hoodie

   

Sherryl was about to return from her hour long break when she received a phone call from her half-brother, Milo. She picked up the call upon the last ring after deciding to eventually pick up the call.

"What's up, Milo?"

"Sherrie!" Milo greeted happily and Sherryl winced from his ecstatic tone.

"Could you be anymore loud?"

"Of course, but thank god you picked up! I was beginning to worry an-"

"Get to the point, Milo. What did you call me for?"

A sheepish chuckled could be heard from the other line and Sherryl wasn't amuse by it.

"Milo."

"Um, you're good with math, right?"

Sherryl found it an odd question, but she was more curious as to why her little brother would be asking that in the first place.

"Not really. Why?"

He dodged her question and asked another.

"Do you perhaps know someone that does?"

"Even if I did, what's it to ya?"

"Hmm, are you busy then?"

"Milo."

"Just tell me if you're busy or not, sis."

"I'm still on my break. Is there a reason why you called, little bro? Don't you have cram school right now?"

"No. I've been skipping it lately. It's been getting too much lately."

"Milo. You know how Diane feels about your schooling."

"I know, I know, but mom doesn't let me have any fun."

Sherryl knew that her step-mother could be a bit strict, high strung, and controlling, but it was her duty as a parent to make sure her child had the best education as possible. Even if at times Diane was a total .

"Are you in trouble again?"

Milo reluctantly revealed the real reason he contacted his eldest sister and Sherryl let out a sigh knowing that he got himself into another sticky situation again. She left work and hurried to meet him and his buddies.

"Officer Jung."

Zhengting stopped typing upon hearing his name and gazed up at his superior with a curious look.

"Yes, Chief Watson?"

"Have you heard about your upcoming transfer?"

He knew, but he feigned cluelessness wondering why it was being brought up now.

"No. Why am I being transfer, Chief Watson?"

"You've produced excellence results over the past two years here at the Community Safety Unit of the East Akaso Police Departmment, but we've decided that you'll show even greater promise at the First Division of the Nizho Metropolitan Police Department thanks to the recommedation of the higher ups."

"Thank you kindly for your words, but I can't just leave you guys like that." Zhengting said with a polite smile.

"Don't worry about."

Chief Watson dismissed with a wave of his hand.

"Um, so then when does my transfer become effective?"

"In a few days." Chief Watson answered with a sad smile.

"Oh? So just in time for the new year to begin, yeah?"

"Yup. Just need to finish some more paper work and you'll be hanging with the bigshots within the first week of the new year. Just stop by every now and then when you're in the area to hang out with us little guys."

"I will, sir."

Chief Watson walked away after patting Zhengting on the shoulder and he looked about the office. He sure was gonna miss the place, but he knew that his goal still lied before him. Zhengting continued with his report when the chief informed him to tackle one last thing before his transfer.

"Actually, if you could take care of this as well, that would help us a whole lot."

"Sure will, Chief."

"Call." Sherryl agreed as she pushed the set amount of chips into the pile with a neutral expression.

She watched awaiting the results while playing in some dingy and poorly lit bar-like place that allowed minors within their vicinity. She found herself playing Poker for her brother and his friends against a bunch of college students, Arata Mackenyu, Shison Jun, and Yamazaki Kento, from the same university as her. Milo and his three friends, Leo, Adam, and Justin, thought they could out-smart these college students at a game of Poker. Only because the older trio had let them win on the pretense that they themselves weren't good.

"Two pairs." Sherryl laid out her cards with two pairs of Three's and Six's.

"Three of a kind, ten." Jun said following her after.

"Two pairs, Seven's and Eight's." Mackenyu announced next.

"King, four of a kind." Kento stated with a smirk and quirk of his brow.

The quartet gasped in shocked that Sherryl had been bested and were horrified of their punishment. Earlier they had signed a contract with the trio in paying three thousand dollars if they lost. If they won then they would get the three thousand dollars instead.

"It looks like you lost." Jun mocked as Sherryl ginned at him. "Did I?"

The older trio furrowed their eyebrows in confusion.

"I hope you have a plan, sis." Milo responded from behind her as Sherryl nodded in acknowledgment.

Sherryl reached for something within her bag and pulled out a portable black light.

"What's that?" Mackenyu asked.

"You'll see."

The group of males watched as Sherryl clicked the portable and held it above the playing cards. After a few seconds the cards' edges began to glow faintly of green, blue, and pink before the colors brightened. This left the cards of the three Ten's, two Seven's, two Eight's, and the four King's alone as it is.

