“So what can I get for you today?”

Wendy, startled by the sudden voice, looked up with wide eyes. She was too engrossed by the text on her phone to see that the line had moved up a substantial amount. In front of her was a barista with a marker in one hand and a cup in the other, looking at her with wide, gleaming eyes.

“Uh,” she sputtered out. She racked her brain as she tried to formulate a more eloquent answer. “Just, a, uh, m-macchi...”

“A macchiato coming right up,” the barista giggled. “For?”

“Excuse me? No, I don’t want four macchiatos.”

“No, who’s it for?” the barista choked out between huffs of stifled laughter.

Wendy’s cheeks flashed beet red. “Son Seungwan, but you can call me Wendy, uh,” she craned her neck to spot the flashing piece of plastic clipped on the barista’s apron, “Bae Joohyun.”

“Wendy it is,” Irene scribbled the name on the cup and set it aside for the other workers to pick up. “And you can just call me Irene.”

“Alright, Irene,” Wendy smiled. Irene returned the smile and Wendy’s heart began to flutter. Irene’s charm made her want to stand by that register and never stop talking to her, but she knew that the other crabby, sleep-deprived university students also needed their caffeine fix. She withdrew from the register and settled herself down at a nearby table, redirecting her attention to the text she was reading. Her medicinal chemistry professor had given the class a chunk of reading material to chew on to study for the upcoming final. She inwardly groaned as she scrolled through the mass of pages she still had to read by the end of the week.

Oh, how Wendy just loved being a pre-med major.

Irene, who had taken a break from manning the register, had begun to help the other workers with the orders. She took a glance over the counter every now and then to catch Wendy at her table. The girl seemed particularly engrossed with something on her phone. Was it a video? A document? A text from a significant other? Wanting to dismiss the thought, Irene mentally slapped herself to focus on making the drinks. But it wasn’t long until her mind began to drift off again.

She wondered how Wendy liked her coffee, or if Wendy liked coffee at all. She wondered if Wendy was the type of person to drizzle her fries with ketchup or dip them. She wondered what Wendy’s genuine laugh sounded like, and what songs she would sing when she was in the shower. She wondered how Wendy’s hugs would feel when it was two in the morning and they were exhausted and stressed over finals week.

Irene violently shook her head, mentally chiding herself. She can’t become this head-over-heels over a person she had a two-minute interaction with.

But she did.

To think she had better standards for herself.

Irene was shoved out of her thoughts when she heard a peculiar whistle come from her kettle. She hissed a curse, praying that the milk didn’t curdle from the excessive heat. When she found that the milk, indeed, was not a sloppy, sticky mess, she breathed a sigh of relief and poured it into the remaining drinks needed to be made.

“You’re especially aloof today,” a voice commented. Seulgi, who was currently manning the frappuccino station, noticed Irene’s unusual behavior and decided to about it.

“What do you mean?” she set aside the empty jug and faced her colleague. “Aloof? No, I’m just a little…frazzled today.”

Seulgi rolled her eyes. “Come on, Joohyun-unnie, you aren’t fooling anyone. The fact that you actually had the mental capacity to use the word ‘frazzled’ in a regular sentence means that you’re definitely off your game.”

“Funny, because heightened eloquence usually indicates the exact opposite. And I’m a linguistics major, Seulgi.”

“Yeah, yeah, you once read the entire Oxford Dictionary because you were bored or whatever. Stop digressing. You’re distracted by something,” Seulgi wiggled her eyebrows. “Or is it a someone?”

Irene, suddenly aware of the burning sensation on the tips of her ears, attempted to hide them with her hair. “Of course not. Are you the one off your game, Seulgi?”

“Again, you aren’t fooling anyone,” Seulgi smirked. “And your sudden hand-to-face activity is a telltale sign that you’re being a big fat liar.”

Irene rolled her eyes. “You take one psychology class for grad requirement, and you immediately think you’re above it all,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Seulgi, seeing how Irene immediately ended the conversation, shrugged and resumed talking. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“About what?”

“The crush, you doofus.”

“It’s not a crush! We talked for like two minutes!”

“Again, lying, and who says you can’t become attracted to someone after a few minutes?”

Irene scrambled to come up with a response, but her mind was drawing up a blank. All of what Seulgi said was too true, and lying won’t get her anywhere. Letting out a sigh, she hung her head in resignation.

“Fine,” she said, scowling at Seulgi’s triumphant beam. “You’re right.”

“I always am.”

“Yeah, not too sure about that.”

“We can argue about the veracity of my statements some other time,” Seulgi said, pausing her work to clap a ha