Neighborhood, daily life, essay. Essay
Only bad things happened today. While I was away from work, I visited a nearby brunch cafe. The price is good and the reviews are good. I like the atmosphere that is like a local cafe when I go there in person. Of course, the interior is the neatness of the franchise, but as soon as I got inside, I had a hunch. This is a local cafe. It’s a shop in my favorite neighborhood.
The employees who talk to me naturally, laugh and tell me the password to the bathroom, and the customers who come back from the bathroom, “Isn’t today a two-person work day?” “No, three-person work today?” Yeah. That’s right. This is a neighborhood store.
When I go on a trip, I always went to the ‘town’ cafe or a good restaurant. A place where employees who are unfamiliar with strangers coming in often talk to me without overcoming curiosity. Or, everyone but me knows each other well, so they have a pleasant conversation among themselves, and I like places like that where I am the background. It’s okay to talk or not, whether it’s a franchise or not. Just, everyone likes a place where it becomes a natural scenery. Such a place was a local cafe with a high probability. When someone comes, words like “ice today?” like natural space.
Actually, I used to hate local shops. This is because I felt left out as if I were the only foreigner. At that time, I shrank a lot from my sudden life in Seoul and college. So I envied them for having a neighborhood I couldn’t have.
However, time changes people. I’ve become brazen. It didn’t matter if I was sitting anywhere by myself, and rather began to enjoy the time. The sound of laughing among themselves became a pleasant background music. I was there with a smile on my face when I ate something like bread that they had packed. And sometimes I would also buy simple snacks like macarons (especially cafes) because I was sorry to stay a long time. So I also began to seep into a local cafe.
There is a clear indication that he has become a regular customer of a local cafe. What if the employee who saw me coming in started saying, “Iced Latte today?” before greeting? Congratulations, you’ve become a regular! That doesn’t mean you should order just one drink. When I went to a different time zone from my usual time zone, I was told, “You’re at an unusual time today?” If you ordered another drink, you’d say, “You didn’“If a new menu comes out, I’m recommended for that. All these are words that you can hear because you’re a regular.
Today, I am doing my duty faithfully as a guest who is absent-mindedly somewhere in the neighborhood and a guest who is the background.