#yhnari

[khnyh]

yhnari: (…)

“i’m almost done, i’ve hardly been able to put it down.” nari opened up the book to her page to show him where she was, holding it out to him. “it’s alright, i have a new book every other day, anyways.” she laughed easily again, tucking some hair behind her ear with her free hand. “nari. nice to meet you properly, bartender-man.” she joked a little, shifting in her seat to face him a little better, leaning against the bar. it wouldn’t hurt to get to know more people, let alone someone she was seeing so often. “so what brings you here after hours, a workaholic?”

when she offers the book to him, he peers over to see the part that she’s in, humming. he’s read the book cover to cover enough times to know well enough where she is in the story.

“he’s quite a fantastic author. there’s one part he writes.. ‘and in the morning.. it was as quiet as the secrets lingering in his mouth. as the sun waned high in the sky, they felt as bright as the pinpricks of light through the windowpane, fading, like the afternoon, like a cooling cup of tea, like the sea in his heart contained by glass and chains.’ for some reason, i couldn’t stop thinking about it. i read it over and over so much that i memorized it. whenever i see the sun in the afternoon.. or it’s quiet, in the morning, i think about that book,” haneul speaks, but his voice is softer, barely discernible over the noise of the tavern.

“if you finish this one quickly, i’d recommend his other work to you. though i still believe that this one is one of my favorites,” he continues, thinking about his loss of a drink and considering purchasing another to make up for it. as she introduces herself, he hums, and takes a seat on the barstool next to her instead of standing.

“it’s nice to meet you, nari. are you still going to call me bartender-man even though you know my name now?” he says with a soft laugh, and he checks behind himself to move his camera and his jacket over, just to free up the seat for anyone else instead of holding it for no reason. he sets down the collection of pictures he had printed from earlier to make sure that they’re all still intact.

“i.. like how it is here. the atmosphere. even though i work here, i don’t really get tired of it. plus—i haven’t really been as many places around town, actually, even though i’ve been around for a few months. i tend to stick to the same places, when i find something that i like.” he says as he moves some of the pictures so that she can see a few more of them. they are almost entirely photographs of the surrounding nature—the sky, flowers, a cat he had seen lingering around outside the tavern.

“these are some pictures i took earlier today, so i was having a drink while i looked over them. what about you? were you here to just read?”

@yhnari

[khnyh]

@yhnari

yhnari: (...) 

“it’s alright, i’m not gonna get mad at the guy who pours my drinks half the time.” nari spoke with an easy laugh, waving his apologies with her hand holding her book, finger nestled between the pages to keep her place.

he looks a little relieved when he learns that he didn’t spill the drink on her, letting out a bit of a soft laugh at her returning comment. he swaps out the soaked cloth with a fresh one to try to at least make the bar less sticky — it’s a bit of a lost cause, as he leans his side against it to deposit the second one back on the other side. he’d go into the back to take care of it before he left. 

“certainly you’d prefer me to pour your drinks into the glass, not all over the bar,” haneul says, and he looks a bit sheepish about it, reaching back to ruffle his hand through the hair at his nape — eyes downcast as he says it. he drops his hand, regretting it just a little because, sticky, and his eyes happen to catch on the book that she has in her hands. 

perking up a little a bit, he looks over the cover and he recognizes it immediately. there’s a bit more of a light in his eyes now, as he looks down at it as if remembering something fond — and he is. he remembers reading the book when he was still in college, in-between essays and group projects and stress that made him feel weighed down to the ground, he had found a place of refuge in the library to read in-between his classes. a small little cubby tucked in a quiet corner — it smelled like old paper and dust, the kind of building that had been around for awhile and accumulated its own personality, its own recognizable atmosphere, that haneul became incredibly fond of it. 

he hadn’t thought about it in awhile. it’s one of the reason he loves books, for the fact that they allow him to take a couple of moments to breathe. to fade out of reality to go somewhere else, where he didn’t always feel so —

he offers the slightest quirk on his lips, letting the thought go. “i really loved that book back in college. the writer was so.. poetic. for a mystery. there’s this one part i think about all of the time — it hasn’t really left me since i finished it. are you almost done? i don’t want to spoil it for you.” 

leaning against the bar, he props his elbow on the freshly cleaned surface, genuinely casual considering how flustered he had been a moment ago. 

“i’ve seen you reading here quite a bit, but i never have time to ask you what book you’re reading,” he admits to her, thinking, and then realizes he hadn’t even — 

“i’m haneul. by the way. it’s nice to meet you. sorry for the,” he pauses to gesture with his free hand at the bar in some kind of untraceable pattern. 

