Chapter 32 — Watching / Waiting

"It's May 10th, so you know what that means!"

Craig stood before Yuri and Meilag with arms stretched wide open. The two new employees, the veteran between them having worked here for only about six months, exchanged glances.

"It's our annual Shoplifter Prevention day."

Craig swept up from the counter a printed email, and he lifted it so that the others could see that it was, in fact, a printed email. The print was too small for them to read, but Craig was ready to give them the gist anyways.

"Once a year, Yum Yums recognizes the need for improved security, and we are reminded of the ever-encroaching threat of injustice in the grocery business. Now, not all customers would ever steal, but maybe half of them at some point will want to. When a grocery store carries as many great products as we do, even I sometimes feel tempted to take something from the shelf and not pay for it—and maybe I would, if I didn't get paid so much more than the average worker here. Ha, ha, ha."

Yuri slowly stretched and rolled his left shoulder.

"Anyways, boys, I called you in here because I was told you two would make great aisle supervisors for the day, and when I heard this, I agreed! Next to Yomotsu, you two have the best eyes in the business! So for today, you are going to work together on a special job—fun, huh?"

Yuri and Meilag exchanged glances once more. Meilag exposed the front row of his teeth and made a hissing sound. Craig then presented before them both a pair of walkies.

"You two are tuned to the same channel that I will be on. I want you to split up and patrol the whole store. You will each have a different route that intersects at key locations, maximizing store security. If you see someone suspicious, you are asked to keep a safe distance and observe the customer. Should you be able to confirm that you saw the customer shoplift, you are to contact me over the walkie. See, doesn't that sound like fun?"

Meilag smirked. "I will seize anyone who gets in our way—by any means necessary."

Craig grinned wide. "THAT is the right attitude, bucko! And for your sake, I hope there are a lot of shoplifters out today. Last year, Marcus caught 16 shoplifters in one day, and we are expecting you to beat that number!"

Meilag laughed loudly. "I assure you, today I certainly will beat more than just the record today…"

After a few more words, the two were sent out. Yuri's route started at the frozen department, went up through the meat department, went through the grocery aisles, and circled through the deli before passing within view of the checkout lanes. Meilag's route went first across the front end, wound through the natural and organic products, cut through produce and then bakery, before traveling through the grocery aisles and then returning to the front. They expected to pass each other mainly in the grocery aisles, where the highest risk of shoplifting would occur.

Only forty minutes after being briefed on their job, and the first walkie call was placed.

"Yuri—come to the end display of aisle 4."

Yuri joined Meilag, who merely pointed ahead. The aisle was full of customers quickly grabbing products, and the finger could have been pointing at a number of different people.

"Who are we suspicious of…?"

Meilag's pointing hand clenched into a fist at his side. "Look at those wretches up ahead. One of them has that candy bar, and I have my doubts about her character."

Yuri narrowed his eyes and picked apart the people in the aisle. "…The little girl in the pink? The one sitting in the cart?"

Meilag crossed his arms. "That is the culprit."

Yuri sighed. "I am sure the child's mother will pay for the candy bar at the register."

"Never be so sure," Meilag warned. "The child might hide it where the mother cannot find it, and if she is forgetful, it may go unnoticed. She might even put it in one of the bags as soon as one is put in the cart!"

"I hardly think children are that devious," Yuri said.

"And I think you hardly know their kind," answered Meilag.

Yuri chuckled. "So I take it you never plan on having children?"

"Oh God, no!" Meilag answered. "It's for the best if I don't. For everybody."

The girl, her brothers wandering next to the cart, and the mother turned into the next aisle. Meilag, hunching forward slightly, proceeded. "I will follow them—you keep on the lookout for any other suspicious activity."

Once Meilag was off stalking the children and their mother, Yuri went back to his route. He fidgeted with his collar. He later would realize that he learned more about customer behavior and types in this single shift of watching for shoplifting than he had in all his cashiering there put together. He was approached numerous times to find out the location of items by customers of all sorts—lost old ladies, husbands sent in blindly with a list from their significant others, and chic women trying out a new recipe they printed online and not even knowing how to pronounce the item they were looking for.

At times, he would have to tell them they did not carry the product—and some of those customers, upon hearing this bad news, would simply walk off, without the slightest word of thanks. He struggled to fathom how a people who were constantly being saved by the 12th and Lunatic and, even without them, were always being protected by law enforcement, how they could so unappreciatingly walk away from help.

He found himself dealing with the reality that these were the people he fought to save, the people he might die for ultimately. With bitterness, he recalled the treatment NEXT have received since their emergence in the world, and all of the injustice committed between men of even more similar types. Aware of his sensitivity at the moment, Yuri tried to keep it in perspective. He had a habit of using these simple interactions and observations at the grocery store to illustrate an immense big picture.

