Characters/Pairings: Green-centric, various implied (Green/Leaf this part)
Five Jobs Green Never Had (and One He Did)
4. Bookshop Keeper
"10,000," she says. "I'll pay you 10,000."
Green glares back. "No."
"15,000?"
Green doesn't even dignify that with a response.
"20,000, and not a penny more."
"Look, it's not for sale, okay?" Green snaps. "That's why there's that sign - 'Not For Sale.' That doesn't mean I'm going to change my mind if you offer me enough money. That sign means it's not negotiable."
She stares at him thoughtfully with her blue eyes. Then she says, "50,000. That's my last offer."
If it weren't bad business, Green probably would've kicked her out of the store at this point. Instead, he turns the page of the book he's reading and goes back to ignoring her.
"50,000, and a date," she adds on, smiling at her own ingenious suggestion. When Green doesn't answer, she whines, "Why won't you sell it to me? This is a bookstore. It's just a book, right? Can't you, like, order more?"
Green looks up and glares at her. "First of all, it's not just a book," he says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Pokémon Myths above his head. "It's the only comprehensive reference manual for legendary Pokémon in existence, and less than a dozen copies of these were printed a hundred years ago. Most of those are now lost, stolen, or destroyed. It's not for sale because it's priceless, and I'm not going to sell it to some hot-shot trainer who's used to getting what she wants for any amount of money or number of dates."
It's not a complete lie. Green himself had picked it up at a bazaar a couple of years ago for mere pocket change, the book lost in a vendor's bargain bin. He didn't know how rare and valuable it was until he showed it to his grandfather, who'd been surprised and almost envious of his discovery. But now that Green knows, and it's never going to leave his hand.
She looks a little hurt. "Why couldn't they just print more then?"
"They did print more," Green snips. "The Complete Encyclopedia of Pokémon Myths (4th ed.) is in the reference section, aisle ten." He looks back down at his book.
"I already looked through those! Those aren't - they're not complete. They have a picture and some little blurbs or text, but that's it. I want to see the real thing!"
Green sighs. From the corner of his eye, he catches Eevee glaring at the both of them for waking it up from its nap.
The girl has a point. Green knows that, but at the request of researchers, most of the crucial information had been omitted in the reference manual, mainly to protect the Pokémon of legends from being captured by greedy trainers. Most of what researchers knew about them came from his book; whoever had compiled the information did an extraordinarily thorough job at it.
"If you won't let me buy it, can I at least look at it?" she asks, her bottom lip jutting out slightly to form a pout. "Please?"
He's usually even hesitant to lend it to his grandfather - who's the world's more sought-after authority on Pokémon - so why should he let some trainer who might be interested in catching them see the book?
"Why?" he asks her back.
"I want to add them to my Pokédex," she says. Before Green can interrupt her with angry accusations about her selfishness for watching catching them, she continues, "I don't need them on my team, or even to meet them, though that would be great. But these legendary Pokémon... some of them might be extinct, and some of them may never have been real in the first place, but in that book, they're alive. They have stories to tell us, stories most people have already forgotten. That's why you protect that book right? Because even if very few people remember those stories, if you protect that book, they'll always exist somehow. But I want to know them too. I want to help you protect them."
Then, Green realizes - she understands. Even more than his grandfather, on some level, she understands what the book really means.
He nods numbly and takes the book off the top shelf. "Two conditions. One: the book stays here. Two: you read it on this counter, where I can see you."
She smiles enthusiastically and takes the book from him, plopping down on a stool. Green tries not to wince as she turns the pages a little too excitedly.
A few hours later, Green has to do restocking so he tells Eevee to keep an eye on her and goes into the back room to open boxes.
"I'm going!" he hears her call as he's trying to lift a box of cookbooks. "The book is on the counter, okay? I'm only halfway done with it, so I left a bookmark. I'll come back later to finish the rest!"
Eevee hasn't made any noises so he's assuming the girl didn't try to smuggle it out of the store.
When comes out from the back, he finds Pokémon Myths flipped open to the page between Latias and Latios, and Eevee sitting on the counter chewing a slip of paper.
"Hey - hey, what are you doing, Eevee?" Green scolds, and Eevee looks at him guilty.
He pulls what's left of the paper out of Eevee's mouth, and looks down at "Leaf," and what appears to be half of a phone number.
"What'd you do that for?" he mumbles and pokes Eevee in the nose. Eevee squeaks "vui~" at him in a half-hearted apology.
Green pulls a real bookmark out of the counter, a green one with a leaf-shape, and, as an afterthought, writes his own number on the back. He tucks it in the page before closing the book and setting it back on the shelf.
to follow...