0.1 | No Exit from Deception ✓

0.03 | How Is That Even Possible ?

Ruby didn't miss on anything, knowing the frayed certainty of the banal feast that included canned beans on the heel of bread as her everyday meal ─ she took from Lebanese chicken fries to Korean barbeque chicken to Mexican black bean salad to Gado-Gado salad; searching for more different varieties. She tore away the couple like a deranged mother looking for her child and grasped the tongs to add yet another item to her plate. She didn't know care to know its name so far it was on the table.

It started from an amorphous heap and soon became the great-big, Mount Everest on her plate; the weight thereof drowned her to her knees and the two of them cornered themselves with the mission of chewing, gulping, licking every last bit on their plates like cannibals.

As she was distracted by the food, Emily nudged her elbow into Ruby's abdomen. "You see that's Gucci."

"Who? Oh, the one in a magenta gown mopping the floor at the same time? Oh yes! I can see her Gucci and also the multiple uses of her Gucci." Ruby's mellowed giggles rang in her friend's ear.

"Ssshh. . . Ruby," Emily sneered ever-so-slightly. "It's the latest Gucci collection. Layla showed me a catalog." Emily covered her mouth in fear of getting caught gossiping. "The price is many times greater than booking the hall!" she poured poisonously into Ruby's already perked-up ears.

Ruby whisper-laughed sarcastically. "You mean to say that dress? Oh, give me a break."

"Ruby, keep it low," Emily warned with a downward gaze, crushing her jaws altogether.

"Poor lady, I saw the same dress hanging and gathering the dust of the downtown market──and at flat fifty percent off! Nobody even cared to look at it. It won't surprise me if the owner of that shop has seen it himself," Ruby stated dryly, not hesitating to degrade the lady's pride in a microsecond.

Unable to resist the texture on her plate, Ruby opened her mouth with a spoonful of crab salad aloft only to shut it close. Amid the emotional crisis with the food, she heard subdued voices from behind her back; it wasn't anything extraordinary as these voices fell into silence.

She retained her attention and opened her mouth again. Damn. As if to mock her, the whispering sound became more incessant and she couldn't take a bite of anything. A niggling feeling certainly told her what they wanted from her. A bunch of perverts. Her fingers plunged the fork into a piece of chilly chicken cube begrudgingly, as she stuffed it inside her mouth, chewing it hard and gulping it down thickly.

She turned around dramatically to scan the faces of what happened to be two fine men. One had brown skin, an unruly cloud of black hair, and dancing eyes, while the other was big-boned, had a prominent jawline, and looked more serious, so much so that even his muscles were praying to come out of his jacket.

He got the idea that she was the same girl after sneaking a confirming glance at her hair. But the things that blew the air out of his lungs were her eyes, nose, lips, and that holy mole above her lip. He dropped his plate in slow motion after fixating his eyes on her face for the first time. His onyx orbs enlarged and his breathing slowed down to a turtle's speed.

She bore a similar reaction but with a different reason. Her dress (which was not hers, technically speaking) was marred with blotches of ketchup and some good amount of thick curry just like those unnamed, scattered mini-figures on an atlas.

"You dickhead! What did you just do?" Ruby oozed such petulance that it never felt like the boys were in with a chance to end the problem.