Chapter 4 - The Sound of the Street
By Monday, the video had been viewed six million times.
The media did not care about the financial mechanics of the acquisition. They cared about the drama. The Korean Prince and the Barista, the headlines read. Aurelia Coffee War. Sinclair Tower Falls to the Dragon.
Grace could not walk into her night classes without people whispering behind her back. Her phone was a constant buzz of unknown numbers—reporters from the Post, the Times, local news stations offering her "exclusive" interviews to tell "her side of the story."
She ignored them all.
She spent her days in the new office Dojin had built for her on the 39th floor. It was small, but it had a window that looked out over the Hudson River, and the desk was solid mahogany. She was no longer wearing the Aurelia apron. She wore tailored wool trousers, silk blouses, and a pair of dark gray spectacles she used when her eyes got tired of looking at spreadsheets.
At six in the evening, her door opened.
Dojin walked in, carrying a small paper bag from a bakery in Chinatown. He set it on her desk, along with a cardboard cup of black coffee.
"You're still here," he said.
"The Q4 reports for the new logistics hub in Queens need to be finalized," Grace said, not looking up from her screen. "There’s a discrepancy in the union wage scales."
Dojin sat on the edge of her desk, his leg nearly brushing her arm. "You're hiding, Grace."
"I am working."
"Work is not a shield," he said gently, reaching out and placing his hand over her keyboard. "The city is talking about you. They want to know who the woman behind the table is."
"I don't care what the city thinks," Grace said, her voice rising slightly as she looked up at him. "They don't know me. They didn't know me when I was working twelve-hour shifts at Aurelia, and they don't know me now. They just want a story about a poor girl who got lucky because a rich man felt sorry for her."
Dojin’s face went very serious. He leaned in closer, his dark eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that made the air in the small office feel heavy.
"I did not pour that coffee because I felt sorry for you, Grace," he said, his voice dropping to a low, rough whisper. "I did it because I was angry."
"Why?"
"Because for eleven months, I came into that lobby every morning just to hear you say my name," Dojin said. "Because I have spent my entire life surrounded by people who smile at me because they want my money or they fear my family. You were the only person in this city who looked at me like I was just a man who wanted three ice cubes in his coffee."
He reached out, his thumb gently tracing the line of her jaw, his touch so warm it made her breath hitch.
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"I did not save you, Grace," he said. "You saved me from forgetting what a real person looks like."
Before she could answer, the glass door of her office shattered.
