Chapter 1

ROSITA

Rosita considered herself a pretty hard worker. She could apply herself fully to any task at hand, even if that task happened to be something as menial as cleaning out coffee grounds. Still, stellar work ethic or not, she was not immune to distraction.

And, boy, was she facing a hell of a distraction.

She’d seen this particular patron before. He always came in at the same time every morning, hardly five minutes past opening, took up a corner table half in front of the window, unloaded his laptop and then proceeded to spend hours tinkering away. Everyday, he had the same bottomless black coffee, sometimes indulging in a bagel, or muffin, but otherwise, she had no reason to believe he needed anything more than lukewarm coffee to sustain his life form.

Usually, she found him easy enough to ignore. He wasn’t exactly intrusive, and while she was busy with classes, her morning shifts were few and far between.

But summer break had rolled around, and she found herself opening most mornings. Just her, her espresso machines, and her hunch-backed patron.

At first, she hadn’t been any more interested than the few other times she’d seen him before, but seeing someone every single day had a way of forcing interest on her. For instance, he always wore a dark cap—navy or black, she couldn’t really tell which—and he kept it on the entire time he sat there. She was pretty sure the bit of hair poking out was silver, but from the little bit of his face she could see, he didn’t look old.

Then there was the matter of the mask. He wore the hat low enough to obscure his eyes quite well, but if that wasn’t enough, he always wore a black face mask. She imagined he took it down to sip his coffee or bite into his bagel, but she’d never seen it. The most she ever got was a glimpse of the corners of his eyes crinkling with a grateful smile as she refilled his mug. He was a complete mystery, and if there was one thing Rosita loved, it was solving a good mystery.

So, she tried to investigate a little.

“Working hard or hardly working?” she joked as he typed, typed, typed away on his laptop while she refilled his mug.

Again, he gave her one of those eye-crinkles. “Thank you,” he said. Polite, but evasive, leaving no room for her to continue questioning him. She returned to her counter to revise her plan of attack.

The next time she approached him, she took a decidedly sneakier approach. She stood over his shoulder as he typed away, reaching around him to refill his coffee—

He started, his elbow flying out and knocking her arm and the pot of coffee in her grip along with it.

Rosita gasped as the hot coffee splashed out onto her hand, which wouldn’t have been so bad if that hadn’t resulted in her dropping the pot. A gasp went up amongst the patrons in the cafe as the pot shattered and splashed against the tile. Rosita stared at her coffee-soaked shoes and wondered if she was in the midst of a deeply vivid nightmare.

“Pardon me. You startled me.”

Rosita raised her eyes to the enigmatic man before her. Despite his apologetic tone, his crinkly eyes seemed anything but.

“You should wear a bell,” he teased.

She skulked away to collect a mop and whatever shred of dignity she possibly could.

So, approaching from behind wasn’t her best idea. She hadn’t even caught a half-decent glimpse of what he was working on. In retrospect, she should have anticipated that someone who was so keen to keep his face hidden would also take privacy precautions for his laptop, but that only made the sting of disappointment worse, so she cast that nugget of logic aside.

When she got back out to the floor, he, his mask, and his laptop were gone. She sighed and moved to clean his table, finding a note left behind with some loose change.

Hope you didn’t burn your hand.

-Stephen Hyun

She had burned her hand, but staring at the tiny, sharp characters of his handwriting, Rosita thought that it was a worthy trade.

Stephen Hyun. What sort of man hid his face but gave up his name so easily?