The espresso machine arrived on a Tuesday. Rajesh had been sitting at his kitchen table, laptop open to three different job boards, when he closed them all and went to the Williams Sonoma website instead. Three thousand dollars. More than his rent. He clicked "Buy Now" before he could think about it too much.
The delivery men struggled up the narrow stairs to his third-floor apartment. They set the chrome beast on his counter and left without comment. Rajesh stood there looking at it. A Breville Oracle Touch. Dual boilers. Automatic grinding and tamping. The kind of machine he'd walked past in the break room at Vertex Technologies for twelve years, never once using it because the regular drip coffee was fine.
He spent the rest of the day reading the manual. Sixty-seven pages. He read it twice.
That night, he ground beans at ten-thirty. The machine made a sound like a small aircraft taking off. Within minutes, someone was knocking on his door.
The woman outside was small, Korean, maybe seventy. She wore a housecoat over pajamas and slippers that had seen better days.
"You're making too much noise," she said.
"Sorry. I'm sorry. New machine."
She peered past him. "Coffee machine?"
"Espresso."
"At night?"
"I was just learning how to use it."
She looked at him more carefully. "You're the one who works at the computer company. Third floor."
"Worked. I worked there."
Something shifted in her expression. Not pity exactly. Recognition maybe.
"Mrs. Park," she said. "Next door. 3B."
"Rajesh. Raj."
"Don't make coffee so late."
He watched her shuffle back to her apartment. Her door closed with a soft click.
The next morning, he made his first real espresso at six. The extraction took twenty-seven seconds. The crema was perfect, tiger-striped, thick enough to hold sugar for a full second before it broke through. He'd watched fourteen YouTube videos about crema.
He drank it standing at the counter. Outside, Seattle was doing its November thing—not quite raining, not quite not raining. His phone buzzed. His mother calling from Chennai. He let it go to voicemail.
By the third day, he had a routine. Up at six. First espresso at six-fifteen. Second at eight. Check job boards from nine to noon. Lunch—usually yesterday's takeout. Third espresso at two. More job applications. Fourth espresso at four. Sometimes a fifth at seven if he was feeling reckless.
On Friday, Mrs. Park knocked again.
"I can smell it," she said when he opened the door. "The coffee. Through the walls."
"I'm sorry. Is it bothering—"
"It smells good. Better than the instant I drink."
He stood there, unsure what to do with this information.
"You drink a lot of coffee," she said. "I hear the machine."
"Would you like some?"
She considered this. "Okay."
She followed him into the kitchen. He noticed she moved carefully, one hand trailing along the wall. She sat at his small table while he worked the machine. Ground, dosed, tamped, extracted. He poured the shot into a small cup, added steamed milk.
"Cappuccino," he said, setting it before her.
She took a sip. Her eyes closed.
"My husband liked good coffee," she said. "We had a coffee shop. In the International District. Thirty years."
"You don't have it anymore?"
"He died. Six months ago. The shop died with him."
Rajesh didn't know what to say, so he made himself an espresso and sat down.
"This is very good," she said. "You learned this in three days?"
"I have a lot of free time."
"The computer company let you go?"
"Two weeks ago. Restructuring."
She nodded like this explained everything. "My daughter wants me to move to New Jersey. Live with her. I'm seventy-four. Too old to live alone, she says."
"Will you go?"
"Would you move back to India?"
He thought about his mother's voicemails, which he still hadn't returned. "No."
"Then you understand."
She finished her coffee and stood to leave.
"Same time tomorrow?" she asked.
"If you want."
"Six-thirty. Not six-fifteen. Too early."
After she left, Rajesh called Derek, his former coworker. They'd talked about getting beers since the layoff, but it hadn't happened.
"Hey man, how's the job search?" Derek asked. Noise in the background. The office.
"It's going. Hey, do you want to grab that beer tonight?"
"Ah, can't tonight. Team thing. You know how it is." A pause. "I mean—"
"Yeah, I know how it is."
"Maybe next week?"
"Sure. Next week."
They both knew it wouldn't happen.
Mrs. Park came the next morning at six-thirty exactly. She brought a tin of cookies. Korean, she said, from a bakery in Lynnwood. They were made with sesame and not too sweet. They went well with the coffee.
"You're not married," she said. Not a question.
