This is just a one-shot I wrote last winter to entertain Ellyanah, and I figured I'd post it.
~pouf.
(Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.)
YAGAMI RAITO'S HOLIDAY SEASON
Raito's punishment for using the Death Note: working in a gift shop.
1.
Yagami Raito was frustrated. The sheer disturbance of being in a crowded and noisy environment was sufficient to cause this state of mind. Customers – people – trampled the candle shop, fighting for the help of employees and demanding to be given special treatment.
From the other end of the store, the teenager could overhear a very fat woman complaining about some irrelevant factor or other. These rotten, disgusting customers (or so he liked to muse) apparently had nothing better to do than to seek the perfect (useless) gift for people they couldn't have cared less about.
"Just find me any random crap under $10."
"No! Not that, it looks too cheap!"
"Can't you, like, accidentally scan a cheaper item?"
"Hold on, let me call my wife, I don't know what she wants."
"Um, I want it, but I need my husband's permission…"
"Can you get that thing way up there for me? Oh, is it heavy? Hmmmm. Actually, I don't want it anymore. You can put it back now."
Noisiness and crowdedness were bad enough on their own. The teen also happened to be plagued by boredom. Nothing around Raito was even remotely stimulating, which resulted in his immediate zoning out. Careful to remain in one place so as not to bump into anything fragile while he enjoyed his private rant, the young man regretted the challenge of trying to work hard while there had been school.
Yes: such an environment was indeed very bothersome to Raito. In fact, if it was up to him, he wouldn't even be in the shop at all – and if for some reason he had been in there by virtue of his own desire, he wouldn't have stayed for more than five minutes.
"Excuse me, young man?"
Raito was once again faced with the harsh truth. No, he couldn't just go outside for a breath of fresh air to escape the suffocating crowd, because he worked there. He forced himself to look toward the owner of the voice, straining to place a well-practiced smile onto his regulated features.
"Yes, what can I do for you?"
"Ahhh, I have a question."
Was this person an idiot? No one would speak to an employee if it wasn't to ask a question. It would either be "How much does this cost?" "Can you go get that for me?" "I need x product, do you have it?"
For a customer to mention that she had a question was a sign of imbecility, no ifs or buts.
Raito looked at the middle-aged woman expectantly.
She stared back.
"What would you like to know?"
"I was wondering, how much does that cost?"
It appeared that this person's mental capacities were below even that of the average customer. Waving an arm vaguely at a table covered by a pile of cheesy decorative candles was not exactly helpful in expressing what one was referring to.
Raito had a headache.
"You mean the lamp-shaped candle?"
When in doubt, look at the customer's appearance to get a clue about their likes and dislikes. Narrow the choice down to the most popular item amongst those that fit their evaluation.
"Yes, I mean that one, on the table."
The woman made another weird wave. Maybe she had a neurological defect that also included the capacity to think of others as idiots even though she was obviously having issues expressing a simple thought.
Still with an impeccable smile, Raito repeated what he already knew.
"It's $34.99, but there's a promotion – the second item in the collection will have 50% off."
The woman stared. She opened her mouth, drew in breath, and closed it again with a confused air.
Great. Another confused idiot who didn't understand what it meant.
"You mean… the second one is free?"
"No, Madam. The second one, meaning the cheapest one, is at half price."
"So if they're both the same, what happens? They both at 50% off?"
How he managed to look positively unbothered and gentle, Raito did not know.
"No, only one of them will be."
"Well, that makes no sense."
The client is always right. Raito flashed an honest smile.
"What can you say? Bureaucratic ritualism is pervasive."
Hopefully, that would shut her up about the 50% off deal. It did.
"… Okay, so can you hold that box so no one takes it while I ask you other things?"
No use reminding a hormonal woman on the brink of menopause that the table in front of her was laden with about twenty such lamps, and that she had mentioned a question.
"Absolutely! What else would you like to know?"
"How much does that cost?"
Didn't she ever get tired of making the same vague gesture?
"The boxed set?"
"Uh, well yeah, that's what I said."
Right.
"That one's $29.99."
"Okay, so if I get the lamp candle and the box set, how much is it going to cost?"
So she treated him like he was a moron, but expected him to be able to calculate what she couldn't. Very consistent.
"That would be $49.98 without taxes."
"Okay. Hold that one too. What about that thing over there?"
This time, the vague waving was directed to some corner in the back of the store. Walking through the client clutters was going to be such fun with two big boxes in his arms. After a few un-apologising shoves from people who looked like schizophrenics because they were speaking on their wireless phone about wanting to buy so or so – confusing, really, because sometimes they were actually speaking to Raito – the young man finally made it.
"Which item has caught your attention?"
"The mug."
The price of this one was unknown to Raito. Lifting the Christmas-style horror off its shelf, he read the price from the label.
"Oh, how stupid of me. I didn't think that the price would be on it!"
Not just stupid, also insane. One is brought to wonder about how much simpler life would be if it was spent in an asylum. Raito offered another honest smile, known to him as a smirk.
"Don't worry; it happens to all of us! Would you like me to drop these off at the counter?"
"Yeah, I'll just take the mug."
