City Lights: Chapter 1

Chapter: 1 Characters (in order of appearance): Jin Chul/Jinon and Kim Dong Sun* *indicates original character Words: 1,295 Edits: 3 Added: January 28, 2011

Tuesday, July 13, 3:36pm
Seoul, South Korea

In a little café, drinking grape juice and eating the rest of a tuna sandwich from lunchtime sat Jin Chul. He lazily gazed out the window at the sky oblivious to the people outside scrambling here and there either coming from work or from school. He seemed unbothered by the sweltering heat of the day but was rather more distracted than anything. He sighed deeply.

"You know," came a voice next to him, "lately you've been giving off a very gloomy atmosphere. It's making me lose customers. Who wants to come into a depressing café?"

Jin Chul turned to the man wearing an apron. "The reason you have no customers has nothing to do with me. Despite being located in a very busy area of the city, nobody even gives this place a second glance." He looked back out the window and continued, "I'm surprised your café has survived this long."

The man gave Jin Chul a slap to the side of the head. "Ow!" Jin Chul shouted while rubbing his head.

"Yah, punk! You want to die?" the man said looking ticked. He then prodded Jin Chul's sandwich with his index finger. "And what's this? You're bringing in your own food? This is a café! Why aren't you ordering anything from here? You're making me look bad!"

"You call that," Jin Chul pointed to a plate of untouched food on a nearby table, "food? Is that even edible? I mean, the customer left without a bite."

The man hit him again. "Stop that!" Jin Chul whined while rubbing his head again.

The man leaned in close to Jin Chul so they were face to face and glared. "You know what?" he said. "I shouldn't have to put up with your lip. I let you come in whenever you want to relax, study, and even use my computer and then you have the nerve to criticize me, punk? I've done so much for you and all I ask for in return is a little more respect." He stood up straight and put his hand on his chest. "Why should Owner Kim Dong Sun receive so little respect?"

"You've done lots for me?" Jin Chul scoffed. "Ever since I first started working here ten years ago, I've done nothing but favors for you. I worked overtime constantly and even got my friends to start hanging out here and ordering your so called food. Even now and ever since I've stopped working here, I continue to help out whenever you're short staff. You," he poked Owner Dong Sun in the chest, "should be respecting me."

Owner Dong Sun clicked his tongue and hit Jin Chul again. He was about to tell Jin Chul off some more but, just then a man walked into the café. Owner Dong Sun's face lit up. With a huge smile, he rushed over to the man.

Jin Chul finished his sandwich and grape juice and got up from the small table. He could hear Owner Dong Sun giving the man directions to someplace. He smiled. He hadn't done much of that lately. Owner Dong Sun was right; Jin Chul had been very gloomy these past few days.

He continued to the back of the café and into an employees' only room and sat at a computer. He sighed again as he logged into his email account. He looked in his inbox and scrolled down the list of messages.

2010-07-06 > Snowy_summer10 | I read your post yesterday. Kkkkk~ So funny! You have to....

2010-07-06 > Snowy_summer10 | Ok ok. Calm down. I was just joking. I thought you liked....

2010-07-06 > Snowy_summer10 | You have to watch this video! It's so funny! This guy is one....

2010-07-07 > Snowy_summer10 | Hey! Wanted to let you know that I'll be in Korea by Friday....

2010-07-08 > Snowy_summer10 | Jin Chul, there's something I need to let you know before....

He clicked on 2010-07-08.

Jin Chul, there's something I need to let you know before I arrive in Korea. It's been bothering me for a while but I figure that if we're going to meet up, you need to know. I really hope you don't hate me after this. I've been lying to you.

He glared at the monitor and then scrolled down to the last sentence.

I'm not a guy.

When he first read that message the other day, he reread that last sentence over and over again. Not a guy? Snowy_summer10 is not a guy? He finally makes a really good friend online, someone who he thought he could trust, someone he bragged about to his other friends, and he's a girl?

He had hoped it was a joke. Snowy_summer was always joking around. But the way Snowy_summer worded it, and just the feeling he got from it seemed like it was no joke. He had to be sure.

I attached a photo of myself.

Even though he was scared to know the truth, he knew he had to view the photo. He was devastated when he saw that the picture actually showed a girl. He quickly got out of it and logged off. He never replied. He refused to. He was too upset, too angry, too humiliated to do anything else. He was in a bad mood for the next five days. He didn't even bother reminding his friends what today was. He knew they'd come back early from their trip to the beach if they found out. He didn't want to be around anyone.

He went out of the message and was about to log off when he saw he got a new message.

[UNREAD] 2010-07-13 > Snowy_summer10 | Happy birthday! Didn't think I forgot did you? Did you receive....

Jin Chul quickly logged off.  Snowy_summer was the only one who remembered his birthday but that only made him angrier.

With nothing more to do, he walked out of the room and back to where Owner Dong Sun was cleaning off some of the tables.

"So," Jin Chul said as he walked up to Owner Dong Sun, who was whistling happily. "What did the customer order?"

Owner Dong Sun quit whistling and said, without looking at Jin Chul, "Nothing. The oaf was looking for a place and came in to ask for directions."

"Oh? Is that why you're so happy?"

"Tch. If I was upset every time I was disappointed in someone, I'd look like," he gestured to Jin Chul, "that. I'd sooner go out of business before I'd look as glum as you." He mumbled to himself, "Walking around looking like someone died."

"Looks like you'll be looking like me in no time then. I predict this café has maybe three months left. Maybe." Jin Chul smirked and then dodged Owner Dong Sun's towel as he tried to whip him.

"Punk! If you're leaving, go!"

"Alright, alright. I'm out." Jin Chul walked out the door and Owner Dong Sun shouted after him, "Punk! The correct thing to say is goodbye!"

As Jin Chul walked down the street, he saw a new billboard being put up across the road. It read:
 You can't expect your problems to go away if all you do is run from them.

He froze. He had been doing a lot of thinking the past five days. He didn't want to respond to Snowy_summer's email because he didn't want to deal with the issue. But he knew he wouldn't be able to get out of this depressing state if he didn't confront the problem. He had to meet with Snowy_summer and say what's been on his mind. He had to fix the problem.

Jin Chul turned around and ran back to the café.

---

Author's Notes:

So umm.... thanks to a certain forum *cough* FCUZED.com *cough* I'm unable to recover my previous edits and notes. I wrote stuff on there but never saved any of it to my hard drive thinking it would be safe and fine. But, now the forum is closed down and may not be up for several months and I'm left with trying to make a blog instead. Let's see how effective this will be. Sadly, I won't have any of the readers I had before. My one sister will for sure read it (she's been threatening me to write it -_-) but yeah...