수호 (SUHO) X 장재인- 'Dinner' 

                 Her eyes sighed as she looked around the dim lit blue-hued restaurant with a familiar jazz music playing the background. She knew she looked like a damsel in need of rescue, sitting all alone and melancholy filled, in the two-seaters of the poshest restaurant in the city, the light of the thousand skyscrapers faintly illuminating her silhouette of petite figure donned in the little maroon dress.

Tick tick, the sound coming from her gold pink Rolex made her anxious and yet paradoxically bored to death. Her red tainted lips were caught in between the pearls of white, and her very pale skin flushed a similar shade. Slender fingers wrapped around the wine glass as she brought it near her nose and the smell intoxicated her of a temporary oblivion.

'A Warren. That's why.'

The waiter with the funny mustache came the second time around asking if the wine had to be refilled. She looked at the glass with not a single drop less, she smiled slightly at the waiter's excuse to rescue this damsel.

She shook her head so slowly, that not even a strand of her waist-length brunette was misplaced. The waiter with the funny mustache smiled with embarrassment and left her alone.

He had said he would be here at 8.

A glance at the glossy dial.

It's 9:15. No wonder the waiter wanted to refill the wine.

With her pointed chin rested on her palm on the table, she sighed aloud.

'Why him, papa?'

'A Warren. That's why.'

She smoothed down her velvet skirt for the fourth time. Waiting was nothing new to her. She had waited her whole life. But now, she couldn't help with her drooping eyelids. A silent yawn escaped her lips which she didn't bother to cover, unlike the other times. Her transparent contacts over the grey-blue iris was now really dry and it made her lids tired.

Another glance.

9:35

Slowly the jazz music blended out and her head dropped. Unconsciously she lifted it back straight. But then her back arched more and her head moved back.

Waiting and sleep were never a good combination.

Her head felt light and soon found a comfortable pillow to rest on. She fell asleep.

Only that, it was on the silk laced shoulder of a man seated behind her. 

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When he laid his eyes on her closed ones, he was hit with a cold wind. He had felt a lightweight on his right shoulder all of a sudden and impulsively turned to find himself in the close proximity of a sleeping girl. Her pink shadow glittered up close and he could fell her even breathing against his neck. As much as he wouldn't have wanted, reflex got him to quickly stand up letting her sleeping head jerk down.

With eyes wides and the chair screeching, he immediately caught her from tripping.

She gasped. Eyes were opened now and they stared at him. A disoriented stare. He helped her sit back and found her cheeks velvet, spreading to the ear tips.

She caught her table edge for balance and constantly kept looking at the carpeted floor. Breathing in and breathing out.

He found it strange. To have a girl fall asleep on her shoulder. He smirked at how the last thought sounded and loosened his teal neck bow.

'Sorry. I-I don't know wh-Sorry.'

Her voice resembled that of a timid rabbit. Not that he had heard a timid rabbit seak. But that's what it must have sounded. So low so hesitant and so..

He felt the heat rise in his own beardless cheek and shook his head, letting his blond dyed curls fly astray.

Soon one of the waiters came up asking if everything was alright. The girl nodded and excused herself from the scene while he assured the waiter nothing was amiss except that he would like a refill of the wine.

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She pulled back behind the pillar when she saw him still seated at the table behind her. Her own chair still pushed back to be very near his own pushed back chair. It looked like both the chairs were away from their respective table to be behind each other.

Still freshly cooked from embarrassment she hesitated to go back to her. Where was her date anyway? Another glance at the watch read 9:50.

Disappointment washed over her. She had been stood up by a date whose name nor face she knew. Pathetic.

She didn't want to, but couldn't help herself from imaging the look on her Papa's face if she told that she had been stood up by a Warren.

The proud and protective Girmen would have even gone to the limits of sue-ing the Warren Co. Her papa would have done that, in fact, he had done that when a business partner broke her sister's heart. Of course, Girmen had sued his company through loopholes and now that man was gone for good.

But would he do it now?

