The unexpected and slightly irritating feeling of a finger tapping his right shoulder made Minho cringe, scrunching up his eyes until he couldn't see the checkered floor he was dribbling blue liquid onto. He instantly swiped at his ear, catching his fingers on the wire of an earbud to pull it out as he whipped his head up to see who it was that had touched him. A familiar face was waiting for his to meet it, though this face was looking a little older and maturer than it had before. And maybe even more tired.
"Lee Minho? Oh, gosh, it is you!" A pure, friendly smile greeted him. "That's a relief, it would've been awkward if it wasn't," mumbled the boy that Minho now stared at, more to himself than anything. "Yeah- um, sorry, I tried calling you a couple times," he explained, gesturing casually toward the shoulder he'd touched. He'd sensed Minho's discomfort.
"Oh... Hey, Bang Chan hyung," Minho began, his eyebrows cocked in a mix of surprise and confusion. "What're you doing here?" Minho removed his other earbud and paused the music that was freely flowing out of it.
"Was on my way home from work. I saw you mopping and I thought you kind of looked like... well, you," he chuckled.
Minho nodded, his lips twitching up a little.
Chan smelled like coffee, even more than he used to. He probably worked at the fancy cafe down the block, especially since he was wearing a plain black shirt and coffee-brown corduroy shorts; his hair swept back just slightly with a bandana that matched the shorts, and that outfit certainly fit the cafe's vibe.
Weird.
If that were true, that would mean that he and Chan had been working almost right next to each other for who knows how long, and they'd never bumped into each other before tonight. With the remnants of polite and almost awkward smiles fading, they stood across from each other quietly, finding themselves sucked into small pockets of assorted memories at the sight of one another.
Chan didn't let their silent stillness last very long. He cleared his throat to snap out of his own little reminiscing-fest, then declared, "Well, I'm already out late, since I had to close tonight—" Minho nodded promptly, leaning onto his mop to bring attention to the fact that he was suffering the same fate. "—so I should really get home before my mom starts frantically texting and calling me to ask if I've been kidnapped. But we should talk again! I wanna see what's up with you!"
"Sure, hyung. I'm here... Most days."
♡
Chan came in the next day while he was on lunch break. Minho made him a stack of blueberry pancakes to soothe his growling stomach. He placed the steaming platter on the counter in front of Chan, sliding a pitcher of maple syrup his way. As Chan took his first bite, he leaned over the counter near him to see what he thought.
He gave them two thumbs up and a content smile. "I can't believe you remembered blueberry pancakes are my favorite."
Minho just shrugged. "Some things just stick in the mind, I guess."
"Like Changbin's slideshow about why group projects shouldn't be assigned?"
"Yeah, like that," he chuckled. "Wow, it's been a while since all that... I didn't think I would be seeing anyone from school again."
"Yep. Sometimes I feel like graduation was just yesterday, but it also feels like it's been so long." Chan paused, nodding a few times to punctuate his speech, and taking the chance to take another mouthful of blueberry pancake. "What have you been doing?"
"I took a gap year, so I've just been working this whole time. Making pancakes, mopping floors, taking orders..."
"Been working here since graduation?"
"Pretty much— I started about a month or two after."
"That's weird that I didn't see you at all then. I've been working down the street for months now."
Minho's assumption was correct.
"But— You said a gap year? So you're planning on college?" Chan asked, slathering his pancakes in oozing amber syrup.
"Mhm." Surprisingly, Minho been so caught up in work affairs that he hadn't even realized how close he was getting to the day when he'd have to pack up and leave. "Starts in a couple weeks."
"Mine too. September 6th, I think."
That was another thing that struck Minho as an odd coincidence. Their colleges would be starting the same day. "Wait, which college?" Minho probed.
"Hannam. It's like... three hours away."
"Hah. Guess we'll be seeing each other, then."
Chan's widening eyes lit up when he heard that one of his old classmates would be at college with him. "You, too?"
"Yeah, Hannam."
Bang Chan was delighted to find that Minho was going to be at his college that year. And he told him that. Excitedly. Several times.
꘎♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡꘎
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