Bar

@Park Seonghwa "Rats for breakfast... rats for lunch... that was the dream.", Riley kept talking over the guest who was placing their order, but Tom had heard the man and nodded. "Coming right up." Tom glanced at Riley to make sure he was still washing the glasses and then moved to prepare the man his drink. Riley kept rambling. "Had lots of fun catching rats, but I also hate them. Hate hate hate hate them." Riley washed the glasses as aggressively as he could without breaking them. "Hurt my stomach, yes." He meowed again, and a deadly bloodlust filled his usually empty gaze. "I'm going to kill all the rats!" As soon as he spoke those words, he curled forward and shook his head quickly. "No no no no no killing, not killing any rats. No rats. No bugs. No people." Then he looked up again and stared at the guest who had ordered the rum and coke. "But killing was fun. Right? - NO! No no, not fun at all. Horrible horrible horrible! I hate rats. And cats. No, no not cats. Cats are very good sshhhh"

Tom appeared again with the drink and set it down in front of the man. "Here you go. Don't mind him. He's nuts, but harmless. Wouldn't harm a fly." With that said he smacked Riley over the back of the head and told him to shut up, that was scaring the guests. Riley did shut up, long enough for Tom to walk away, and then walked closer to the guy with his rum and coke and leaned over the counter towards him. "Do you like cats? Say yes. Cats are cute, right? And scary. Good scary. Cute and scary. Right?"

@Riley Parker Seonghwa hummed a soft tune under his breath as he walked down another alleyway, under the cover of more shadows. He was still visible to others, unfortunately. He didn't have the ability to hide himself within shadows. He had been practicing with creating illusions with minimal eye contact for the small things though, like... making it seem like he wasn't there. He was getting there slowly.

It was tiring though. Being outside around people. People who didn't understand- okay, so it was a bad day for him. He has had worse - he will always have worse - but there definitely had been better days. He let out a curse under his breath as he joined the stream of people along the pavement. He tugged on his coat and hood, making sure they were secure as he slowly made his way along a less busy street, towards a bar he very occasionally visited. And by that, he meant that he had probably only been at this particular bar twice or thrice.

The drinks were decent, at least according to his memory. He walked in, scanning the place quickly before taking a seat at the middle of the bar. He noticed the little scene but ignored it in favour of actually choosing something that he wanted to drink. He couldn't help but eavesdrop. It wasn't like they were very inconspicuous. He raised a brow at whatever was happening behind the bar and leaned against it, elbow resting on the thankfully clean surface as he laid his head against his head. "Excuse me," he called out, just loud enough for the bartenders to hear him. One of the few reasons why he came to bars run by humans at all was because most of them were still run by them, he didn't want to expand his interactions with humans without needing to. "Could I get a rum and coke please?" he ordered. He decided to start light.

@Park Seonghwa Riley looked and smelled like he could use a shower, but in this bar nobody cared. He was assigned dishwashing duty and stood at the sink behind the counter, slowly washing one glass after the other. Then, out of the blue, he stopped, looked up and walked out from behind the counter and towards the door. 'He's leaving again.', a regular client murmured with an amused snort. "Hey, Riley's leaving.", he called out louder this time, so that the other bartender heard him. Riley's colleague Tom cursed under his breath and quickly walked out, held Riley by his arm and dragged him back behind the counter. "Where are you going, Riley, hm? Your shift isn't over. You've got to wash the glasses.", he said with a strained tone and a kind, but forced smile. Riley stared at him with his dull, hollow stare. "I got to water the flowers. The roses will die. It's too hot." The regular client laughed, and Tom sneered and dragged Riley all the way back to the sink. "There are no roses outside, Riley." Riley looked at him in confusion. "No roses?" Tom nodded. "None at all. You need to wash the glasses." Riley reached for a glass and got an encouraging smile from Tom as a reward. "But I planted them last year. They should be blooming now.", Riley replied, removing his hand from the sink once more. Tom shook his head, took Riley's hands and dunked them into the sink water. "No, you didn't. You only came to this city a few months ago. You didn't plant anything. It's not real, Riley. The glasses are real. Wash the glasses." Now, Riley's expression morphed into one of helpless confusion. "It's not real..." Tom nodded. "That's right. Wash the glasses, and then, you can go and buy yourself some roses if you want to."

