The windows, oh gracious, they're sick. The windows are also the walls themselves. It is so big and so wide, and so fantabulous, it gives me a hard time determining which is which. Just by simply looking through it, we see how gigantesque the chandelier hanging on the ceiling is. It looks like a bejeweled corpse of a giant spider beautified with uncoordinated colors of gems. It also has twelve silver branches creeping out of the dark wooden beam down to the heart of the ceiling. Every end of the branches has grown piles of crystal-like leaves which surrounded a space small enough for the light bulbs to fit. I assume the chandelier alone is worth more than the combined annual incomes of all the workers working inside.
"Are you sure we are going in?" I ask, an octave high. "I don't think we are meant for this. Everyone inside is suited in formal costumes and they all look deep-pocketed."
"Do I have to clean the air again? Who cares about costumes? We are here to eat!" Laikyn struts over, fishing her phone out of her bag to take a look of herself in the mirror. "And hello, money is useless when everything inside is free," she adds. I must admit she gains herself another score for being practical like that.
"I feel something bad about this," I whisper as I follow Laikyn who's already meters away from my spot. "Hey! Wait for me!"
We pursue our plans of getting inside. For Laikyn, it is a good opportunity of eating as much as we can for free. But for me, geez, I see another hell of constant embarrassment.
We stop by the door. It's a frameless hinged door in transparent blue color with a handle of silver and black. It's so vivid that in my simple glimpse at it, I see how terrible and homely-looking the two of us are. Another thing, as I stick my eyes on it, I realize how different we are from the people inside. Not different in a good way. But different in a bad, paltry, and trashy way.
Everyone's dressed in their best of the best formal suits and costumes, even equipped with their sparkling and eye-catching expensive pieces of jewelry, while the two of us, ugh, goodness. We're like a tandem of a drag ballerina and a student who was kicked out of the class because she wears her fake jewelry set instead of her i.d card.
"May I have your ticket, Ms." says the guard in his typical American accent. He smiles to Laikyn as he receives the two tickets, and gestures his left hand to welcome us inside, while his right hand opens the door.
When we step in, the first word that came across my mind is 'shit'. Shit in all senses of the word. I lost count on the round tables that's been settled on the center of th hall for two reasons; one, it's because they're just too many round tables that it's hard to believe it's a restaurant and not a wedding reception, and two, it's because of so many people busy passing across all directions. It's pure insanity if we blend in the crowd of luxury and rich while suiting like these. I swear, we would look like ugly ducklings in a pond full of beautiful swans.
A waitress comes before us, handing us plates and two sets of eating utensils. "Enjoy our limited-time buffet," she then says optimistically.
"We will, definitely," answers Laikyn while rubbing the fork and the spoon together.
Eight rectangular tables brimming with too many to mention foods queues on the left wing of the restaurant. Legitimately speaking, I don't know what to put on my plate. Every cuisine looks delicious and it feels like missing a single dish would be a sin.
It's a serious problem to think of what to eat first, but after a few minutes of staring contest against the buffet, we finally get our plate-full of happiness. Mine's loaded with steaks and veggies and other strange American dishes, while Laikyn, I couldn't identify which dishes did she get at all. They're mixed together, and it's the most unpleasant and grossest thing to see inside the restaurant.
We have trouble of looking for a spot to eat. However, a waiter comes when he notices that me and Laikyn looks so lost. He accompanies us upstairs because the tables on the first floor are all taken, which I first thought was oddly impossible. I am overwhelmed by the fact that the ground floor that wide is crowded, but I am more overwhelmed by the fact that the second floor is crowded as well. Luckily, there's still one more vacant table near the window so that's where the two of us takes our seats.
"Let's dig in!" Laikyn tries her best not to scream, but the smell of the food brings too much excitement in the air. She inhales all of those and screams without thinking twice. Or evence once.
"We're gonna survive this. We're gonna survive this. . ." I repeat again and again, hoping that no one would notice how misbehaved my friend is.
Everything flows fine, contrary to what I thought would be another sort of disaster. We chomps our food like how normal people on a normal lunch does, munches on everything our plate contains without minding what people surrounding us would react. It turns out to be a peaceful lunch for everybody who savours everything their stomach could take in this once in a blue moon grand opening event. Unless this restaurant would close and re-open again, then it wouldn't be once in a blue moon anymore.
"This is the best lunch I ever had so far." Laikyn gulps. She opens the last two buttons of her leopard-inspired dress, and let her bloated tummy be exposed. She slides down the chair making herself look like a pregnant woman ready to give birth.
I reply while biting the straw from my glass of cola."I agree."
"Now that I'm full, I don't know what to do with my life anymore." Laikyn sighs, recovering herself from that ready-preggy position and sits like a decent woman for a while, but later on hammers her head on the table which creates a bang loud enough to nail the attention of the crowd. With her head still dropping, she raises her right hand and gestures her fingers in a peace symbol.
I giggle. "Is this normal in your country?"
"If you mean the crowd, the restaurant, the color of the people, then it's not. But if you mean, me, and what I'm doing, yes, it's normal in my country." She burps unexpectedly, twice.
"Geez. You sound like Papà when he's overdrunk with wine."
"All fathers sound the same when they burp, actually."
"Yeah, I think so."
It's interesting to talk about burps not because it's a weird thing and we both like weird things. It's interesting to talk about burps because it ends the conversation straight away, which is heavenly good especially if we're in a place where burps shouldn't be something to talk about. The silence lasted for about fifteen minutes, a perfect time for us to digest what we had eaten. It actually could've lasted longer but someone sits to a vacant chair between us to interrupt our resting moment.
"How's lunch?" A croaky voice airs out of the blue.
I am dead idle to open my lips only to answer 'I'm fine', so I just raise my hand and give him a thumbs up.
"I'm Benjamin," he introduces. "Benjamin Holler."
I refused to look at him because my attention is only focusing at the people eating on the tables from the direction opposite to where he's sitting. It takes me a while to answer. "I'm Callie."
"You're familiar," he goes.
Laikyn ascends from leaning on the table when she hears I'm talking with someone else. She faces him, and he adds, "You too. Both of you are familiar."
When he said that, I feel like my nerves balloons. I turn my head on him and I see a white guy on a gray hood with his black hair brushed on the side. Eyebrows are thin fibers of copper wires, and eyes are blue like the sky on its gloomy day. He wears a black sleeveless with horizontal stripes of white, and a silver cross necklace that flares around his neck.
His Adam's apple moves as he talks further. "I'm not mistaken, I think it's really the two of you."
"The two of us who?" I ask, raising both of my brows along with the slightly tilting of my head.
"I saw you two on the street walking next to. . ."
"Shhh!" In a split second, Laikyn grabs her handkerchief and roofs it on his mouth. "We don't know it was the King who was in front of us, okay? And you don't have to say we're on the television because we anticipated that already."
Yeah, we anticipated that already. And that anticipation isn't good.