Chapter Text
Tsukishima had been working in this clothing store for over a year now, so sometimes he assumed that he had already seen the most annoying customers possible. But the universe kept proving him wrong.
“I need to return these shoes. They fell apart after a week! I barely wore them.”
He took the box from the woman’s hand. “We can definitely do a…”, his voice trailed off after he noticed the weight of the box, too light to be holding anything. And when he opened it, his suspicion was confirmed. This woman was trying to return...nothing.
How do you politely explain something so obvious? He didn’t exactly know how someone could be ignorant of the fact that to return something, you actually have to return it. But he had been staring just a little too long, so with the air of a parent explaining something to their child, he said, “I’m sorry ma’am, but you need to actually bring the shoes here to return them”.
“What? I told you, they fell apart! I threw them away. I can’t believe you won’t return these! I’ve returned things like this before and I’ve never had a problem!”
Tsukishima found this particularly hard to believe. “Again, I’m sorry, but it’s policy that we need to receive the item to return it.” As was the policy in every other store, ever.
“This is ridiculous, I want to speak to your manager!”
An excuse to hand this off to someone else? He’ll take it. “Of course, I’ll go get her.” And if he also took the opportunity to roll his eyes once he had turned around, well, that was nobody’s business but his own.
After explaining the situation to his manager Kiyoko, he returned with her to the register. After a while working here, he had managed to find a few things that were actually amusing, and watching his manager put her foot down was one of them. Especially since she was somehow incredibly polite while doing it - he was often told by certain coworkers that he could learn a lesson or two from her, which he vehemently denied. Out loud at least.
It took almost five minutes for the woman to be convinced that she was not going to get what she wanted, at which point she stormed out. Kiyoko thanked him for getting her, which he didn’t really understand, it’s not like it was an inconvenience to have someone else deal with the problem. It was annoying to go off-script with customers.
So as someone walked up to the counter to check out, he prayed to whatever gods there may be to keep them all on-script for the rest of the day - or his life, if they were feeling generous.
“Will this be all for you today?”, he asked the man who had just walked up to the register. Tsukishima vaguely noticed that he had brown hair and was shorter than him, although those were both fairly common traits. The man replied affirmatively, and then put his large stack of items on the counter. To his credit, although there were way more things placed on the counter than could comfortably fit, he only ended up only dropping one shirt on the floor.
“Sorry about that,” the brown-haired man apologized sheepishly. “I got a little carried away.”
And as much as he liked to be apologized to, instead of the apologizer, something about the situation demanded a denial. “Don’t be. A lady in here just tried to return an empty box.” Tsukishima decided he said that because he was trying to be a good employee...well, it was really more like he couldn’t think of any other plausible reason. Besides, it was in his best interest to keep the nice customers around, wasn’t it?
But he was startled out of this line of thinking when the man in front of him started laughing. “An empty box? That’s crazy! You must get a lot of weird people in here, I guess.”
Again blaming it on just being polite, Tsukishima tried not to think too much about the smile tugging on the edges of his mouth when he heard that laugh. It was strangely...something. Something he wanted to hear again. Was that weird? Most of the time he didn’t think of himself as a forward person, he usually thought of himself as the exact opposite. But he found himself wondering, mildly, if it would be unprofessional of him to ask the laugh’s owner what his name was.
In a well-intentioned effort to not accidentally be rude, he replied to his statement with, “Yeah, sometimes. Most people are fine, though.” Tsukishima received no response to this, so he just finished ringing up everything and told the man his total. When he took his card, Tsukishima saw his opportunity and snuck a glance at the name on it.
Yamaguchi.
At least now he had a name for the face in front of him. But as for what he intended to do with that information...well, he had no idea. Probably nothing, since he wanted to avoid doing anything potentially embarrassing for him or anyone else, and it wasn’t like he knew what to do anyways. Really he should just move on from this train of thought, preferably before he changed his mind.
So, having decided on doing nothing like usual, Tsukishima printed out the receipt. “Receipt in the bag?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s fine.”
With the receipt securely in the bag, their interaction was over. Yamaguchi left, and Tsukishima stared at his retreating form. He blamed it on boredom, or maybe because Yamaguchi had commiserated with him, although neither of those explained why he had been so partial to that laugh. He tried not to think about it too much, he’s going to forget about it eventually anyways.
When Yamaguchi had withdrawn out of sight, his gaze shifted to the clock on the wall. Three more hours before he could go home, collapse on his couch, and do absolutely nothing. Exciting.
Snapping him out of his daydreams about his couch, the next customer - blonde hair, not brown - stepped up to the register. “Will this be all for you today?”