"I have to warn you that the people who come through here can be a bit weird. We get all kinds of vagrants and some of them can be…a little out there."

Sakura nodded. "Okay."

"So if you get creeped out, you've got the walkie-talkie there if you want me to come and handle a customer for you. I'd be more than happy to do it, all right?"

She nodded again. "Sure."

"Okay then, I think that's everything. Good luck!"

It was noon on a Wednesday, one of the few days that Sakura had her night job off, and also her first day as a cashier at quite possibly the smallest gas station convenience store she'd ever been to. It was unfortunately named Come and Go Convenience. There was only one bathroom, in which people had taken to writing on the wall alternative names for the store that more clearly illustrated the problematic nature of its title. (She had thought of one herself, and would have made her contribution if she wasn't now currently employed there.)

The only thing she was worried about concerning the job was the possibility of a robbery; the seven o'clock news was always showing clips of masked gunmen invading gas stations at night. She didn't know what she'd do, other than hide beneath the counter, if that happened—but in reality she wasn't too worried about it. She'd looked up the statistics—it didn't actually happen that often.

So it was with a little boredom that Sakura began her first tentative day of work. She qualified it as tentative because the moment she found a better day job she'd take it in a heartbeat—she was not going to spend her days working in a dusty old convenience store making little more than minimum wage.

She was looking forward to watching a sappy movie and eating frozen yogurt in her tiny apartment that evening when she was done with her shift, but that was eight hours away. For now she just had a four-hundred page novel she had been meaning to reread for years as company and a whole day to kill selling candy bars to travelers coming down Highway 1, all while her manager watched Frasier reruns in the back.

Sakura sat reading for an hour behind the counter on a little wicker chair as cars periodically stopped at the pumps outside to fill up, wondering offhandedly if she was actually going to have to work at all, when finally someone walked in to buy something. She hurriedly stood up.

Her first customer was a middle-aged man who had two kids in tow, a boy and a girl. From her place behind the counter, she watched them peruse the aisles, the kids excitedly picking out candy bars for themselves. The man however seemed not to find what he was looking for, at which point he approached the counter—and, she realized, her.

"Hi there, you need any help?" she asked politely. The man wasn't meeting Sakura's eyes—he was staring at her pink hair, like most people did the first time they met her.

"I'm just looking for some sunscreen. I didn't see any in the personal items section, and I was hoping you could check the back…"

"Let me ask the man in charge," she replied, tuning into the walkie to get the man in question's attention. She already knew there was sunscreen in the back. She'd walked by a box of it when she'd arrived, but she didn't feel comfortable enough yet leaving the register to get it. "Hey, could you check for sunblock, please?" she asked.

His garbled reply signaled an affirmative. "I'm sure we have it," Sakura told the customer while they waited, who nodded, the expression on his face resembling the sort of lofty condescending courtesy that people seemed to save exclusively for retail workers. His kids were gawking at her hair in open curiosity. She smiled at them, and they hesitantly smiled back.

While they waited, Sakura tried to make small talk. "So where are you guys headed? The coast? It's great this time of year."

"We were just there," the customer said dismissively, signaling that he had no desire to fraternize with her.

"Why is your hair pink?" the little boy inquired. His father made a shushing noise at him, but Sakura grinned and rested her elbows on the counter.

"Your dad ever tell you to make sure you don't get bubblegum in your hair?" she asked conspiratorially. The kids nodded. "Well, my dad always told me that too, and I didn't listen! Once I was blowing a huge bubble, and it popped and covered my entire head! Since then my hair has been pink, and I can't wash it out no matter what. It's stuck."

The children burst out laughing, and even the customer chuckled, his cold veneer melting with the warmth of his son and daughter's giggles. Sakura grinned, glad that she'd successfully changed the tone of the transaction entirely.

The manager appeared, carrying the entire box of sunscreen. The customer paid for two bottles and his kids' candy, and Sakura's first transaction was over. As the family exited the store, she called out to them, "You guys drive safe!" and was met with a chorus of thank yous. The kids waved goodbye, and then all three of them were gone.

"So, how was it?" her manager asked as he leaned on the side of the counter opposite of her. "That was your first customer, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she replied. "They were nice." Her manager retreated to the back, and Sakura returned to her reading.

Cars came through regularly, but no one else came in to buy anything. Sakura got through three chapters before her peace was again disturbed—only this time it didn't even take a customer walking in to disrupt it.

