I sat for about half an hour while writing this just staring at my wrist because I could actually see the blood vessels pulsing in my wrists, something that I have never noticed before.
"I know who it is." He replied sternly. "Hello Videl."
"Excellent! So you two know each other then?" The elder man questioned, completely oblivious to the tension that existed between the two of them, which had only been heightened after the happenings of the day.
The girl nodded back at him. She looked nervous, she had absolutely no idea that anyone from her school worked here, let alone her worst enemy. Surely he was too young, but then again so was she, the manager had been quite lax on those rules so it shouldn't really have surprised her that another person below fifteen worked here.
The problem however, was that this was his territory, his home turf. He knew everyone here and she was going to be trained by him. She was completely at his mercy.
"I'll leave you two kids alone then, shall I?" The two were about to protest but he strode off quickly. Gohan sighed heavily, this was going to be a gruelling night.
He turned to face his new charge and he was quite surprised at her attire. At school, she always wore fairly baggy clothes despite how little her friends might put on, and he had always silently respected her for that.
But now, she had been forced to wear the compulsory female uniform. He looked her up and down as she glanced around nervously. He smirked, an action usually not witnessed coming from him, it wasn't often that she was nervous and he knew that he was the cause.
She wore black cotton trousers and clung to her slender legs and the blue shirt was a far more feminine version of his own. On the wrong person it was embarrassing, but when worn by a well proportioned female, the item of clothing could do wonders. It accentuated all of her curves and for the first time he truly noticed how well developed and in shape she was for her age. In another nervous gesture she smoothed over the front of it, and ran her hands over her hips to flatten out any creases.
He watched her in awe. If they were about four years older he would be all over her right now.
He coughed to catch her attention and to calm his own growing hormones. "First things first." He spoke. "Charles is coming in tonight, the guy that owns this store. You know that this is a franchise, right?" She nodded back to him as he coughed again nervously. Now both of them were anxious. "Well, when he comes in, we have to follow all procedures correctly, so you will need a hairnet on."
He chuckled as she wrinkled her nose in disgust at the thought of putting one of those horrendous things on. Wearing a cap was bad enough in itself. The boy went over to where they hung on the wall and removed one. He handed it over and she set her cap down to allow access to her dark locks.
Her hair was in a ponytail but a few stray strands managed to escape the band holding it together. He watched her closely and for the first time noticed her delicate hands. He knew that she was a fighter, but unlike most martial artists, her hands remained dainty and feminine to match her body. Studying her face, the boy realised just how pretty she was. From her eyes to her nose to her mouth he saw that she had the complete package. If he didn't hate her so much he might go as far to say that he thought that she looked almost perfect.
She was having trouble getting all of these stray hairs underneath the net, and this did not go unnoticed by the young male, so he moved closer to her in order to help.
"Let me sort it out." He spoke. His hands reached out and her own dropped to her sides. If this had been any other situation, she would have decked him by now, but all she could do was stand there.
As soon as his skin touched the soft black tresses he noticed just how silky her hair was and he realised it felt even better than he had imagined it would. He also realised that he really had imagined what the texture of her hair might feel like on more than one occasion.
The ends of his fingers absently grazed over the smooth, unblemished skin of her forehead and she almost gasped out loud at the contact. She closed her eyes and focused on removing the blush on her cheeks. Her face was boiling hot and she was on the verge of sweating profusely.
She wondered if he was doing this on purpose, teasing her just for the fun of it. But she knew that he wasn't the type. He was obviously just trying to help her out.
Upon realising how inappropriate his actions were, he pulled his hands back. The loose hairs had been hidden away and she placed the cap back on her head quickly. She felt that whatever look was on her face, it must have been, at least in her view, a weak one, because he was looking at her rather strangely. She replaced it with a rather more haughty one, something that she often gave him at school.
The boy was taken aback by her sudden change in expression and posture and he dutifully attempted to regain his senses. He remembered that he had a job to do and he began the arduous task of showing her around the kitchen area.
The evening dragged on painfully slowly, almost completely silent save for the in store sound system that repeated the same twenty tracks over and over. Even when he was explaining something he kept his words to a bare minimum and she rarely, if ever asked any ensuing questions. It was dreadfully quiet, even for a Monday night, so unluckily for the pair they were simply stood around for the majority of the night doing absolutely nothing.