"No."
"Girlfriend?"
"Not anymore. She took a job in Austin last year."
"You didn't go?"
"I had a good job here. Had."
She made a sound that might have been disapproval or understanding.
"My husband and I came here in 1973," she said. "From Busan. He had an uncle in Seattle who sponsored us. The uncle died two years later. We didn't know anyone else. Didn't speak English well. But we stayed."
"Why?"
"Where else would we go? We'd already come this far."
She visited every morning after that. Six-thirty sharp. Rajesh would have her cappuccino ready. She'd bring something—cookies, fruit, once a container of kimchi that she taught him to eat with scrambled eggs.
On the tenth day, she said, "You still haven't called your parents."
"How do you know I haven't called them?"
"Your phone rings every morning. Same ringtone. You never answer."
"They don't know about the job."
"Why not?"
"They sacrificed a lot to send me here for graduate school. They tell everyone about their son in America, working for the big tech company. How do I tell them I failed?"
"Getting fired isn't failing."
"It feels like it is."
She was quiet for a moment. "My husband had lung cancer for three years. We didn't tell our children for the first two."
"Why not?"
"Same reason as you. Didn't want to be a burden. Didn't want to admit it was real." She turned her cup in its saucer, a small clockwise rotation. "It was a mistake. They were angry when they found out. My daughter still is."
"But you were protecting them."
"I was protecting myself. There's a difference."
That afternoon, Rajesh finally submitted three job applications he'd been sitting on for a week. They were all for positions below his former level, but he clicked submit anyway. Then he called his mother.
"Raj! Finally! We've been trying to reach you."
"I know, Amma. I'm sorry. I've been busy."
"How is work?"
He looked at the espresso machine, its chrome surface reflecting his distorted face. "Actually, Amma, I need to tell you something."
The conversation went better than he'd expected. His mother cried a little, but then she said, "Come home for a while. Until you find something new."
"I can't, Amma. My life is here."
"What life? You live alone. No wife. No girlfriend. What's keeping you there?"
He thought about Mrs. Park, about their morning coffees, about the tin of sesame cookies on his counter. It seemed too small a thing to explain.
"I just need to stay," he said.
Three weeks into their routine, Mrs. Park didn't show up. Rajesh waited until seven, then knocked on her door. No answer. He tried again at eight. Nothing.
The building manager, a Russian guy named Dmitri, let him in with the master key.
"Mrs. Park?" Rajesh called.
He found her in the bedroom, sitting on the floor beside an open closet, surrounded by men's clothes.
"I'm fine," she said before he could ask. "Just couldn't stand up."
He helped her to her feet, walked her to the living room. The apartment was the mirror image of his own but felt completely different. Photographs covered every surface. A young couple in black and white. The same couple older, with children. The progression of a life.
"I was getting rid of his things," she said. "My daughter says I should have done it months ago. But I started and then I couldn't."
"You don't have to."
"I do. She's right. It's time." She looked around the room. "But not alone."
"I'll help."
"You don't have to."
"I have time."
They spent the day sorting. Keep, donate, throw away. Mr. Park had been a small man, about Rajesh's height but narrower. He'd liked plaid shirts and owned seventeen of them.
"He bought them at Costco," Mrs. Park said. "Always in threes."
In the closet's back corner, Rajesh found a coffee grinder, old but well-maintained.
"From the shop," Mrs. Park said. "He couldn't let it go. Said he might open another place someday. He was seventy-eight when he said that."
"Hope's not a bad thing."
"No. But it can make you hold onto things too long."
That evening, they ate takeout from the Thai place on Market Street. Mrs. Park insisted on paying.
"You helped me all day," she said. "And you make me coffee every morning."
"You bring cookies."
"Not the same."
They ate in comfortable silence. Outside, actual rain now, not Seattle's usual mist. Rajesh's phone buzzed. An email. One of the companies wanted to schedule an interview.
"Good news?" Mrs. Park asked, noticing his expression.
"Interview. Next week."
"That's good."
"Yeah."
But he didn't feel good. He felt something else, something he couldn't name.
"You don't want it," she said.
"I need a job."
"That's not what I said."
"It's a good company. Stable. The position is—it's fine."
"My husband worked at Boeing for five years before we opened the coffee shop. Good job. Stable. He hated every minute."
