Bubble Tea
It's been years now.
Around this time of the year, I head to The Red Bubble Tea store at the end of the street and order a taro bubble tea with black pearls and half a cup of ice. Then I sit on the two-person couch by the window. Sometimes I hear birds chirp on the apricot tree just outside.
I didn't always do this. No boy did. It was a tradition back then: the boys played basketball at the children's park while the girls sipped their bubble teas in this shop and talked. Until one day, many years ago, she had brought me here and broke that tradition.
At first, as I entered the store again, I wondered if I was doing this just for her…after all, I was always ordering her drink. But maybe I'm here just for the purple sweetness of the drink. Or the feeling of the cold ice pressing against my lips as I eat the remaining black pearls at the bottom of the cup.
Today's the shop's last day, according to the placard hanging at the store entrance, and I feel a bit sad when I see that the couch has already been taken by a couple. They're the only other customers in the shop. They're drinking black and brown americanos.
I sit at a single table on the opposite side of the store.
When I am back at the counter to pick up my drink, I ask the manager why he's closing. He says that the head office was losing money here and couldn't keep up with the inflation. I appreciate his honesty. I thank him for the drink.
At the table, I watch the couple on the couch. The woman tells a joke. The man snorts as he laughs and claps.
If she had been here, she would have told me something funny as well. Probably something about my basketball skills back then. How nerdy I looked when I first started to wear glasses. If she were here and told me something like that, I knew that I would laugh harder than that man over there.
I smile.
The stereo is playing right next to me. It's playing a classic: Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'.
By the time I finish the drink, the couple has left. I momentarily think about going to the couch and sipping on a new drink, just to do what I came here to do. But I don't. I just stare at the spot from afar and wonder where she could be now…
…and how she would look now….I look at the old pictures on my phone for a while as if they could tell me where to go. They don't. They just bring back old memories.
I thank the manager again as I leave. He thanks me back.
Outside, the air smells like wet grass. I hadn’t noticed before. It’s nice. I let the wind blow.
Yejun Chun is a 20-year-old university student studying comparative literature and culture at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. His poetry and prose have been published by yonseimunhak.