Hell is Other People

[Yugikun]

Jasmine hated this job sometimes.

((Jasmine King, continued from The Blood Witch))

Hmm, well, that was sort of an unfair thing to say. Only slightly, though, because there were definitely things about her job that she wished could be improved upon. The lack of customers, for one. Maybe it was just the time of the shift that she was on but whenever she was at the counter barely any people seemed to come into the store. That wasn't really anything she'd call bad on her own, but it did lead to her shifts being totally boring, considering that she wasn't allowed to use her phone on job. Not that she was really annoyed about that, though, she was one of those few people who could actually survive not having their phone for a few hours. Really, it was more that she couldn't really do anything other than just stand at the counter for the duration of her shift. There was no clock on her floor of the store (maybe that was something she could talk to her boss about) and there was regularly nobody to talk to, so most of the time she just had to stand there waiting for her shift to end or waiting for something to actually happen.

Still, though, there were definite upsides to it. The pay, for one. The environment, for two. Working in the bookshop was like a dream. The warmth of the heater and the borderline library that just happened to be around her made this a place that she honestly wouldn't mind being in for longer than she had to. Plus, whenever the store made a profit her boss allowed her to take whatever book she wanted for free, and that was certainly something she appreciated. Although she knew that her job didn't pay as much as what some of her friends got, getting the things she actually wanted for free in her opinion made this the much better job.

It was hard to shake off a bad day, though. It was Sunday. 3 PM, if she had to guess. She was leaning forward on the counter, hand on her cheek. If her estimate on the time was correct then that meant she still had two hours to go before she was able to go home. Although she didn't think that her guess was incorrect, she hoped that it was, in a way. If it was earlier than she thought it was then that meant that it could still potentially get better and if it was later than she thought it meant that she could go home sooner. All the better if it was the latter, if it meant that this fucking stagnant shift could be over that much more quickly. Really, the only people that had actually come at this point were the families with young kids, and if there was anything worse than nobody coming to the store then it had to be a bunch of little kids being loud and demanding her attention and asking stupid questions. Plus, there was a fairly important English essay that she wanted to put the finishing touches on and it was due tomorrow and it kept coming up in her mind and making her worry the more and more she worried about it. Really, if she was wrong, she wanted it to be later than she thought. Then she could go home and she could make it perfect.

She stared at the new releases section, somewhat longingly. Admittedly she still wanted the former to be true, even only because she wanted the store to make a profit. One of her favourite authors had released a new book a couple days ago, and as much as she wanted to buy it now she didn't want to accidentally waste her money or anything like that. Julian wasn't ever going to let her go if that happened and she definitely didn't want him to have the upper hand. At this rate though, it didn't seem like she was going to get it today. She slumped down a little more. Back to hoping it was later, she supposed.

The door to the store opened and the little buzzer made its sound. She sighed, slightly, getting off her hand and standing upright.

At least at the point it was now it could only get better.

[backslash]

((Min-jae Parker continued from Bittersweet and Sour))

Jae's motives for swinging by the bookstore on a Sunday afternoon were twofold; one, Nadia's birthday was coming up and they were friends or something so he should probably get her a gift. Two, he was fucking bored.

Okay, that was being a bit uncharitable. He and Nadia were friends, as much as they sniped at each other, and she deserved a little something special for her upcoming 18th. He had vague aspirations of finding some novel with all that jazz about empowerment and stuff that she liked, or maybe the next book by this author she'd been reading lately. He'd made a note of the author's name in his phone, because he could barely remember how to spell it and had no hope of pronouncing it if someone asked what he was looking for. He'd never read anything by this chick, but apparently Beyonce had referenced her or something during a show, so she was kind of a Big Deal. Also something about feminism and human rights, which was Nadia's jam when it came to literature.

In short: if he couldn't find anything by this Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie person in Kingman, he was going to have to resort to ordering things off of Amazon again, and the things he bought for his friends guaranteed that all the "recommended purchase" emails that he got from them were ever-increasingly weird.

The (fake) bell over the bookstore's front door chimed as Jae pushed his way in. The store was practically deserted, save for the bored-looking girl at the front desk that Jae thought he vaguely recognized as a Cochise student from the grade below him. An empty store suited him well enough; nobody to distract him from browsing or complain that he was blocking a shelf or anything.

He didn't bother to say anything to the girl as he made his way back to the fiction novels. He wasn't sure what genre he was looking for, so he figured that working his way through alphabetically was his best bet.

[Yugikun]

"Hi. Welcome to Barnes and Noble. How can I help y-"

...

"Oh..."