"But he had the shop to go to. I don't have that."
She was quiet for a moment. "The machine. How much did it cost?"
"Too much."
"How much?"
"Three thousand."
She whistled, a surprising sound from such a small woman. "That's rent money."
"Three months, almost."
"Why did you buy it?"
He'd been asking himself the same question. "I don't know. I was sitting there, looking at job postings, and I just—I wanted something. Something that was mine. Something I chose."
"And now?"
"Now I make coffee."
"Good coffee."
"Good coffee."
She stood to leave, then paused. "The interview. Go to it. See how it feels. But remember—you already chose something."
The interview was downtown, thirty-fourth floor, view of the Sound. The same questions he'd answered a hundred times. The same promises about culture and growth and opportunity. The hiring manager, a woman younger than him, smiled a lot and said "leverage" seven times.
On the way home, he stopped at the coffee supply shop in Ballard. He bought better beans, Brazilian, single-origin. Expensive.
Mrs. Park was waiting when he got back.
"I have something for you," she said.
She handed him the old grinder from her husband's closet.
"I can't take this."
"It should be used. He would like that. Someone who understands coffee using his things."
"Mrs. Park—"
"Jung-sook. My name is Jung-sook."
"Jung-sook. Thank you."
"How was the interview?"
"Like all the others."
"Will you take it if they offer?"
"I don't know."
But he did know. He'd known the moment he'd walked into that glass tower, seen the open floor plan, the ping-pong table, the kombucha tap. It was Vertex Technologies with a different logo.
That night, he used Mr. Park's grinder for the first time. It was manual, required effort, but the grounds were more consistent than his electric grinder. He made notes in a notebook he'd bought specifically for coffee observations. Grind size. Extraction time. Temperature. It was like debugging code, but with immediate, tangible results.
They offered him the job two days later. Good salary. Better benefits than Vertex. He asked for a week to decide.
"You're thinking too hard," Jung-sook said the next morning. They were trying a new bean, Ethiopian this time. Floral notes.
"It's a big decision."
"Is it? You have savings?"
"Some. The severance was decent."
"Enough for six months?"
"If I'm careful."
"Then what's the decision? Take the job and be miserable now, or wait and maybe be miserable later?"
"When you put it like that."
"My husband wanted to wait until we had more money saved before opening the shop. I said, 'When will that be? When we're old? When we're dead?' We opened it six months later."
"And it worked out."
"For thirty years. Then he got sick. But those thirty years—" She smiled. "He was happy. Every morning, excited to go to work. Can you imagine?"
Rajesh thought about his twelve years at Vertex. The morning commute. The stand-ups. The sprints. The reviews. Had he ever once been excited?
"I wasn't unhappy," he said.
"That's not the same as being happy."
"No. It's not."
That afternoon, a package arrived. Coffee cups. Professional grade, the kind cafes used. He'd ordered them the night before, after three glasses of wine.
He lined them up on the counter. Six cups. Six saucers. White porcelain with a blue rim.
His phone rang. The hiring manager.
"Mr. Menon? I wanted to check in about our offer."
"Thank you for calling. I've decided to decline."
A pause. "May I ask why? Is it the compensation? We might have some flexibility—"
"No, it's not that. I'm pursuing other opportunities."
"Oh. Another offer?"
"Something like that."
After he hung up, he felt lighter. Also terrified. But mostly lighter.
Jung-sook brought a friend the next morning. Mrs. Chen from the first floor. Eighty-one years old, walked with a cane, had opinions about everything.
"Too strong," she said about the espresso.
Rajesh made her an Americano instead. She approved.
Soon it became a regular thing. Jung-sook and Mrs. Chen every morning. Then Mrs. Chen brought Mr. Rodriguez from 2C. Retired mailman, liked his coffee black, told stories about the old Seattle, before Amazon, before Microsoft, when Boeing was king and you could afford an apartment on a mailman's salary.
By December, Rajesh had six regulars. His apartment had become an unofficial coffee shop. He'd bought more cups, a better milk steamer. The neighbors brought food—pastries, fruit, once an entire breakfast casserole from Mrs. Chen.
"You should charge," Jung-sook said one morning.
"I can't charge. You're my friends."
"Friends can pay for coffee."