[yhminah]

— see you again;

@yhnari

maybe it's because minah lives just above the tavern that she ends up spending so much time in it, especially when she doesn't have much else to do, not when she's not painting anymore — considering how nothing comes out right these days — and she doesn't have any work that isn't painting. besides, visiting his family is always a russian roulet and minah sometimes just doesn't have the mental strength to deal with her sister going off at her and then putting their parents in a tough spot, especially when she's the intruder now, she's the one who moved out of the house— of the country and then decided to come back because things weren't great anymore.

very selfish and convenient for her, minah thinks, so there's only so much she can mess up in here. actually, she shouldn't be messing anything up at all—

but well, that's besides the point and minah does visit her family sometimes, she's not that awful of a daughter.

the point is that minah does visit the tavern quite often more often than their family maybe and she's familiar with some of the characters that show up regularly, like the bartender who helps her trying to find her inspiration again in yunhwa, like this girl that is always drinking and at this point they're polite enough to greet each other, even if briefly and quietly, whenever their eyes meet and tonight is supposed to be the same, but when minah's eyes find the familiar figure on her usual table in the tavern something else catches her eyes.

les fleurs du mal is a book that she never thought she'd see in yunhwa especially in its mother language, not when it's such a small town and she has met people who knows how to speak english, sure, japanese, of course, but never french. it makes her perk up and her eyes sparkles a bit. even if south korea will always be the home she was born into, minah has spent enough time in paris to also consider it a second home and if she has to be honest, the artist can't deny she misses being able to speak french with someone.

that's why she orders her drink from the bar and approaches the stranger that seems engrossed in her reading. "if i had known you had such great taste in literature, i'd have approached you much sooner." minah says in a light tone. "do you mind if i sit here?" and maybe it's a little too shameless considering how there are a couple of empty tables around the tavern, but minah doesn't mind. the worst thing that can happen is the stranger saying no and then she'll go back to minding her own business.

[khnyh]

@yhnari

haneul flexes his fingers and wipes off the excess condensation from holding onto his glass for too long on his jeans- the bar was sticky but he didn’t mind too much, knee bouncing as the low rumbles of mokjawon tavern whirred quietly in the back of his brain. he’s not sure how long he’s been sitting here but it’s probably been hours, unsure if he’s missed the way that the sun sinks below the line of trees to dip the world into darkness. lip between his teeth, whiskey is still sweet on his tongue, fingers flipping over a stack of pictures that he had printed from earlier- his camera sitting nestled atop his leather jacket he had placed beside him to keep it safe.

there were times he preferred things to be completely silent or overwhelmingly loud- this was one of those times in-between, where he wished to have a quiet chattering, to hear voices, the scrape of barstools on worn ground, the clinks of glasses, music thumping through speakers to fill in the space even fuller, ice clinking against new drinks as they were being made. he works here but he still hasn’t gotten tired of the atmosphere, the worn wood, the dim lighting, the tightness in his chest from the music and the people and just the ability to witness other existence. it helps him feel less hollow.

it’s one of his off days but he’s still here, looking through his pictures, careful to not get his fingerprints smudged on the shiny surface reflecting the image. there are pictures of flowers sprouting up from the dirt, of their petals dipped in morning dew, of a curved tree leaning towards another in the forest that he had noticed (when he tilted his head just so) — that looked like it was curving in for an embrace from a lover, crawling ivy engulfing the tree like frost over a body of water, like water spilling over rocks and moss of a river. it was these moments, these small, quiet scenes that he wished to keep with him forever.

he’s humming under his breath, maybe to match the melody of the song crackling through the speakers, as someone moves to sit nearby in another barstool. haneul reaches out to move his jacket to make more room, there’s a quiet excuse me under his breath as he reaches for it to keep his camera out of the way but as he reaches his fingers brush against the remaining contents of his mixed drink to spill it against the bar. there wasn’t much left but it still makes a river of liquid that makes him jump up — a muttered shit! under his breath, an exhale — he thinks of his camera, first, relocating the jacket and camera to nestle on his seat as he reaches over the bar for a cloth laying cast aside.

he notices, as he hurriedly cleans up the mess, chipped blue polish on his fingers stark against the white fabric sopping up the whiskey and coke, that it’s spilled out towards a girl sitting down the bar from him, hidden mostly by a curtain of dark hair in the glances he had gotten of her as he had occasionally looked around the bar in-between his musings.

“oh — shit, i’m sorry, did it spill onto you at all? i wasn’t fucking looking at all, that’s entirely my fault — ”