Working Sundays
Rating: K. Will go up.
Warnings: Angry Uzuki is angry, and... really nothing else potentially offensive, unless a character getting a minor injury offends you?
Disclaimer: I don't own The World Ends With You.
A/N: This has been sitting on my hard drive for about a month and a half, now, wanting to get finished, but I was on too much of a Shiki/Eri kick to work on writing much of anything else, and it was either going to have three or four chapters of reasonable size or be kind of humongous, so here's the first chunk. This takes place about two years pre-game. I'm not sure what the consensus on Reaper ages are, but the consensus that I've seen and subscribe to is that, while they probably don't get old-looking, Uzuki was fifteen when she died. This takes place slightly before that, on a Sunday. Mostly at a convenience store, but not quite yet in this chapter. There were probably better places for Uzuki to work, but damn it, I love that silly meme, so a convenience store it was (although the story to come has nothing to do with the meme besides taking place at a convenience store.) Some, but minimal, internet research was done about convenience stores in Japan, so this probably won't be a 100% accurate portrayal of them because I was too lazy to google konbini for longer than like an hour.
(also, while a similar minor-injury thing happens in "Princess and Ghost", I wrote this one first and like the scene too much to change it. Maybe I'll go back and change "Princess and Ghost" if I feel like it later.) and, I have had too much to say about this first chapter tonight. here is fic now.
The alarm clock goes off. Uzuki Yashiro opens up her eyes and looks at the time. It's too early, really, and probably she could still get ready and make it to work on time if she got up a little later. She thinks about hitting the snooze button, seriously debates with herself the merits of hitting the snooze button, decides that yes, another twenty minutes of sleep would do her wonders and not make her late at all, and then hauls herself out of bed and into the shower anyway. She's had the clock for years-- it's a mascot character that she refuses to admit she still likes-- and while she knows it's painted to smile pretty all the time, she can't help but imagine that its cute little button eyes are glaring at her antagonistically. Well, she'll show it who's boss.
She's brushing her teeth, now, and combing out her hair. She puts on her uniform shirt-- ugh, the thing is so tacky, she'd never wear it in a million years if they weren't paying her to-- and a pair of her favorite black jeans. Under the bed are her pink sneakers, which she slides her feet into, and she fishes around in her jewelry box to pull out a matching pink choker and bracelet, and a pink hairband to pull over her shortish brown hair. Anyone would assume she was a fan of pink, especially with the lipstick and fingernails, but if you ask her, she'll more likely glare and growl and ask what was it to you if she did like pink than give you a straight answer. Uzuki isn't the kind of girl who admits to liking much.
Waving a quick goodbye to mom and dad, she grabs her bag, gets out her bus pass, and practically runs out the door, almost forgetting to close it behind her. The clock on her phone tells her she's a little more than twenty minutes ahead of schedule, but that's okay. She didn't need the extra sleep, really. If she gets there early enough, she can help do morning inventory, and maybe the boss will see how helpful she's being and bring up her name when they're picking the new assistant manager next month.
She's a little young to be working, and she hasn't been there as long as everybody else, but then again, everyone else is working there because they have to-- either they can't get a job anywhere else, or their parents made them stop freeloading and work somewhere, or they just don't care enough to look for anything better. In the long run, a convenience store really isn't the best place to be employed. Uzuki's convinced herself she's working there because she wants to, even though she complains about the place as often as her friends will listen to her complain, and she doesn't want to work there as much as she's looking to work somewhere, so somewhere better's going to think she's special for having work experience from so early on, especially if she can get herself promoted.
The bus is already there when she reaches the stop, and even though it's the bus before the bus that takes her to work on time, because she always gets there before the on-time bus arrives, and all of a sudden she's not so much early for work as she is late for being early enough. She shows the bus driver her pass, and he gives her a quick smile, because she's one of the usual riders on Sundays- she's early more often than she's on time, even though the manager's never picked her to take morning inventory. She sits in her usual seat by her usual window, and passingly looks out at the usual buildings and streets the bus passes by. Somebody sitting across the aisle is playing their music a bit too loud. Uzuki grits her teeth-- not only does this idiot not have the sense to keep his volume to himself, but rap? She can't stand it.
The bus stops, and the music fades out. A lady with a child gets on-- older, the kind of person who's given up herself, given up her ambition and just become some accessory for making somebody else happy. Uzuki looks away. She's never going to grow old and shrivel up and forget how to take care of herself (a coffee-stained sweatshirt? In the middle of Shibuya?). She's going to have a career. She'll work her way to the top, even if she has to start out working the early morning shift at a convenience store on a Sunday. She'll work her way to the top, and then it'll all be easy, it'll all be perfect and she'll finally be somebody...