"It's not about money."
"What's it about then?"
He thought about it. "Connection, I guess. Purpose."
"You can have those things and still make money."
"I'm not opening a coffee shop, Jung-sook."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not. Because I don't know anything about running a business. Because—"
"Because you're scared."
He wanted to deny it, but she was right.
"My husband was scared too," she said. "Every day for the first year. Scared we'd fail. Scared we'd lose everything. But fear and doing it anyway—that's courage."
"Or stupidity."
"Sometimes they're the same thing."
Mr. Rodriguez had been listening. "You know what I think? I think you already have a coffee shop. Just a very small one."
Rajesh looked around his kitchen. The espresso machine. The grinder. The cups lined up on the shelf he'd installed. The notebook full of coffee observations. The neighbors gathered around his small table.
"The building manager's brother owns that empty space on 65th," Mrs. Chen said. "The old sandwich shop. Been empty six months."
"I'm not—" Rajesh started.
"Just look," Jung-sook said. "Looking costs nothing."
He looked. The space was small, needed work, but had good bones. Northern exposure, so not too much direct sun. Room for maybe twenty seats. The kitchen was set up for basic food prep.
The landlord, Dmitri's brother Pavel, walked him through.
"Previous tenant left the equipment," Pavel said. "Fridge, stove, dishwasher. All working. I make you good deal. First month free, if you sign one year lease."
"I need to think about it."
"Sure, sure. Think. But not too long. Other people interested."
There were no other people interested. Rajesh could tell. But he appreciated the fiction.
That night, he did something he hadn't done since buying the espresso machine. He made a spreadsheet. Startup costs. Operating expenses. Projected revenue. The numbers were terrifying.
He called his parents.
"Appa, I need advice."
His father listened while Rajesh explained. The job loss. The coffee. The neighbors. The empty shop.
"This is what you want to do?" his father asked. "Make coffee?"
"I think so."
"You went to MIT to make coffee?"
"I went to MIT to have choices."
His father was quiet for a long moment. "When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher. But engineering paid better. Safer choice. I don't regret it—it gave us a good life, sent you to America. But sometimes I wonder."
"Wonder what?"
"Who I would have been. If I'd chosen differently."
"Appa—"
"The coffee shop. Is it possible? Financially?"
"If I'm very careful. If nothing goes wrong."
His father laughed. "Something always goes wrong. But you're young. You can recover from wrong."
"I'm thirty-eight."
"Young enough."
Rajesh signed the lease on December 15th. Jung-sook went with him.
"I have one condition," she said afterward.
"What?"
"I want to invest."
"Jung-sook, no. I can't take your money."
"Not giving. Investing. I'll be partner. Silent partner. You run everything. But I own ten percent."
"Why?"
"Because my husband would have loved this. Because I have money sitting in the bank doing nothing. Because I'm seventy-four and I want to be part of something again."
"Five percent."
"Ten."
"Seven."
"Ten, and I help you set up the shop."
"Deal."
They shook hands. Her grip was surprisingly firm.
The next two months were a blur. Permits. Inspections. Equipment. Rajesh's savings dwindled at an alarming rate, but Jung-sook's investment helped. She also knew people—contractors, suppliers, people who owed her husband favors from the old days.
The neighbors helped too. Mr. Rodriguez painted. Mrs. Chen's grandson did the electrical work for cost. Even Derek showed up one Saturday, guilty about having avoided Rajesh for months.
"This is crazy, man," Derek said, watching Rajesh install the new espresso machine. A two-group La Marzocco, used but immaculate, bought from a shop in Tacoma that was closing.
"Probably."
"But crazy in a good way. Maybe."
"Maybe."
They worked in silence for a while.
"I hate my job," Derek said suddenly. "I've hated it for three years."
"Why don't you quit?"
"Because I'm not crazy."
"Or brave."
"Same thing, isn't it?"
Rajesh thought about what Jung-sook had said. "Sometimes."
They opened on February 1st. A soft open, Jung-sook called it. Just the neighbors and a few friends. Rajesh made coffee. Jung-sook had convinced him to keep the menu simple. Espresso drinks. Pour-over. A few pastries from a local bakery.
The first paying customer was a woman walking her dog. She ordered a cappuccino to go, left a two-dollar tip.
