Work Text:
[Trait: Poker Face (B) activated]
“...Sorry, I didn’t quite catch what you just said, can you please repeat that— sir?” Cha Eui-jae asked, his voice cracking on the last word.
Beneath the counter, his hands were balled up in tight fists, tremoring as he barely managed to rein back the urge to provide the hunter before him with a complementary jaw rearrangement.
‘There’s no way, right? There is no way this bastard had actually just-
“Hah? Are you deaf or something?” the hunter sneered, his nose scrunching up as if he’d seen something disgusting, “I said: with the publicity my face will bring, shouldn’t this bowl of dog piss that tastes like shit be on the house? No?”
‘Should I just kill him?’
Cha Eui-jae’s eye twitched.
It was one thing to insult him, it was another to badmouth Grandma’s recipe.
The hunter's face would've already met the floor at least a dozen times by now if it weren’t for him not wanting to cause a scene and ruin the shop’s reputation.
‘Customer is king…Customer is king…’
He chanted the mantra like a devout priest would for a hymn, desperately trying to brainwash himself.
“Hey! Just what do you think you're saying to our part-timer, huh? You punk!”
‘Ah?’
Cha Eui-jae blinked, his murderous thought derailed by the sudden interruption. His eyes traced along the muscular arm that had wrapped around the rude hunter’s shoulders —exerting a not-insubstantial amount of force, judging by the hunter's pained grunt— and made eye contact with Bae Won-woo, who flashed him a big, toothy grin.
“Don’t worry, part-timer! Nobody would be able to pick on you with me here!” Bae Won-woo said, striking his signature PSA commercial pose.
‘No, what kind of insane things are you saying to an S-ranker?’
Cha Eui-jae silently moved out of the way of Bae Won-woo’s enthusiastic, incoming shoulder pats, lest the man accidentally break his hand on impact or something.
“Haha, don’t be shy, Part-tim-
The sound of chairs screeching against the wooden floor disrupted the ‘wholesome’ moment Bae Won-woo was trying to build, “Hey! Shield Guy! How could you be so shameless!” One of the other regulars at the restaurant suddenly stood up and yelled, “We clearly agreed to wait to beat the bastard up in the alleyways later! What are you going to do if the restaurant gets a bad review because of this, huh?!”
‘...is that really something you can say out in the open???’
Cha Eui-jae’s eyes widened as they unconsciously shifted toward the piece of pristine paper tacked onto the bulletin board —It’s really delicious ^^ - Hunter Jung Bin— then jerked away the very next second.
‘Sorry, Jung Bin.’
He briefly apologized to this former colleague of his before promptly pushing the issue of stopping the hunters to the back of his mind.
Instead, he looked toward the rude hunter to gauge his reaction, and judging by the way colors had instantly drained out of his face…it was as if he had actually eaten a bowl of fecal materials as he had claimed.
Cha Eui-jae couldn’t deny the small sense of satisfaction he had gained from the scene.
‘Serves him right for disrespecting Grandma’s recipe.’
On that day, Cha Eui-jae decided, just once, to increase the limit of soju bottles per person to three.