Chapter 5

Different from the Beginning (2)

After finishing the self-photo shoot, Kang Dae-oh and Min Seung-yeon spent the entire day looking through Kang Yera’s pictures again and again.

They had to choose only the best pictures and send them to Kang Yera’s grandparents and maternal grandparents.

“You said you would send the pictures, right?”

Min Seung-yeon nodded firmly at Kang Dae-oh’s question.

“You have no sense when it comes to choosing pictures.”

“That’s unfair. You’re winning with facts…”

It was so true that Kang Dae-oh couldn’t even find the will to argue.

Even when they were dating, Min Seung-yeon had always been the one in charge of taking and choosing their selfies.

“I’ll choose the pictures, do some editing, and then send them.”

“Send them to me too when you’re done. I’ll save one as my smartphone wallpaper.”

“Okay. More importantly, when are you going to work? Isn’t it about time to open the café?”

“I should go now.”

Even though it was still early in the morning, the café had to be open even if there were no customers.

They never knew when someone might come looking for Kang Dae-oh’s café.

The laundromat owner across the street usually came to the café in the morning as well.

More than 90 percent of the orders were Americanos.

Kang Dae-oh left the house and drove to work as usual.

While he was opening the café and organizing the shop,

“Why don’t we look at this place?”

“Hmm, the location isn’t bad.”

Kang Dae-oh noticed several men dressed in suits carefully looking over his café from a distance.

Are they customers?

But something felt strange.

Their behavior was unusual.

Rather than looking like people who had come to drink coffee, they seemed much more interested in inspecting the café itself.

Just as Kang Dae-oh was about to go outside and ask them why they were there,

the men quickly left.

What was that about?

He wanted to run after them and find out where they were going.

But he couldn’t leave the café unattended with the door open.

Kang Dae-oh decided to treat it as nothing more than a small incident and picked up the mop again.

He began cleaning the floor.

There really are a lot of strange people in this world.

If he had to name the strangest person he had seen recently, it was definitely…

‘My daughter.’

An involuntary bitter smile appeared around Kang Dae-oh’s lips.

As Kang Yera continued to grow after being born, the little daughter of Kang Dae-oh experienced the biggest event of her life so far.

It was—

“Oh my goodness! She rolled over?”

The laundromat owner watched a video of Kang Yera rolling over that was saved on Kang Dae-oh’s smartphone.

He was so happy that it seemed like it had happened to his own child.

“How many months old did you say Yera is now?”

“She’s just over 100 days old.”

“She’s incredibly fast! My kids only started rolling over by themselves when they were five months old. Why is Yera so fast?”

“I don’t know.”

It wasn’t only rolling over that she did early.

The same was true for babbling.

And she had already started sleeping through the night.

Most of the things people called the ‘100-day miracle’ had already happened to Kang Yera long before that.

“When I tell people I know who already got married and had children about Yera, they never believe me. They only believe it after I show them videos as proof.”

“Of course. When you first told me that Yera had already started rolling over, I also told you to stop talking nonsense.”

The laundromat owner had come to Kang Dae-oh’s café to take a short break from his wife and the laundromat.

That was when he learned about Kang Yera’s unusually fast growth.

And that wasn’t all.

“She seems to recognize people already. She definitely calls my wife ‘Mom,’ and she even clearly calls me ‘Dad.’”

“Wow… The more I hear, the harder it is to believe. Is Yera a genius? You know what they say, ‘A promising tree looks different from its first leaves.’”

“I don’t know. I really can’t say.”

Even though Kang Dae-oh said that, his face was filled with a bright smile.

Ever since becoming a father, Kang Dae-oh had recently realized something.

He felt happier when his child was praised than when he himself was praised.

As Kang Yera continued to grow, Kang Dae-oh was also growing little by little as the father of a child.

While he was proudly talking about his daughter,

Jingle, jingle!

The small bells hanging on the café door rang.

Several men walked through the door.

Their faces looked quite familiar to Kang Dae-oh.

They’re the same people who were hanging around near my café that morning.

It had only been a few days, and because they had seemed so suspicious at the time, he remembered their faces clearly.

One of the men, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, looked back and forth between Kang Dae-oh and the laundromat owner.

Then he walked over to the laundromat owner and politely greeted him.

“Hello. Are you the owner of this café?”

The laundromat owner laughed and pointed toward Kang Dae-oh.

“The owner is over there. I’m the owner of the laundromat.”

“Oh, I-I see. I’m sorry.”

If the laundromat owner and Kang Dae-oh were standing together, it was easy enough to mistake them for an owner and an employee.

So Kang Dae-oh wasn’t offended by the man’s mistake.

Anyone could make a mistake.

“Why have you come here?”

No matter how he looked at them, they didn’t seem like people who had simply come to drink something.

Just as Kang Dae-oh suspected, the man handed him a business card and revealed the real reason for his visit.

“I came because I wanted to make you a good offer.”

“An offer?”

The man looked toward the business card he had just handed Kang Dae-oh.

Kang Dae-oh looked at the card.

His eyes narrowed for a moment.

A coffee-specialty brand called ‘TwoSet.’

It was a fairly well-known café brand among the famous café brands in Korea.

The man finally revealed the real reason he had come to see Kang Dae-oh.

“Boss, have you ever considered becoming a franchise owner?”

It was already late at night, long after the sun had gone down, when Kang Dae-oh finally returned home.

