Nizuo had already left for Melbourne.
Our coffee would have to wait until she came back.
Life, on the other hand, wasn't waiting for anyone.
I still hadn't heard back from the jobs I'd applied for. Every now and then I'd check my inbox, mostly out of habit now. No new emails. No surprises.
It was raining all morning.
Sydney does rain rather well. Not the kind that ruins your day, just enough to make everything look softer and give you a perfectly reasonable excuse to postpone vacuuming.
The vacuum cleaner would survive another day.
So would I.
I grabbed my keys and drove to Korean Town.
By now, the girl behind the counter probably knew my order before I opened my mouth.
"One latte, please."
Always a latte.
My favourite part has never been the coffee itself. It's that first sip of warm milk foam. Soft, light, gone almost immediately. I still think those first few seconds are worth buying the whole cup for.
I found my usual seat by the window.
The café was busy, as always.
Most of the conversations around me were in Korean.
I couldn't understand a single word.
Strangely, that's exactly why I like coming here.
Nothing pulls my attention away. Nobody's conversation accidentally becomes mine. The voices become part of the background, like the rain outside.
I put on my headphones.
Another little ritual.
Most mornings I listen to the same few YouTube channels. World news. History. AI. Technology. The world seems to change every day, and I like feeling that I'm changing with it, even if it's only one story at a time.
Sometimes I laugh at myself.
There I was, sitting in a little Korean café in Sydney, listening to someone explain what happened five hundred years ago, followed by another person talking about technology that probably won't exist five years from now.
Not a bad way to spend a rainy morning.
Every so often I'd pause the video and look outside.
People came and went with takeaway cups tucked under umbrellas.
A young man walked in wearing gym clothes, ordered without even taking off his headphones, collected his coffee and disappeared back into the rain.
An older couple spent several minutes studying the cake cabinet before leaving with two coffees and absolutely no cake.
I admired their self-control.
I probably wouldn't have lasted that long.
A mother folded a wet stroller with one hand while balancing a coffee in the other. Somehow she managed without spilling a single drop.
Watching people is funny.
You never really know where they're going.
Or where they've just come from.
For weeks, I'd been thinking I was waiting.
Waiting for someone to reply.
Waiting for work.
Waiting to know what came next.
Then I looked around.
The young man was waiting for his coffee.
The couple had been waiting to decide.
Someone outside was waiting for the traffic lights.
A delivery driver sat in his van, waiting for the next order to appear.
It suddenly occurred to me that maybe waiting wasn't a pause.
Maybe it was just another part of moving forward.
I glanced at my phone.
Still no new emails.
I smiled, locked the screen and slipped it back into my bag.
The rain hadn't stopped.
Neither had everyone else.