The next time the walkie was used, it was Yuri calling for backup in the meat department. Meilag appeared quickly after the call, and he was almost panting when he arrived.

"What is this? Another challenger stepping into the fray? The last one was, unfortunately, a respectable customer… I haven't been able to spill some new blood in quite a while. Please, tell me you have bad news."

"See the woman in the floral pattern dress?" Yuri asked. Meilag nodded. "I saw her put a bottle of imitation vanilla extract in her purse. The product came from the endcap on that last grocery aisle. I happened to catch the act out of the corner of my eye."

Meilag grinned. "What a fool!"

"And that gentleman over there, the one with the baggy pants—he slid summer sausage into his pocket."

"Ah, how predictable these simpletons are!" Meilag laughed.

Yuri struggled to keep his attention focused on both of them, especially when he could also see a woman peeking over at him from the other end of the store, a particular woman wearing a bright blue and green costume with a cape. "Which one do you wish to watch?"

Meilag thought on it. "I will take the one with the flesh. You can follow the imitation."

They split up and, when it came to the registers, found that their following was enough to pressure the suspected shoplifters into revealing their products and paying for them. The man took the sausage out of his pocket and checked out at the front, and the woman added the imitation vanilla extract to the rest of her order.

"Perhaps we are too obvious with our methods," Yuri remarked when they crossed each other again along their routes.

"We are never going to catch shoplifters if we keep making them pay for their products," Meilag agreed.

"From now on, we keep more of a distance and conceal our purpose more cleverly. I assume you are capable of subtlety, Meilag?"

The other grinned. "I can be a snake when I need to be, I assure you."

Their new approach led to the arrest of 10 shoplifters over the full shift. Craig was disappointed that Marcus' record remained, but neither Yuri nor Meilag knew what they could have done otherwise. In the end, they had walked around the store for eight hours straight and had done everything they could to rank up a higher score.

Yuri was just grabbing the remainder of his leftovers from his break earlier when he noticed Meilag enter the breakroom after their shift. He watched curiously as his coworker went over and grabbed his black trench coat from the rack.

"Why are you wearing a coat?" Yuri asked. "It's still hot outside."

Meilag went still and answered, quietly, "It is my way." He squirmed inside of his coat before finally settling in it and facing Yuri. "You look like you have another question for me. Hurry up and ask it, so I may finally return to my home and rest."

Yuri thought hard. He was not sure if he had another question aside from the silly one that had been on his mind off and on through the shift, so he decided to simply go with that one. "Earlier you said that you were never going to have children… If I am not prying too much, do you really feel that way? What if you were to meet someone you truly loved?"

By this point Yuri had heard Meilag laugh, but never like this before—he looked like he was having trouble breathing. "Wha-what? What kind of asinine question is that?"

"It just surprised me that you felt so strongly, although I can't place why," Yuri said.

Meilag composed himself and then, after a thoughtful pause, drew closer to where Yuri was standing. He answered while looking down, toward the ground, "There are very few women in this world that I could ever truly feel any strong emotion toward… At least, not any pleasant emotions… Love: that one inexplicable emotion… Perhaps I am worn of thinking of it just as I am worn of thinking of death. The two are related, as once one begins loving, the attachment to another is the death of the individual… Or so I fear it could be in my case."

He cleared his throat and then looked Yuri in the eyes. "Unconditional love is one of the biggest lies the idiot masses have come to accept. If I ever love another enough to even consider reproducing with them, my love for her will be on my terms. I do not think there are any women on this planet who would be foolish enough to think of me as a suitable partner, so I find that this whole topic can become so… Hypothetical."

Yuri nodded slowly.

"But that's not the case with your Yomotsu and Mercy, am I correct?" He looked up at the ceiling and continued, "Those imbeciles. Those lucky imbeciles. They are the lucky ones, you know—and no matter how they use their luck, it eventually will all come crashing down. That is why they are lucky, though. When their lives comes crashing down, they have someone there who will help them out of the rubble. That is a luxury I will never have."

Meilag turned to leave the break room.

"Enjoy the night, Yuri," his coworker called out. "This new Goddess of ours—she has made it a quiet one."

Yomotsu heard Mercy slow her walking, until she came to a complete stop by a large tree. He could hear the rustling of the branches full of leaves. The wind was outrageous today. Yomotsu imagined that Mercy placed her hand on the trunk and felt her way down its bark for a few seconds. He thought she looked serious in thought.

"It's already the 19th of May," she said quietly. "Can you believe how fast it has been going?"

Yomotsu chuckled into his hand. "The river of time never stops flowing toward the ocean."

