The aforementioned new hire for the West Fiore Trading Company looked up at the girl as she rejoined him, blinking for a couple seconds before he realized it was the same girl. Eyepatch wasn't eyepatch anymore. He'd assumed her eye was missing, but no, it was just weird. He had to resist calling her Weird Eye. He vaguely wondered what had happened, but didn't care enough to ask. Other than the shock of her slitted and scarred eye, the rest of her looked good enough. "Yeah, yeah," he waved off her compliment, though his grown alleviated into something more like a smirk for just a split second when she quipped him about his frown. A lot of things pissed him off, and most of the time it was unpredictable. However, her spunk was enjoyable in some way. Most people avoided him and walked on eggshells when they couldn't, but she was primed to give it right back to him. He wasn't so inhuman that he couldn't appreciate that. It was a break from the norm. Slouching in his seat, he decided to toss some words back at her. "It was probably hard on 'em, but they must be miracle workers, I guess. You turned out alright, somehow," he shrugged. His aloof tone expertly covered up his awkwardness with taking and giving compliments, and just like that that conversation was over.
Waiting for the wedding to start was a shiny new ring in hell. Rainer wasn't used to talking much, especially not to someone calm. Most of his conversational skills came from jeering burly men in the granite mines and the occasional words with his ill mother and sister, which weren't as many as he'd wished. The more he was out of his little town and forced out into the rest of the world that turned as if his own personal world wasn't a crumbling, dying mess. He hated it out here, but he also hated it at home. He hated everyone and everything, his situation, the cards he'd been dealt. Rainer was a bitter and angry young man that felt wronged at every turn, but he still fought to make the best of it the only way he knew how. Screaming at it, blowing it up, or sucking it up. "Everything about this is weird," he grouched, slouching so far into his seat that his legs hung open and the back of his head rested on the top rung of the chair's back. His face angled toward the sky and he stared into it as if it'd make time pass faster. "Love is weird, so weddings are dumb and wasteful and Valentine's Day is a sham. If you love each other, you don't need to drop all this money on something stupid like this. Anything to scam the last jewel out of someone," he ranted quietly to his date. He glanced at her. "I'm so glad we weren't chosen. I'd have said piss off, you know?" Rainer said, shaking his head. "Ain't doin' it. I ain't never doin' this." Sure, this only reinforced her likely confusion about why he was even here, but he wasn't as mysterious as he seemed if one paid attention long enough.
Her fascination with the detail the fake wedding held fell on deaf ears. He remained slouched into his seat, alternating staring at the sky and closing his eyes to enjoy the warmth of the sun on his face. He couldn't have been less interested. The change in music indicated the bride had probably appeared, but even then he ignored it. Rainer didn't look up until the priest brought the services to a close and the two were to kiss.
Why he chose to look up at this moment was unclear, but his expression darkened a bit as a result. The bride was pretty. She reminded him of his sister, which was a sore spot. The poor girl was so sick that, if he faced the facts, he knew she'd likely never reach this day. She'd never even been on a date, and as much as he refused to dwell on it or even entertain it, if he didn't make a lot of money soon, his mother would never live long enough to see either of her children start a family, and his sister would never bare the children she always wished for. Imagining against his will that his sister was well and standing where that bride stood was a sharp, hot knife in his chest. Luckily, the awkwardness of the kiss brought him out of it all and he was left sneering. Poor suckers. It was clear they were indeed chosen at random and didn't know each other at all. Rainer thought for just a second that he wouldn't wimp out like that pansy groom and would have given Sara a real kiss if it had been them, but in the end that'd have been impossible because Rainer would have been on his way out of Magnolia by now if that had been the case.
The reason he had chosen to attend this dumb Valentine's Event soon became abundantly clear as the ceremony wrapped up and headed into the reception. The boy, despite all his muscles and spiky hair and abrasiveness, was famished. He barely made it through the ceremony. Beady red eyes now kept darting toward the food table, which was mysteriously devoid of cake, but he didn't give two craps. All the tables he could see were lined with things that were edible, and that was enough to make this worth it.
"Alright! Ladies and Gentlemen!" a suited host of the event said into a mic from the corner of the fenced off area that indicated he reception. "Normally this is just for the bride and groom, but in the spirit of a demonstration, everyone will feed each other cake as if you've just walked down the aisle with your won true love! Please! Direct your attention to the dessert table!" the slick-looking blond woman boomed with grandeur, motioning to the center of said table as if she was a magician revealing the climax of her trick. However, as all eyes, including hers, directed there, it was indeed empty like Rainer had noticed forever ago. "A-A-Ah!" the host stammered, looking around in thinly veiled panic for someone rushing in with the cake, or at least someone to blame. Nothing. This was a disaster! A wedding with no cake! Their marketing was obliterated. The prospective customers were starting to murmur in concern. How to save this....what could she do?
"Ahem!" she called attention back to herself, straightening her suit jacket. "Times have changed people! I bet you all were looking for a boring old tiered cake? Not from our company! We keep up with the times, shake up boring traditions! Notice the elaborately catered dinner table!" she used the same grandeur as earlier to indicate a thankfully full table of piping hot offerings. "Why feed each other cake when you could feed each other dinner? I invite you all to get yourself a plate! However, don't think you can get away with not playing along! The dinnerware is enchanted so that at least the first bite must be from you to your date."
"Oh, what the f--" his furious cursing was lost in the excited rabble of the crowd. Now Rainer was normally the type to scream screw this, flip a table over the embarrassing and pointless thing being forced on him, and moodily stalk off to find an easier way that would waste less time. However, even though his angry expression indicated he was just about to do just that, his stomach rumbled loud enough for probably anyone in the vicinity to hear. He leaned forward and a hand clamped onto the vest fabric over the rogue, treacherous belly that dared tell on him. As if to escape his embarrassment, and so no one would see the very light blush threatening his cheeks, he hastily stood up and went straight for the table, grabbing up a plate and loading it with mashed potatoes, chicken, and whatever else he could pile onto his plate.
Finding a seat at some round tables indicated for guests to eat at, Rainer would impatiently wait for his 'date' to seat herself next to him so they could get this asinine task over with and he could scarf down a decent meal. His spoon was already loaded with mashed potatoes, ready to strike and shove it into her mouth at the first possible opportunity.
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