And thus began Yagami Raito's holiday season while working a part-time job in a candle shop.
2.
To make a long story short, the list of Raito's ailments was growing to be pathetically long. By then, not only was the teenager bored out of his mind and prevented from being amused, he was also dreadfully tired. Sure, he had been a tennis champion, but short-term physical activity with a goal was nothing compared to spending hours on end just… standing for no reason other than to look nice for the customers.
His head hurt from the constant harassment from clients, his legs and feet ached from being immobile for so long, and the bright neon lights from the shop were, to say the least, painful for his eyes. Offense was added to the injury when the newest addition to the shop's staff complained of a pain to her eye – "I think I might have conjunctivitis, my eye burns."
Well, go figure. Raito's eye hurt as well, and no one heard him complaining, except when he was assigned a full-day shift on a day before an exam when the employer had been forewarned a month in advance of specifically not giving him more hours during that time. He had been given the excuse "You don't need to study…" to justify the presence of the shift. Seemingly, people who worked in minimum-wage positions did tend to be a bit slow. Sure, he didn't need to study, but he DID have to read the book.
He had been forced to work that day (with fewer hours, but still work) because this particular complainer had stated that she needed her Sunday for church. Well, he needed his Sunday for something just a bit more important!
Thus knowing the woman's history of attempting to evade work, the teenager decided to seek out the problem for himself.
"Oh? Let me see? Well, it doesn't look red… Look up? Down? Left? Right? Nope… no inflammation. I think it's muscular, probably due to fatigue or stress."
"Yeah! I've been tired and stressed lately!"
Haven't we all?
"Does it hurt around your eye?"
Now would be the moment of truth!
"Yeah, kinda."
There we go. Funny how before he'd said that, she had claimed her eye burned and had conjunctivitis. She lied. Frustration.
Such behaviour from a co-worker would have been acceptable on its own; it only served to underline the imbecility of the new employee, and was rather amusing insofar as something frustrating could be.
However, the 'best' thing about the situation was that the complainer had found a suitable ill to complain about with success.
Indeed, Raito then overheard a conversation between his boss and the complainer – the latter was permitted to leave early because the muscle pain around her eye had spread to her temple.
Very funny. Raito was sure to remember the excuse for future reference.
3.
Raito had decided that his un-stimulating new challenge was to contend with customers. It wasn't all that much worse than pretending to be challenged in other situations; it was just less pleasant (here, he meant "very unpleasant"). The biggest problem with standing there was that he had a number of fresh interesting periodicals to read and that, while he was busy dealing with the customers, he could not even flip through them. As a result, Raito had "fun" maintaining a train of thought full of complaints while taking care of the customers and ignoring the shop's Christmas music in favour of the music library in his mind.
As bored as Raito was, the interruption of his jejune work day by Kleptomaniac Guy seemed like an exciting relief (read: an opportunity for mischief).
Indeed, Raito was standing in his usual spot when a man, who had previously been furtively eyeing the employees, grabbed a few items and retreated back to a deserted corner. Raito could see the man's hat over the store's merchandise, and caught glimpse of his eyes as the man once again looked around suspiciously.
Raito wanted orange juice.
The man had just stuffed a hand into what appeared to be a reusable shopping bag when he walked back towards Raito empty-handed
How could someone be so obvious?
Raito stared. Why ruin the fun and risk being accused of defamation?
The man looked nervous.
"Excuse me, I have a question."
"…" Raito held back a twitch and resisted the urge to sigh.
"It's about your gift cards."
The man started walking towards the checkout area where they were kept.
Might have worked on someone else – look innocent by distracting the employee and heading straight where there are other employees.
Had Ryuk been around, the shinigami would have grinned with an apple stem stuck in between his teeth – 'omoshiroi'.
"Right, so like, what, we buy one?"
"You decide on the amount of money you want to put on it when you pay for your purchases, yes."
Would he notice the jibe?
"Ah… Okay."
Maybe not.
Raito walked away towards his boss, and said what he had just seen.
He observed with a hidden smile as the man put yet more objects in his 'shopping bag' and was intercepted in the process by his quite voracious boss.
Kleptomaniac Guy jumped a few centimetres into the air, bumped into a display and made a chandelier fall.
Raito held back a laugh as the man apologised profusely, handed back the items he had just put into his bag (but not the ones Raito had seen him grab), and ran out the door.
Unfortunately for the teenager, the small bit of entertainment at seeing another human being squirm in humiliation was interrupted when his boss came to him.
"Why didn't you tell him you saw him when he came to you???"
Oh, honestly!
"Because he had already put the things in his bag."
"So? You saw! Now we lost a shaker and a carrot peeler!!!"
"Yes, but it was already done. Ergo, if I wasn't careful, I could have been accused of defamation."
Raito didn't add "which is why I let you create my fun for me, plus, I don't care about the shaker and peeler."
"Oh. Okay."
The boy let out a snort when he had a flashback of the man's jump and run.
It was not long before the amusement faded and Raito went right back to being horrendously bored.
REWIND; REPLAY.
… … …
Somewhere in town, a man named L laughed uproariously.
So did a shinigami.