"Hmm, strange." Sherryl stated with feigned cluelessness. "I know that I marked the whole deck with my very specially made glow-in-the-dark ink based highlighters when I dealt the cards not that long ago, but why are these cards the only ones not glowing?"

Sherryl lifted her gaze towards Kento who won with the Four of A Kind.

"The three of you've been cheating all this time and even tried to trick my little brother and his friends, right?"

"Whoa, whoa, calm down." Kento said with a laugh. "It was just a joke."

"Yeah, just a joke." The other two chimed in with uneasy expressions.

Kento cast hera small wry smile.

"Neither of us has that sort of money on us, anyways."

"Just a joke, right?"

The older three males nodded.

"Then lemme see the two contracts you had us signed."

Sherryl held out her hand beckoning for Kento to give her the contracts with a serious expression. The older males looked at one another nervously before handing over the pieces of paper they had the quintet signed earlier. Sherryl skimmed the contracts again before ripping them with a smug smile.

"Then this is voided."

"Hey! Y'all signed it, so it's not voided." Jun exclaimed in anger. "Now that's a double fine!"

"Oh, really?"

She paused in her ripping to re-read the important parts of both contracts.

"The agreement signed was by a Halstead Lomi, a Li Nongnong, Bing Lifan, and a Hwang Myungho."

She held up one of the contract with one hand before holding up the other with her other hand.

"The other one was signed by a Black Cherry."

"You-"

She interjected while pointing behind her with another smug look.

"Neither of them are the people that signed this contract and neither am I. So it's clearly voided."

Sherryl ripped the rest of the papers in half before shredding the pieces down to even smaller pieces. Jun and Mackenyu groaned and held in their anger not wanting to admit that the contracts were indeed invalid.

"I know you, don't i?" Kento suddenly stated with a curious glance at Sherryl. "We go to the same university."

Sherry didn't answer him and instead continued ripping up the contracts while her brother and his buddies cheered behind her at not having to be indebt.

"I clearly remember you. I think you're the one that's been changing majors over the years."

Once again Sherryl ignored Kento's words as she tossed the pieces of paper at him. Before Kento could try again with his memory, the bar's door busted opened with a man shouting, "Freeze! Don't move"! and was followed by several others shouting the same phrases one after the other.

"Of all times, it had to be this one." Sherryl shut her eyes with a sigh.

"You're aware that playing for money is a felony, right, Miss Grey?" Zhengting questioned Sherryl as he sat before her with a calm demeanor.

She didn't reply to his question and gazed at him in boredom. Zhengting tried again.

"May I ask why you had these on you?"

He placed the portable black light onto the table along with her art kit supplies.

"I revoke my rights to speak without an attorney."

She knew how the police work. She's not gonna confirm their works when she wasn't doing anything wrong.

"Okay."

He backed off with a nod while trying to gauge the female's body language.

"Can I go?"

Zhengting had no reason to keep her despite the printed sheet his colleague gave him, but he didn't want to bring up her past incidents to something current like that. Also he already knew that she wasn't the culprit thanks to Sherryl's friend. He had gotten a slight headache before entering th interrogation room and knew that there were two inside although one was more solid than the other.

"Sure."

Zhengting pushed her items back towards her and Sherryl placed them inside her tote bag before standing and swinging it over her shoulder. He stood while leading Sherryl out. He bid her a good day despite a slight frown appearing on his face as he noticed the numbers above her head kept going up and down frequently. Sherryl's spirit friend walked alongside her and waved goodbye to Zhengting with a polite smile.

"You're not gonna tell Mom, are you?" Milo asked while he, his friends, and Sherryl left the police station.

Sherryl didn't respond back to her brother as she just wanted to get far away from the station as possible.

"Please don't tell her." Milo pleaded once again. "She'll ground me for life if she found out."

Sherryl just side-glanced him with a blank look.

"No, seriously, Sherrie. Don't tell Mom because then she'll tell Dad." Milo added. "And I won't hear the end of this until the day I die and beyond my grave."

"Well, shouldn't have been playing for money now, huh?" Sherryl countered in a playful tone before looking over at Milo's friends who had stayed quiet after leaving the police station.

"What about you three? How come you're not tryna to convince me to not tell your moms, too?"

"Because I don't have one." Justin informed her with a stoic expression. "I live with my older brothers."

"Yeah, same here." Adam agreed with a neutral tone