The Times With You

The Part-Timer

"Hibiki, can you clean up table 4?" Mr. Koga called out as soon as he steps out of the break room.

"On it!" Hibiki replied and immediately took the cloth and glided towards the table at the corner of the customer-packed café hall.

It was another restless day. After all, a slow, and quite shift in a café right in the corner of a busy street is something not to be expected. With most of the customers making this small establishment their best go-to place to hang out with friends or meet with an acquaintance, a jam-packed café hall will always be part of the staff's daily 'struggle'. The buzzing crowd, the chaotic laughter in the air, the loud greetings of men in suits, and the annoying giggles of lovers at the side of the room. If Mr. Koga didn't name it as a 'café ', then Hibiki would think this place is more of a pizza parlor or a pub. Not that he wants to complain about it, but sometimes, a hall as small and crowded as this tends to get messy more often than he can ask for a leave in a month.

As he wipes the edge of the now empty table, a loud scream echoed at his right and made him jumped out of shock. Startled, he automatically turned his head and saw a woman grabbing the hair of another woman from the table right next to him, cursing and shouting her lungs out like a vocalist of a metal band. There it is, the 'mess' that always happen in this small and crowded café.

Hibiki took a deep breath as he pocketed the cloth into his apron and stepped closer to the scene seeing that the other woman has now grabbed the perpetrator's hair and started fighting back. This won't end well, he thought, trying to get a hold of either of the women's arm to break them off.

"Misses, we don't tolerate violence here. Please let go," he calmly said. But his voice might be too low for them to hear, and he's too tired to even raise it a bit louder so he just kept on trying to grab at least one of them away. The other customers in the café are now gathering around them. They may be too stunned to help, or they just want to get a good view of the catfight, without offering any help at all. Nothing's new - same old, same old.

"YOU SLY, BACKSTABBING, PIECE OF SHIT! YOU THINK I WON'T FIND YOU OUT, YOU BITCH?" one of them shouted – he doesn't know who, and he don't care.

"YOU GUYS ARE OVER, YOU TWAT! AND HE SAID HE DON'T WANNA BE WITH YOU CUZ YOU SMELL!" replied the other. Whatever it is she means, that's a bit too much of information to be shouted out loud that Hibiki almost spit out a laugh.

The crowd guffawed, cheering and howling, enjoying the ridiculous, scandalous scene. Of course, another cheater has been caught red handed, Hibiki silently said in his mind and looked around to check on this 'oh-so-ever-pretty-guy' who have the audacity to date two girls at the same time. Looks like both of them use to be friends, too. That said guy, whose face went all white in shock, slowly sat up and quietly exited the scene and walked into the crowd. Hibiki scoffed, furiously staring at the back of the man and was about to go after him when a hand pulled him into the fight and another started grabbing his hair.

"Hold on! That's my hair!" he called out.

"WHAT, YOU THINK I'M GONNA LET YOU GO?! I'LL PULL ALL YOUR HAIR OUT UNTIL YOU'RE BALD BITCH!"

"Please don't –" Hibiki inserted.

"GO ON! WE'LL SEE WHO GOES BALD FIRST!"

"Ow—"

"YOU HOMEWRECKER! I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!"

"AND YOU THINK I WOULD?! I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!"

"Hey, just let me go for a sec—"

"HE'S MINE! YOU ALREADY KNOW WE'RE NOT OVER YET!"

"IT'S NOT MY FAULT HE FELL FOR ME WHEN YOU'RE A DIRTY AND SMELLY WHORE!"