Gunfire rang out, screams sounding out and bowls that he had served customers clattered to the ground as people dove to find cover. He’s ducking behind his cart as well, though his eyes are following where his ears heard the sound coming from. He doesn’t notice what else is going on, except to automatically call out to one of his patrons once he sees her, “Sohee-yah! Come here!”
There doesn’t seem to be more gunfire from there, but it’s the City Hall. Anything can happen at a moment’s notice and he needs to be careful.
He isn’t here as Ryuu of the Hydrus gang. He’s here as Samuel, a civilian who came to serve food due to the large amount of foot traffic that would get him raking in a few extra bills for the week. That means his involvement would be absolutely nothing, and he doesn’t recall if he heard anything through the others about this. Politicians, police department, it’s a big opportunity.
An opportunity that sounded like it was executed poorly.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
Sohee only involves herself in large crowds for valuable (stolen) rewards. Ever since the beheading, since the mess of her life that ensued afterwards, she’s careful, much more careful to avoid situations the Sohee of old would have charged into headfirst.
Nothing is ever safe in Myeongcho, not really, but a carnival, filled to the brim with men in uniform and certainly armed to the teeth should be somewhat fine. There’s free food when vendors aren’t looking, free money dropped on the ground by the careless parents who let the children hold onto the stash. And even more to be earned, all if Sohee applied herself enough.
It’s a step, she tells herself, a step towards progress, towards tending to wounds both mental and physical, to prove to herself that she can manage to live as she was. So far, she’s done well, except when she bent a kid’s arm behind his back for standing too close to her- that could’ve gone better. She flits back and forth, working every angle and checking back in with Samuel every now and again, someone she thinks of as an ally since his intervention. (After all, it was he who let her know there was an event in the first place.)
When the gunshot rings out, it’s like her mind is transported to a bad day- her hands clamp over her ears and she squeezes her eyes shut as if to will the ringing in her ears to stop. It’s people screaming and running in all directions all over again, and Sohee is stuck in the middle, trying to remember to breathe. Still, she manages to hear Samuel call for her, and it pulls her from an ever-spiraling rabbit hole as she runs, joining his side behind the cart.
He asks if she’s okay and though she gasps for air, both from running and from her scare, she nods. “Someone failed terribly.”
