speeding up my heartbeat / purinz

02

A few hours later, a freshly showered, fed, and caffeinated Yunjin is stifling a yawn as she trots up the little set of stairs leading up to the front door of Eden, the bar-slash-restaurant that she, Sooyoung, Haseul, and Kahei have co-owned and ran since its inception almost four years ago.

Mondays tend to be their quietest days, generally only needing one bartender, one server and one manager on, so Jiwoo, Haseul and Hyeju are the only ones in at the moment. Jiwoo greets her at the door with her usual amount of enthusiasm, Hyeju takes one look at her from behind the bar and silently turns around from chopping up some limes to start making Yunjin a coffee, and Haseul is nowhere to be seen, which usually means she's hiding in the office pretending to work while actually browsing Net-A-Porter.

Yeojin isn't working today, but she is lounging at the bar looking at something on her phone while she sips at a bright pink drink, presumably in preparation for dinner with her and Haseul's mother, who never quite got over the fact that both her daughters chose the hospitality route rather than a 'real' career. It's still a touchy subject and a main source of a lot of Haseul's teenage-reminiscent-angst despite her being in her late twenties.

(Last year they made the top ten of TripAdvisor's best restaurants in Seoul — a feat that Haseul immediately printed out, framed, and hung up in the office — so Haseul's mom can, quite frankly, suck it.)

A few hours later, after Haseul and Yeojin have left and Yerim has come in to join Jiwoo with the server shift, Yunjin is tucked away at an empty table at the back of the restaurant with her laptop and a cup of tea, beginning to draft the schedule for next week, when Jiwoo's loud laugh catches her attention.

Glancing up, Yunjin sees her at the host stand at the front of the restaurant talking to a woman with bright red hair. The woman is facing away from Yunjin so she can't see her face, but Jiwoo is smiling and talking to her like she knows her. Although that could just be Jiwoo's general friendly disposition, making everyone she meets — guests included, as per several glowing TripAdvisor and Yelp reviews; take that, Haseul's mom — feel welcomed.

The music in the restaurant is quiet, their usual weekday afternoons jazz playlist going at a low volume, and there's only a few tables in for an early dinner or some drinks, so when the red haired woman laughs at something Jiwoo says, albeit not as loud as Jiwoo, Yunjin can hear it even from the other side of the room.

And there's this weird, wild, stab of déjà vu that jolts through Yunjin's entire body, before it's gone as quickly as it appeared. Yunjin squints at the woman a little longer, now gesticulating wildly with her hands while Jiwoo's expression goes from amused to scandalised to delighted, and wonders what caused it, the strange feeling of recognition, the odd certainty that she knows this woman from somewhere.

Maybe she just came in for drinks last week and Yunjin served her table or sat her down or took her payment. Maybe Yunjin sat next to someone on the subway who uses the exact same shade of red hair dye that this woman does. Maybe Yunjin's body still hasn't quite recovered from being woken up so early and she's just tired.

She goes back to her laptop and the schedule, wondering briefly if Yerim and Hyeju both asking for the exact same specific set of days off is merely coincidental or if there's something going on there — coworkers hooking up is truly the most exciting thing that ever hits the rumour mill at Eden — before Jiwoo comes skipping up to her.

"Yunjin-unnie! Hi! Chaewon is here for her first shift."

Yunjin blinks at her. "Chaewon?"

"Kim Chaewon. She's the new bartender. Sooyoung-unnie told her to come in today for a trial shift."

Yunjin's definitely still tired; the new bartender had completely slipped her mind. "Oh, her. Yeah, okay, give me a second and I'll be right over."

Jiwoo wanders off without waiting for her, and Yunjin saves the various documents and email drafts she has open, drains the rest of her now lukewarm tea, and stands up to make her way over to the bar where Jiwoo and the red haired woman, presumably Kim Chaewon, are now chatting to Hyeju.