February 2020

A new player enters the lobby. He's still yet to get his hands on Santi but it seems the little family at the bar keeps growing bigger. He continues to peer through the tinted window of the backseat of his black Rolls-Royce, from across the street about three stores away from The Roundtable. He sees the newbie in his white long-sleeved bartender uniform, emerging from the side of the building while carrying two black bags of garbage to dispose of into the industrial bins in an alleyway beside the establishment. 

"Who is that, Boss?" his driver seems to have been watching the same thing. He keeps looking, catching a glimpse of his own appearance in the reflection of the glass. He does a quick run-through of his hair, his clothes, and the jewelries on his neck before looking back at the newbie.

"I ain't got a single clue," he answers. "But ain't it suspicious how these fools keep popping up on the 17?" He's talking about the district, of course, Sector 17. It's his group's turf after all. "These damn trespassers. Find out they're from the main and all it brings is trouble."

He waits for Santi, but since there's a newbie at the job, naturally they give the menial tasks such as throwing out the trash to him. He won't be able to see what the waiter is up to like this. So he fixes his silk navy blue jacket suit and touches a few of the blond spikes on his head, before he opens the door of the car and steps out into the street.

He knows he's being watched. He just doesn't know why he knows this. Instinct, perhaps? Anyway, he's not in the mood to force his trauma-induced brain to crack itself open to him when it doesn't freely, and painlessly, do so, so instead of driving himself crazy and feeding into his paranoia, he just busies himself with sorting out the garbage he's getting rid of, segregating the recyclables from the bottles and the food trash. He had just emptied the last of the two garbage bags and had finally closed the lid of the giant waste bin, when his eyes start doing the thing they usually do, which is look around and keep track of his surroundings. Nothing seems amiss, just the same dirty alleyway in the afternoon. He's been doing this for the past eight days since he had started working as a waiter-and-slash-bartender for The Roundtable. Living with the rest of the crew in the employee quarters had been a great help. He admits that up until now he still wouldn't have known where he'd find himself in if he hadn't accepted Mr. Jeon's offer. But the deal is not without its fair share of discomfort, too. He's wary mostly of the other waiter, Santi, who sometimes does performances whenever the bar isn't too busy. Lucky for the singer, he now almost exclusively just performs because they'd find a new hire in Howie. That has been his new name since coming in to work for the bar. Mr. Jeon had decided to call him Howie, for reasons he had only vaguely touched upon. He had told him it was the name of a character from a Sci-Fi movie he once watched but had forgotten what the title was. It didn't help that his coworkers just gave him a blank stare for a response. None of them were excited to hear a name like that, it's too plain. Not to him, though. Somehow it feels familiar.

Eventually his gaze falls upon the posters that are scattered across the entire side of the building. Three of them are right in front of his face, situated just a few centimeters above his eye-level. It's from last year's election, a poster of the now-elected Mayor of Sector 17, Salem Boo, from when he was still running for office. The posters are flaying from being exposed to the elements for the past 10 months now. He can't even make out the words for the candidate's slogan, just the bold and capitalized letters of his name and desired position.

One of the photos—the one that had the least damage to it and still had most of the picture of the Mayor intact, had a word scribbled across it in yellow spray paint. BLINK, it says. It doesn't take long for him to realize what it means, which warrants out of him a kind of laugh you make when you just let out a sharp snort from your nose one time. He'd have continued just standing there and looking, losing track of time as his mind wanders away when he suddenly hears a click that sends an electric shock to his entire system, making his body involuntarily jolt. His head snaps in the right direction just in time for him to see a man in a navy blue silk jacket and dress pants standing at the entrance of the alley. Reality sets in as he sees himself being sandwiched between the intruder and the dead-end walls on three corners. The stranger lights a cigarette with a vintage silver lighter with the rolling mechanism that you had to press a couple of times for it to work. That's where the clicking sound had come from.

The man puts the cigarette in between his lips and brings the flame of the lighter to it before he inhales. Bright orange embers glow and flicker at the end of the white stick. As he exhales, the smoke gets caught in the blond spikes of his hair that's held up with the help of gel or wax. The man looks like a pompous albino hedgehog, Howie thinks to himself.

​​​​​​"Afternoon," the stranger greets after a second.

"Good afternoon," he says back, calmly.

"You new around here?"