Maybe it was earlier than she thought after all. Even if it was though she was still surprised to see someone she knew walk in. Through all her shifts in the months that she had worked the front counter not one of the people who came into the store was someone she knew. They were mostly just people from around town, not really anyone she knew and not really anyone she cared about, either. They tended to enter her short term memory and then immediately leave the moment they left the store. This time though, one of the people who opened the store and rung the bell happened to be a person imprinted in what happened to be her long term memory.

"Um..."

Min-jae Parker was someone she knew from school. More than knew, in fact. Liked. Okay, well, that wasn't really something she wanted to admit to anyone but she honestly couldn't really help it. It was just... she didn't really know. She found him cute, she knew that, but she didn't know what about him made him cute. It just felt that whenever he entered the room her skin rose a little on end and whatever else came about it always came back to him. She couldn't even really help it, he just took over her focus and whenever he came up as a topic or a person all her thoughts were pushed away to make room for her stupid lovey-dovey daydreams about being with him. It sucked. She couldn't think of anything actually important and she just couldn't help but stare at him and god, it was the worst fucking feeling in the world and she honestly just wished she could have it go away.

He was cute, though. She would be totally open for dating him. It'd likely screw her schedule up and it'd leave her open for anyone else to mock her on it but she felt like she was good enough to deal with that. Even if it was a pipe dream, it was still fun to imagine, sometimes.

"Hi, Jae."

[backslash]

So much for browsing without interruption. Jasmine - he was pretty sure the girl's name was Jasmine, though his memory space devoted to Jasmines in the junior class was mostly full of the other Jasmine and all the myriad reasons to avoid her - had perked up as soon as she realized the person coming through the door was from Cochise. Jae personally couldn't say that he especially liked bumping into people he knew while he was at work, but he supposed an empty store on a Sunday afternoon was boring enough that you'd take what you could get.

"Hey, Jazz." Did this Jasmine also go by Jazz? He didn't know. He also didn't intend to get sucked into conversation with her long enough to find out.

Jae located the sign designating the fiction section and paused before it, wondering if it would be easier to just head over to the As and start looking there or if he should check "New Arrivals" first. He wasn't sure how recently this Adichie person's last book had been published, but maybe it was worth a shot?

[Yugikun]

The smile on Jasmine's face that was put on for the customers started to become more and more legitimate with the words that came out of Min-Jae's mouth.

She could feel the butterflies fluttering around and crawling on her skin. He said hi back! He also didn't sound snippy about it at all! He knew that he was snippy and that he was cold and that he was honestly kind of a jackass to other people sometimes but apparently he at the very least was friendly with her! That was good. Too good to be true, probably. She knew about auditory hallucinations, of course; sometimes you could hear someone say something to you even though they weren't actually saying anything and she knew that some of her friends occasionally had them but she was sure that what Jae said was for real. Nobody called her Jazz, it was always Jasmine or Jazzy but it wasn't ever anything else, so if it was in fact an auditory hallucination it'd be weird if it made up a new nickname for her.

Of course, if it was real it didn't necessarily mean that he liked her or anything like that but the fact that she had an original nickname in his mind had to imply some level of fondness on his side, right? That was something that couldn't possibly be bad. At this point, she hoped that it was earlier than she thought it was because the fact that the guy she happened to like just happened to walk into here and be somewhat nice to her had to mean something. This was good. Maybe she'd enjoy her shift after all.

Wait, no. Even if this was a meeting of fate or something nothing would come out of this unless she did something about it. If she just stood there and admired him from a distance then he'd just get his book and leave and then she'd be stuck here regretting it. She had to do something about this. Talk to him or open up a conversation or she didn't know just anything she supposed. But what about? She knew that he was moody and that probably meant that he wasn't really open to just anything but she didn't know what he would be open to and it sucked and she really wished she didn't feel light at the moment because she needed to think.

Wait, what was he doing? Maybe she could get something off of that. Generally when she was talking to people with the aim to get something out of them she asked what they were doing to just casually slide into what she wanted to talk about. Maybe that'd work here. He was browsing the shelves and not taking anything out. Maybe he was looking for something? It wouldn't hurt to ask at the very least.

"Are you looking for anything?" She called across from the counter.

[backslash]

Wow, this chick must be really bored. Or maybe she was just one of those overly-helpful types eager to make a sale, from the way she was beaming at him. Either-or.

Well, at least she might know what he was looking for. "Yeah," he said shortly, digging in his jacket pocket for his phone. "Hang on." Phone retrieved, he brought up his memos and located the author's name. "You know if you've got anything by..." Jae eyed the name suspiciously before slowly sounding it out. "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie...?"

God, he hoped he hadn't mangled that too badly. He knew how annoying it was when someone butchered your name or native language just because it wasn't English. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie might not have been around to hear it if he had completely messed up, but that didn't mean he was going to disregard how her name was supposed to be pronounced just because nobody was there to correct him.

