Business as Usual
A weekday morning—not yet the rush, but hardly idle either. Office workers dropped in for a cup of coffee on their way to work, neighborhood residents stopped by after finishing their walks, and the regulars settled into the same seats at the same times as always. This was how each day at Cafe Fluffy began.
Now that I was the manager, only the job title had changed; the work itself was barely different. I took orders. I brewed coffee. I washed dishes and checked the inventory in whatever gaps I could find.
There was, however, one thing that had changed: there was a little more I needed to keep on top of now.
All the little things the owners had handled without a second thought now fell to me to decide. When to order more milk. How much stock remained. How today's sales were looking. And whether Yoo Harin had done the bookkeeping properly.
...That last one is what worries me the most.
For the record, the person in question still hadn't shown up for work.
She is so dead.
I was in the middle of mentally chewing Harin out yet again when—
"Young man!"
I turned at the familiar voice. It was Uncle Kim, who stopped by every single morning after his walk.
"Good morning," I said.
"So I hear they've gone and made you the manager?"
"Word really does travel fast around here, huh?"
"Heheh. Everyone in this neighborhood already knows, son."
Grandmother Park, reading a book at the next table over, chimed in with a smile.
"I hear the owners up and moved to the countryside?"
"Yes. They said it was about time they got some rest."
"They ran it a good long while, they did."
On both of their faces, wistfulness and warm encouragement sat side by side.
"Still, long as we've got you here, young man, there's nothin' to worry our heads over."
"...Thank you."
Those words landed on me more heavily than I'd expected.
This cafe was never just a place that sold people coffee. For some, it was where their day began; for others, where it wound down. And for me, it was a place layered with memories—where my precious everyday life had taken root.
Having agreed to take it over, then, the choice was obvious.
I couldn't exactly let the place fall apart on my watch.
I was still turning that over when—
Ding-a-ling~
The door opened again. A woman came in with familiar steps, a large box cradled in both arms. Long, deep-blue hair spilled loose over her shoulders as she smiled brightly. Kang Seoyoon, who ran the bakery in the same building as the cafe.
Every baked good the cafe served—cookies, bagels, bread—came from her shop. She was a noona a few years older than me, but she was so naturally easygoing with people that there'd been almost no distance between us from the day we met.
"Good morning~"
"Hello, Seoyoon."
"Brought this week's delivery~"
As she lowered the box onto the counter, Seoyoon flashed a playful smile.
"So what am I supposed to call you now—'Manager,' maybe, instead of part-timer?"
"...Just call me the same as always. Please."
"Hehe, and here I was rather looking forward to that."
Her eyes curved into a gentle smile.
"Looks like I'll be seeing plenty of you from now on~"
"I suppose you will."
Back when the owners were still around, a delivery meant nothing more than a quick greeting in passing. From now on, though, I'd be receiving them myself and talking through whatever the cafe needed. Like it or not, her face was about to become a much more regular fixture in my days.
"Well then, I'm counting on you going forward, Manager."
Somehow, I had a very distinct premonition that this woman would be leading me around by the nose for the foreseeable future.
And so the morning rush came and went. I was in the middle of my lunch when—
Ding-a-ling~
The door flew open and someone came barreling in, gasping for air. Hair a tangled mess, sweat beading across her forehead—judging by the heaving of her chest, she'd sprinted here at full tilt.
"..."
"Yoo Harin."
"......Sorry."
Harin apologized with her head bowed deep.
Had I been angry? Honestly, yes—there was no denying that. But she'd been handed the owner's position out of nowhere; the pressure on her must have been enormous. I figured she probably hadn't been sleeping properly, either.
...Right. If she'd simply overslept, I had fully intended to let it slide.
"If you'd genuinely just slept through your alarm, I was ready to go easy on you."
"Yeah..."
"So then, what exactly am I supposed to make of this match history?"
I held my phone screen up in front of Harin's face. Nine games, recorded in proud defiance on a Rel match-tracking site.
"You were already short on sleep, and you played nine games last night?"
"No... that was...!"
"Are you talking back to me right now?"
"...No, I'm sor—"
"Politer."
"What the—!"
"Even politer."
"......Yessir."
To be fair, I wasn't actually all that furious. I knew this girl's habits—stress hit, and the game was on before she'd even thought about it. But.
This was the same girl who normally strutted around teasing me, now shriveled up and cringing before me.
How could I possibly pass this up?
Opportunities like this didn't come often. Who knew when I'd get to savor another one? So I resolved to enjoy this to the very last drop.
"All right, then. Go ahead—defend yourself."
Harin opened her mouth with the expression of someone gravely wronged.
"It's just... last night I really was only going to play one game and then sleep..."
"Were going to, you said?"
"...I was going to, sir."