Riley wasn't always as coherent as he appeared now. Today was a good day: He was a little confused, but his story was plausible enough. On other days he would insist he needed to fly to the moon to save his cat from choking on cake.

Riley wasn't moving his hands, so Tom placed a rag in one and a glass in the other. Then, he leaned in close. "Clean the glasses, or I'll make you kill a rat." Riley shuddered, whimpered and hurriedly got to work. "No no no I don't wanna I hate rats", he sniffled, "rats taste good but I hate them, and they're fast and so annoying when I can't catch them", he spoke, addressing a glass he was holding up. Then, he meowed.

@Oh Jieun /riley wasn't working at his usual bar today, and was struggling to keep up with all the things people were telling him to do
/it was a busy night and he felt overwhelmed and found solace in telling drunken patrons all bout how the eagle that lived next door cheated on his wife and got beat up for it
/unbeknownst to him, the patrons had made a game out of taking a shot each time riley flapped his arms, demonstrating the eagle's movements
/if not for all the money the bar was making off of that game, riley would have gotten into a lot of trouble
/he was just about to explain why the eagle's wife was human, when the door burst open
/the first thing he heard was gunfire and the patron sitting in front of him suddenly slumped forward, deceased
/someone screamed that the unnamed had come, and chaos erupted
/the world moved in slow motion for riley, and all he saw was a girl who looked like she was going to get killed; he wasn't thinking when he ran out from behind the bar, grabbed her by her wrist and pulled into the back rooms

@Tsuki The night was still young enough for someone like Jackson. His elegant hand was carefully rolling the glass on the counter. It had about two fingers wide of a darkish liquid in it with the dim lighting of the bar people easily could mistake it for whisky or scotch but despite the beautiful burned amber colour, it wasn’t that it was a distillate sure but nothing fancy the colour came from the same barrel ageing it had the same notes of oak and it paired just as good with the tastes of cigarettes but I was darker less smooth less more frosting and at the same time sweeter. He always had a soft spot for Liquorice and so it wasn’t too out of the way for him to find his poison in the rather difficult-to-find barrel-aged Sambuca.

Taking a sip, he turned to the corner stage watching the musicians who had played there pack up. The first time he had entered this bar it had been for the liquor but now he came back for the information this apparently unpresuming bar was holding. May would presume that the amount of information found in a bar depended on the barkeeper and their ability to talk with the people but that wasn’t always true. A way better source of information was the bar musicians. They played in different establishments and even if they didn’t at least they knew who played in the other live music bars around the city and they would always know what was going on. That was why Jackson had made it his hobby to meet and get familiar with the musicians and bands performing in these bars.

As he was carefully rolling the bottom edge of his galls against the counter once more the next act was setting up. He never had musical preferences and as long as the music was capturing the audience he was also inclined to listen after all it was good to be well versed in all walks of life as someone who made their living making people talk and extracting their secrets it was beneficial to be able to talk casually about any topic. The human mind is easy enough to manipulate if one was told to think of a red elephant the first thought that appeares is exactly that. And if the mind was told don’t think golden goose then still it would think golden goose. Thus, casually talking about any topic could bring the mind to think don’t think about that one secret related to that topic and abracadabra your mind would think exactly that secret. And Jackson just needed to look into that person’s eyes and would be able to pull that secret out.

Which was also one of the reasons why he naturally avoided eye contact. Looking into a person’s eyes opened the door automatically at least when he was touching them, he could choose to listen or to not listen. His hand still playing with the glass he was waiting for his company to arrive so he could listen to today’s newest information and gossip.