The store was now closed and both of them had managed to rid themselves of the restrictions of hats and hairnets. Gohan was currently showing her where the bacon was kept and she was following closely behind him towards the walk in refrigerator. He didn't notice the water on the floor that had accumulated from a leak in one of the water pipes.
The boy managed to step over the spill, owing to the location of his footfalls, but was still unable to notice it. The girl was not as lucky due to her shorter footsteps and stepped right into the centre of it. As she lifted her other foot, the first one lost its footing and began its treacherous slide from underneath her.
Gohan heard the skidding sound and span round hastily. Her face was one of shock as time seemed to slow down for the boy and he stretched his arms out to steady her falling body.
He grasped firmly, but tried hard not to squeeze too hard on the tender flesh of her upper arms. After she felt herself steady, Videl peered down to her left where she saw the deep fat fryers boiling away. If he hadn't of caught her she would have probably mutilated half of her left arm as she fell.
Underneath his fingertips he could feel the firm muscles of her upper arm and was surprised at how strong they felt. Although she was in shape, her figure gave the impression that she was fairly weak, even for a girl, owing to her diminutive size, but he could feel that it was quite the opposite. Her skin however, was unbelievably soft and smooth. He had never touched a girl like this before and he wondered if they were all like this, or whether it could just be her.
He realised that she was quite a lot like his mother, in some areas at least. He didn't want to kiss his mother though.
His thumbs were caressing the sensitive, inner side of her biceps while his long fingers almost wrapped their way all of the way around her arm and the girl was shocked at how she welcomed his touch. So she did the only thing that she could think of in the situation. She pulled back sharply. "What are you doing?" She accused, but it hardly sounded like she really meant it.
He was shell shocked. Girls were always beyond him. He had just saved her, hadn't he? "I just..." He mumbled.
"Just forget about it." She muttered back. "Thanks." She whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. She felt badly for shouting at him, but she knew that he knew she didn't mean anything by shouting at him. It was simply her reflex action at being touched in any manner by a male and he was in fact lucky that she hadn't attempted to smack him.
With the tension between them increased ten fold, the pair continued on their way. As they wandered off, Gohan tried to remember all of the reasons why he disliked, or rather hated her. Somehow she had known instantly when he had begun school just who his father was and this gave her a valuable piece of information which she happily shared with all of her friends.
Then the taunts about how his father was a dirty trickster and a loser started, all fuelled by Videl's father no doubt. Even Gohan, the usually clueless Gohan, knew who Videl's father was, it had been thrust directly into his face when he began. And all Gohan heard when Mr Satan appeared on television was the ignorant, over bloated man going on about past champions and fighters as if he knew what he was talking about, putting them down, treading down upon their formerly good name and reputation.
But he soon realised that what he felt for her was far from hate. Hate was a such a strong word, one bandied about by teens all over the world without there ever being a great deal of meaning or feeling behind the words. Now he knew that he was simply scared. Scared of her and the growing attraction that he had towards her that was slowly becoming more and more obvious to the boy.
She was alluring to him and he found himself constantly stealing glances towards her as they worked and on more than one occasion he met a glance of her own head on.
He was supposedly a genius but his mind was full of confusion over her. At school they were the worst of enemies but here their interaction couldn't really be any more different. Normally they would argue with each other, something that would usually be out of Gohan's nature, but with her, he simply found himself being infuriated simply by her presence.
Here though, in just a few short hours their relationship had been turned on its head. The incident from earlier where he had steadied her unstable form would have resulted in world war three at school. Maybe it was because at school they each had back up from their friends but here they were truly alone against one another.
"Why are you here Videl?" He blurted out suddenly.
"Huh?" She mumbled back. Wasn't it obvious? This was a job, where hopefully she might even get paid.
"Your father is probably one of the richest men in the world yet you're slaving away in this dump."
She laughed out loud, but it was one full of sorrow. She looked away and furrowed her eyebrows in concentration but the boy focused his eyes intently on her face awaiting her answer. "My parents split up. And I went with my mother. My mother is very ill and she has had to stop working. Even though she is struggling for money she still wants me." He found himself smiling as she herself smiled at the thought of her mother's devotion.
"Even though my father is the reason they split up, he refuses to pay my upkeep because she was the one that moved out and he thinks that I was stolen from him by her. I explained this to Rei and she decided that she would allow me to begin because I'm almost fifteen anyway." She halted her speech when she realised that even her closest friends knew nothing of this. Why was she revealing herself to him, of all people?