She sighed and, presumably, leaned against the tree. Yomotsu asked her earlier what she was wearing today, and he quickly added that he did not wish to sound creepy by asking but simply wanted to know what image to carry in his mind. She explained her simple wardrobe today: a black and red My Chemical Romance t-shirt, a pair of faded jeans with a big hole on one knee, and her combat-style boots "because we will be out in the dirt a bit today."

The two had already walked out quite a bit from where Mercy drove them. They followed a dirt path for a while, but then they went into an area where there was no path.

"This is the big tree I used to climb a lot when I was young. It's the biggest in the area, or at least the biggest in the area I was willing to go. I was always told not to go too far out, and I really never wanted to, either. I was scared of what might be out there, any further than this big tree. But I still wanted to be able to climb to the top one day and look over, you know?"

Yomotsu nodded.

"There's a lot of flowers here. There were back then, too, but of course, they are different flowers now. A lot of dandelions, a lot of weeds too."

The air smelled fresh. No doubt the grass was a dark green. There had been quite a bit of rain the past few days. Yuri had been extra contemplative lately, but not necessarily in an antisocial type of way. He insisted on leaving the house when possible, preferring to spend his time either with Yomotsu or Mercy or both of them when their work schedules convened in the right way.

"Did you go here alone, or with your friends?" Yomotsu asked.

She made a long "ehhhhh" noise and then responded, "Sometimes, sometimes not so much. I did not have a lot of enduring friendships. Not that I was alone, just not a lot of close people. There was this one girl I was really close friends with, but then came the end of 9th grade, and we sort of ended up drifting. But you know how that goes."

Yomotsu honestly could not say that he did, but he nodded.

"After a while, I stopped taking people here, because I realized that most people in my life would be fleeting," Mercy explained. "It took me a while to accept that I just wouldn't have long-lasting ties to anyone. So, I decided to save this place for just myself, because I knew I would always be around, in some way, at least. Even if I grow older and change, as people do, it would still be me, in essence…"

She cracked her knuckles and began walking again. "Let's go back," she said, softly. "I don't think staying out here would be too much fun for you."

Yomotsu shook his head and waved his arms. "No, no! Not at all! It's fine. If you wish to stay here, here is where we shall remain."

Mercy was standing in front of him. He could hear her quiet breathing. "That's really nice of you, Yomotsu, but… That would be awfully selfish of me. This whole thing was kind of selfish, wasn't it? But, that's just how I am."

Yomotsu reached his hand forward and gently grabbed her arm. "Mercy, selfishness does not define your character in the slightest! You brought me here, because you wanted to share this with me, am I correct?"

"Yeah."

"Then this is a gift I must thank you for. Although I cannot see this place, I can feel it in other ways. And while I may not have the memories you have, you have been narrating the scenery as we went along, and now I have this memory with you to cherish. With zealous enthusiasm, I shall dance at the mere remembrance of our time together!"

Mercy chuckled. "Yeah… Maybe this was a mistake, if me doing this is going to make you make more of those cheesy remarks."

Yomotsu smiled. He slowly caressed the arm he had been holding. "Please, let's remain here a while. Tell me more about what everything looks like, and be sure to add any memories you might have to share!"

She clasped the hand that had been caressing her arm. She gave it a squeeze. "Thanks, Yomotsu, but again, you don't have to."

"I want to!" Yomotsu insisted. "I don't know how to prove it. I don't know—"

Leaning forward, she kissed him. When their lips parted, she took a few steps back. "You'll always be there, even if I drift for a while, right? You'll be there, waiting?"

Yomotsu felt cold, when she was away like this. "Of course, Mercy."

She chuckled something a little soft. "For as long as I can remember, I have just wanted to be near someone, be near something that could carry me through… But I have never wanted to be the helpless damsel in distress, either. I wanted to be protected, and yet I wanted to be able to protect myself. And lately, I have been so confused, but you have been here. You are the 12th, and you are the greatest person in my life. If you weren't the 12th, then there would be fierce competition between the two of you—but now that I know that you're both the same person, it makes it so easy for me to like you." She chuckled more.

"And I do like you, a lot." She started choking a little on her words. "I hope you know that, Yomotsu. I love all the time we spend together. I love it when we can just hang out and not be serious and drink our drinks and make our stupid references and jokes. But I also love times like this, where we can be sappy together and get really emotional. And I love the time we spend with Yuri, too, and he's already such a best friend to me. I couldn't ask for anything more than this… It's so righteous. So… Justice!"

Yomotsu could tell by the sound of her change in posture and simply by the tone in which she pronounced "Justice!" that she had thrown her arms out in a sweeping gesture of grandeur. They both laughed a little, and they remained by the big tree for more than two hours. They talked a lot, but sometimes they just sat next to each other under the tree. They checked for ticks later, but at the time, they simply checked each other for signs of love.