"Where's he going where's he going where's he going?" Ino muttered under her breath as she watched Uchiha Sasuke come up the escalator from the food court. She and Sakura had stationed themselves in front of the pet store to keep a clear line of sight on the raven-haired boy without seeming too obvious.

Sakura's eyes surreptitiously followed him. He stopped for a moment to look at the Directory display, killing time as he ate a corndog. "He's dressed all in black." She suddenly gasped, "Oh my God, you don't think maybe...he works at the Cheesecake Factory?"

The Cheesecake Factory was at the very top of the mall, built right on top of the roof as an addition. Though it could have been considered food service, its hierarchal position was above even that of the commission-based high end department store it sat on, never mind the lowly food court. With the wait staff entirely in white and the hosts entirely in black, Cheesecake Factory employees represented the pure and untainted elitism their employer established in the mall.

Ino pouted her lips in thought, "I don't think so. Cheesecake Factory straight off the bat is unheard of without getting your feet wet on a lower level." She mentally went over the possible stores Sasuke could be heading to in his attire as Sakura counted off on her fingers the possible destination.

"L'Occitane?"

"Hmm, no, he's way too hetero to sell French bath and beauty products."

"Banana Republic?"

"Not with his shirt untucked like that."

"That rules out Express Men, the Apple store, Aldo shoes, and the cell phone kiosk," Sakura counted off.

"Maybe Godiva?" Ino suggested.

"Perhaps...the apron would cover the untucked shirt. But he seems the type who'd rather tuck in his shirt than wear an apron."

The blonde nodded, agreeing with Sakura's reasoning. "Unlikely as it is, Cheesecake Factory sounds like the best option."

"But I'm pretty sure they have to tuck in their shirts too..."

An annoyed voice interrupted their investigative discussion.

"Are you done loitering here yet? If you keep standing there doing nothing in front of the kitten window, they'll develop a complex," Kiba snapped at the girls.

The two whipped around. "Oh, shut up. It's not loitering if we work here," Ino replied.

"You're not working. You're stalking," the Inuzuka deadpanned.

The pink-haired girl huffed, hands on her hips. "We're merely observing a new fellow mall employee out of curiosity."

Kiba stepped further out of the pet store to better scan the mall's ground floor, and immediately spotted the young women's object of observation. "Christ, you're trying to find out where Sasuke works, aren't you?"

"So? What of it?" Ino sniffed.

Judging by Sasuke's entirely black outfit, and the girls' obvious and long-standing worship of the guy, Kiba already knew what they were thinking. "He doesn't work at Cheesecake Factory," he smirked.

"How would you know?" Sakura snapped, despite hers and Ino's initial doubt of the Uchiha's employment there just a few minutes ago.

"He's too much of a prick," the boy answered matter-of-factly while pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. The girls looked absolutely scandalized. Their attempts at telling off the messy-haired boy were shushed as he dialed a number and put the phone on speaker.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Naruto. It's Kiba."

"Oh hey! What's up?"

"I've got Ino and Sakura here, and they want to know if Sasuke works with you."

Sakura turned to Ino, "'With' him? Naruto's working at the Cheesecake Factory?" she asked in what was an attempt at a whisper.

"Hi Sakura."

"Er, hi Naruto," she sputtered before Ino leaned in to interrupt.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. So, Naruto? Does Sasuke work with you or not?"

The voice on the phone scoffed.

"Ha! Nope! He's not employed up here, even though he could have worked here if he wanted."

Ino's eyes lit up in awe. "He turned down an offer from Cheesecake Factory. That's so badass." Kiba just rolled his eyes.

"Meh, nothing special. His brother's the assistant manager. He had an easy 'in'."

The two girls looked at each other excitedly and exclaimed, "He has a BROTHER?"

Kiba, who was looking more and more irritated, said, "At least this brother has the courtesy to be an Uchiha jackass far away from everyone else." However, it was Naruto that cut through Ino and Sakura's excited giggles.

"While he doesn't work up here, I DO happen to know where the bastard does work."

"Where?!" Sakura practically yelled into Kiba's phone. The phone's owner made a show of wiping spit off of it.

Instead of answering her, Naruto asked, "Kiba, what time is it?"

Kiba looked at his watch, "It is exactly...12:59."

"I'm assuming you can see Sasuke from where you are?"

"Yeah, we see him," he replied. The girls immediately spun around to find Sasuke again, who had continued walking.

"Okay," Kiba could practically hear the Cheshire grin in Naruto's voice, "His shift starts at one. You'll find out any second now..."

At this point, the young women had taken to muttering to themselves.

"He just walked past Brookstone...."

"Pssh, like he'd ever work there. Perhaps Gap?"

