Strawberries And Cigarettes

Chapter 9

Sinb's POV

I shut the door after pulling Yeji inside. This girl was with me for years but I still didn't know her. When Ryujin cried for the first time in front of me, telling that thing about this girl; when she accidentally uploaded that video where this girl was talking— I felt as if I wasn't watching someone I've watched for almost 4 years. It was different girl who plead to me, years ago.

I put my phone back in my bag when I heard some sniffs here at the back of the bar.

"Who's there?" I tried calling out, hoping for someone to answer but there's none.

When I took another step, that's when I saw someone behind the trash bin. A girl crying while laying on the dirty ground, her light brown hair was too messy and the side of her face that I could see from here was dirty.

"H-Hi? What are you doing there?" I approached. She stopped sniffing the moment she heard me, before I could even step my feet back, the latter hugged my knees.

She cries way harder. I guess something bad happened last night to this poor girl.

"T-They like d-dumping...someone w-when it has no u-used at all...I j-just want to escape my life..." she mumbled with her grip, loosening.

I touched her hair, watching some strands of her hair going between my thumb and point finger. "Shh...it'll be fine. Be sure to trust the right person next." I said. She looked up to me— and far from my expectation earlier, I'm seeing a girl with desperate look on her face right now, far from the innocence she had in her voice earlier. And far from the sniffs I heard— there was no tears on her eyes.

So that was the girl before Yeji came. Before that eyes turned brave and desperate.

"Hi," someone approached me here in the corner of the bar. I answered her with a hum with my eyes glued on my phone.

"I'm the girl you helped yesterday. You said you're working here— I want to work here too."

I lick the bottom of my lip as I put down my phone. When my eyes laid on her, that's when I recognized that girl who I saw at the back of the bar.

"You don't know what you're talking about. We do dirty stuffs here." I said.

"I can be a stripper. I have nice body and you can't deny that I got pretty face too. I'll do everything you want."

Before I could even speak, she knelt in front of me. Her expression was so desperate. There's nothing I could see, a total empty eyes.

"I can do the dirty work. I need it. I can do it. I can prove myself to you." she said without changing her expression.

"You need it? It means you don't want it. You're doing to the thing you're not used to because you need it?" I asked while staring on the wine as it rotates around the glass I'm holding.

"I need it to erase who I was before "

I stood up. "Why? Who were you before?" I asked while looking at her.

"Fragile as a glass of wine whom they easily ruined." she stated.

I put my hand on top of her head, rubbing my hand on her now, smooth hair. "Do everything for me. Do everything to be my golden child in this field."

That's when my golden child appeared. The kid who's willing to do everything for her master. The kid who has a cold aura but a person who doesn't forget someone who helped her.