◜.•° .•° .•°◞ ━━━━━━ || 24-HOUR DINERS ARE the bane of his existence. too bright, too open. any drunk nobody can stroll in and belittle the staff and siwoo can’t do anything about it without exposing himself as what he truly is. the permanent anger he feels is something he can’t quite control yet – not even when he tries. he hates the new world and the people living in it, for a reason as invalid as it is valid. they have grown with this, gradually introduced to the change. that’s far from siwoo’s own experience.
◜.•° .•° .•°◞ ━━━━━━ || EVEN WITH HIS hatred of them, the diners are the safest places to be. being so open, no supernatural being would risk being berated by their superiors. this one location in particular is less busy, on the outskirts of town. siwoo sits in a booth with a laptop in front of him, tab open in a chatroom. it’s silly of him to think that he could come across the people he’d been stuck with for fifty years, but he knows that more must have escaped or been let go, and he needs to talk about his suffering with somebody before he cracks. those he knows now aren’t an option. he’s too embarrassed. thinks that this could lead to being treated differently (be that positive or negative). and he needs someone who understands wholly what the past few decades have been like.
◜.•° .•° .•°◞ ━━━━━━ || WHAT HE DOESN’T need is the crippling anxiety that comes later, after answering a call. too urgent to remain inside the establishment but not enough to gather his things and leave. he hadn’t realised that somebody else entered in the time it took him to get rid of the person on the other line. the newbie doesn’t appear to be interested in his laptop screen, but they’re standing too close for his liking and once he has his mind made up about something, it’s quite hard to change it. “hey! what’re you doing over there?”
ISOBEL HATES HABITS ━ rather, she hates when they occur within herself. habits make your behavior more predictable and your sovereignty easier to manipulate, which is great when she’s looking for a button to push in someone else, but significantly less so when someone uses her own against her. still, one habit she does keep is doing business where there are witnesses present. diners are a good place for that - public enough that her contacts won’t be idiotic enough to try anything, but seedy enough that everyone within them knows better than to pay real attention to other customers. she’s just closed a deal now under the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights, having waited for the other party to be well on their way before she makes her own exit.
THERE’S BEEN A PATRON in the seat a few booths away from isobel’s since long before she entered the diner, and the fact that it’s now missing a person gives her pause. she hasn’t survived this long without being suspicious by nature, and the sight of the empty booth sets her on edge. she places the reasoning when the owner of the laptop storms back into the establishment, the scent of vampire keeping isobel’s haunches raised. it’s one thing to encounter them in venus, a neutral setting that she controls. there she knows that even if anyone comes intending to cause trouble, she has the upper hand. here, it’s another thing entirely. “standing,” is her immediate response. it’s not blatantly acrimonious, and just disdainful enough that it gives off an air of disinterest in the situation. “this isn’t the best area to leave your things unattended, you know.”