He let out a deep sigh filled with exhaustion.

It felt as if heavy loads called fatigue were piled on both of his shoulders.

But the moment he opened the front door and saw his daughter’s smiling face,

all those heavy burdens disappeared like snow melting in the sun.

Min Seung-yeon came out to greet him while holding Kang Yera in her arms.

She gave her husband a playful glare.

“Oh? Husband. You’re not even looking at your wife. You’re only looking at the baby?”

“I was looking at both of you.”

“Liar.”

“I’m serious.”

Kang Dae-oh felt a little guilty inside, but he pretended to be completely innocent.

Thanks to that, he only received a suspicious look from his wife for a moment and managed to get away with it.

“How was today?”

“What?”

Min Seung-yeon tilted her head at Kang Dae-oh’s question.

“I mean Yera. I was wondering if she was good and quiet.”

“Of course she was. But lately, she seems to be trying to stay up a little later.”

“Really? It’s already nine o’clock. She still isn’t sleeping?”

Kang Yera was lying in her reclining baby cushion, blinking her big eyes several times.

She almost looked as if she were challenging them.

‘Go ahead and try to put me to sleep.’

“She definitely doesn’t look like she’s going to sleep.”

“Right?”

She would eventually fall asleep on her own when the time came.

But they had no idea when that time would be.

No matter how mature and grown-up Kang Yera seemed compared to other babies, she was still a baby.

Babies were unpredictable, and something could happen at any moment, so they always had to keep an eye on her.

Still, Min Seung-yeon said that they had once again had a peaceful day of taking care of the baby.

Hearing that, Kang Dae-oh felt relieved.

“…”

Min Seung-yeon silently looked at her husband’s expression before asking him in return,

“Did something happen at the café?”

“Huh? Why do you suddenly ask?”

“No. You look like you have more things on your mind than usual. I thought maybe you had another difficult customer today.”

Perhaps it was because they were married.

She noticed even the smallest changes in him right away.

Kang Dae-oh decided to honestly tell his wife what had happened that day.

“People from TwoSet came today.”

“TwoSet? You mean the TwoSet I know?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Why did they come?”

“They asked if I wanted to sell the café. And if I didn’t want to sell it, they asked if I wanted to sign a franchise contract with them and operate the café under the TwoSet name.”

There were two choices.

But in the end, both choices would lead to handing the café over to TwoSet in some way.

“I don’t really want to sell the café for money. If possible, I’m thinking about signing the franchise contract.”

“Why?”

“I think operating under the TwoSet name would be more effective at attracting customers than just running an ordinary neighborhood café.”

“That’s true… I have a few friends who pass by other cafés nearby and only go to TwoSet.”

That was the power of a famous café brand.

“What are the conditions?”

“They aren’t amazingly good, but they’re not bad either.”

“So that’s why you’re thinking about it?”

“Exactly.”

If they had offered Kang Dae-oh an enormous amount of money to sell the café, he wouldn’t have had to think this much.

He could simply use that money to open another café somewhere else.

Min Seung-yeon gave her opinion first.

“I’ll support whatever decision you make. I said the same thing when you first opened the café, didn’t I?”

“You did. You said exactly the same thing back then.”

In the end, the decision was up to Kang Dae-oh.

“A franchise contract… would probably be better, right?”

“Have you decided to go with that option?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

Just as he was about to call the phone number of the TwoSet representative from the business card he had received that day—

“Waaah! Waaah―!”

Kang Yera suddenly began to cry.

The baby almost never cried when she was at home, so when she suddenly let out a sharp cry, Kang Dae-oh and Min Seung-yeon were both extremely startled.

Min Seung-yeon immediately jumped up and picked up Kang Yera.

“Yera! What’s wrong? Huh? Is something bothering you?”

Was she hungry?

Or was there something wrong with her diaper?

But neither seemed to be the problem.

She had drunk formula thirty minutes ago.

And Kang Dae-oh had changed her diaper just ten minutes before he returned home.

She had even pooped twice that day.

She didn’t have a fever either.

Before long, Kang Dae-oh realized that Kang Yera wasn’t really crying.

She was pretending to cry.

Because—

“Yera, you don’t even have a single tear.”

“Oh my, you’re right.”

It seemed as if she were trying to force her mother and father’s attention completely onto herself.

Kang Dae-oh took Kang Yera from Min Seung-yeon and looked directly into his daughter’s eyes.

“Yera, are you doing this because of what Daddy just said?”

Kang Yera nodded her head.

“Daddy shouldn’t sign the franchise contract?”

Once again, she nodded.

Whether it was just a coincidence or whether she had actually understood what her father said and was answering him, Min Seung-yeon was completely confused as she watched them.

But Kang Dae-oh kept getting a strong feeling.

A feeling that he should listen to what his daughter was saying.

After handing Kang Yera back to Min Seung-yeon, Kang Dae-oh stared at the phone number of the TwoSet representative displayed on his smartphone for a long time.

Then he moved his finger.

[Delete this number?]

Kang Dae-oh thought about it for quite a while.

His choice was—

[Yes]

He boldly deleted the TwoSet representative’s phone number.

He had no way of knowing whether what his daughter had told him was truly the right answer.

But—

‘For some reason, I feel like something bad will happen if I don’t listen to Yera…’

He decided to trust the opinion of his daughter, who had been different from the very beginning.