The man speaks with an accent, but Howie isn't quite sure if it's authentic or if he's doing a really good bit. He sounds convincing for the most part, but he's either too young to sound that old, or he just really takes care of himself too seriously to look practically the same age as the mid-twenty something year-old bar employee. His eyes continue to scan the intruder, and they absently land themselves on the right upper arm sleeve of the man's navy blue jacket. There's a remarkable embroidered tiger head design on it, with a smoke or perhaps the tiger stripes forming a bird-like silhouette detailed into the forehead of the animal. It had two teardrop-shapes turned sideways for the eyes, the same color as the burning end of his cigarette.

"Cat got your tongue?" the stranger retorts, flicking the of his cigarette with his thumb making the ashes fall. "Did I ask you a question or nah? You gonna just stand there and blink at me?"

"Yes," he answers, but to which question he isn't quite sure. He doesn't like how the guy is acting. He's trying to intimidate him, Howie surmises, which is highly unnecessary in his opinion. Why would this man need to scare him? The thought of that slowly begins to annoy him somehow.

He takes his gaze back from where he is actively scrutinizing the stranger, whose slanted upturned eyes continue to follow his movements, as he turns his attention to the trash once again. He discards of the black bags in one of the bins as well. And with one final clap of his hands, he dusts off all the excess dirt and the feeling of dirt from himself. He steps toward the double doors to the back entrance of the bar, just some few steps to the left of the industrial bins, when the stranger puts a foot forward, the crunching noise of the wooden soles of his black dress shoes against concrete and grime resonates around them, almost echoing in that backstreet. With another long stride, the stranger's other foot follows, and he's now standing half a meter closer to him, blocking the entrance further.

"Can I help you?" Howie asks, his left hand hovering over the handle on one of the doors.

"I ain't happen to see you from around here before, have I?" the man taunts, his almost nonexistent blond eyebrow raising.

"If I had, I'd probably know. You're hard to miss," which is a lie of course, because he can't remember jack about anything from before the past two weeks.

"I just can't seem to shake the feeling I seen you before, is all," the stranger explains purposely. "Sometimes you gotta know what trouble looks like 'fore you know whatcha have to look out for."

"You're saying I'm trouble?"

"I dunno," the stranger shrugs, the ember end of his cigarette illuminating as he smokes it. "You tell me."

Howie snatches back his hand that is carefully linking him to the doors which will effectively lead him away from this conversation. With a swift and silent motion, he twists his right foot at the same time as his right shoulder, adeptly pointing his whole body towards the stranger's direction. He's face to face with the blond man again. He sighs deeply as he holds his gaze and locks it with the stranger's equally unyielding eyes. "If you don't need anything from me, you can leave now," he tells the man as a warning.

"Alright, brother," the stranger holds his hands up in resignation. "I'll, uh, catch ya later then," he the inside of his cheeks as a pleased open-mouth smile displays across his features.

Howie doesn't leave. Even though the smell of trash is slowly beginning to permeate through his nose and by proxy all his senses, he pretends he doesn't notice. He just stares intently at the stranger and waits for him to be the first to withdraw. The man seems to be having the same thoughts though, and so they just stay like that for almost a minute, before a new character breaks the silence. The doors swing open and marching from within the building comes Santi, initially with an irritated look on his face, possibly because of his coworker and how he had been away for more than the appropriate amount of time he needs to dispose of two bags filled with garbage, and then upon recognizing the situation, his demeanor shifts from agitated to shell-shocked.

"You can't be here, Kwon," Santi announces. Howie has never seen these many emotions register in his coworker's face for the two weeks he's known him as he had now. The pale man's bangs had been combed back carelessly, and he's missing his cap, so all his disgust, alarm, and confusion comes to full view for everyone to see.

"Now this is the son of a I'm looking for!" the stranger exclaims proudly. He clasps his hands together and rubs them against each other as he inhales sharply through his nose, but not before throwing his barely finished cigarette stick onto the ground and stomping on it. First, he comes uninvited to provoke Howie and now he's littering in front of his face, right after he'd just painstakingly segregated their trash, no less.

"Go yourself," Santi hawks at the blond man.

"Them YCC bastards can't protect you forever. You know that, right? So you had better get your straight if I were you," a dangerous glint flashes in the stranger's eyes. "Take this as free advice."

"This is a direct violation. You better get your own straight before you give people advice." Santi has not made a single muscle in his body move an inch since the moment he had stepped into the commotion. He hangs there, stock-still, with his hands in the pockets of his black sweatpants and a face full of contempt. The stranger seems to