The sound of the shutter fills in the empty room. The clinking of heels fades away as the door closes quietly. Antonio Daniel or Ato, for a lot of people, is sitting in his own dressing room, coffee in one hand, and his phone on the other. It's a Monday and like any other Mondays, the unspoken rule still stands—no one makes a noise before 9 in the morning or until Ato finishes his coffee. The multi-millionaire CEO of Universe Café is quiet and reserved and doesn't speak more than ten words to people he just met. It's a surprise that he agrees to be the face of his own business. Universe is opening its seventieth branch on its third year—a feat any new entrepreneur has yet to conquer.
The café was supposed to be a one-time thing. Two years after Ato graduated college and a year since he came back from the States, he took a sudden interest in coffee. He spent days and nights watching documentaries about coffee and later enrolled himself to get a barista license. It was supposed to be a onetime thing—a pop-up shop in Eastwood with his siblings as a way to bond and shut his mom up for nagging about finding a job but one thing led to another and before he knew it, he was opening his first branch of his first café at the mall near his house.
Universe was fifty five squares at first. Covered in portraits of coffee cups courtesy of Ato himself and a bunch of ropes hanging on different sides of the café—aesthetic, he said. Morbid, his mother argued. The café was covered in brown and black. No matter how much Ato's interior designer convinced him to spit in some colour in the branches that followed, he didn't budge. Brown and black was the theme of the place. Somewhere in between coffee and the entire universe—no one really knows and Ato doesn't care to explain.
Three years later, everyone just wants a piece of Antonio Daniel. Not only was he twenty five and thriving, he was twenty five and good-looking. Somehow, one customer figured out that he was the owner after one morning of just hanging out in the café and before he knew it, his face was plastered all over social media. More people started coming in, more people than he could ever imagine. People were begging for more branches because not only was the owner good-looking, he makes good coffee. Universe Café its on his seventieth branch but no one knows much other than that.
"Sir Ato?" A lady about the same age as him but looks far more laid-back and scared approaches the man in a suit. "Sir, picture na daw po."
"Tapusin ko lang 'to." He wiggles his coffee and offers a small smile. "I'll be right out."
The coffee cup has been empty for a while now but Ato can't bring himself to start working despite it. His thumb lingers on his screen—every like on anything creates some sort of chaos in his groupies. Ato refuses to call them fans because he isn't a celebrity and he never will be. Groupies was the term his brother came up with as a joke and he just went along with it. It's not like it's a real thing. Sure, he has nine hundred thousand eight hundred sixty five followers on Instagram but that doesn't really mean anything right? Ato thinks his life is as normal as it can be. At least he tries for it to be.
A particular instagram post catches his attention and he just wants to hit the heart button, for god's sake but his thumb is frozen mid-like and he thinks of how much of coward he still is. He's twenty five and an even bigger coward than he was at twenty. She's smiling so brightly on the picture that she posted, holding a whiteboard with her name and ID number on it. She graduated med school and is on her way to do greater things—save people—than him and his heart is bursting with so much pride. The caption is short and witty-ish and is so much different than the one she wrote for her undergraduate photo.
@kai.cbernardo: Signing out. Gotta get that license. Wait. Good night.
Ato ends up not liking the photo. He starts working five minutes after, shyly posing for the camera for the next two hours until they find the perfect shot for the next advertisement they have yet to release next week. Ato doesn't speak and only smiles a total of six times when he was asked by the photographer to do so. If he wasn't his brother's girlfriend, he wouldn't listen to that crap. He would have rolled his eyes when she asked him to look gloomy then proceeded to joke around and say you always look gloomy, kuya. Like he needs reminding of some sort.
