School had officially started again, and—no surprise—it was boring as hell. I was hoping something interesting would happen now that I was finally a senior, but so far? Nada. The occasional fight broke out in the hallways, and teachers were already feeding us bullshit about how they could "fail us for the whole year" if we didn't fall in line. Yeah, sure.
What caught me off guard was how fast the weeks started slipping by. Two months gone, just like that. Nothing really happened. I didn't make any new friends, and the only thing that really stuck out was the occasional bullying I had to deal with—same crap, different day. The one upside? I landed a new job as a waitress at a pretty upscale spot. It wasn't amazing, but it beat sitting at home doing jack shit.
Then the rumors started.
Apparently, there was some new transfer student. People whispered that he was insanely good-looking or something, but he kept to himself, barely spoke a word. Honestly? I didn't give a damn.
Or at least, that's what I thought.
Because today, at work, my boss pulled me aside and dropped this on me:
"Alright, everyone, this is Zen. He's gonna be working part-time here. Mostly in the kitchen—he's got experience with all kinds of Brazilian dishes, so he'll be handling the weekend specials—but he'll also help out as a waiter during the week."
And just like that, the mystery kid everyone had been gossiping about? Was now my co-worker.
"Hey Mars," my boss added, "since Zen's new here, I want you to show him the ropes. He'll be working with you the most anyway—our most requested waiter at the moment."
"Yes, sir," I replied, a little stiffly.
So I started walking Zen through the menu, the routines, the customer tricks. But god, it was boring. He barely said a word, just nodded like a robot the entire time. I couldn't get a read on him at all.
After the shift ended and we were locking up, he suddenly walked up to me.
"Hey, Mars?"
"Yeah?"
"Would you be interested in going out to eat?"
"…Huh!? W-what the fuck?! Where the hell did that come from?!"
"I'm interested in going out with you."
"What? Are you serious? We just met! We haven't even had a proper conversation! How the fuck do you figure that's a good idea?!"
Zen didn't flinch. "Would you prefer another time?"
I stared at him, completely thrown off. Was this guy dense or just dangerously confident?
"Fuck off."