It was in the middle of a lull in the plot that she heard the rumble of a vehicle distinctly separate from the quiet purrs of the car engines she'd been hearing all day. She looked up just as it cut off, and there was silence—and then the door swung open, letting in one of the scariest-looking men she'd ever seen in her life.

He must have been at least six foot three, his arms covered in blue-gray tattoos (there were even some on his cheekbones!), and he was wearing a white t-shirt and a leather vest that stretched snugly across his broad shoulders. There was a loud clunk every time he took a step—his boots were dusty and looked as if he wore them often. His hair was dark and short; his face roughly angular and almost harsh. He looked like the kind of person who wouldn't swerve to miss animals on the road.

Sakura watched him warily from the corner of her eye as he walked slowly to the side of the store where the drinks were kept. Remembering her fear of an armed robber, she searched for a gun on him, but he wasn't wearing a holster, and his shirt was tucked into the waistband of his faded blue jeans, so he couldn't be hiding one. The only place left that she imagined could conceal a weapon, albeit a small one, was the inside of his boots, but even if there was a comically tiny handgun in there she was confident that he wouldn't be stupid enough to try and rob her with it. Then again, he was nearly twice her size…

Sakura remembered her manager's promise to handle a customer if she didn't want to, and her hand was already twitching toward that walkie-talkie just under the counter. But then she remembered how the frosty father of three hours ago had melted at her joke even after throwing an unpleasant attitude beforehand.

She pulled her hand away from the radio and joined it to the other, folding them both in front of her as she stood ready and waiting.

The man approached the register, soda in one hand and cell phone in the other, his gaze focused on the glowing screen. Sakura smiled despite that, determined to be polite, and said, "Hi there, find everything okay today?"

"Just fine, thanks," he said, his voice unsurprisingly a deep rumble. He set the bottle of Coke down on the counter. "And a packet of Newports, please." That he was a smoker, too, wasn't a surprise. In fact, the only thing that was surprising was his courtesy—she could count on one hand the number of times a customer had said please to her, and exactly none of them had been leather-wearing bikers with tattoo-covered arms.

After Sakura cashed him out for the cigarettes and the soda, he pocketed one and palmed the other and turned to go, giving her a look at the arrangement of patches on the back of his vest: a large, dark red cloud surrounded by smaller patches, including a yellow compass with an emphasized south bearing, and another patch that simply read "est. 1994." It reminded her of the vests she'd seen in Sons of Anarchy. At least there weren't any reading "Men of Mayhem" or "Unholy Ones."

"Thanks," he said, looking back at her over his shoulder as he headed to the door.

"Oh, you're welcome!" she hastily replied, again surprised at his civility. "Have a nice day!"

The man grunted and left.

He didn't vacate the premises, though—Sakura could see him through the windows that wrapped around the front and sides of the store as he went to stand off a little ways left of the door, where he lit a cigarette and made a call on his phone. While he talked, Sakura got the chance to really look at him.

Not only was he tall, but muscular, too, with carved biceps and broad forearms. He lifted the Newport between his fingers to take a drag, his bicep growing rounder as his hand met his mouth. Sakura realized that she was staring and shook her head, redirecting her focus. His tattoos looked curiously like wedding henna—geometric designs that covered his medium-toned skin, beginning at his fingers and extending up into his shirtsleeves.

Despite his aggressive bearing, she concluded, he was actually okay-looking—certainly not oozing magnetism like her charismatic brother did, but he could qualify as attractive. There was just something about the set of his shoulders and the way his neck moved, and the quirking of the corners of his lips…

Suddenly he turned and looked at her, as if he could sense that she was staring at him, and caught her hopelessly off-guard. She hadn't looked him directly in the eyes before—they were dark and piercing, and far more intimidating than his clothes or his size. Those were eyes that didn't joke around. Those were eyes that recognized the scrutinization that Sakura had been putting him under. Her face grew hot, and she looked down timidly, hoping she hadn't just offended him.

She fiddled with the time-softened corners of her book, not daring to look up until she thought it was safe to. When she did, the man was no longer there. She was certain that he had already driven away when she heard the rip of a motorcycle engine—and there he was, driving across the tiny parking lot. He seemed to be going in slow motion as he directed his visored gaze toward the window, and Sakura could swear he was looking straight at her, before he accelerated sharply and disappeared from sight.

The rest of her day was unexciting.

A/N: Surprise, I'm not dead! This is a ship that's been growing on me for a long time. There will definitely be more chapters—at least two more. (Don't count on that. I'm procrastinating trash.) Try to guess the identity of Sakura's brother! I'll send you a preview of the next chapter if you get it right.