평온

Yet another sigh slipped past her lips. Her chin was now resting over a small mountain of books she had built from her reference manuals, while one was open on her head, creating a pointed hat of some sorts. She had written multiple messages to her friend and yet, no response had been sent back to her, and a full minute had already passed by. Maybe Juni was simply busy? And yet, she knew from her brief comments about Seoul that the Japanese woman hadn’t exactly spent that much time out of her home, unless it was to head to the tea shop or to purchase her groceries. So, Boa thought, that it was perfectly fair of her to assume that she was home alone. 

Then what could possibly explain this unresponsiveness? Was she doing this deliberately? Was she ignoring her on purpose? Was this how she viewed their friendship? Something one-sided that had been forced upon her? Did the shop owner truly feel obliged to share her number with this over-bearing client? Was that flurry of texts just that very proof of her being way too pushy? 

No. Boa wasn’t allowed to force such a character onto Juni. If anything, even though she had sent an apology in one of her messages for the sudden intrusion, the massive activity pouring into her friend’s phone probably left her even more speechless than her muteness made her unable to speak. 

Suddenly, the long-awaited – no more than five minutes – response made it through her cell, making it vibrate and causing Boa to jump lightly. Lost in her messy thoughts, she had to physically attempt to scatter them away by shaking her head vigorously. There was some sort of anxiousness building up right in the instant leading up to reading the sent message. 

However, it crumbled at the speed of light when the preview of the message was enough for her to read its entirety. She had been sent a single lonely word. Boa really had no clue as to what she could’ve expected more from Juni. Overwhelming excitement wasn’t a reaction known to her. 

A simple smile adorned her lips and she chuckled lightly, but just enough to make her book-hat fall to the ground. A side glance to her fallen ally confirmed that the pages hadn’t been damaged and her irises went back to the pink background. 

[text sent to Juni-Tea]: Cool! Do you want to make one now? I can meet you in front of your shop! 

[text sent to Juni-Tea]: Or tomorrow? It’s like 9:36PM…

          It was very unusual. To have someone contacting you out of office hours, to have another person to interact with other than your adoptive parents on the phone. Her contact list was rather small, minuscule even. She didn’t see anything wrong about having barely five numbers saved on her device.

          It was worrisome to her mother though. Every day, without fail, she would advise her to go out more often than just for work. Shopping for the bare necessities didn’t seem to count as an outing. A stroll on her own didn’t pass either. Juni must be accompanied or else it was pointless.

          She understood, somehow. Her mother feared for loneliness to devour her whole. Her lack of human interactions would handicap her in the future. Already, her current condition wasn’t the greatest. But did the petite female care? Not really. Why? She wouldn’t know better than the treatment she received so far. Everything became a routine, a pattern that ensued serenity.

          Nonetheless, her small universe required its barriers to shed in order to welcome novelty. A new country, a new environment and new people. Boa was among the ones she met frequently at the store and surely the first to message her. A pleasant surprise, it would probably be what her mom would define it. However, the disagreement expressed on her daughter’s face, panic slowly draining the color from her skin, definitely said otherwise.

          Was her answer decent? Lengthwise, it was questionable. Juni wouldn’t know any better. If she didn’t answer on time, it would be even worse. She did reply to her question. Although the idea of spending time outside with someone with a purpose other than purely business frightened her. The tea shop owner remained hidden underneath her blanket for a while longer, unable to peek out even once to check her phone.

          No, no and no! Why did she have to endure the agony of waiting? She must have messed up. She should have given a better reply. What could have been a better reply? Besides, she didn’t refuse the proposition, so it was a good thing, right? Did she make her wait for too long? Did she go to sleep? If that was the case, Juni wouldn’t be able to… not until she was certain she didn’t fail miserably.

          An inaudible noise came along her jump when the phone signaled a new set of messaged sent to her. With shaky fingers, she tapped away her reply.

