Betaed by WhatAreAllTheseTears
It wasn't Maka's job to judge. It really wasn't. And usually she didn't judge, people bought everything at the convenience store and Maka had come across some very odd and usually terrifying combinations. Maka thought she had seen it all; condoms and applesauce, orange soda, vodka and purple popsicles, party balloons, play dough, band aids, and seven different flavors of Italian sausage. The variety of people that came into the store were just as colorful. At certain times of the year and the day you could guess who they were; full moons brought out the crazies, mid-December and late-May and early-June was the finals frenzy, any time during the school year between the hours of 8 PM and 3 AM meant overworked students, summer meant any partying kid who wanted fireworks (especially around July). Every now and then a handful of teens would rush in and grab armfuls of food and drinks then would pay and all of it would last less than five minutes.
But, well, Maka had never seen this before. And Maka was definitely judging.
The store was mostly empty, it was a hot spring day and the air conditioning in the store was nowhere near adequate. Maka silently suffered through layers of sweat in a white shirt with a maroon vest. She wiped her forehead and was disgusted at the amount of perspiration that glittered in the noon sun. But the man painstakingly took his time as he unloaded one of the store's only shopping carts onto the conveyor belt.
His white shaggy hair was slick around his neck with sweat, the other strands stuck up at odd angles and a black headband tried to hold the wild hair. He wore a black leather jacket which must have been sweltering in the heat, and black jeans that looked fashionably ripped. His orange shirt showed no stains of sweat. He finished unloading the store's entire selection of cookies onto the belt and dug around his back pocket for his wallet.
Maka blinked owlishly as her mind, groggy and slow from the heat, tried to process what was happening. And she came up with the extremely unprofessional "what the actual fuck."
"Huh?"
Maka's hands moved mechanically as she began to scan the cookies into the system. "S-sorry. I just-" Maka shook her head puzzled, "-are you seriously going to eat all of these?"
The man grinned, his pearly whites were sharpened like a shark's. It actually kind of weirded her out. And made Maka kind of want to run her fingers over them… The man didn't say anything. The grin was starting to look kind of sinister. He looked back down at his wallet and frowned as he pawed through his cash. "How much?"
Maka waved her cookie-full hands. "Oh, yeah. Go on." He mumbled.
She continued scanning the packages of junk food. She frowned when she noticed that one of them was different. "You know this is oatmeal raisin, right?" The last ten she'd scanned were the same company but chocolate chip.
"They're cookies so I'm buying them."
Maka raised an eyebrow. "Is this like a bucket-list goal or something? Buy every single type of cookie in a five mile radius?"
The man just grinned again. Suddenly the room seemed a whole lot hotter. Maka hoped she wasn't sweating through her white clothes. Maka finished scanning the cookies into the system and her eyes widened. "Congratulations, if you go through this bet or whatever it is, you will be the proud owner of over five hundred dollars' worth of crappy cookies."
"Crappy? These cookies are the best non-homemade cookies in the world."
Maka snorted. "They taste like cardboard."
"What? Are you a gourmet cookie person? Can't eat the horribly good cardboard cookies like the rest of us?"
"Not really a cookie person."
The man gasped at Maka dramatically. "Everyone is a cookie person…" He glanced at her name-tag. "Maka." He rolled the words over his tongue as if he was trying it out, testing it, measuring it, like he wasn't sure if he wished to say it more. The thought made a shiver crawl down Maka's back.
"I'm more of an ice cream person."
"It's not a dichotomy, Maka." He kept saying her name like that.
Maka just shrugged and the man handed her his credit card. She swiped it through the machine. "Do you want a bag for this stuff?"
The man (who's name on his credit card was Soul) shook his head, fluffy white hair sticking to his face from the heat. "One second." He told her. He took out his phone and texted someone before he signed at the machine.
"Do you want a receipt for that?" Maka asked.
"No thanks, Maka." The doors to the convenience store opened and five men rushed in. Two held opened the double doors of the store while their car was parked right in front of them with the trunk wide open. The other three started grabbing packages of cookies, running to the trunk, and throwing them in. Maka watched the operation wide-eyed.
Soul helped them casually, as if they did this all the time. One of the men whooped the entire way, his bright blue hair stuck straight up.
"Come on, come on, come on." One of the ones holding the door called to the others, trying to rush them.
"We're going as fast as we can, Rung!" One of the other men snapped. He had to push up his glasses and he dropped a handful of cookie packages. He tossed the others into the trunk of the car before running back to pick them up.
One with black hair and white stripes grabbed the last couple of packages and shouted "GO! GO! GO! GO!"
The others ran back into their car and Soul ran to the trunk to close it. He stopped and glanced back at Maka, those crimson eyes of his locked onto hers and she felt the temperature in the room rise.
"C'mon Soul! Let's go!" One of his friends shouted from the car. Soul held up a finger in the international symbol of 'one minute' and grabbed a package of cookies.
Soul tossed the cookies to Maka was a grin, showcasing his pointy pearly-whites. Maka caught them, surprised. "Try them again," Soul encouraged her, "maybe you'll find that you are a cookie person."