Coffee. He needed coffee so bad since his stomach felt like it was about to literally eat itself from the lack of flesh. Taehyung did his best to conserve his energy and hold on to the last bit of sanity that clung onto the back of his mind. The customers in his shop were looking like fine meals for his teeth to sink into and having their blood run down his tongue. But no. He had to have self-control, Couple of minutes and he can hold on. Thankfully the shop was closing soon and the couple in his shop were already leaving when they picked up a Stevie Wonder classic vinyl. Quickly giving them their change and receipt, Taehyung held a grin on his face when they exited with such smiles How nice.
Having the shop close early, his stomach was twisting again, this is what he gets for refusing to eat for a long periods of time. But fuck it. Inhaling a deep breath, Taehyung grabbed his book bag, and locked the shop up before walking down towards a local coffee shop that made strong enough bitter blonde coffee for him.
The walk was short and there weren’t much people today which he thanked or then his patience was going to be the end of him to exposure. When the barista glanced at him, she knew already what he needed, and Taehyung was about to take a seat on his usual corner but noticed an unfamiliar face. It was rare, not much ‘humans’ came by. But this human, was strange. He looked like a real survivor, being a curious ghoul, his eyes were fixated at mathematics and strange symbols.
Strong aroma of the coffee called to him, turning around the cashier called him by his name. “Nishiki, here.” Grunting in response, Taehyung grabbed his cup of coffee and took a sip, when he noticed there was a pause at this stranger’s expression, like as if he was stuck on something and sure enough he was stuck on a problem. Math wasn’t his think but he can tell it was like chemistry. Maybe a Chem Major? Who knew.
Taehyung grabbed the pen nonchalantly and fixed the problem that lead to the problem he grinned gently, glancing at the name at the upper right corner. ‘Yongguk’. Interesting.
Yongguk looked up at him with confusion at first then a fiery glare that sent a shiver down his spine. Very interesting. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Humming softly, Taehyung shrugged his shoulders and took a sip of his coffee, leaving the shop with a mumble. “Maybe I shouldn’t Yongguk, but you should be thanking me.” He knew they would meet again. This person truly intrigued him. And probably pissed him off as well. Friendships can’t always be greeted with a hello, sometimes it takes different wrong approaches, in this case, very.
Coffee. Its scent wafted about the store, filling each and every crevice with the warmest tints of brown. It would trickle through the porous blockades within his brain, opening all passages of thinking — of experimenting and of remembering. In almost every single store that he visited, this scent would merely penetrate the first layer before fading out and refilling with the less enticing scents of sugar, cakes and that suspicious tint of old milk.
This store had the most accurate balance of accompaniment dishes and coffee. And in this very store, Yongguk would brew his thoughts, nurturing them and archiving them in the little time he spent about the area. He loved this little pocket of the city. As strange as it was, this store drew him back over and over again, despite the variants that existed throughout the lines.
The coffee always seemed to be made just to his liking.
Yongguk was there once again, his books and thoughts interlacing with the coffee about him. This time, he didn’t watch the city pass by, rather, he mused himself with incomplete theories. Quantum particles, chemistry and fractions of engineering battled upon the pages. Blue, black and red scrawls decorated the pages in the most awkward angles — twisted, distorted and squashed about the corners. They made sense.
This moment of growing understanding lasted till a hand came into his line of sight and picked up a pen. It reached towards the only white space left on the paper and added to his notes. Whatever that hand wrote made sense. However, it only made sense in this line. Yongguk flickered through his memories and huffed. It didn’t work in the other worlds. With this discovery, his eyebrows furrowed, confusion evident on his features. Why, of everything, would it not work?
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
They slipped his lips before he could do anything. Even before he could erase the somewhat frustrated comment, Yongguk’s thoughts were greeted by a reply. Thank him? Yongguk registers this just as the individual was leaving the store.
Thank him. That was the courteous thing to do. And of course, Yongguk thanked him. He tipped his head in recognition, mumbling a soft thank you before glancing back at the numbers and indecipherable mess on his page. With a new conjunction of reds, blues and blacks, Yongguk saw another factor to the theory. It required a solu—
In this new light, it worked. This time, Yongguk jolted from his seat, leaving his bill on the table and hastily gathering his books. This man had a head for these equations and Yongguk wanted to take a peek into his knowledge. It could have been anything, but whatever it was had brought a new light to a different mass of scientific confusion.
He pushed through the door of the café, muttering a quick thank you to the barrister. His eyes dart about the surrounding area, faces converging but never matching the one that had added to his theory.