Wild Creatures

Chapter 45

Wei Ying was excited as he served customer after customer in the Coffee Carousel, later on Friday afternoon. He was happy and sad about leaving a job where he had worked for nearly three years, built up close friendships with his co-workers and enjoyed talking to his regular customers. They had become more like acquaintances now than just customers, and he liked chatting about insignificant things, such as price hikes in their local grocery store.

But he was even more excited about their upcoming day trip to the beach.

With Lan Zhan.

And the children.

It was gonna be so much fun!

"One caramel latte, please, with two shots." A warm voice said.

Wei Ying looked up into animated silver eyes, watching him carefully.

He suppressed a shudder, because those eyes seemed so, so familiar, and yet Wei Ying couldn't place them. He had definitely seen this person before, and recently.

They belonged to a young man with a shaved undercut, medium length black hair dyed a vivid hot pink on the ends and pulled up into a ponytail. He had multiple piercings on his face: a nose ring and a stud on the left, one in his eyebrow, and five each in his ears.

All silver jewellery and a silver chunky bracelet on his wrist, the centrepiece was a moon opal, and he wore a matching choker. His fingers had writing tattooed on the left hand, and a bright turquoise dragon in fine lines swirling up the back of his right hand all the way up his forearm. His nails were carefully manicured, with hot pink tips.

It was a cool look.

He snatched his hand away when he saw Wei Ying looking at it.

"Nice tats." Wei Ying recovered quickly, not wanting to be caught staring, and making the person uncomfortable. "Name? For the order?" He clarified.

"Mo." The young man replies easily, though his cloud-coloured eyes are cautious.

"I've been thinking about getting a tattoo." Wei Ying says casually, grabbing the milk jug and simultaneously pouring in all the ingredients to make the caramel latte.

"What do you have in mind?" Mo goes to the waiting section, watching Wei Ying making his drink.

"See, that's where I hit a mental block every single time. I don't want to get something meaningless, and then I remember that it's permanent. It would suck if I didn't like it, or if the person doing it messed up."

Mo snickers. "I bet. But most tattoo parlours have stuff all over the place, if you're looking for inspiration."

"Where did you get yours done?" Wei Ying hands him the latte.

There's a brief shuttering in his eyes, before he plasters on the biggest grin. "I did it myself!" He laughs at the look on Wei Ying's face.

Mo picks up his drink and salutes Wei Ying with it, and walks out. He's wearing black leather pants with silver chains and studs, and a matching leather jacket with a blue dragon embroidered on the back.

It matches the one on his right hand, Wei Ying realises, as he watches the man walk away.

He had been so absorbed with thinking about the beach and then this customer, that when the feeling of being watched comes around again, it slams into his consciousness like a Mack truck.

Wei Ying looks around surreptitiously, making light conversations with his fellow workers, but seventy-five percent of his attention is all around the Coffee shop.

But no one seems out of the ordinary, no one is looking at him, or doing anything suspicious, and it leaves Wei Ying drowning in self-doubt.

He knows he's been unconsciously nervous about his biopsy and getting the results back, all the time hoping that they're negative, and then dealing with the part of himself that is fully convinced that he's gonna die really soon, just because it's a drama queen at heart, plus the mystery surrounding Lan Zhan and the vampires.