24 Graduation Day (4)

In the room in Nine Heavens, Aria expected to see a menu somewhere but despite looking all around, she found nothing.

When no one else seemed surprised to not see a menu, she figured it must just be normal for this restaurant to not provide one.

Unknown to her, part of Nine Heavens success was due to the way they handled each customer's food. It had been founded by a renowned chinese chef looking to expand into B City and into owning her own restaurant.

She was simply known as Chef X because no one had ever seen her in person except for kitchen staff and her old boss.

Her fame and mystery was part of what had initially made Nine Heavens popular, but by the time Aria was back in B City, most people had stopped talking about her and simply referred to Nine Heavens.

One of the defining features of the restaurant was that every table would receive a nine course meal. Of course, not all the tables were equal. The cheaper of a table you reserved the lesser of a chef you got to prepare your food.

On the other hand, Chef X herself would cook the food for the top booked room. Sadly, all of this remained unknown to Aria and she had no idea their food was going to prepared by a famous chef and cost over double the normal price.

The seating at the table was slightly strange. Even though the table had seats for over 10 people, all four members were sitting clustered at the middle with 2 on each side.

Aria shifted around awkwardly in her seat as she looked at the older couple in front of her and the glanced to her side at Aika.

Despite having been invited, she felt like was intruding on a dinner of a celestial family as a peasant.

Suddenly, she felt a hand grasp her shaking one for a moment and looked to her side again to see Aika smiling reassuringly at her.

The hand on hers sent tingles up her arm and straight to her heart making it skip a beat.

Aria took several deep breaths to calm her unease and the unusual feeling building inside her. Once she had calmed down she pulled her hand back from the grip and ignored the uncomfortable feeling of coldness.

Before the silence could grow uncomfortable, Aika called out to her parents, "Mama, why didn't I know I had a sister?"

Yuna's face crunched up before she replied, "Well, look how good a girl she is. Why don't we just adopt her?"

"Yes! I'll call a lawyer right now!" Max pulled his phone out of his pocket and started scrolling through a list of numbers.

Astounded at the progression of events, Aria's jaw dropped and the three other people in the room all started laughing.

As she realized she had missed out on the joke, Aria pouted and took her phone out from her purse.

Aria scrolled through her playlists before selecting one called '18' and putting in headphones.

Instead of actually hitting play, she pressed on it twice extremely quickly so it paused immediately. Pretending to be fully engaged in her music, she mouthed the words to her favorite song and watched everyone else at the table.

Everyone's faces of happiness gradually crumbled and were replaced with a mix of shock and guilt.

When she saw everyone react like that, she felt really bad instead of finding it funny like she expected and took the headphones out.

"I'm sorry, I was just trying to mess with you..." Aria felt like she had done something horrible and couldn't apologise enough.

Suddenly, Aika hit her shoulder gently and pulled her into a hug. As they were pressed closely together, her mind went blank and she unconsciously sniffed her friend. When Aika pulled away Aria realized what she did and felt her face and ears heat up slightly.

Aika had a cute smirk on her face and spoke slowly, "It's okay, we've all told bad jokes now, so let's move on?"

Aria nodded a little too eagerly and turned back to her friend's parents. "I-"

Before she was able to speak, the sliding door opened and a traditionally dressed waiter walked in with the first course of food. The waiter ran his eyes over Aria repeatedly as he set down the food.

Feeling slightly uncomfortable, she was about to ask the waiter if anything was the matter when she felt something warm fall over her shoulders and upper body. When she looked to see what it was, her face turned bright red and she found herself unable to speak.

Covering her previously somewhat exposed upper body was Aika's cardigan.

Without a chance to process what happened, her heart was assaulted once again.

Aika spoke coldly with a deadly edge to her voice, "Please get us a different waiter or I'll be speaking to your boss."