Chapter 12

Chapter 12

12. A Surprise Gift

Early morning, in an old studio apartment on the outskirts of Honolulu.

- Smack.

“Sophie, you can do this! You're finally achieving your dream! ”

Standing before the bathroom mirror, Sophie slapped her own cheeks and steeled herself.

The area around the mirror was covered in Post-it notes.

『My dream is to be a barista.』

『Goal for this year: Earn my barista certification』

『Create my own recipe!』

『Don't skip studying coffee beans』

The cute handwriting on the notes contained all the effort she'd put in over the years.

Sophie peeled one of them off and slipped it into her bag.

“Let's go! ”

- Click.

She grabbed her bag and strode out the front door with endless determination.

How long had she been walking?

“Huh?”

She couldn't believe what she was seeing.

Even though she'd arrived an hour early for her first day, there were already people there before her.

Customers who had willingly come for an opening run first thing in the morning just to buy coffee.

“Sophie! Hurry! Hurry!”

One of the employees lining up the customers shouted toward her.

“They've all been waiting since this morning! Sorry, but could you open a little early?”

“What? I haven't even had my handover yet······.”

“There's nobody to give you one anyway!”

“Huh? What do you mean······.”

“All right, we're opening!”

“W-Wait!”

【Hale Kope】

(OPEN)

The employee changing the sign was just a little faster than Sophie's protest.

And with that, the customers flooded in,

forcing Sophie to begin working before she even had time to savor her first shift as a barista.

‘Seriously?!’

Her panic lasted only a moment.

“Yes, what can I get you?”

“One cup of drip coffee with 100% Kona.”

“Me too! ”

“I'll have mine iced.

“Yes, two Kona drips! One iced!”

- Clink. Clink.

With the same friendly service Woo-jin had seen dozens of times, she fitted a paper filter into the dripper.

Her movements flowed naturally as water.

For a young woman who had finally achieved her dream, none of her old clumsiness remained.

***

Maybe I should've hurried a little more?

I'd waited forever before finally getting my coffee, yet the line behind me was still just as long.

“I really don't get it.”

The hotel lounge right next door sells coffee for seven thousand won a cup. Why come all the way here to drink coffee costing over twenty thousand?!

Did every one of these people win Powerball like me?

Besides, this café wasn't even designed for customers to come buy coffee in the first place.

There were exactly three tables.

I'd spaced them far enough apart that nobody nearby would bother me.

I'd even specifically asked Vivian to bring in chairs and tables designed to make working on a laptop comfortable.

If I'd actually wanted to run a business, I couldn't have designed it any worse.

Yet the long line outside the café showed no sign of shrinking.

“Well, I guess it's a good thing?”

If people wanted to line up and buy coffee from my shop during an economic downturn, I had no reason to refuse them.

So as a substitute for my lounge seat, I took my coffee in a takeout cup and went into the staff break room.

‘Oh, lucky!’

Fortunately, there was a desk and chair in one corner of the break room where I could use my laptop.

It wasn't as comfortable as the plush sofa in the lounge café, though.

I sat down immediately and opened my laptop.

- Sip.

Yep, the coffee really is fantastic.

Then shall I kill a little time on the gallery?

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Pathological Liar Gallery

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[General] Drinking coffee from my hotel.jyp

HotelMan | 2027.01.14. 14:20:16 | Views 278 | Likes 8

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(Photo)

Seriously delicious!

Can't even compare it to coffee at other hotels

Attachment: LoungeCafeCoffee.jpg

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└ Anon(290.31): Didn't you say you were going to the lounge café.. You can't even afford a café anymore..

└ 2YearsOnFluoxetine(58.140): Holy shit you're right lmao looks like he went into some storage room to take this lmaoooo

└ CaptainChoiThePipe: This guy's working at a day-labor office! Look at all that junk around him, that's 100% a labor office.

└ CaptainChoiThePipe: Bro! If you finished your half-day shift, go home already. If you hang around just because the AC is on, the foreman won't like it, you punk.

└ CaptainChoiThePipe: And now that I look closer, this bastard's doing everything a foreman hates. Who mixes three packets of Maxim in a glass cup at a labor office? Frustrating as hell.

└ CaptainChoiThePipe: Guys like this are always the ones who come back with TOB when you send them out for coffee at the jobsite.

└ CutieCoco: ↑I think this is the first time I've seen him write comments this long...

└ Anon(211.36): Lmaoooo was he seriously doing construction work?

└ 2YearsOnFluoxetine(58.140): If Pro Choi's vouching for it, odds are high

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These bastards can't even recognize premium coffee costing over twenty thousand won a cup.

Well, I guess you'd have to drink something like this before you could recognize it.