The employee turned away from him to attend to his other tasks, leaving Taehyung to resume scrutinizing the interior decoration from a client’s point of view. The man that just finished speaking to him punctuated his last statement with a nod towards a door seemingly leading to their storage room. He concluded the woman he was inquiring about was probably behind that very door, but how the employee knew she’d walk out the door without having alerted her of his presence was an interesting question. 

9:00PM came around soon after, and, as it was predicted, Juni made an appearance, immediately noticing his own presence on the other side of the counter. 

And then, she stared. And he stared back at her, withstanding the weight of her curiosity. 

Taehyung didn’t pay attention as to how long this exchange of gazes lasted, nor how many times the other employees looked confusingly at the pair. The way she looked at him with a ridiculous amount of brightness in her eyes should’ve thrown him off guard. But she adverted her eyes from his first, and he followed them to look at a tablet, most likely to be the one used for communication purposes. 

That was his cue to start putting up his act of ignorance. After all, he was just a man who had been told by a friend that a baking partnership would be an opportunity to pursue. He wasn’t a man who knew far too much about a woman. 

Once the words she had written to him had been read, his eyes made their way from her writing to her face, and then back, and up again. “Huh,” Taehyung simply huffed out, as if he realized something crucial. 

“When Boa noona explained why she’d been asking me so many recipes, she failed to mention my potential partner– like partnership partner, not partner partner, was mute. Not that it’s a problem, really. It suits your whole cutie drinking and selling tea image.” 

          It seemed like she wasn’t the only one to stand out in their own way. The male’s big ears became an aspect of importance, so much that she judged irrelevant his identity and his purpose for entering her tea shop.

          Were his ears always that big? Was his hair dyed? Juni wouldn’t encounter many with colorful hair or unique facial features. Then again, when did she have the courage to get out of her several hiding places? Not so often.

          Monkey. That word repeated on its own in her mind. He was a monkey, a humanoid one. Many names caught her attention, preventing her from returning to reality. Would a Pokemon describe him more? Or maybe should she look further in the Disney movies? King Louie? No. Flunkey might be a good match— No, he was a small monkey. This young man was taller than her. Ah, but monkeys are usually smaller than her. Perhaps one that isn’t so tiny would do the trick—a colorful one, maybe?

          Ah—

          Great, she trailed off again. How long had it been? Did she make him wait for too long? Her introduction happened a while ago. Surely, her incompetence must have stood out when she daydreamed. Her posture shrunk a bit, her shoulders stiff and her eyes wide open.

          Her hands held the tablet firmly. Her thoughts possibly obstructed the flow of information she needed to pay attention to, but they didn’t completely. Juni the cutie? That was a first. Was that a compliment even? Why would a stranger say such a thing? Was it a good sign? A bad one? How was she even supposed to answer to that? Did she need to thank him? It would be impolite to not react…

          ❛ Boa-ssi? ❜ The name appeared abruptly in front of him, her move miscalculated since she stretched her arms too far. Juni almost hit him even. ❛ Your recipes? Ah… the cakes are delicious. Thank you. ❜

The tea shop Boa noona told him about was modest in every sense of the word. It had this traditional vibe to it, like it came straight from Japan. The exterior wasn’t extravagant and, as he stepped inside the small establishment, his eyes canvased his surroundings, taking in the just as simple interior design. It looked nothing like the big chains à la Starbucks. It was probably its uniqueness that attracted people’s attention, slowly becoming more and more popular. Some of its clientele was also part of the crowd that used to hang around the previous owner’s coffee shop.

Of course, Taehyung already knew all of this from looking into the shop’s history, its current owner’s and its previous one.

And also from stalking Juni. But the hunter preferred calling it surveillance. After all, it was what made him good at what he was doing now and then. Plus, he didn’t like people that tend to have their nose in his stuff. This woman was far from that type of person.

