Lover Boy | Newt (Book 1)

~~ 8 ~~

Alby's P.O.V.

   There's a lot of tension with the new Greenie. How to put it...Ah. He's making Newt a bit...jealous. Put it in one word, give or take, that kinda thing. I mean, it's not the serious jealous kind of thing since they only knew each other for a week, but he's probably insecure. Yeah, insecure is how I'll put it.

   "Newt, can you take care of Minho and give him the Tour?" Cyrah asks, already skipping towards the kitchen. 

   I don't think she notices the tension between those two...but I'll leave them to it, maybe they'll find a compromise (and hopefully making Newt less jealous). "Uh...a-alright, Love," Newt agrees, albeit reluctantly.

   I follow Cyrah, not wanting to witness the drama that'll surely erupt and also hoping to pick up some cooking tips (I'm not sure if they'll work for me, though).

   I give Cyrah an expression that hopefully means "Are you sure this is a good idea?" and she shrugs. I'm gonna trust her, she's the closest thing to someone who knows what they're doing. Heck, she probably does know what she's doing.

   "Hey, Cyrah? Is it okay if I watch what you're doing?" I ask.

   "Alright. Trying to polish our non-existent cooking skills, are we, Albert?" She jokes. I hate when she calls me Albert, but at least my name isn't "Newtie". I don't even know how Newt puts up with that girl, but she is the only one who does the stuff properly. It's like she was trained to survive in the wilderness before she came here.

   "Yeah," I agree, reluctantly. No matter how much it pains me to admit, cooking is not my secret ability. "I'll just watch and try to improve my 'non-existent cooking skills', as you put it."

   "No problem," she agrees and continues frying whatever she's doing on the pan.

   "What are you making?" I ask, pointing to her pan. Maybe she'll whip up something fancy for the new Greenie...and then I can pitch in when it comes to dinner. On the eating part, I mean.

   "I'm not making anything special for the Greenie, Albert, so get the idea out of your system. You just want to eat the food anyway, you're not really concerned about Minho's food." Busted.

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Cyrah's P.O.V.

   "Nice try, Albert," I say over the hiss of the frying pan. I am making something special for Minho's arrival, but he doesn't need to know that.

   "Why?" Alby whines. "Please make something good!"

   "I might..." I say, pretending to consider. "If you do well in today's cooking lesson."

   Alby looks eager to start and stands up straight immediately. "What are we making today?"

Time-skip to An Hour and a Half Later –––

   "Good job, that's considerably better than your last attempt at it," I sigh, offering my compliment that is most definitely sincere. His last attempt was two days ago, and the meat was completely fried to a crisp. 

   "I know," he agrees, taking a tiny bite of the mini turkey roll we made. I swear, that guy doesn't have a shred of modesty.

   "Alright, let's go put this outside and make sure Newt and the Greenie got along," I instruct.

   "Yeah, about that..." Alby mumbles. 

   "What?"

   "Uh...nothing?" He tries. I know he's hiding something but I don't press.

   "Let's go already."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Newt's P.O.V.

   "So. Greenie." 

   "Are you just gonna talk or are ya gonna give me the stupid Tour?" The Greenie, or Minho, demands. 

   "Patience," I huff, which just makes him roll his eyes at me. 

   It's already bad enough that I don't really like Minho, ever since he knew Cyrah's name and didn't let go of her hand. And he's handsome, too, and more muscular. Maybe she'll fall in love with him and then –––

   "Uh, Dude, are you okay?" Minho asks, snapping his fingers in a Z formation in front of my eyes as I blink back to reality. "Your face is red." Is it?

   I touch my cheeks, and to my embarrassment, they are heated. "M'alright," I mumble, mortified that he caught me in that moment.

   "Are you thinking about a special someone?" Oh, how I just wish I can strangle the Greenie. "I might not remember anything about my past life, but you can always come to me for relationship advice..." He offers.

   "Shut up, Greenie," I hiss through my teeth. If it wasn't for Cyrah politely asking for me to "take care" of him, I would have killed him.

   Minho absentmindedly twirls and then puts something in his mouth. On further observation, it's a necklace. "Greenie, you don't know where that thing's been, take it out of your mouth."

   He takes it out and looks to the stone surprised, almost like he had no idea the stone is there. "I-I don't know, I think it was a habit from...before. I didn't even know that necklace was there." 

   We both study the stone that still has traces of saliva. The stone is a dark crisp green with a few occasional lighter dots, the shape of a perfect circle, quite flat, with a small hole in the middle.

   The disk-like stone was polished to perfection other than a few shallow scratches here and there. There are a couple of small gold inlaid designs and characters, the figures to small to depict from this distance. The stone is strung on a thin gold chain which is looped through the hole in the middle.

   If we were out of this place, I'd say the necklace would have been expensive. 

   "Anyway," I clap my hands. "Let's go."

   In the next hour and a half, I really get to know Minho better, and I would say he's the sassiest person I've ever met (not that I've met that many people, not ones that I remember, anyway) and he's actually a nice person.

   "What's that?" He asks, gesturing towards the doors. 

   "Oh, those are the doors to the maze. They'll close soon. We haven't really explored properly yet, we were thinking of going out soon."

   "Huh," he muses and watches the doors for a bit.

   "Dinner is ready!" Alby's voice booms from the kitchens. That guy really has a talent for yelling. To be honest, I think that's why he and Cyrah bond together so well.

   "And Albert didn't ruin dinner for once!" Cyrah adds, and I can just imagine the glare that comes her way after.

   "Let's go eat, Minho," I say and beckon him towards the kitchen.