Tsk, commoners.

Just as I clicked my tongue in pity and closed the laptop,

- Creak.

A familiar employee opened the break-room door and came inside.

“Hello.”

“Welcome. Good work out there.”

It was Sophie.

She looked visibly exhausted, probably from making coffee nonstop until now.

“Rough first day, huh?”

“Ah, n-no! I'm fine!”

“By the way, I enjoyed the coffee. Still tastes great.”

“Thank you for hiring me! I'll work really hard!”

The way she bowed deeply looked exactly like a Korean greeting.

I really did hire the right person.

“Then get plenty of rest before heading back out.”

“Yes!”

Wait, can anyone really rest properly in a place like this?

The only furniture was a few tables and chairs, while random junk whose purpose I couldn't even guess was piled messily in one corner.

Honestly, it was closer to a storage room than a break room.

Tsk. There's a place this lacking in luxury inside my hotel?!

Unacceptable.

I left the break room and immediately called Vivian.

(I heard you held a festival! You should've invited me too!)

“You're in New York.”

(It's a short flight!)

We boldly skipped all the usual small talk about how she'd been doing.

(So why did you call? You're not the type to call just to ask how I'm doing.)

“Yes, I have another job for you.”

(Again? Don't tell me you want this one done in two months too.)

“Of course not. ”

Two months? Please!

“I'd like it finished within two weeks.”

(······.)

Why isn't she saying anything?

“Hello?”

(I can't! I can't do that!)

“You said you couldn't do it last time too, and you still managed.”

(That was different!)

“You can do it this time too.”

I didn't know about other curators,

but Vivian could do it.

As long as I paid enough.

***

Two weeks later.

“James, what are you staring at?”

Koa approached humming when he spotted the employees gathered in front of the storage room.

“This place has been closed the whole time because of the interior work, right?”

“They finished today and the workers Vivian sent already left. Now we have to clean up.”

“Aw, I only came over because I was curious, and now I'm stuck helping.”

“We were waiting for you, actually. All right, opening it?”

- Slam.

“······.”

“······.”

The employees who looked inside stood there speechless with their mouths hanging open.

No, it wasn't a storage room anymore.

【Staff Break Room】

Perhaps to make sure no employee failed to recognize it,

a huge office plaque had been mounted on the wall directly opposite the entrance.

James was the first to recover and cautiously stepped inside.

“Th-This is······.”

“My God!”

It was no longer a storage room piled with miscellaneous junk.

It was another world.

There were sofas and tables,

a television so massive you could believe it belonged in a theater,

an aquarium full of tropical fish,

a snack bar stocked with every kind of snack and drink,

lockers,

and even three massage chairs lined up side by side.

“Holy shit! I didn't even know TVs this big existed!”

“Look at this! There are different game consoles next to the TV!”

“I'm not joking, this is literally a hundred times better than the share house I live in.”

“Are you kidding? This is practically on the same level as one of our hotel suites!”

“You've got to give the boss credit. When he does something, he goes huge.”

While everyone excitedly explored the break room,

Sophie, the actual winner of the bet, quietly stared at the long row of lockers along the wall.

[Sophie]

Her name was engraved on one of the lockers.

It was even coated directly onto the locker door, as though nobody had considered what would happen if she ever quit.

After staring at her name for a long while, Sophie pulled an old Post-it note from her pocket and stuck it beside the locker.

『My dream is to be a barista at the Hale Koa.』

A new line had appeared beneath the dream written on the note.

‘President Kim, thank you.’

And at that same moment, Woo-jin, who had made Sophie's dream come true, was receiving quite the repayment himself.

***

- Ring-ring-ring.

Huh? It's Sullivan. What now?

“Yes,”

(Mr. Woo-jin, it looks like your dividends will be a little higher this month!)

“Pardon? What did you say?”

(Your dividends are going up! It'll probably be around seven million dollars again!)

What kind of nonsense is that out of nowhere?

It hadn't even been a month since I'd paid Vivian for remodeling the staff break room, yet more money was already coming in?

What the hell is wrong with this account? The more I spend, the more money flows into it.

At this rate, I might genuinely suffer the catastrophe of taking hundreds of billions of won with me into the afterlife!

“Sullivan, I think I'm going to spend some serious money this time.”

(Why are you telling me that?)

“Big money comes with big paperwork.”

(No! What are you planning to do now······.)

“I'll organize the details and send them by email.”

(W-Wait!)

I hung up quickly before he could tell me no.

Of course, even if he did say no, I was hiring his law firm, so Sullivan's opinion wasn't particularly important.

Having one reliable lawyer really was as good as having an army at your back.

© Kim Mangcho#1ond5