24 Graduation Day 4 (1/2)

In the room in Nine Heavens, Aria expected to see a menu somewhere but despite looking all around, she found nothing.

When no one else seemed surprised to not see a menu, she figured it must just be normal for this restaurant to not provide one.

Unknown to her, part of Nine Heavens success was due to the way they handled each customer's food. It had been founded by a renowned chinese chef looking to expand into B City and into owning her own restaurant.

She was simply known as Chef X because no one had ever seen her in person except for kitchen staff and her old boss.

Her fame and mystery was part of what had initially made Nine Heavens popular, but by the time Aria was back in B City, most people had stopped talking about her and simply referred to Nine Heavens.

One of the defining features of the restaurant was that every table would receive a nine course meal. Of course, not all the tables were equal. The cheaper of a table you reserved the lesser of a chef you got to prepare your food.

On the other hand, Chef X herself would cook the food for the top booked room. Sadly, all of this remained unknown to Aria and she had no idea their food was going to prepared by a famous chef and cost over double the normal price.

The seating at the table was slightly strange. Even though the table had seats for over 10 people, all four members were sitting clustered at the middle with 2 on each side.

Aria shifted around awkwardly in her seat as she looked at the older couple in front of her and the glanced to her side at Aika.

Despite having been invited, she felt like was intruding on a dinner of a celestial family as a peasant.

Suddenly, she felt a hand grasp her shaking one for a moment and looked to her side again to see Aika smiling reassuringly at her.

The hand on hers sent tingles up her arm and straight to her heart making it skip a beat.

Aria took several deep breaths to calm her unease and the unusual feeling building inside her. Once she had calmed down she pulled her hand back from the grip and ignored the uncomfortable feeling of coldness.

Before the silence could grow uncomfortable, Aika called out to her parents, ”Mama, why didn't I know I had a sister?”

Yuna's face crunched up before she replied, ”Well, look how good a girl she is. Why don't we just adopt her?”

”Yes! I'll call a lawyer right now!” Max pulled his phone out of his pocket and started scrolling through a list of numbers.