| Jin hadn't answered Hwoarang's question. When he left the rathskeller that night, Jin let several days pass without contact, busying himself with the normal and inconsequential hassles of everyday life. At the end of one of those days, however, he left his guardsmen and the world he had inherited and once more disappeared downtown, into the Yurei District. His pace was casual but his eyes were searching. Feeling conflicted and contradicted, the redhead had spent those days - more specifically, nights and early dawns - retrogressing. Rekindling his old habits helped hide the confusing feelings growing in him, giving Hwoarang a familiarity and security and confidence. Those few days he went about hustling with a new vigor, pulverizing his victims with a cathartic fanaticism. Strange dreams had started to come, but at least they ended with the morning. He spent every moment of the dawn attempting to block the image of the Japanese from his thoughts. That particular evening Hwoarang flourished alone, and amidst a carcinogenic haze of smoke at the back of the Yurei rathskeller with 'decent' karei, gravitating with a stick about a pool table. Naturally it was one of the last places that Jin checked. His hands in their pockets were sore when he removed and flexed them and he suspected that his nose was red, too. He let himself inside, lingered a moment there by the door until he was adjusted to the smoke and din and odd smells. It was gratifying to know that his search was over when he spied a familiar redhead bent carefully over a pool table under the light of a round, bright hanging lamp. Kazama approached from behind, probably easy enough to go unnoticed. He stood there and watched. And Hwoarang didn't seem to notice. In grey jeans, black chaps and an indigo sleeveless stretch-shirt - goggles suspending orange strands - he did appear his old self. Each sphere of rich sienna brown focused on each maneuver taken in the solitary game - his hearing monopolized by the clash of balls - and having ignored the noisy surroundings Hwoarang cleared the green surface in a matter of minutes. He leaned to align the last shot, murmuring to no one in particular. ".. eight ball - corner pocket." Two or three seconds passed, before he cracked white with the end of the pool stick, sending the ball colliding into black with a force that soon concluded his prediction. With his arms crossed loosely over his chest Jin smiled -- to himself, since no one was looking. He wanted to speak. After a respectful pause Jin broke his silence, watching the back of Hwoarang's head as he said, "Good game." |