Blades of Honor

Chapter One

Ten minutes have never lasted as long as they have in this one moment.

JiYeong let out a huge sigh, blowing a stray strand of hair from her face. Her coworker Kayla was yammering on about school or something, JiYeong wasn't truly listening. Kayla was in high school, a place JiYeong hadn't thought about in five years. A place she had stopped caring about once her diploma was handed to her.

JiYeong was glanced back toward the clock, hoping time had magically decided to leap forward and rescue her from her fate of being the unwilling audience of Kayla's overdramatic retelling of the fight that broke out during second lunch.

Much to her disappointment, only one minute had passed since she last looked at the clock.

The store she currently worked in, a small, local grocery store, was empty, as it always was this time of day. It didn't usually start getting busy until after she was off, because that's when people who had regular nine to five jobs were getting off their jobs, and doing their shopping. By then however, she would be at home, lying in bed or playing on her computer.

Exactly the thing she would be doing today, if time ever decided to give her the courtesy of moving faster than it currently was. There was a quest on her favorite game, Blades of Honor, and she wanted to get it done today. It was supposed to give her a status boost for two in game days, and that would be extremely useful for leveling up her cooking subclass, since her main class as a Guardian was already at the maximum level one could reach in the game. There was talk of the developers putting out a patch that would raise that level from its current 100 to something higher, but it was nothing more than talk. Nothing concrete had been released yet.

JiYeong looked at the clock again. It was four fifty-five. Why was time moving so slowly?

"We have to do a five-page essay. Single spaced. And with references." Kayla was whining. When had she moved on from her food fight story?

JiYeong had to stop herself from sighing aloud. It wasn't as if Kayla was a bad person. She was friendly enough, and at the very least did her job. It was the amount of talking the younger girl did that got on JiYeong's nerves. Every day was something new, as if Kayla experienced so much in her everyday life she couldn't wait to tell the first unsuspecting soul. And since the store was the first place Kayla went to when she left school that usually left JiYeong to bear the brunt of it.

"Are you planning on going to college?" She asked.

"Yes?" Kayla responded hesitantly, her face showing that she wasn't going to like what JiYeong had to say next.

"The shortest essay I had to write was ten pages." JiYeong said, picking at her nail. She glanced at the clock again; another minute had passed. Far too slowly. "Five pages would have been a Godsend." She was being facetious, of course. College had been surprisingly easy for JiYeong. Or at least, her high school teachers had made it out to be a lot harder than what she'd found it, actually experiencing it was almost a letdown.

Of course, it also depended on what Kayla was planning on studying in college. JiYeong had gotten a degree in Computer Science.

"Ten?" Kayla squeaked, her hand going to her heart over-dramatically. Her reaction told JiYeong she couldn't tell she was exaggerating in the least bit. "About what?"

JiYeong shrugged, her eyes flashing to the brightly lit exit sign before looking back at the blonde standing at the register next to her. The blonde wasn't natural, that much JiYeong could tell. "I dunno. Depends on the professor, and what your subject was. I once had to write a paper on pencils."