"Uh-huh. And?"
"And, well. Losing and then going to bed? That's just not something I can accept... sir."
"......"
"I know it's an excuse... but I honestly couldn't just sleep like that..."
"So you bashed out all those games, dropped dead asleep, and woke up late?"
"......Yes."
A brief silence.
Then the laughter I'd been suppressing burst out of me at last.
"Pfft—"
"...?"
"If only you were this obedient all the time. Life would be so easy."
"Hey, you—!"
Harin started to snap—then caught my eye and shut her mouth again.
"...I'm sorry, sir."
"Good. As an act of contrition, the bathroom is yours to scrub for the rest of the month."
"WHAT?! That's way too unfair—"
"Too unfair?"
"......I'll do it, sir."
"Good."
Harin finally bowed her head, wearing the face of someone about to burst into tears.
...She's a little cute when she's like this, actually.
The afternoon proved plenty busy in its own right.
The espresso machine ran without a moment's rest. The dish tub piled high with cups. I'd be halfway through restocking the milk when an order came in; the second I tried to catch my breath, the bell would ring again.
The genuine surprise of the day was that Harin was better at the work than I'd expected.
Guess a little of that old experience stuck around. So this is what they call muscle memory, huh.
"Han Doyoon! Where does this go?"
"Second compartment of the freezer."
"And this??"
"Left-hand shelf in the storeroom."
"Oh, right!"
She fumbled her way through things, sure—but she never asked twice about anything I'd shown her once. She still looked flustered, granted, but after a handful of explanations she was picking things up in no time. It occurred to me that she really was the owners' daughter, and it showed.
...If only she didn't oversleep.
And so several days passed without any major incidents.
"Phew..."
"Uuugh... I'm gonna die..."
"Good work today."
"Yeah... you too..."
Boneless, Harin slumped against a chair and groaned.
I'd been right, it turned out. With both owners gone, the gap they'd left behind was unmistakable.
It wasn't more than the two of us could survive. But.
There's zero slack in this.
Two or three parties walking in at once was enough to throw everything into chaos. One of us took orders while the other did nothing but pump out drinks. Meanwhile the dishes piled up, the inventory checks got pushed back, and even a simple wipe-down of the shop had to wait for a lull between customers. Above all, we had to read each other's every move just to sneak off to the bathroom.
If we'd been running deliveries on top of this, we'd have collapsed on the spot.
It dawned on me, all over again, why the owners had never offered delivery service.
...Thank you. Truly, both of you.
And what's more—
It was still January. Middle schools, high schools, universities—every last student in the area was on break. This should have been a relatively slow stretch of the year.
If it was already this bad...
Once school starts...
A high school sat ten minutes away on foot, a middle school right next door, and a single bus ride connected us to the university district. The moment the semester began, students flooding in was a simple fact of life. I'd only pictured the scene for a heartbeat, and goosebumps had already crawled up my entire body.
...We'd be done for.
Today the two of us had scraped by, and that was luck. We couldn't keep that up every day. What if one of us caught a cold? What about exam season? What if Harin's classes ran long? At that rate, it would clearly be my life that shut its doors before the cafe did.
...Honestly, giving up would be the easier road.
And yet—
I let my gaze wander around the shop. By the window, one of our usuals was tapping away at a laptop. In front of the counter, an elementary-school brother and sister were locked in a dead-serious round of rock-paper-scissors over a single cookie. And in the back seats, Seoa—who had slipped in at some point without my noticing—had her laptop open, quietly studying.
An utterly ordinary scene. And for precisely that reason, a precious one.
I wanted to protect this everyday life, this cafe, for as long as I possibly could.
The longer I turned the problem over, the more the answer refused to change.
Just then—
"Hey, Han Doyoon..."
"Hm?"
"Don't you think we should hire a part-timer?"
As it happened, I'd been thinking the exact same thing.
"What about hiring two?"
"Two?"
"...Too many?"
Truth be told, training Harin alone was already eating every scrap of my attention. If two rookies walked in on top of her, drilling them both would end up being my job in the end. The mere thought made my head throb.
"Two's a stretch. Let's start with one."
"Mm... fair enough."
Harin conceded without much of a fight, nodding along.
"...By the way, is it easy to find part-timers these days?"
"Hard to say..."
"If we put up an opening, a couple of people are bound to come, no?"
"Let's just hope whoever shows up is a normal person."
I silently shared the sentiment. All we needed was someone who took direction well and worked with honest diligence. The cafe work itself, I could teach; the occasional mistake was fine, too. As long as they had the will to learn, that would be more than enough.
Or so I truly believed, in that moment.
A few days later—
I couldn't have imagined, not even in my wildest dreams, what kind of encounter that innocent little wish for a "normal" part-timer was about to set in motion.