Now when any help from Warren Co was welcomed into Girmen enterprises?

She knew that the only reason her Papa wanted her to go on this date was in hopes of getting on the good sides of the Warrens. But rather than being angry, her father would be disappointed. Hopeless.

Running her fingers through the brunette locks, she sighed. The rules of money. Changing everyone as it comes and crushing everything as it goes.

Suddenly her iPhone lighted up with a notification,

'Is the date going that splendidly that you don't want to part? But its late. We have to go home, kid.'

Irony.

With a dejected laugh, she shot back a reply to her chaperone/driver.

'A few more minutes please Mr.Roy.'

What would be perceived as a few more minutes of enjoying the date was actually a few more minutes of waiting for the so-called date. She had no idea why she was waiting even when she very well knew that he wouldn't show up.

Chucking her iPhone into her dress pocket, she leaned against the pillar forgetting the reason for being beside it in the first place.

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He was getting nervous. First, that girl hadn't turned up yet. He knew she was waiting for someone through the hushed whispers of two waiters. What if she had left tired of waiting. Second, why was he even bothered with her not turning up? And lastly, he himself was stuck in that girl's predicament of mere seconds ago.

He pulled the text thread from his phone to check if the time and location were right. Yes. Even the hearts and kissing emojis meant it was she who typed it, not her assistants as usual.

Then where is she?

His eyes roamed around and she lazily looked up. When his eyes skimmed towards the pillar, their gazes locked. Both were surprised, the former that she hadn't left and the latter that she got caught.

She bit her lower lip and hurried off to the reception desk. Unconscious of her movements, she pushed her credit card and ignored the bill for only a glass of wine and made a beeline out of the restaurant door into the corridors outside.

Finally, she stopped, doubling over to let out a breath she had no idea she was holding.

'Miss!'

Oh no, he had followed her outside? Why?

Her eyes wrinkled and mortification weaved her expression. She stood up and tried walking as fast and yet as subtly as possible.

The voice was calling her and she was not stopping.

'Madam, you have missed your purse.'

She tsked internally for being careless and for another round of embarrassment. She turned around very hesitantly only to find that it was the waiter with the funny mustache jogging towards her.

Keeping her calm, 'Oh. Thank you.'

'No problem, miss.' He winked with a smile.

She smiled a fake smile and watched him turn around, only to see the man leaning against the walls and smothering a laughter. His shoulders shook lightly, the one she shamelessly fell asleep on.

Dumbstruck and stuck on the spot she watched him push himself up and smooth down his white button up with a thick mahogany coat in one hand.

Stupidly, she remembered that his coat resembled hers which was in the car anyway.

'If I am not wrong, you did think it was me who was calling you, right?'

His voice just deep and smooth, right enough to cause something in her tummy.

He was smiling with the light of the chandeliers above illuminating his figure. He was good looking and she wanted to just stare etching each feature into her mind.

The girl was pretty. Weren't they all pretty? Given that she had a pointed chin, a slim body, she looked like the others he had met in the upper status. Well polished.

His laughter had drained down to a noiseless grin on his milk-white face.

She simply shrugged and turned around.

'You aren't waiting anymore?'

He saw her tense up, shoulders stiff and her turning around for the second time of the night.

'Quoii?' She shook her head and repeated, 'What?' Her silver eyes raked him head to toe. 'How did you know?'

Caught red-handed, he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck and avoided her eye. Finding the chandelier interesting, he answered, 'You were sitting in a restaurant known for its delicacy with nothing but a glass of wine and –'

He looked at her. Letting her he knew that she was waiting for someone. He just knew even before he heard it from the waiters.

'And?'

Right then an old couple, the woman clad in diamonds and the man donning a walking stick walked by ignoring the two young people. But their eyes followed the couple until they were out of the corridor doors.

'And you had the look of being tired. Tired of waiting.'

A pregnant pause followed which made him think whatever he said was just cheesy.

But she surprised him by saying, 'So do you.' , with a sad smile and acknowledgment of finding a company in the lost game of waiting.

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