          Confined within four little walls and stacks of unopened merchandise coming from various countries notorious for their tea leaves and loyalty towards the company, Juni ensured to exit the storage room unharmed. Not just herself, but the stocks as well. She only brought her tablet on top of a box containing the necessities. A few shelves needed to be filled before the shop’s closure. An hour remained. One painfully unwanted hour, its countdown already started with every step she made.

[text sent to Juni-Tea]: My tattoo artist jokingly wrote to me saying that I should bake twenty cakes for him and his twin sister.

The fingers tapping on the cellphone stopped forming sentences to hover over the single button on the well-lit screen that would be able to send the message’s content to the intended contact. Juni-Tea. Boa smiled because this was the first message she was sending to the tea shop owner and because she had found a suitable nickname to store her in her phone. The screen momentarily passed from its current state to its black and locked self before its owner beckoned it awake once more by swiping her password over a background of Bee and Puppycat.

[text sent to Juni-Tea]: I don’t think he believes that I can cook nor that I can bake twenty different cakes.

The woman felt that, instead of waiting for her friend to respond, she’d send a flurry of messages to explain the goal she needed to accomplish within the next 20 weeks. She also felt that baking a cake every week was a reasonable project, but also, that if she was making herself bake 20 cakes, that she could do it with someone to accompany her throughout the whole project.

          She had only grown in an isolated environment, overprotected, underestimated, but that wouldn’t really matter. Her limited knowledge was her only defense after all.

          A faint cloud of smoke arose from the warm tea she had made after another stressful day at work. Over a year passed and still, Juni had many unresolved fears and doubts, all of them being unnecessary or even ridiculous to anyone’s eyes. Even with a routine, she reminded unsettled, often locked in the storage room rather than in the shop.

          But it was all over now. The rest of the night would be spent with her stuffed Totoro on her lap and her cup of tea nearby, all curled up in a blanket, as she resumed her marathon of Card Captor Sakura.

Time passed by slowly at the laundromat, but 3DS games and books helped her ease herself in the uncomfortable benches. But within the first three days of boxes and boredom, she had already read through the three Hunger Games and grieved quite enough over how the series had ended. The library was the second logical place to visit because, if she knew something about herself, it was that she could grow increasingly bored over the course of a few hours.

Oh Boa knew it was a mistake. Putting herself in a library would prompt her to borrow an exorbitant amount of Korean books. Usually, more than half would feed her guilty pleasure and the rest for developing her knowledge of Korean culture and idioms. But with her washing machine finally installed, she needed a new place to hang out at.

She found solace in background noise when reading. Despite people discussing about their troubles, her brain would shut it all out to concentrate on the worlds taking shape in her mind. Coffee shops had been her go-to back in Canada and France, but she was now in Asia, where tea shops would be at their most authentic.

It took a little while to find this sweet little haven with Juni at its helm. After the first raised eyebrow at the owner’s silence, she found out that conversations were just as pleasant when they could connect through pixelated words and rapid napkin scribbling. However, she noticed that even if these were the only times where she would require to communicate through writing, she had more confidence in her words than the younger woman, who hesitated a lot in the choosing of her sentences.

Once again, her swift pen glided across a napkin she picked up near the cash register. ‘Good evening, Juni. It’s the end of a long week for me. How about you?’

          People wouldn’t be so welcomed and helpful to someone like her, her adoptive father would shout in irritation as his patience grew thin. The few words she meant to say were left obstructing her vocal chords. Rarely were they used and whenever there was an occasion to do otherwise, her nerves would always kick in. Ah yes, people wouldn’t be so keen to her need for time when even her second parental figure couldn’t stand investing some to his mute daughter.

          People wouldn’t be so understanding to her limits and exceptions, she was reminded through a phone call as she was settling the merchandise in the tea shop with employees constantly staring at her, waiting for a word to be uttered. Alas, her lips were sealed despite sounds being made here and there. Staying mute became her bypass to the cruel world she decided to face alone.