𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑, j.mori

𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄

—— CHAPTER NINE / rejected

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"MY, MY WHAT A TERRIBLY WEAK ARMY YOU HAVE."

Numerous Minotaurs lay on the ground, not all of them were dead, but on the edge of death. She twirled her knife in her hand, a smirk on her face as she stepped over limp bodies, kicking a head here or there as she went. "But I have to say," she said, turned to King Uma, the smirk on her face everpresent. "They have good willpower. Protecting their ruler at the cost of their lives," she flipped over a body with her toe, making the dead man face the sky and looking at one of the nine kings, her head tilted and and her eyebrows furrowed, mocking her, "Isn't that a little selfish, Your Majesty?" Uma stared at the body she had turned, a deep frown etched onto her cattle-like features.

His face was bloody, twisted in pain and the look frozen there even after death, his body deformed, blown up and on the verge of bursting; like he had caught a disease. And that disease just happened to be a one-man (or woman in this case) army. King Uma had brought only half of her army, which roughly consisted of a few millions soldiers if one took the time to estimate it and the demon she was standing before had wiped all of them in three seconds flat. For one hopeless second, Uma wondered how long it would take the desperado to wipe her out. To say Uma was angry would be making the mistake of making a tremendous understatement. Out of pure adreneline, she summoned Pacho, a "pathetic handfan," as Mawang liked to call and advanced forward, her size growing gradually to tower over the demon to smack her down six feet into the soil.

She was as tall as thirty coconut trees stacked together, approaching fast, her feet thuding against the ground making it shake. Mawang's smirk grew wider and she flicked the pad of her thumb against the butt of her knife only to have it grow in length to become a swordstaff. A sick smirk cutting through her features, she advanced toward the giant cow, and stabbed her in the space between her big toe and second toe. Uma's cry of pain rang through the area and Jecheonseongdeong could hear it from where he sat on his throne.

"Does that hurt, Miss Cow?" mocked Mawang, her head tilted to her side and slashing Uma's middle. "If that doesn't, you'll only feel more pain soon."

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"No."

"What? Why?"

Aella frowned harder, couldn't this boy get the idea? "Because you're annoying and I'm not interested in dating right now." As much as she was infatuated by Mori, she really didn't want to go out with him. She wasn't used to being loved, she wouldn't know what to do if she was. In addition, there would be an inevitable end to their "relationship," soon enough after he slowly and carefully brushed off the sand off her secret like an archeologist digging for fossils.

Maybe in different circumstances, maybe in different lifetimes or even when they were once in the Sage Realm, the nice park he chose to ask her out with a bunch of roses in his hand would be nice; and maybe she would've even said yes. And she left him pouting in the park to leave to visit her grandmama like she did every Friday.

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It was an invitation to a BTS concert this time. He had waltzed into her bar with two tickets to the said concert, a bright smile on his face. "No, Mori." she declined, closing her eyes to pinch the bridge of her nose, not wanting to see the disappointed look on his face that once recently held a smile. And the worst part? He barely begged for her to go out with him. A small part of her hoped he would beg her and she wished she had yes the first time. She couldn't go after him now, so she just went to visit Grandmama.

"You look upset." It wasn't a question, it was a statement—a grim statement. She plopped herself down on the stool next to her grandma's bed and sighed. "Boy problems?" Aella's black eyes widened in confusion and suspition. "How'd you know?" Her grandmother chuckled and held her adopted granddaughter's hand in her own cold ones. "Because I know the feeling."

Aella frowned for the nth time that week and threw her hands up in the air with a short exasperated cry. "I dunno what to do, Grandmama! He's so confusing! He keeps asking me out and I keep rejecting him and I don't know what to do!" Grandmama chuckled another sweet and airy chuckle. She didn't know the whole story but she told her, "Do what feels right."

"Nothing feels right," mumbled the teenager, her slender fingers softly pressing into her eyelids that covered her eyes. "Tell me what to do, Grandmama."

"That's for you to figure out, honey."

Aella growled in frustration, Are humans always this complicated?

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"Aella, will you go out with me?" asked Mori with the best puppy dog eyes he could present. A week went by like a breeze, with Mori dropping by every day at least two or three times and even the staff of the bar were getting irritated at this point. The day before, Kim had leaned down to Aella's height to whisper in her ear, "Why aren't you saying yes?" It wasn't that he wanted Aella to agree to go out, it all her choice, but the college student was hoping for her to say yes so that the stubborn idiot would leave the staff alone too.

Mori had made no progress in a week's time and Aella was unwilling to budge from her seemingly firm decision, though her resolve was slowly cracking from inside; but she never showed it on the outside. Apperently desperate, he resorted to the last stage: the begging stage.

"Aella, please!" he begged, dragging every word in the short sentence agonizingly slow. A tick mark appeared on both her forehead and cheekbone as she crossed her arms and closed her eyes, trying to drown out his painfully obnoxious pleas. "Fine, if I go out with you, will you please stop bothering me and everyone here?" The boy's pale lips stretched into the biggest smile Aella had ever seen as he hugged her close to his chest—close enough for her to hear his heart beating fast. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" He pulled away, his hands still on her shoulders. "I promise I won't disappoint you!"

And the staff silently thanked their boss for agreeing as the ball of sunshine dashed out the door to tell his friends.

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