"Mommy! Look there! Look at the sign!" the child squeals. Probably a girl. Uzuki thinks the voice is too high to be a boy's, but she admits she doesn't know very much about children, and she doesn't care enough to look over. It's not an admission of failure or inadequacy-- she just doesn't like kids. She's passed this street corner enough to remember the sign. Something about a collectible card game, if her memory serves her right, and she'd be the last to say it didn't. Her little brother watches the show it's based on-- or the show that's based on it, if Uzuki's right and the whole thing exists just to sell cards and toys. Stupid fads. She can't understand why anyone would like that sort of thing, and really, it's not just because the one time she'd begrudgingly let him show her how to play, her brother had beaten her soundly. Really.
The little girl continues to babble, and her mother continues to nod and humor her, and Uzuki tries to block out the noise in her head. It strikes her as especially annoying, just like the boy who played his music too loud did before. There's always an annoyance on the bus, especially to someone who isn't particularly tolerant of the irritating things people tend to do. There's not much different about this morning from any other Sunday, aside from the tiny specifics of the day. She breathes on the glass of the window, then doodles a little pattern with her manicured nail. Maybe she hasn't done this before. Maybe last time, she played with her phone, or thought about how the day could go (the boss would recognize her hard work and devotion! She'd become assistant manager, and then maybe even manager in a little while, and then she'd move up to a better job, maybe once she got to college, but hopefully even a little before...) or played with a chunk of her hair.
Uzuki wonders when things are finally going to become better.
...but it's not as if things are particularly bad, she reminds herself. Work isn't great, but that's the point of an entry level job, and anywhere better wouldn't hire a thirteen-year-old, which, two years ago she'd been. Maybe she wanted to be appreciated-- she definitely wished she'd be allowed to dye her hair, too, but if things were going to improve, they were going to get there through hard work. Pink hair wasn't worth as much as a stepping stone to a better job.
The bus stops. The woman with her daughter (Uzuki was right, the kid's a girl-- even though her face isn't visible, her pigtails are, one on either side of her head) gets up to leave.
"Mom? I can spend my own money, please! Can we stop and get cards?"
"Shhhhh, we're not passing anywhere that sells them, honey..."
The bus doors close again, and whatever insipid little nagging the girl had been doing can't be heard inside the bus. Uzuki would be thankful for the peace and quiet, really, but the next stop's hers, and she's using the time she's got left to straighten up her shirt, fix her hair-- it would have looked so much better with a little dye, she grumbles to herself, but rules are rules--, look a little more professional and organized. She's not the gangly, awkward thirteen-year-old who looked even smaller in her uniform shirt anymore, but she's still young for the place at fifteen; most of her coworkers are already out of high school, aside from the one boy who's maybe a year older than her that takes over after her shift. She hopes the others don't associate her with him. She's worked overtime more than once (whenever the boss hinted that he'd look kindly on working overtime, and whenever she'd believed him-- okay, even when she didn't, even when it was obvious he was just using his approval as bait) and all he did was sit in the back room, playing video games on some kind of handheld thing.
It was just her luck, getting partnered up with lazy types every single time she had to work together with someone.
Her hair combed back and newly untangled (when it had been completely in position and untangled before), her uniform shirt nearly wrinkle-free (she thought, with distaste, that perhaps she'd crumpled it a little by trying to make it perfect), she's ready just in time-- the bus is already pulling into the stop three blocks from work. She's got to make it there for morning inventory, she just has to, because if you've got the perfect employee it doesn't matter if she's fifteen, and she breaks into a bit of a run after only a couple steps on the sidewalk. Inventory's in five minutes.
She's coming up to a corner and takes the turn sharp. It isn't her fault, really. She didn't see that the sidewalk was wet-- how could that be? it wasn't even raining-- and she's falling, going to mess up her uniform and hair and everything and she's going to look sloppy in front of the boss, and he'll see her as just another disposable teenage worker... but she throws out her hand just in time, and catches herself. Spilled beer, it looks like, and her hand hurts, but there's no time to worry about that, she needs to get to work. Pushing herself up (the nerve of some people, refusing to clean up after themselves, and who would be drinking already?) she starts running again, and it's a little harder now. She realizes she must have landed on her knee wrong, too, and she catches herself making a small, hurt noise very quietly before she tells herself it's something you'd see in a little girl, not the future assistant manager, and catches the sound in her throat.
Then she's there. "Yashiro?" comes her boss's voice from inside.
"Good morning, sir!" she says. "I just thought you might want some help with inventory..." He opens the door, comes out to look at her tiredly.
"Yashiro, your shift doesn't start for another twenty minutes. It doesn't take more than two people, haven't I told you that?"
"Of-of course you did, but--"
"How many times have I told you-- whoa, wait! Are you bleeding?"
She looks down at her hand, and sees that yes, she is.