"Your father is an ass." Surely a man as rich as Mr Satan would support his own family, no matter what had happened between them.
"Yes he is, but I still love him. He's just a misguided man with questionable ideals, that's all."
"He's an ass." The boy repeated.
Videl turned to face Gohan, realising that this was possibly the first non-obligatory conversation that they had ever shared. "So, why are you here?"
"Because my father is a loser who went and got himself killed and my mother is a lazy bitch."
"I said that, huh?" She scolded herself for saying such unfounded and untrue words, even if they had been in the heat of the moment. "Sorry."
He chuckled, never really taking such words to heart. Their childish squabbles and arguments had been nothing but petty. "Sticks and stones..."
"Um, Gohan?"
"Yes."
"Today, at school when you punched Sharpener. If that had been me annoying you at that time would you have hit me?" She questioned tentatively.
"Of course not." He instantly replied.
"Why not?"
"I'd never hit a girl, no matter what she had done to me."
"Even me, someone that knows how to fight and how to defend herself? Why not?"
"Because all women are weak and need protecting by men." He said with a smirk. She returned his expression with the most ferocious of death glares that he had ever received.
"How dare you! Are you calling me weak?"
"You and three billion others, yes."
"That is the most chauvinistic thing that I have ever heard... I'll show you weak..." Instead of continuing with the verbal argument she reached out with both hands and clasped his wrists within her own hands in an attempt to twist him arm behind his back in some sort of defence of women everywhere. But of course women are weak and need protecting so her attempt was sadly in vain and he easily held his arms in place as she struggled against his inhuman strength.
She knew that his words were meaningless and that he was simply toying around and she was giggling away unconsciously during their play fight, a sound rarely heard save by her mother. The boy was suddenly taken by surprise at the laughter being emitted from the girl. He stopped in his tracks and looked down at her.
She in turn looked up and saw a thoughtful expression marking his face, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. During their little skirmish, their hand positions had managed to swap, but Gohan's hands were almost holding her own in his, as opposed to her wrists.To anyone that might wander in, the scene might look fairly suspect.
And unluckily for the two teenagers, that is just what happened.
"From the sounds of it, I would of guessed that you two were finished up in here. But from the looks of it, it would seem that you two were just getting started." Gendo almost thundered out loud, alerting all of the other members of staff to the predicament that the two youngest workers were in.
The other members of staff came rushing over towards the sounds of their assistant manager shouting about getting started. Some were worried that the two of them might be nowhere near finished and that all of them would be stuck there all night, but all of them smiled away to themselves as they saw the two youngsters practically holding hands with each other.
The pair sprang apart, much like they found themselves doing rather a lot recently. "It's not what you think!" Videl began protesting instantly as Gohan began scratching his head and waving an arm in front of his body.
"You know me! I'm not like that." He joked. He wasn't like that but it was obvious that the others wouldn't see that what they had witnessed was completely innocent.
With the lure of being able to go finally go hone, the topic was momentarily halted as the teens went upstairs to gather their belongings."Do either of you two need a lift home?" Gendo questioned as they re-emerged, Gohan thanking the man silently that he hadn't brought up the topic of Videl and himself.
Gohan mulled over whether the man would be prepared to make a thousand mile round trip as Videl spoke up. "If it isn't too much trouble..." She had been uncharacteristically shy tonight and she just assumed that it must simply be due to her unfamiliar surroundings.
"Don't worry about it." He turned to the boy. "Gohan?"
"No thanks."
"Are you sure? You'd get to spend some time alone in the back of my car with Videl here." He turned beetroot red in embarrassment and anger at the man for suggesting such a thing.
"I get home all right every other night, don't I?"
"OK then. We'll see you in a couple of days then." Gohan began wandering off to a quiet alley as the girls climbed into the car with the man and waved as they sped past, off into the night.
Videl sat on her junior high school's stands, her friends surrounding her as she sat with her elbows resting on her knees and her head cradled in her hands. She let out a sigh as he passed their group again, jogging around the track.
She didn't enjoy wasting away her lunch break like this and would much rather be doing something much more constructive, like running with him. Her friends hurled insults and even a few objects as he went on, but he carried on regardless.
The two hadn't spoken since her first night at work and she didn't even think that he had even looked at her. But they would both be there tonight and maybe things might actually go smoothly between them.