"I know right?" She found herself clenching the edge of the table with her fingers and let go before her nails broke. With a thump, she sat down again, a sigh dragged out as undramatically as she could. "But if say she, uh, ahem, c-cheated on you before you die leh?" Her voice, barely a whisper, melded into the air, "Then how?"

This time, she dared a straight look at the researcher, eyes wide.

◇◆◇

"That would be very nice. I know this really nice place that got serve black squid rice ..." The Thai girl felt coy around Fletcher, his innocence infecting her. Or maybe she was too thrilled to be exposed to such a strange specimen. She couldn't tell yet.

"Okay, so we three do the least job compared to m-Rain and Awester," the pinkette bobbed her head slowly in understanding as she looked inside the array of pens - red, blue, black, and a lonely green - and a simple, practical stack of lined A4's.

"You have shit taste," she mumbled, but decided to pay the rounded sum as printed on the receipt. Forking over the twenty ringgit orange bill to a grateful Noon, Murphy started to make her way out with an aloof, "I'll be out with Fletcher."

Her voice left a ringing finality between the three. Even with her back towards the two flirting youngsters (Murphy liked to consider herself part of the older generstion regardless of age, a chagrin to the older staffs), her stature imposed a sense of "I'm looking at you" directed at the new hire.