"First dollar," Jung-sook said, taping the bills to the wall behind the register. "For luck."
Business was slow at first. Five, maybe six customers a day. Then ten. Then twenty. The neighbors told friends. Those friends told others. Someone posted on Instagram—a photo of the latte art Rajesh had been practicing, the layers of milk and espresso forming a rosetta pattern.
By March, they had regulars. The nurse who worked nights at Swedish. The construction workers from the site down the street. The woman who wrote novels at the corner table, drinking the same cup of coffee for three hours.
"You need to hire someone," Jung-sook said. She'd taken to sitting at the counter most mornings, not working but presiding, greeting customers like they were visiting her living room.
"Can't afford it yet."
"Can't afford not to. You're exhausted."
She was right. Open at six, close at four, then cleaning, ordering, bookkeeping. He was working more hours than he ever had at Vertex, for a fraction of the money.
But every morning, when he pulled the first shot, heard the hiss of steam, saw the crema form perfect and golden, he felt something he'd never felt in twelve years of writing code. Satisfaction. Simple and complete.
He hired Maria in April. Twenty-three, art school dropout, made better latte art than he did. She also had ideas.
"You should serve food," she said. "Nothing fancy. Sandwiches. Salads."
"That's a whole different license. Different equipment."
"My aunt runs a catering business. She could make things off-site, deliver every morning."
"I don't know."
But he did know. The coffee was good, but coffee alone wouldn't sustain the business. Jung-sook knew it too.
"Adapt or die," she said. "My husband used to say that."
"What else did he say?"
"Many things. Most of them in Korean when he was angry."
They added food in May. Simple things. Maria's aunt's sandwiches. A daily soup. Sales increased thirty percent in two weeks.
June brought unexpected heat. Rajesh learned to make cold brew, bought a used ice machine. Mrs. Chen suggested bubble tea.
"Absolutely not," Rajesh said.
But Mrs. Chen's granddaughter, Amy, home from UW for summer, convinced him to try it. Just a few flavors. Classic milk tea. Taro. Matcha.
The bubble tea brought in a younger crowd. Students. Tech workers from the new apartments being built two blocks away. The same people Rajesh would have been competing with for jobs six months ago.
One afternoon, the hiring manager from the downtown company came in. She recognized him, looked embarrassed.
"I heard about this place," she said. "Didn't know it was yours."
"What can I get you?"
"Cappuccino. To stay."
He made it with extra care. Perfect microfoam. The rosetta pattern Maria had taught him.
"This is really good," she said.
"Thank you."
"Are you happy? Doing this?"
He thought about it. Happy seemed too simple a word. He was tired. Worried about money. His feet hurt. His parents still didn't quite understand. But every morning, Jung-sook came in, sat at her spot at the counter. Mr. Rodriguez told his stories. Mrs. Chen complained about everything and kept coming back. The regular customers knew his name, asked about his weekend, remembered what they'd talked about the week before.
"Yeah," he said. "I am."
She smiled. "Good for you. Really."
After she left, Maria said, "Who was that?"
"Someone who offered me a different life."
"And you turned it down for this?" She gestured at the shop. Mismatched chairs. The wall that needed repainting. The espresso machine that required constant maintenance.
"I did."
"Smart man."
He wasn't sure about smart. But for the first time in his adult life, he felt like himself. Not the version his parents had imagined. Not the one his ex-girlfriend had wanted. Not the one Vertex Technologies had shaped. Just himself, making coffee, creating a space where people could sit and talk or sit and be quiet, where loneliness could ease for the price of a cappuccino.
In July, Jung-sook got sick. Nothing serious, she insisted, just a summer cold. But she stopped coming every day. Then not at all.
Rajesh brought her coffee in the afternoons, after the shop closed.
"I'm fine," she said, but she looked smaller, more fragile.
"Let me take you to the doctor."
"I've been. They say rest. I'm resting."
But he could see it was more than that. The way she moved, careful and slow. The way she winced when she thought he wasn't looking.
"It's my hip," she finally admitted. "Needs replacing. My daughter wants me to have the surgery in New Jersey. Stay with her while I recover."
"How long?"
"Three months. Maybe four."
"And then?"
She looked around her apartment. At the photos. The life built here.
"I don't know."
