"Anything Else?"

Chapter 1

"You're doing it again," a voice I could recognize almost too easily said from behind me.

"Huh?" I turned around to look at my superior who did not look very pleased. I had been in this situation more times than I could count on two hands. It was not like I was doing it on purpose, but my boss always acted like I was consciously playing with his patience.

"How many times do I have to repeat myself? If you keep this up, I'll fire you without hesitation!" he talked pretty loud, not that he did not usually do that, and he tried to appear as intimidating and nonchalant as possible – probably just because he knew that the other employees were listening and he wanted to display his authority. He was just using me to set an example.

"I'm sorry, it won't happen again," I tried not to sound as if I did not care if it happened again or not, but it was hard, since the only reason I was there was because I needed the money so I could pay my rent and get food on the table every now and then so I would not starve to death.

"It better not. Now get your ass behind the desk, people are tired of waiting!" apparently, I had been daydreaming while being called to the desk over the speakers – again.

He walked away without as much as deigning to look at me one last time. I understood why he had to be so rough with everyone, he took every opportunity that he got to yell at somebody and show them their place in the hierarchy. If he was not rough, they would just stop respecting him and eventually stop listening to him. Someone in his position needed respect from everyone under him or else things just would not work out the way they should. I sighed loudly as I made my way down to the 2nd checkout lane, wondering how much time there was left until I would have my freedom returned.

All the people in line glared at me as I finally sat down behind the desk. No one appeared to be the slightest bit happy that I had come to open another checkout, they only seemed to focus on the fact that I had not showed up immediately after being called. Always looking at the negative side of everything. Typical. Just typical. But I was used to that, since I was working at a supermarket. All shop assistants were practically fed with negativity from the beginning of their very first day at work. People did not seem to care if they were rude or not towards us, we were there to serve them. Shop assistant, I hated that word more than anything in the world. It was so slightingly.

It took my colleague and me around half an hour to get through the long line that had piled up because of my ignorance. It was not so bad, though, when you were used to it. All the superficial glances and sullen looking faces, not to mention the way they spoke without variation. My job was to overlook all of those things, put on a smile and wish them a nice day. That was not too much to ask for, was it? I did not think so, at least not for 618 yen pr. hour. Yeah, being paid minimum wage was not exactly something to write home about, but I needed every single yen I could get my hands on and if that meant I had to smile to someone, who looked like he was tired of his life and had devoted himself to make everybody else think the same way of their own lives, I would do it.

"Have a nice day!" I said, faking the happy tone in my voice, not even looking up at the leaving customer neither the next one I was about to service. I cursed my life soundlessly as I grabbed one grocery after another, yanking them over the barcode scanner.

"How much?" asked the customer opposite me. I looked up and saw someone I serviced at least twice a week. Mondays and Thursday mostly, but also at weekends, though that was mostly to buy booze and cigarettes, and some times other weekdays if some special groceries were needed. Today was Thursday, the day I also beeped in an one and a half liter bottle of diet coke and an extra pack of cigarettes, besides the usual groceries, for this particularly customer.

"That would be 7.723 yen, please," I glanced over at the groceries I had just registered as "bought" and quickly discovered that there was something in the heap I was not used to be selling to this customer at Thursdays. Cream of fish, that was bought on Mondays. Strange?

I looked up when the man stretched out his hand towards me to give me the money, "Here you go. Exactly 7.723 yen, you can count them if you don't trust me," he flashed a smile, at least that was what it looked like he was doing. I could only tell his expression from his closed eyes since the lower part of his face was always covered from the nose and down.

"I-I believe you," I stammered and threw the money into the cash register. I hated when I could not control my own voice, it was so embarrassing. He opened his dark grey eyes, but kept on smiling with them.

"Cool, thank you very much. Have a nice day," he opened the plastic bag he had bought and stuffed all the groceries inside of it.

"T-Thank you... Have a n-nice day," I was stunned by our conversation. We had never traded so many words on the same day as we did that day and we had known each other for a long time. Well, maybe known was not the best word to describe our relation to each other. We did not really have any other relation than the supermarket. He was the customer and I was the shop assistant there was not anything else to it. But to me, he was not just a paying customer. He was so much more than that.

I followed him with my eyes as he walked out of the shop with one stuffed plastic bag in his right hand. It looked heavy, but he did not complain. I could not help but wonder why he had bought that extra plastic tray with cream of fish. Had he had someone over for dinner? Or was he perhaps going to? Maybe he had just been craving cream of fish that week and had eaten more of it than he usually did? It was hard to tell since everything else aside from that seemed normal. Another thing that had been especially abnormal about that day, had been the conversation between us. The mysterious man did not say much, normally. Most of the time, I had to force the words out of him by asking stupid things like, "Anything else" or "Is that all?" My stupidity and lack of creativity sometimes surprised me. No normal person would ask if the customer needed anything else if he was shopping in a supermarket. It was silly. But anyway, just hearing him say those three words, "No thank you," that was enough to satisfy me for at least the whole day out.

"EXCUSE ME!" a woman on the other side of the counter yelled, leaning over it so that she could shout her words right into my face. I shook my head with astonishment and looked up at her, then over at my tongue-tied colleague and then back at the woman once again. Had she been trying to get my attention for a while now? At least it that was what it look and sounded like by her face and the tone of her voice.

"I'm sorry, what?" I sent her a puzzled look, trying to figure out what the hell her problem was.

"Maybe you would like to do your job now that you're done daydreaming?" she sounded like I was getting on her last nerves. My guess was that she had three screaming kids waiting outside for her in a black family Volkswagen. She had probably just gotten off from work and now she had to go home and clean the house and make dinner before her husband got off too while she still had to manage all her chocolate covered children. What a life.

Coming up with stories like that about my customers' lives was the only thing that made it easier for me to keep smiling at their sour faces, "My apologies," I said, not meaning a word of it and I continued to do what I was supposed to, but the guy with the mask never left my mind.

OoooOooOo

Hey everybody!

This is actually my first attempt ever at making a Naruto fic... Well, actually I've been working on something for a while now, but since I sense that it's going to be a longer story I decided to wait with publishing everything till it's completely ready. With this fic, though, I just felt like publishing it right away and I feel that I'll be able to find time to write new chapters every now and then like it should be done. Enough of that, back to the actual story.
I hope you liked the first chapter and please feel free to review so I can read your thoughts about. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad or if it is about the story itself, the structure of it, ideas for something that could happen later on or maybe something about the way I write, critique is always appreciated.

By the way, if it bothers you that I only use contractions in direct speech, I'll have to apologize for that. English isn't my mother language and we aren't allowed to use contractions in class unless it is direct speech. So I'm just practicing, since I normally use all the normal contractions when writing something in English.

Well, I guess that's all for now. See ya' ^^