It's nearly noon. Marko is out in the supermarket with his wife, doing grocery. Already halfway to his day-off and he still hasn't relaxed or enjoyed it one bit. With way too much on his mind, he grabs his phone while lazily pushing the half-filled grocery cart, and opens his contact list, looking for the person he wanted to call.
He presses the dial button, places the phone by his ear, and patiently waits for the person on the other line pick up.
RING
RING
RING
RING
He had a hunch the person wasn't going to pick up. Marko decided to wait for a few more seconds before hanging up.
RING
"Yo," Sebastian's voice.
"Are you busy?" asks Marko.
"Um, not much. Why?"
"I just wanted to ask… something"
"Shoot."
"How did you do it?" asks Marko. "Retirement, I mean."
"I said 'fuck it', went to get my last, big paycheck, and left. Easy."
"No, I mean, the life after," Marko clarifies.
"How did you go back to that every day, peaceful life?"
"I didn't," Sebastian answers.
"I didn't have anything to 'go back to' because I never had that life to begin with."
"I see."
"But I get what you mean. And the answer is I still couldn't. Why do you think I came back?"
"My first week or two at Copenhagen, I was bored out of my mind. I never loved the job, I don't think I even liked it. But somehow I kinda missed it. I missed pretty much everything, I guess. The job, my apartment, even shitting on Harley. Rina. I missed every aspect of that shitty life," Sebastian explained.
"But it's a shitty fucking life. And I kept reminding myself that the life I had at the time in some small, quiet town on some small boat was much better, and that it was the life I wanted and deserved. So I stayed until the next day, and the next, and the next. I tried immersing myself in a few hobbies and activities and though they didn't last long, they were still effective at taking my mind off of things for a long while."
"Anyway, what's the problem, big guy?" Sebastian asks.
"Thinking of retirement?"
"No… I—"
"Ah, that's alright. You have a family, you've made bank for years. We'll just find another seven-foot behemoth somewhere to take your place."
Sebastian's comment breaks the seriousness in the atmosphere.
"Anyway, thanks," says Marko with a smile on his face.
"Anytime, big guy. Got to go," Sebastian hangs up.
"There's that smile," says his wife, coming over and placing box of cereals on the cart.
In some woods at the bottom of a mountain range, Sebastian lights up a cigarette while squatting on top of the corpse of a 12-foot, ape-like monster with dark brown fur, not painted with splashes of blue blood and a large slash wound on its chest, ripping it open.
"Aw, man," Chen who rushed over to find the target's corpse exclaims in disappointment. In his hands are two short, but curved and broad silver blades with a long, black handle and are enclosed by a circular black guard or pommel.
The two went together on this B-rank mission with the sole purpose of having a race on who finds and exterminates the target first. Additionally, Sebastian only agreed because they placed a bet on it and whoever wins would get the other's bonus for completing a mission.
Every agent, upon mission completion gets a salary bonus on top of the initial salary that they are bound to receive regularly. This bonus is based entirely off of the rank of the completed mission meaning higher-ranked missions like S-ranks would yield the highest bonus.
"You gotta do better than that," says Sebastian.
"Easy for YOU to say, you just go and shhoom everywhere," Chen reasons out.
"Winners don't make excuses when they lose," the winner huffs out a cloud of smoke.
"And if that's a big deal for you, then you should have added that as a clause," he throws the burnt out cigarette on the ape's lifeless head.
"Why do I get the feeling that you just hustled me?" Chen asks.
"You're making excuses again, what did I just tell you?"
"That wasn't an excuse that was an educated guess."
"Mm-hm. EXCUSE."
Chen scratches his head. He always thought he was stubborn but this man was even more stubborn than him.
"You keep this attitude up, you're gonna be like that moron, Harley. Do you want to be that guy?"
"Why are you talking to me like I'm an eight-year old kid?"
"Because YOU ARE an eight-year old kid."
"Dude, I'm 18. And I asked around and you're just 24, we're practically the same age."
Sebastian aims his hands towards Chen which he was using as a makeshift puppet and imitating a yapping mouth with his fingers.
SHHOOM
"And I'M the kid?"
SHHOOM
The teleporting man warps back again.
"You don't follow through with this bet and you're waking up with your stupid boomerang up your ass."
SHHOOM
"It's not a bo—"
Chen sighs.
"Whatever."
"I have to wait here alone?" he says, looking at the butchered corpse.