Chocolate Cake

Tinkle.


The gentle sound of a bronze chime announced the arrival of a customer. I looked up, trying to put up a smile, although, it being close to closing time, I was secretly wishing for whoever it was to turn around and get out through the very doors he had entered.
When I saw the face of the person who had entered, I froze.

It was me.

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I took the plate holding 2000kcal worth of chocolate cake and a cup of warm milk that he had (or should I say that I had) ordered and laid it down on his table. With a gleeful look in his eyes, he dug in without hesitation, devouring within seconds what had previously been an elegant masterpiece of chocolate and cream. I wasn’t quite sure how this 5-year-old looking me was going to pay for all this, but I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. There was a more pressing matter at hand. Why did he come here? Was he looking for me? More importantly, HOW ON EARTH WAS I TALKING TO MY YOUNGER SELF?
But before I could make sense out of this incomprehensible situation, he, having finished the cup of milk as well, opened his mouth.

“Is there anything you want to say to me?”

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The coffee shop was closed, but I wasn’t alone.
The boy sat in the seat across the table, humming to himself absent-mindedly. The tune had almost a nostalgic feeling to it.
“Stop trying so hard.”
Breaking the awkward silence, I blurted out what I had been on my mind all these years.
““I’m telling you, it’s not worth it. You’re just going to raise your parents’ expectations and your brother’s going to have a pretty shitty time, thanks to you.”
The bitter complaints did not seem to have any effect on the little boy. He was still looking up at me with those black eyes glinting with the signs of innocence that I had lost many years ago. Maybe he was too young to properly register the implications of my words.
My heart started to beat faster. I felt the blood creeping up my neck. Something about the naïve, happy expression on his face was getting on my nerves.
“Not to mention, you’re going to get really, really unhealthy, sitting on your ass studying for all day long with no friends, then you’re going to get a manic depression with an eating disorder starving yourself until you pass out.”
I was positively shouting by now.
“Worst of all, you’re going to fail. You’re a loser. You’re not going to win the Nobel Prize; you’re not going to get into MIT. Spare yourself of troubles and quit it now, quick and painless.”
The room fell silent again.


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“Well then,” said the boy rising from his seat, “I guess that’s about all that I needed to know.”
He had a steely tone in his voice, an air of indifference that was grotesquely jarring with his figure of a 5-year-old. I was confused. This wasn’t the kind of reaction that I had been expecting.
“What…?”
“I said, I guess that’s about all that I needed to know. I was going to ask you a few more things, but now I see that it would be pointless to ask a pitiful loser like you for advice on practically anything.”
I was astonished more than anything. Had I been that arrogant, rude, obnoxious son-of-a-bitch in my youth?
“You’re so afraid of failing that you won’t even try? Even a kid like me can tell that that’s the worst failure of all. You also work at this beautiful café, but you’re still too sore from failing as whatever you had been that you don’t even realize that this was actually one of the things that you’ve always wanted to do. So don’t worry about becoming a failure, you are one already even without trying.”
I was dumbstruck. Each of his words jabbed painfully at my heart.
“Thanks for the cake by the way, it was delicious.”
With another gentle tinkle of the bell, he walked out through the door.