Week by week passes by, it’s been a month for Yena to work in the lounge. The midnight is pretty chill and cool. Yena loves this kind of atmosphere; which is also the reason she personally asked the manager to put her in the evening shift rather than the day shift.

Or in other words, Yena is a person that you’d call a nyctophiliac. She doesn’t hate hate daytime, but most of the time, the brightness coming from the sun hurts her eyes and Yena isn’t fond of that kind of feeling. Aside from that, she finds the nighttime to be comforting, finding it more relaxing than daytime with its heat and rush hour, anyway. And thus, she always prefers the night, to be in the dark, hidden from the prying eyes of the bright, blinding world.

Yena pulls her sleeve a little, squinting her eyes at her watch underneath. Twenty five to two. Alright, time to chop chop ice cubes for tomorrow. She thinks to herself then walks away toward a freezer in the back, grabbing a cooler box from there and walking back toward her station. She places a cutting board on the counter, then puts the cooler box upside down on it, releasing the ice from the box at once. Faint smoke surrounds the ice, moving around without a clear direction and caressing Yena’s skin. The chill she gets on her palm is just as cold as winter.

With a serrated knife, Yena makes an initial cut to half the ice block on its edges. Her hand moves transversely, adding pressure to tear the ice. She takes a mallet—a wooden hammer—with her other free hand then smashes it onto the knife which, of course, bitterly cuts through the ice block with more force. She slices, smashes, and more slicing. Yena repeats those steps until the previously ice block gets into cube-sized, because that’s what she needs.

Just when Yena is about to put the last pack of ice cubes in a freezer bag, a patron comes in, walking over the room toward her direction right away.

“Good evening, Sir,” she greets, her usual smile gracing on her lips. Yena then offers a menu to the man that she assumes is in his late thirty by the looks of his face, which isn’t very young nor old either. “Would you like an Old Fashioned or trying our Dark ‘N’ Stormy?”

The man takes a seat (in front of where Yena’s stood) and his eyes scan the menu for a brief moment in his hand. “I’d like a Whiskey Sour,” he says, putting down the menu.

“Will be served shortly, Sir.”

With confidence, Yena’s hands instantly get into the work, pouring and mixing of; half an ounce of lemon juice, another half an ounce of simple syrup, one dash of bitters, and she needs to add white eggs into the shaker as well. Yena cracks an egg, gently rocking the yolk back and forth between the eggshells, and this allows the egg whites to essentially separate themselves down from the shells. She disposes the yolk and eggshells into a trash can, and she then wipes her hand, making sure her hands are clean before she closes the shaker with its lid.

Grabbing the shaker firmly over the shoulder, Yena begins to shake, just a few shakes to emulsify the egg until it gets nice and frothy. She adds in ice cubes afterward and shakes them again to chill the drink. Yena then prepares the rocks glass, adding medium ice cubes and bourbon—whiskey—on it before finally topping them with the mixed ingredients from the shaker. For the garnish she chooses to use a toothpick kind of spear, making an orange flag made by a thin sliced orange with cherry on the top, then carefully putting them onto the cocktail.

It’s looking nice, silky, and Yena sure it’s sour as sin just like its name; Whiskey Sour. The drink is at once a wake-up call after all, it’ll jolt the drinker’s palate and scrub them all. Maybe the man just ate a savory dish that he needs to drink something fresh, Yena ponders.

Presuming the man is her last customer that night, Yena begins to clean up her station. The man pays and leaves the lounge immediately once he finishes his drink, leaving Yena alone because the other bartender has ended their shift an hour before Yena’s shift ends. This causes Yena to close the lounge by herself on that day every week (starting from today). And Yena seems to pay no mind to it, until,

Another figure appears right before Yena is about to lock the front door.

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