cutting her and Jihyun's conversation short. 

He had apparently laid the guitar which was previously strapped to his back on the chair where he sat; his choice of seat was just a few steps away from the bookshelf.

Maybe he sensed her eyes on him, or maybe Hyuna had been staring at him for longer than deemed polite and stealing sidelong glances while standing there with her hand holding the book she had come for; because his chocolate brown eyes turned to hers, catching her taking in his appearance.

Catching her red handed in the act.

It made her heart jump several times due to the surprise that he actually stared right back. A chagrined flush dusted along her cheeks and neck when his doe eyes locked with hers.

She quickly broke the stare, hurriedly turning away and proceeding to return back to her seat.

 However, in her haste, her inner clumsiness decided to make a much dreaded cameo, making her stumble a little. 

Her two left feet seldom disappointed.

 She twisted her right ankle at a very odd angle, making a pained cry escape her lips.  Embarrassment burned her face red.

 Thankfully no one noticed her ungracefulness and Hyuna internally almost sighed in relief.

Almost.

Because an unfamiliar voice was heard behind her, an "Are you okay?" proving that someone had indeed seen her stumble and twist her ankle.

If Hyuna thought that Jimin's voice was the best she had ever heard, this unfamiliar voice proved her wrong. The tenor was warm like just the autumn sun; a certain velvety softness to it along with a hint of an almost faded Busan accent. 

She turned and saw that the one who had witnessed her mortifying clumsiness was none other than the young man she had been staring from the corner of her eyes.

He was handsome, she observed as she looked at his face but averted her eyes from staring into his chocolate orbs. 

There was an adorable mole under his lower lip, which became pronounced as he rolled his lips, eyebrows scrunching down in a slight frown.

"Are you okay?" He repeated, concern lacing his tone and making her blink rapidly as she mumbled a "Yes, I am fine."

"Sit down here for a moment." He surely wasn't convinced she was fine like she had claimed she was, especially because Hyuna involuntarily winced as she shifted her weight from one leg to another.

"I'm fine, really." She insisted, this time a bit louder but there was no firmness in her statement, and he seemed to pick up the chink in her armour as he politely gestured towards what Hyuna concluded must be the table where he was seated.

So thus, she found herself sitting opposite the handsome stranger, trying to rotate her foot but wincing again when it hurt. 

"Should I ask for ice for your foot?" He inquired, worry swirling in his eyes. 

"This young man is quite polite for a stranger." Hyuna mused under her breath as she shook her head in answer to his question; her words low so that they were inaudible to him.

She focused instead on the guitar case he had now slung behind the chair where he sat, several colorful badges pinned on the case. 

Hyuna had once tried to learn to play the instrument during a brief phase in high school but she had given up after about six lessons, begging her older brother to take her place instead.

"Do you play?" She nodded towards the instrument, internally sighing at the lame question which escaped her lips to fill in the silence which lapsed between the two, one which made him pause as he was reaching for his mobile kept on the table.

"Yes, I do." He flashed her what she could only describe a bashful grin, a little dimple poking his right cheek. Hyuna found her heart flutter at the shy bunny smile.

"Do you play too?"

"No." A chuckle bubbled up her lips as she vigorously shook her head. "I think I simply learnt finger exercises and how to play 'do re mi' before I quit." She revealed, making him laugh.

"I see. I am Jeon Jungkook by the way." 

"Kim Hyuna." She felt her lips return his friendly smile, a fluttery feeling blooming inside her chest, seed of which had been planted the moment she had seen that dimple of his, those brown eyes which had a certain youthful spark to them- a shine not often found in many of the residents of a fast paced city like Seoul. 

Suffice to say, writer's block was pushed to the very back of her mind as she conversed with the enigma that was Jeon Jungkook.