SLIDE TACKLE * / featuring @feyrosa
it’s not that he’s guilty or ashamed -- this isn’t why he presses himself into the farthest corner of the train car or why he looks both directions before crossing the right street a few stops later. it’s not that he’s afraid that he might see a familiar face and they might ask what he’s doing. in those hypothetical conversations, the hypothetical-him always fumbles over the right answer to give: oh, well, i was getting sick of coffee, and i thought i’d try tea, and then i managed to find this shop. the hypothetical-him sounds defensive, and sunkyu doesn’t know why that is, why it feels like such an admission of weakness to say. it’s only tea.
the truth is as simple: that sometimes he feels like a book bound too tightly, spine pulled taught and made to hold too many pages, and it’s better on some days and worse on others, but when it’s the latter and he can’t afford to unravel and coffee’s just going to make his bones rattle out of his skin, it’s tea that he goes to, and he’s just sick of the store-bought tea bags he’s been surviving on for four years now, is all. better tea will better help solve all of his problems.
he found this shop a couple of weeks ago, technically. it had caught his eye from the other side of the street and he’d vowed to go, but that was before the rest of the week washed in like a storm and slowing down to breathe hasn’t really felt like an option.
today, though. today. sunkyu enters the shop with his jacket drawn tightly over himself, like the streets aren’t bathed by the warmth of the sunset outside.
it smells...comforting here. he’s not sure if it’s the different ribbons of tea swirling in the air or some kind of placebo effect already settling in, but his posture relaxes. fractionally.
he lingers by the door for a few seconds, before he spots someone who looks like they might be another customer. “hi? s’cuse me. are you here for the tea, too?” it looks like one of those days when every syllable out of his mouth sounds errant, wrong. sunkyu clears his throat a little and pushes on anyway: “i’ve never really been to a tea shop before. do you know if-- do i have to, like, fill something out? or--?”