"No, he's walked right by it. Oh, wait it might be Walden Books!"

"Nope, past that one too. Wait..."

"Is he turning?"

"Oh my God he's turning...!"

"Turning...into..."

"Hot Topic?!"

Behind Ino and Sakura, Kiba had fallen back into the pet store laughing, rolling on the floor in his mirth, while Naruto's maniacal laughter could be heard on the speaker phone.

------

"We work in Hot Topic, Karin. Who the hell are you trying to impress?" A boy with shaggy silver hair asked while watching his co-worker alternately muss up her bright red hair on one side of her head and comb it stick-straight on the other side in front of one of the store's mirrors.

"Shut your hole, Suigetsu," the girl in question responded.

Suigetsu did the opposite. "I mean, really, are you trying to impress our three target demographics at once? I assume the bright red is for punks, the flat side of your hair is for the goths, and the greasy bedhead side is for the emos? I'm sure they'll all appreciate your efforts to relate to them, but you look like an idiot."

Karin tossed Suigetsu a mean look, but continued to work on her erratic hair. Suigetsu, looking for some other way to get a response from the redhead, grabbed a clipboard from under the counter and flipped to the week's employee schedule. A devious grin formed on his face.

"I see we have a new guy coming in today," he asked innocently.

Karin continued to ignore him.

"And it looks like he starts in, oh," the boy looked at his studded Nightmare Before Christmas watch, "two minutes!"

Karin's movements became a little more frantic, adjusting and unbuttoning a few buttons on her shirt, straightening out aesthetically-placed giant safety pins on her plaid miniskirt.

"You know what helps a new person feel more at ease?" Suigetsu faux-mused, "Telling work-related stories. A really great one to start with would be that time you came to work in those gigantic raver boots you could barely walk in, and you ended up falling over and crashing into--"

Wild-eyed and jaw clenched, the girl spun on Suigetsu, "Shut up. Shut up. Shut UP!"

He dropped the ruse, but kept his grin. "Why is Uchiha Sasuke working here?"

Dropping her voice conspiratorially, eyes darting around behind black-framed glasses, "Because he was looking for a job that didn't ride on his brother's coattails."

"But why here?"

"I told him he didn't have to greet or smile at customers and he could wear whatever he wanted."

Suigetsu quirked a suspicious brow, "So, you didn't sleep with him to get him to work here?"

Karin flushed. "No, I wish. Now don't embarrass me!" she whispered hoarsely, cursing her co-worker's wicked grin. She didn't realize it was not meant for her.

"Hi Sasuke!" he said far too cheerily for a Hot Topic employee.

The Uchiha strode in, looking effortlessly cool with a bare corndog stick hanging purposelessly from his lips and a bright blue cup half-filled with lemonade dangling limply from his fingertips. He nodded almost imperceptibly in answer to the silver-haired teen without breaking stride, and went straight into the back room to clock in. Karin took the opportunity to snap out of her mesmerized stupor and undo one more button on her shirt. Suigetsu snickered.

"He looks like Edward Scissorhands."

"What?" the redheaded girl snapped.

"Pasty skin, stupid-looking hair, all dressed in black, and to top it all off, can't talk to people," the other teen explained. "Give him scissors for hands, and you've got a creepy, castle-dwelling mandroid who gets his kicks cutting hedges and old ladies' hair."

Karin shrugged the insults off, "Whatever, Johnny Depp is hot."

"Pfft, not as Edward Scissorhands."

Before the girl could retort, Sasuke came back out, sipping at his lemonade. She promptly approached him, eager to help the new employee.

"Hi, I'm Karin!"

The dark-haired boy sipped his drink. "....hi."

Seemingly encouraged by his reply, she went on, "So, I know you're new, but I was wondering if you needed help, you know, with training or anything like that..."

Sasuke's face remained expressionless. "Juugo trained me yesterday."

Suigetsu, laughing heartily, swung an arm over Sasuke's shoulder. "Never mind her, she just wants you to look at her boobs." He pulled the other boy away from the girl, who was opening and closing her mouth but unsuccessful in producing any sort of sound.

"I've been here longer, and I know from experience that every employee has their own way of keeping their sales up. Juugo already explained the sales goals?"

"Yes," the Uchiha answered.

"Okay. Take me for example. I talk a lot. I also happen to be quite charming," Suigetsu demonstrated with a dashing smile. "I get most of my sales by talking people up, praising, 'You would look SO hardcore and rebellious wearing this artistically torn tank top with that retro Lost Boys hoodie,' you know how it goes."

Sasuke merely blinked at him.

