𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑, j.mori

𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄

—— CHAPTER FIVE / a troublesome goddamn elbow

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"IT'S A SHAME, JIN MORI." she said, looking him up and down after he got up from the dusty ground and dusted himself. "I thought you'd be stronger." Her eyebrows rose in mild amusement when she saw him smirk and position himself in a fighting stance.

"Your strong, Aella." he acknowledged. "Let's go again!"

She looked away, fidling with the cuffs on the sleeves of her dress shirt. Her left side facing him, resulting in her seeing nothing but black on that side because of the bandage. "No..." then as an after thought she added, "you stupid monkey." Mori pouted at the ridiculous nickname and at the fact that she declined his challenge. With a smile that screamed that she ultetior motives, she walked closer to him and extended her hand towards his head, wrapping her slender fingers around his olive green eyemask and gingerly slipping it off his head. With a smirk, she turned around to walk back to the bar, his eyemask in hand.

"Come back when you've grown stronger, Jin Mori!" she called from over her shoulder.

But she had to admit, he provided her the rush she used to get during a good fight.

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"She... she took you down with one hit?!" laughed Mira, gripping onto her plastic cup of boba tea tighter, making Daewi worried it would burst. Mori puffed his red cheeks and crossed his arms, tired of being teased in the past half hour ever since he told them the events of last night. Mira's boisterous laughs gained them looks from the other occupants of the small café—the looks which were not heeded by the trio.

"And she took my eyemask!" he said, throwing a hand in the air in exasperation while he used the other to show them the scar on his forehead. Daewi chuckled while Mira silently slapped the table, "I can't wait to meet your new girlfriend!"

"She's not my girlfriend!"

"Look at 'im, he's blushing!"

Mori looked away, non-verbally giving up trying to make his friends stop teasing him. "Seriously, though," started Mira, lazily leaning against the table, the tone of her voice lower than before, "who is she?"

"She could be a power borrower," supplied Daewi.

"But that's not right," said the bespectacled girl, holding her chin between her thumb and index finger, "if she had a borrowed power, she would've used it against someone as strong as Mori."

"So she must be a genuine fighter?"

"Uh-huh, that's possible."

"Alright," said Daewi, getting up from his seat and holding his black jacket over his shoulder, "let's go meet her."

"Eh? Why?" whined Mori flailing his arms around like a little kid. "Because we want to meet her. You said you're friends with her, no?" The young god stayed quiet, not having something to say to defend himself. "And maybe we'll even find out what type of martial art or what borrowed power she uses." Mira looked at her half-blind friend who only shrugged as a response. Mori blinked at both of them, not liking the fact that they teamed up against him (a childish thing to dislike, really), "Fine."

"Great, show us the bar."

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The three walked inside the bar, to find no customers; they had three hours till the opening time. A handful of staff moved around, going about their business, some upstairs where most of the tables were and some downstairs, mopping the floor and one woman cleaned the remaning shards of glass that had previously been broken.

"Hey, you kids are not allowed here!" scolded a woman no older than forty, her nose scrunched in annoyance. "Uh, we're looking for Park Aella," Daewi told the woman, not stumbling over his sentence once. The woman swept the bridge of her spectacles up her nose and closed her eyes for a second before answering, "She's out back in the stockroom, go find her... and don't touch anything." Daewi and Mira nodded, while the more clueless one out of the three simply looked around, focused on counting the number of alcohol bottles stacked together.

It didn't take long to find the stockroom (it was on the upper floor at the back) and they swung open the door, to see bottles stacked upon shelves and shelves. It looked like a library but instead with bottle. "Wow," breathed Mira while Daewi whistled in amusement. "If you're just going to stand there," came a voice from deeper inside the room making them snap their heads towards the right, "you might as well help me." Mori's face lit up like a christmas tree when he recognized the voice and said told her rather boisterously, "Hey, Aella! I got my friends today. They wanted to meet you!" The said girl came out into the open, a crate full of red wine occupying her hands.

Both Daewi and Mira noticed the girl had a bandage wrapped around her head to cover her eye much like Daewi's. The only difference was that the stuff covered her left eye while it covered Daewi's right. She stood tall, despite the heavy crate in her arms, her black eyes scanning the two new faces. "Um, hi." she greeted with an awkward smile.

"Hi." chorused Mori's two friends. Aella's black eyes stared into Mori's, "Why did you—" She was cut off by the buzzing of her phone in the back pocket of her slim trousers that hugged her long legs. She walked towards Daewi, particularly because he too had bandages around his head and handed him the heavy crate with a sweet smile, "Could you hold onto this for me for a minute?" The teenager didn't answer, just took the crate from her and let his eyes follow her actions as she reached to her phone and answered it.

"Hello?" She walked outside and Daewi followed her. She stopped suddenly, making the half blind teenager almost bump into her. "Eh? What do you mean you can't come tonight?" She waited and the trio assumed that the person on the other end was talking. "Oh, okay and uh, don't bother coming next time too, yeah?" Mira rose her eyebrows in faint amusement upon finally realizing that the girl fired her employee without a second's thought.

"What's wrong?" asked the clueless Mori, leaning against the doorframe of the stockroom. "Um, one of the bartenders just cancelled. I need to find a replacement now."

"I can do it." chirped in Daewi.

"Sure. We have some extra uniforms in the back room, you can go change."

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"So what do you think about Mori?"

Aella followed Mira's gaze at the other end of the bar, where Mori tried to catch Daewi's attention as he served customers. "Well, he's a troublesome goddamn elbow," replied Aella, a look of pity on her face. Mira snorted at her answer.

"But I have to admit, he's a cool guy."

"So when are you going to give his eyemask back?"

"Hm, I don't think I will. I hid it somewhere."

"I already like you."

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