The scanner beeped as I passed the lone, pint-sized carton of ice cream over it. I looked to the cashier monitor and checked the price. Same as usual, no special discounts, and the patron hadn't given any coupons. I tapped the monitor's screen, confirming the purchase of the sole item. Looking back at the patron, I saw that they were a short, young woman.

Her hair was split in brown and pink, and a stripe of white popped out in the pink half. Her eyes were heterochromatic, following the color scheme of her hair, pink and brown on respective sides. She wore a white coat that was cut off midway down her torso, revealing a brown leotard that went under brown skinny jeans. Tall white boots donned the lower half of her legs, just under her knees. Damn, this girl is cute, I thought. I realized I was pretty much checking her out when she waved a hand in front of my face, with a knowing smile on hers.

"Uh, s-sorry," I yearned for my mouth to work, I was on duty after all. "That's 5 Lien, miss."

"…" No verbal response was given, but she nodded as she handed me the correct amount of currency. After putting the Lien in the register's drawer, I took the ice cream pint and put into a plastic bag off the bag rack in the cashier's little compartment. A quick glance caught the ice cream flavor, Neapolitan. Huh, I smirked as I doubled the bag for safety. That's… appropriate.

After giving her the bag, she smiled wide and briskly walked out of the store, while I turned to the next customer in line. For some reason, I was secretly hoping I'd be seeing more of her soon.

. . . . .

It's Monday. Dust damn it, I hate Mondays. I never have enough energy to last even half a day of work in this damn grocery store. The hangover from last night didn't help either. I don't care if policy says we're supposed to smile at customers while we work with them, Mondays are black holes of all positivity and you can't convince me otherwise.

"Next!" I did my best not to let the pain from my ringing headache and general Monday exhaustion leak into my voice while I called for whoever else would be in line. The moment I heard a solid thunk on the conveyor belt. Looking over, I saw four packs of chocolate chip cookies on the conveyor belt. Looking back to the patron, I could tell she was in quite the hurry to get the cookies home and scarf them down with reckless abandon. Having worked here for a while, I knew a lot of the snack items' prices by heart.

"That's 10 Lien." I said, scanning the packs and putting them in a bag.

"Uhh…" This patron was also rather short and young-looking, much like the ice-cream themed girl from days before. Her dark hair became red as it got closer to the ends. Her silver eyes looked from her wallet to me with some rapidity that I can only place as nervousness.

"Problem?" I asked. I wasn't in the mood to have a lot of full on conversations today, so I stuck with just responding with single words for pretty much the entire day.

"I, uh… only have 8 on me right now." She rocked on her heels, like a child would when they got caught stealing from the cookie jar. This was something close to the adult version, I suppose. She looked like the kind of kid that didn't do this often, but she locked silvery-puppy eyes at me, as if begging for a way out. I sighed and took a card out from behind the cashier's monitor and scanned it.

"That'll be 8 Lien, then." With that, she threw the Lien excitedly in my direction, grabbed the plastic bag holding the purchased cookies, and seemed to run out of the store at a speed I could barely keep up with.

"Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouuuuu!" Her voice trailed off as she faded into the horizon from where I could see out of the store's entrance.

I sighed and collected the Lien thrown at me. That was probably the most excitement I'd be getting out of today.

. . . . .

Wednesdays are just as bad as Mondays. They're in the middle of the week, and what I like to call Torture; so close to the weekend, yet still so far. I was in the process of locking up the store and finally about to bring down the metal curtain in front of the shop when I felt someone tapping my shoulder. I turned to see a young man who looked just as tired as I was. He wore a black and green, eastern style martial arts tunic. His companion beside him appeared to be quite the bundle of energy, a redhead wearing a white top and a pink skirt. The latter was bouncing lightly, chanting softly about something related to pancakes.

"Can I help you?" I asked. Secretly hoping they were just tourists looking for directions to Junior's club or something. I could at least help them out there as long as I was going there.

"I'm really sorry about this," I could hear true sincerity in the young man's apology. "But, we're in a rather dire need for some cooking ingredients and were hoping you could hold off for a moment so we can buy them here?"

"Can't this wait 'til the morning?" I questioned. I was just about to close the store completely when they showed up. Just my luck, huh?

"No, please please puleeeeaaase?" The redhead bounded forward, grabbed my arm and shook it intensely. Her blue eyes shone with hunger. "It's an emergency!"

Her boyfriend, I guessed, seemed to be biting his tongue to prevent from lashing out in public at such a time of evening. Instead, he just looked to me imploringly. I sighed as I contemplated what to do.

I mean, I wasn't planning on going home yet. I thought. And this might a certain time for her to need whatever from the store. Might as well help the poor guy deal with it as soon as possible.

Calmly, I removed the girl's hand from my arm, and turned to unlock the small grocery store's entrance. I sighed as I pushed the metal curtain up a little more with one hand and unlocked the store's entrance with the keys the boss left me with. After fumbling around a bit, I got the door open.

"Come on," I beckoned them in, flicking on the light switches next the door. I stepped in and to the side to let them enter before saying, "Cooking and baking supplies are in aisle 3."

"Thank you." The dark-haired boy said quickly while trying to keep up with his companion, who zoomed to the mentioned aisle. "Sorry, again."

I waved it off before looking at the store. It was a small corner grocery store, with only one refrigerated aisle at the end of it. There were only 5 aisles in total, but we had decent amounts of common fare for people to buy. I walked over to the nearest cashier station, turned it on, and logged in, patiently waiting for the two teens to approach.

It was a rather normal transaction after that. Two minutes later, and the two came by with several boxes of pancake mix and syrup. The girl went out to the street to wait patiently while the boy gathered his bags. He was currently giving me more Lien than required for the things he just bought.

"No, it's fine, kid." I assured him, trying to give back the unnecessary amount of extra Lien. "I know how girlfriends can get from time to time, don't worry about it."

"O-oh no, we're not together like that, we—," He said, what sounded like out of instinct, before I cut him off.

"Also it's store policy to not tip employees." At that, his pleading eyes blinked and he sighed.

"Thank you." He said once more before jogging out with the groceries. I muttered a "no problem" before turning off the station and leaving. I was really feeling the need to hurry to Junior's for a much needed drink.

I sighed as I returned to locking the store and finally bringing the metal curtain down and locking it to the cement. Suddenly, my Scroll vibrated, and saw that a city-wide text was sent to me.

JUNIOR'S CLUB EXPLOSION, AVOID AREA

Damn it.

(Heyo everyone! BleachCadelina here with a little side project! This is just a thing for me to exercise comedy in writing, with the ulterior motive to work on my comedy before trying to produce something worthy of an submission for RT's Short Form Narrative writer position!

Doesn't follow any sort of regular upload schedule, but more will come!

Any requests as to who you want to see next? Would you like some out-of-store interactions? Maaayyybeee fluff/lemon? Just put them down in the comments/reviews and I'll see what I can do!