Chapter 4

The cafe was decorated with fairy lights and small shelves with board games and a few small plants. While it wasn't too busy, the line was still somewhat long today and the place was a bit crowded.

"Hey, how about you go sit down somewhere and I could order your drink for you."

"If you're okay with it, alright." Kevin paused for a few seconds, "I like Thai tea."

"Okay," he paused thinking, "Anything else?"

"There is some shrimp here, we should eat that! There are also vegetarian dumplings. Oh, and they have lobster bread, or do you like chicken better?"

John smiled at him, "I'm fine with anything you want. I'll check out the menu and be back as soon as possible."

He watched as John left him. As he waited he went to look to see if there are any new notifications. There was one from Toby, a few emails, and a couple of spam messages. He deleted the spam messages and looked through the emails first. The emails were asking for commissions.

"Ah, I need to get back to work soon."

He never fully understood why there were so many people who liked his art. He had always thought his style was just really generic, but he was also happy that people liked it so much. He wasn't really that popular, but he made enough money to keep his apartment and feed himself. He started to type out some responses when John came to the table.

"I finished ordering everything. Oh, I also bought a lot of food, I hope that is okay."

"Nice! You got the shrimp. Wait, do you need help paying for those? I can pay for the things I wanted." Kevin grabbed the receipt to look at the order, when something caught his attention. "...Arjun..?"

John quickly took the receipt back, "Ah, sorry. Um, Arjun is my real name, but I usually use John because it's easier for people to say."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to look at anything personal."

"It's not a problem, don't worry. I'm just a bit embarrassed."

Kevin paused, thinking. "Hey, would you be okay with me calling you by Arjun? ...I want to get closer to you, so if it's okay..."

"That sounds nice, sure," he took a bite out of the sweet potato fry, "but if you're gonna get to know me, I want to get to know you better as well. Tell me something I don't know about you."

Kevin thought about it for a little then started speaking, "It may be a bit weird, but when I was younger, I didn't know I was Vietnamese. I thought I was Chinese or something. It wasn't until someone with the same last name told me something like 'Hey you know Nguyen is not Chinese right?."

"You didn't know?" Arjun chuckled "I feel like that's something a bit too important not to realize about yourself."

Kevin shrugged, "I guess my parents never told me. They wanted me to be more like everyone else so they never taught me anything about our language or culture."

They were both silent for a moment before Arjun spoke, "Sorry, I probably shouldn't have asked."

"It's fine, I was the one who chose to talk about it. It's something in the past so it's not like I can do much to change it, and I am trying to learn Vietnamese and stuff now." Kevin took a sip of his tea, "By the way, if you don't mind me asking, why did you choose to go with a different name?"

He laughed a bit "There were some kids in my class that had a problem with it. They said stuff like 'Arjun is a strange name, weird to spell, we should all call you Aaron.' It annoyed me, so I decided to name myself after a superhero I was reading about in a comic. My mom thought it was unnecessary but I was also starting to think my name sounded strange."

"I don't know if this helps, but I think your name sounds cool. You don't have to worry about it."

Arjun patted Kevin on his head. "Yeah, thank you."

They ate some food and talked more about their lives and what they like. Taking the time to get to know each other. Even though they knew each other for years, even though they were around the same age, it wasn't until today did they start to know each other.