"And I can tell you're not much of a talker. So you need to figure out your most effective way to sell." Suigetsu pulled the other boy along and positioned him ten feet from the store's door, standing in between a rack of gothic fairy notebooks and Punk Rock Hello Kitty shirts.

"Luckily for you, I think I've got your selling style pinned. Do exactly what you're doing now, standing at this spot."

"At the front of the store?"

"Don't worry, you don't even have to talk to the people who come in. Just ring them up when they come up to you wanting to buy stuff."

Sasuke looked a bit doubtful. "That's all?"

Suigetsu nodded sagely, "That's all. It's just an experiment. We'll see how it goes." And he headed for the rear of the store, leaving the other boy at the front, still sipping his lemonade. As Suigetsu walked up to Karin, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him.

"'Just stand there'? What kind of advice is that? Are you trying to steal his sales?" she accused.

The young man gasped in feigned shock, "Excuse me? How dare you suggest such a diabolical idea!"

"Suigetsu...."

He smirked, "Relax. I was being serious. I think I figured out the best way for him to sell. And if I'm correct, we may make more money than usual. See?"

Karin looked to the front of the store, where two girls walked by, did a double-take at an indifferent Sasuke, and cautiously walked in, obvious with their candy-colored polo shirts that it was their first time in Hot Topic. They circled the store, seemingly looking at the items on display, but eyes frequently turning to the dark-haired boy still standing in the middle of the store, completely ignoring them. A few more girls walked in, doing the exact same thing, picking up little knick knacks as if to shop, but not really looking at whatever they were holding. When the number of girls circling the store reached eleven, Suigetsu grinned in amusement.

"Look at 'em! Like flies to shit!"

Karin kicked the boy in the shin with her platform Mary Janes.

----------

The late afternoon was warm and blissful. The sky was a soft, deep blue, occasionally succumbing to large puffy clouds rolling past. He could smell the fresh-cut grass beneath him and hear the whisper-light rustling of the tree leaves above him. It didn't get much better than this.

Then, from a distance, he could hear someone calling for attention.

"Excuse me?"

He closed his eyes. They'll go away soon enough.

"Excuse me?" Closer this time. Would they not go away?

"E-excuse me?" Now they had taken to nudging him. Damn it all, no point in napping now...

Shikamaru opened bleary eyes and rubbed them to clear his vision. He was back in the God-forsaken gift store. Or, more accurately, mall management-forsaken. When he could finally register that he was not, in fact, napping under his favorite tree, he realized a girl had woken him up, and was warily eyeing him as if expecting him to yell at her for the disturbance. When he realized she wasn't going to say anything until she was sure he was willing to help her, he spoke.

"Can I...help you?"

Huge lavender eyes that were wide with nervousness finally blinked, and the girl smiled her relief.

"Yes, um. I wanted to make a purchase..." she replied. She very gently placed an antique katana and display stand on the counter.

Shikamaru looked at the item in question. First, he didn't realize his little store sold antique katanas. Then again, like every other person in the mall, he didn't pay much attention to the place. Which, he considered, might not be a good thing since he actually worked there. Second, this was an antique katana the girl had picked out. At the very least, it would be a four-figure price tag. Never mind this teenaged girl – no one blows money like that in an eclectic hold-in-the-wall gift store. He kept his thoughts to himself as he looked for the price tag to ring up the sword.

"That'll be, $7,052.50," he informed her almost reluctantly. He was indifferent to most anything in the world, but even he would feel bad if the girl didn't realize how expensive her choice in gifting was.

Instead, she handed him a credit card and asked, "Would it be possible to have it gift-wrapped?"

Relieved that she didn't object to the price, but somewhat appalled that it was no big deal to her, Shikamaru could only let out a semi-flustered, "Uh, yeah."

She grinned at him like it was the best thing ever, and he proceeded to dig out an oblong box and tissue paper. To narrow down his wrapping paper choices, he asked her, "Is this for a certain occasion?"

"Oh, for my cousin's birthday," she answered.

"Male or female?" he asked, though he was pretty sure the girl wouldn't buy an ancient sword for another girl.

"Male."

Shikamaru pulled out some neutral-colored wrapping paper and ribbon and got to work. After half a minute, the customer broke the silence.

"I-I didn't realize you worked at the mall as well."

Taken aback, he looked up at her. Was she implying that she worked here too? He took in her outfit: a cream-colored, intricately embroidered sundress and a light angora cardigan, and slightly heeled sandals. A simple enough outfit, but it was obvious that any single item she was wearing cost more than his weekly paycheck. Perhaps she was from the upstairs department store, even a personal shopper that the hoity-toity folks hired to help them, well, shop.

She correctly read Shikamaru's scrutiny for not recognizing her, so she helped him out.