The day before she left, she came to the shop. Rajesh made her usual cappuccino. She sat at her spot at the counter.
"Ten percent," she said.
"What?"
"My share. Don't forget. Ten percent of this." She gestured at the shop, now full of the afternoon crowd. "I want my dividends."
"Jung-sook, you know we're barely breaking even."
"Not about money. Never was."
"What was it about then?"
She thought for a moment. "Being part of something. Watching something grow. Like with my husband and our shop. We built something together. It mattered."
"This matters too."
"Because you made it matter. That's the secret, Raj. Nothing matters until you decide it does."
She left the next morning. Her daughter came to get her, a woman in her fifties who looked harried and impatient. Rajesh helped with the bags.
"Thank you," the daughter said. "For looking after her."
"She looked after me."
The daughter seemed surprised by this but didn't comment.
Jung-sook hugged him at the car. "Take care of our shop," she said.
"It's not our shop. You're a silent partner, remember?"
"Ten percent not silent enough?"
He laughed. "Come back soon."
"If I can."
They both knew what that meant.
August was the busiest month yet. A food blogger wrote about the shop. "Hidden gem," she called it. "Authentic neighborhood spot in rapidly gentrifying Ballard."
The article brought crowds. Lines on weekend mornings. Rajesh hired another employee, a kid named Marcus who played jazz guitar and made the best pour-over Rajesh had ever tasted.
But success felt hollow without Jung-sook there to share it. He texted her photos. The line out the door. The new customers. The deposit slips showing actual profit.
She texted back occasionally. Short messages. "Good job." "Proud of you." Once just a coffee cup emoji.
In September, her daughter called.
"Mom's not doing well. The surgery was successful, but she's not recovering like they hoped. She's depressed, I think. Won't eat much. Doesn't want to do physical therapy."
"Can I talk to her?"
"She doesn't want to talk to anyone."
Rajesh thought about Jung-sook in New Jersey, in some suburban house, away from everything familiar.
"I'm going to visit," he said.
"You don't have to—"
"I want to."
He flew out the next week, leaving Maria in charge of the shop. Jung-sook's daughter's house was exactly what he'd imagined. Big, beige, a development where all the houses looked the same.
Jung-sook was in a hospital bed in what had been a home office. She looked diminished, like she was slowly disappearing.
"You shouldn't have come," she said.
"You're my business partner. Had to check on my investment."
She almost smiled. "How's the shop?"
"Good. Busy. Wrong without you."
"Everything changes."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it."
He'd brought coffee. Good beans from the shop, a portable grinder, a small French press. He made it in her daughter's kitchen while the daughter watched, disapproving.
"She's supposed to be cutting back on caffeine," the daughter said.
"One cup won't hurt."
He brought it to Jung-sook. She took a sip, closed her eyes.
"Tell me about the shop," she said.
So he did. Every detail. The new customers. Marcus and his jazz. Mrs. Chen's latest complaints. Mr. Rodriguez's new girlfriend, sixty-eight and recently divorced. The way the morning light hit the windows now that fall was coming.
"I want to go home," Jung-sook said when he finished.
"Mom, you can't. You need help."
"I need my life. What's left of it."
They argued, the daughter in English, Jung-sook slipping into Korean. Rajesh sat quietly, drinking his coffee.
Finally, the daughter turned to him. "Tell her she's being unreasonable."
"I can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Because I understand. She wants to be where she chose to be. Where her life happened."
The daughter left the room, frustrated.
"You could come back," Rajesh said to Jung-sook. "I could help. Check on you every day. Maria could too. Mrs. Chen. Mr. Rodriguez. We're your people."
"It's too much to ask."
"You're not asking. I'm offering."
She was quiet for a long time. "I'm dying, Raj."
"I know."
"How?"
"I just do."
She nodded. "Six months. Maybe less. The cancer started in the pancreas. Spread everywhere."
"Your daughter didn't say—"
"She doesn't accept it yet. Thinks if I try hard enough, eat right, do the treatments, I'll get better. But I'm seventy-four. I've had my life. A good life. I want to end it where I lived it."
"Then come home."
It took another week to convince the daughter. Rajesh promised to check on Jung-sook daily. Arranged for a visiting nurse. Set up a schedule with the neighbors.