Unless Jasmine turned out to be a fan like Nadia was, in which case he was fucked. Jae gave her a sidelong look. Unfortunately there were no identifying marks or sign over her head that could tell him if she was hardcore into feminist foreign literature or not.

[Yugikun]

Wait, hang on, she actually had a question from him! Normally when she said that to customers (really, she shouldn't have taken so much to ask him that, that just showed her how annoying it was to be in love with him) they didn't tend to need any help initially. Time usually went on to prove that that they did when they came back and asked whether Jasmine knew or could search up a certain author or book, but this was the first time in at the very least a long while that someone asked her for help immediately. That was nice, and the fact that it was Min-Jae made it all the more sweeter. She knew that even if in the situation that he liked her back that this didn't mean anything but still, it felt good to know that the boy she liked relied on her for something. Oh, how this was going to be a story to tell Kizi about when she got home.

Well, she wasn't going to mention Min-Jae by name, of course, but describing him to her as "the boy she liked" would easily work, and she was strong enough to resist Kizi's prods after that.

The question that he had asked her was whether the bookshop had something from... an author whose name she wasn't even going to try to pronounce. The name didn't pop up with anything in her head, and given the author's name, it was likely that she just didn't know who she was rather than her just forgetting it, so she felt like she could forgive herself for that.

"I'm not sure, I'll check."

She felt awkward using the semi-formal cashier language, but as much as she didn't want to she didn't feel like it was proper to use it, considering how little he knew her.

Hopefully that would change sometime soon. She went to the computer besides her, opened up the search feature, and then...

It seemed like she was the one needing help this time, to her chagrin.

"Um... how do you spell that?"

[backslash]

Well, bullet dodged there at least. Jae moved to the desk and wordlessly held his phone out to Jasmine so she could see the memo he'd made with the author's name. Better than trying to spell it out; not for the first time he was thankful that his name was fairly short so at least people didn't fall all over themselves trying to stumble through it. Of course, given how some people with fully American English names attempted to spell things...

Jae recalled the evening that both his parents had spent raging over the fact that some client of the firm had been seemingly unable to spell his own kid's name twice in a row consistently. His dad still got a faraway look in his eyes whenever he met someone who introduced themselves with "It's pronounced this way but spelled this way" as a caveat.

Still better than people asking if he could speak Japanese for them, though.

Anyway.

Jae leaned on the counter, absentmindedly resting his chin on his hand while Jasmine looked through the store database or whatever she was doing on the computer. She seemed halfway competent, he'd give her that. It was more than most people minding stores got, in his experience.

[Yugikun]

She expected him to just spell it out. She wouldn't have minded that. He had a nice voice, she would have liked the excuse to listen to it a little bit more.

But instead, he did something even better. Jasmine had to hide her surprise as he decided to come closer and show her the spelling himself. The surprise was of the pleasant kind, obviously, but it was still something she had to hide. If she acted weirdly in front of him then he might think she was weird and he'd try to get away from her and god knew she didn't want that. So she tried to keep still. Not like, still still, that would also look weird and do the opposite of what she intended to do, but fairly unmoving and casual. Like Min-Jae was one of her friends. Well, not acting as if she and Min-Jae were sudddenly friends but more like she wouldn't act so awkward around him.

She resisted the urge to sigh. If you wrote an essay on why the feeling of love was actively detrimental she was pretty sure you could use her as the perfect case study.

But still, she had a job to do, and although the incredibly handsome goth guy was standing right next to her she still had to input the name of the author into the system. For both his and her job's sake. She put the letters in slightly quickly, not really skimming the words because of how complicated the name was but still doing it at a good enough pace.

She would freely admit that she checked him out a little while she did this, though. Not to him, or to anyone really, but she felt just that little bit better whenever she did it and she was not going to hide that from herself.

She entered the name in, and one result came up.

"Yeah, it seems that there's one book in the non-fiction section. It's called We Should All Be Feminists."

He had pretty odd taste, but she wasn't going to complain about that. She looked up.

"Does that help?"

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Jae tried to remember if Nadia had told him which books by Adichie she actually owned already, but came up blank. Oh well, she could always return it for store credit or something. "Yeah, that sounds good." He straightened up from the counter and looked around to find the "Non-Fiction" sign. He'd found a book by the right author, it's the thought that counts, blah blah. Slap a bow on that shit and he was golden.

"Thanks," he added belatedly, starting off towards the non-fiction section before something else occurred to him. He wheeled back around to face Jasmine again. "Do you guys sell birthday cards here? Or like, wrap stuff?"