"You bought a corndog...and waited for Chouji. I probably look different...I changed out of my uniform since my shift ended..." she began to babble.

If Shikamaru were the fumbling type, he would have dropped that sword point-down right on his foot. Luckily, he was not that type, but he still blustered, "Hot Dog On A Stick?!"

"Yes! You remember!"

He shook his head incredulously, "Yeah...I mean, I remember what happened down there, but I didn't realize it was you..."

The girl giggled, "I suppose I look different not wearing that funny little hat."

To say the least, Shikamaru thought to himself. Buying seven-thousand-dollar swords and wearing expensive designer duds, and she worked at Hot Dog On A Stick, of all places. He just couldn't wrap his absurdly intelligent mind around the very idea of it. He continued wrapping the girl's present.

She had begun looking around the store from where she stood, and Shikamaru could trace exactly what she was observing. First, the stone bird bath next to his counter, stone cherubs sitting on the rim. Then her eyes moved above him, where a buffalo head was mounted. To the right of that, an antique Winchester rifle, that he sometimes wondered was the one that shot the buffalo. Down below, leaning against the wall was a stack of black velvet paintings, the one visible of a almost cartoonishly angry tiger in the jungle. The shelves behind the girl had random little trinkets: novelty bottle openers, permanently formed miniature sand castles, tooth pick dispensers, a one-sixth scale purple banjo. Finally, her eyes landed on a sign tacked to the side of the counter, "Keys Made Here."

"Wow, this place has just about everything," she said, genuinely in awe.

Shikamaru smirked, "Yeah, everything but customers."

When she frowned sympathetically, he quickly added, "Not that it's a bad thing."

Still, she frowned at that, "O-oh, I didn't mean to disturb you when I came in. Normally, I would have waited for another time, but I'm meeting my cousin right after this--"

"No, no, that's fine," he reassured her, though he wasn't sure why he had to since he wasn't supposed to be sleeping anyway. "I like it quiet. It's nice when everywhere else in the mall is bustling and noisy." He added the finishing touches to his wrap job and swiped the girl's credit card for the purchase.

She smiled, "I prefer the quiet too, but I doubt the food court is ever peaceful. You're very lucky."

Shikamaru tore off the printed receipt and handed it to her with a pen for her signature as he unthinkingly said, "Well, if you ever want to find a peaceful moment, you know where to find it." He mentally slapped himself. How completely idiotic to invite her to hang out in his store of oddball goodies. He could see it now – having tea using china printed with border collies atop a table made from repurposed driftwood.

Despite his embarrassment at the suggestion, she beamed emphatically, "That sounds really nice. I may take you up on that offer." She signed her receipt and handed it back. "Thank you so much for your help...I'm sorry, I didn't get your name?"

"It's Shikamaru," he responded, holding out his hand to shake.

She received it happily. "I'm Hinata." She added almost shyly, "Thanks again." She picked up her large parcel, waved goodbye and left the store. Shikamaru's eyes followed her as she went up the escalator. He smirked to himself. A rich girl spending what most would spend on a car for her cousin's birthday present, of course she'd be headed up to The Cheesecake Factory. Though, she could have gone to any much higher-end place in town, but Shikamaru reasoned she stuck to the mall since she was already working there. Money and common sense, a rarely found coupling, he mused.

As he chuckled to himself, still wondering why any rich teenager would willingly work, he looked at the signed receipt.

Hyuuga Hinata.

Hyuuga, as in Fortune 500, finger in every known pie, Hyuuga Enterprises? Shikamaru gaped at the little white slip in his hand. This girl was more than rich, and smart as he was, he couldn't think of a word to properly describe the obscene wealth connected to the Hyuuga name. What in the world was she doing working at Hot Dog On A Stick?

That afternoon nap he was hoping to get back to was quickly forgotten.

Author's Notes:

Thanks for reading! And thank you for your reviews, they're very much appreciated!

Is it obvious how much I like Suigetsu? XD

Every mall should have a store like Shikamaru's. There was a store like that at the mall I used to work at -- no actual store name, and nothing in there made sense. It was awesome.

When I was a naive young corporate punk, I loved Hot Topic. And those salespeople always seemed too cool to work there, never really greeting customers, showing off their tattoo sleeves and obscure piercings. Now everyone and their mother goes there for 80's throwback T-shirts and emo band merch.

The Cheesecake Factory is inspired by the one sitting on top of Macy's in downtown San Francisco. I've been to a few CFs, and that one specifically is the only one where the wait staff and hosts have superiority complexes. I don't know if it's because it's on the roof of a high-end eight-story department store or what, but they're total dicks.