Jung-sook came back to Seattle in October. Rajesh and Maria picked her up from the airport. She cried when she saw the shop.
"You painted," she said.
"Marcus did it. Said the old color was depressing."
"It was."
They'd set up a chair for her behind the counter. Her spot. She couldn't come every day, but when she did, she held court. Talking to customers. Telling them about her husband's shop. About the old days. About Raj and his three-thousand-dollar espresso machine that started everything.
November came gray and wet. Jung-sook's good days became less frequent. But she still insisted on coming to the shop when she could. Raj or one of the neighbors would help her walk the three blocks.
"I have something for you," she said one afternoon. She handed him an envelope.
Inside were documents. Transfer of ownership. Her ten percent of the shop.
"Jung-sook, no."
"Yes. It's decided. But there's a condition."
"What?"
"Keep the chair. My spot. Even when I'm gone. Someone else will need it. Someone lonely. Someone lost. You'll know them when you see them."
"Jung-sook—"
"Promise."
"I promise."
She died two weeks before Christmas. Quietly, in her apartment, Mrs. Chen sitting beside her. The funeral was small. Her children came from New Jersey and California. The neighbors. A few old friends from the International District.
Rajesh closed the shop that day. Put a sign on the door: "Closed for family."
Maria asked, "Was she family?"
"The kind you choose."
The shop felt different after. Quieter, even when it was full. The chair behind the counter stayed empty for a week. Then one morning, an old man came in. New to the neighborhood, he said. Just moved from Spokane after his wife died.
"Sit anywhere," Maria told him.
He looked around, uncertain. Rajesh caught his eye, nodded toward the chair behind the counter.
"That's a good spot," Rajesh said. "If you don't mind the noise from the machine."
The man sat. Ordered a cappuccino. Stayed for two hours, talking to other customers, watching Rajesh work.
He came back the next day. And the next.
"I hope this is okay," the man said on the fourth day. "Sitting here."
"It's your spot," Rajesh said. "Long as you need it."
December thirty-first. The shop was closed, but Rajesh was there, doing inventory. Taking stock. A year since he'd bought the espresso machine. A year since everything changed.
His phone rang. His mother.
"Happy New Year, Raj. Almost."
"Happy New Year, Amma."
"How's the coffee business?"
"Good. Better each month."
"And you? Are you happy?"
He looked around the shop. His shop. Their shop, really. Jung-sook's. The neighbors'. The regulars'. Everyone who'd made it what it was.
"Yes," he said. "I am."
"Good. That's all we wanted. Your father and I. For you to be happy."
After they hung up, he made himself an espresso. Perfect extraction. Twenty-seven seconds. The crema thick and golden. He thought about Jung-sook, about her husband's thirty years of morning excitement. About choosing something and making it matter.
Outside, Seattle was doing its New Year's Eve thing. Not quite raining yet, but thinking about it. The neighborhood was quiet. Most people were downtown or at parties.
But tomorrow, the shop would open at six. The regulars would come. The nurse getting off her night shift. The construction workers. The novelist with her single, three-hour coffee. New faces too. People looking for more than coffee. Looking for what everyone was looking for—a place to belong, even briefly.
Rajesh finished his espresso, rinsed the cup, turned off the lights. Tomorrow would be busy. The first day of a new year. People making resolutions, starting fresh. He'd make their coffee, remember their names, listen to their stories. It wasn't the life he'd planned. It was the life he'd chosen.
The espresso machine sat silent in the darkness, waiting for morning. Three thousand dollars. The price of change. The weight of steam and decision. The cost of finding out who you were when everything you thought mattered stopped mattering, and you had to decide what mattered instead.
He locked the door, headed home. Tomorrow he'd be back at six. Every morning after too. For as long as the shop lasted. For as long as the neighborhood needed it. For as long as the coffee brought people together, eased loneliness, created small moments of connection in a city that could swallow you whole if you let it.
Jung-sook had been right. It was never about the money. It was about being part of something. About watching something grow. About mattering to people who mattered to you.
The rain finally started as he reached his apartment. He stood for a moment, letting it fall on him. Then he went inside, set his alarm for five-thirty, and went to bed. Tomorrow there would be coffee to make. Lives to touch, however briefly. A chair behind the counter waiting for whoever needed it next.
It was enough. More than enough. It was everything.