"hyerin-ssi, are you sure you're alright? you kept stumbling over these past few hours." a worried dance student of hers approached her, a couple more people following to check up on hyerin, "we can end classes early today if you want."
hyerin shook her head, "its just a couple of hours more, let's just finish today's lesson and call it a day, yeah?" she smiled faintly looking at all her students.
"but—" it was no use protesting as hyerin headed to play the music and proceeded to teach them the last few steps to the dance, "if we finish this early, then we can all go home." hyerin stood in front of them.
the students then went to their places immediately, wanting to end today's classes just so hyerin could finally take a rest, not knowing hyerin still has her next part-time job at one of the restaurants nearby.
as the class proceeded, hyerin kept on spacing out between breaks, not able to focus properly on dancing, it made her frustrated how she kept on messing the dance.
"noona, let's stop it now. its just 15 minutes left more anyways, you won't get trouble ending today early." one of the younger boys said as he glanced at their pale dance teacher.
"you guys won't stop until i agree, won't you?" hyerin smiled at them, all of her students wearing the same worried expression on their faces, "arraseo, let's call it a day."
all students smiled and went to grab their things, saying goodbye and advicing hyerin to rest well before leaving the room.
"those people, really." she smiled to herself, remembering how much her students became such important people to her, caring for her health and vice versa.
-
"good afternoon, ma'am. please do just ring the bell when you are ready to order." a smile not leaving hyerin's face as she greeted a customer, the customer didn't return her greeting and proceeded to find an empty spot.
she's quite rude, hyerin thought as she watched the lady walk away.
after a couple of minutes, new group of people entered the restaurant, all wearing masks or caps, seemingly hiding theirselves from the public.
"good afternoon, please do just ring the bell when you are ready to order." she smiled at the new entered people, but her voice might be a bit low that they didn't manage to hear her.
a bell then just rung, signaling that a customer was ready to order, grabbing a notepad and a pen, she went to the table of the customer, it's the lady, she smiled and greeted her and the other people she was with.
the lady started stating her orders, purposely saying it faster for hyerin to have a hard time to keep up, "could you repeat the last three orders again?" she asked, still writing some of the orders she managed to hear clearly.
something about hyerin seemed to annoy the lady, and since she was in the mood to be bitchy, she decided to let it all out on the innocent hyerin.
"what do you mean repeat? how did you not hear everything i said?" the lady rolled her eyes and glared at hyerin.
"im sorry but you were quite fast when you were talking, unless you repeat it again i can't give you what you want." hyerin forced a smile, her hand clutching the pen and notepad tightly.
the lady groaned before repeating her orders and hyerin then bowed slightly, she then went away, sighing in relief that she was away from that lady.
she handed the orders to the cooks, and went back to the counter, waiting for the next bell to be rung.
"here's the order, be careful hyerin, its hot." a tray was placed in front of her, containing lot of hot dishes and couple of side dishes.
"thank you, i got it." she grabbed the tray and went to the table, careful of her steps, making sure she won't drop anything.
she placed the orders one by one gently on the table, the lady watching hyerin silently, smirking as she thought of something, "don't dare spill anything."
hyerin just nodded and smiled, as she was about to place the last one, a hand suddenly purposely bumped her, making her drop it causing the dish's soup to spill onto her hand.
she flinched at how hot it was, groaning as the pain grew bigger, she grabbed her hand and looked at the lady, "why did you do that?" she was trying her best to control her anger.
"what did i do? are you accusing me of something i clearly didn't do?" the lady glared at hyerin, a smirk still present on her face.
"you did it on purpose, i don't know what i did to annoy you but what you did was completely wrong." hyerin's uncontrollably raised voice managed to attract other customers attention including a group of boys sitting a couple tables away.
not knowing, a boy has been silently diverting his attention on hyerin as soon as he entered the restaurant, him knowing and seeing what really happened made him somewhat mad about it.
"how dare you? you just work here as a waitress and you have the guts to answer me like that? where's your manager? god, i can't believe this restaurant is accepting people like you." she rolled her eyes while standing up, looking for the manager.
"and i can't believe people like you needs to be treated nicely when you clearly don't deserve it at all." hyerin muttered under her breath, still holding on onto her hand.
shit, i forgot about my hand, she looked at her hand and saw it was turning to red, really red.
she was about to excuse herself when she received a slap from the lady, she stood in shock as the pain surged throughout her body, "that's what you deserve." the lady muttered as she leaned towards hyerin.
all attention of the restaurant was then diverted to them, as both hyerin and lady stared at each other, both full of anger in their eyes, "i think you've done enough, ma'am." a guy's voice suddenly appeared, breaking off the silence.
hyerin turned and saw a familiar face, along with three more guys at the back of him, "jimin" she whispered, sighing in relief as she realize she wasn't alone anymore, she was with jimin.
"and who are you?" the lady looked at jimin.
"a friend of hers." he answered bluntly, not bothered by the lady's glares.
no one messes with my friends, jimin thought to his self.
"some of my friends are already talking to the owner of this restaurant and i don't think you would like to know what might be the consequences of what you've done." jimin straightforwardly said, his voice quite stern.
"i — what's up with the manners of kids' these days? all of you surely didn't grow up with proper parental guidance." the lady spat out, arms crossed.
"and she had the nerves to talk about it." hyerin rolled her eyes, only jimin managed to hear it.
"hyerin-ah, let's go and get that treated." jimin held the wrist of hyerin's other hand gently, "the others got this." he smiled as he slowly dragged hyerin away, ignoring the lady who kept on calling for them.
-
"you didn't have to do what you did back there, you know." hyerin watched as jimin gently wrapped a bandage around the burnt part, careful not to hurt her.
"i couldn't just let that lady talk to you like that." jimin held eye contact with her for a couple of minutes before focusing back to what he was doing.
silence filled their atmosphere, jimin finished wrapping her burnt hand up and looked at hyerin, sincere and worry filled his face.
"i never knew you work here, how many jobs do you really have?" he asked, curious of how tiring might hyerin's day be everyday.
he was idol, sure that was tiring but then he loves it. unlike hyerin, jimin truly enjoys his profession even though it can be really tiring.
"i work here thrice a week." she replied shortly, not wanting to answer the second question anymore, "we should head back now." she stood up from her chair and waited for jimin outside the door.
hyerin didn't know why jimin did that, she didn't know why she suddenly felt safe when jimin appeared, she didn't know why she just felt so comfortable with jimin around.
"hyerin, let's go?" jimin popped out of nowhere, startling hyerin a bit.
both walked back to the other members who were dealing with what happened, the owner of the place was present and all were talking calmly, trying not to disturb any other customers.
"please, whatever happened just need to be forgotten. i'm alright and i don't want the problem to just get big. i'm sorry sir, i think i made quite a commotion." she bowed sincerely in front of her boss.
"hey, it's fine. its not your fault that some people are born rude." he glanced at the lady before looking back at hyerin, placing a hand on her shoulder, "you should go home now, take these and treat these boys some dinner, they haven't eaten yet."
the owner reached out some bills, enough to buy food for the seven boys who helped hyerin, she gladly took it and looked at the boys, "let's go, boss will treat you guys to dinner." she smiled, the boys returning her such enthusiastic smiles as well.