It was the next day. Janie stayed true to her statement and did not question Moranda anymore.

The room was dead silent.

In an attempt to break the awkward silence, Janie ran through a variety of topics to start a discussion on, finally opting for the topic of cafes. Janie had never gone to a cafe before, but she could imagine the tranquil vibe that they emit. She imagined the fresh aroma of croissants and freshly brewed coffee entering her nostrils as she slowly drifted into the cafe and magically sat down at a table full of lattes, muffins, cookies, and baked pastries. She imagined the outdoor chimes singing their tunes while the air danced alongside it, the leaves gently flowing and descending down to the ground leisurely, the old-fashioned phone ringing while the baker ran in haste to answer, the clattering of plates. All of this she imagined. Janie was so caught up in her daydream that she didn’t even realize that she was drooling.

Moranda, who was blankly staring at her, snapped her fingers in front of her nose. Janie’s reaction was delayed; flinching back to reality after 3 seconds. Moranda rested her hands on top of her crossed legs, patiently waiting for Janie to recollect her thoughts.

Janie cleared her throat like a teacher gathering their student’s attention directly on them. Moranda, attentively listening, waited for Janie to speak.

“So! Uhhh, what do you think about cafes?” Janie said shyly while avoiding eye contact, whilst Moranda made direct eye contact.

Moranda broke her eye contact with a little chuckle, “I think they have a calming aura, one that can put a turbulent person at ease.”

“Oh cool! So we both think cafes are chill!”

Janie was ecstatic. She felt like she successfully made Moranda comfortable again, which led to Janie coming up with a brilliant idea. A cafe day!

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It hasn’t even been an hour since they both left the house and Janie was already submerged in heat packets. She looked utterly insane going into every store looking for at least a singular heat packet. In Moranda’s perspective, she looked like a shivering puppy with how outrageous she looked while struggling to keep her snot from running down. Everybody has their bad days, and Janie is going through one currently.

Moranda wryly smiled, gazing at Janie with mischievous intentions. She stuck out her pointer finger and slowly wiggled it towards her cheek, and when her finger came in contact with her reddened cheek, Janie yelped in surprise and turned to whine at her. Moranda, unfazed, uttered a chuckle under her breath.

Janie despised the cold weather, and she was subjectively confused about people who actually like the cold, moreover, people who wear shorts in the cold. Her brain never processed how people could withstand the cold air being blown onto them, but yet again, she shouldn’t be concerned about others, as long as she was warm and comfy, she couldn’t care less.

Moranda was in her own world. She gazed around, noticing how gloomy and dreadful the atmosphere was. The multi value gray tones overspread the entire sky making it seem it was about to downpour at any given moment.

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From a distance, the cafe, which was their destination, was within reach. Both artists started dashing towards the place, gently opening the door, and gradually warmed themselves up.

“Hey! Stop acting like you were suffering out there too!” She whined while looking at Moranda rubbing her hands together.

The cashier looked his way at Janie who looked like she was mentally ill and made a face.

Janie, flushed, sheepishly apologized and fumbled with her bag while uttering shamefully at herself.

“Looks like you have a reputation here now.”

Janie scoffed at Moranda who was making her spine shiver from attempting to shuffle her hair. Moranda did her best to not let her hand slip through her head, but her unsteady hand went through Janie's head a couple of times. They sat down at a table far away from the windows, just in case the windows have low quality insulation, but with how chilly the cafe was, Janie already justified that the windows were badly insulated.

Janie took out her sketchbook from inside her bag and laid it on top of the table along with her mechanical pencil. It was a weird feeling for Janie to draw somewhere else other than inside her house, but she wanted to cheer up Moranda, so she had to suck it up and adapt to a new environment. She convinced herself that if she continuously came to the same cafe over and over again with Moranda, then she'll get used to it and possibly enjoy a new change of scenery.

It was time to let herself loose. She assumed her usual position and applied her current knowledge of art to create something out of thin air. Moranda watched intently, watched her make every pencil stroke on the page, contemplating, hesitating, and going haywire. Her attention piqued just by carefully watching Janie. To her, it looked like she was steadily becoming more and more like her when she was young.

Morand used to have the same habits, putting her paintbrush on the canvas, making shapes to imagine something, hesitating and questioning her decisions, and then caving into her restlessness and angrily dragging her paintbrush from one side of the canvas to the next. Many of her paintbrushes resulted in being non reusable. Strands of bristles would drop everytime it was used, and in a fury, Moranda would abuse the paintbrushes and throw them across her art studio, rummaging through a new set of paintbrushes.

She was only 15 at that time, very stubborn and naive to what she was doing, until she chased after a bigger fish in the pond. After that, she set her whole life resolved around him. She was his admirer.

The Moranda presented, had no dignity for herself. She never sought to put herself first and denied any thought that people respected and were inspired by her. So it was lightwork for her to think that she was just another minor person to Janie.

Janie put down her pencil and cleaned up the broken lead that flung all over the table into the palm of her hand. Janie felt gleeful over her hard work and spun her sketchbook around to face Moranda upfront. Moranda complimented her and smiled. That was enough to make Janie fluster and giggle.

Then, within a slip second, Janie paused and jotted something down in the sketchbook before eagerly tapping her finger to where she wrote, trying to catch Morandas attention to that one specific spot.

On that isolated corner of the page wrote:

Do you feel better?

Moranda, perplexed by what she was implying, looked up to Janie with confusion in her eyes.

“What do you mean? I'm not upset or sick.”

That was enough to clarify Janie’s doubts.

“Let's stay here for a while before we head home,” Jaine whispered as she got up with her bulked up wallet in her hands.

Janie and Moranda spent the rest of their remaining time inside the cafe eating and drawing before going home.