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Yusha stretched before returning to his slightly hunched position. Weekends usually weren’t this slow - could it perhaps be the overcast weather? It couldn’t be. He had distinct memories of hoards of people coming in during thunderstorms and even blizzards. He shrugged to himself and scanned the rest of Yu-Mart in case anything needed adjusting or cleaning. Everything seemed normal and to him, each aisle and endcap uncannily matched the store layout booklets. Perhaps he could take just one moment of peace to rest his eyes until the masses decided to finally roll out of bed and sleepily grab some caffeine and other necessities…
CRASH! Ding-a-ling!~
Nevermind.
A young man donning an eyepatch and a ridiculously flashy-looking jinbei rushed inside and made a beeline toward the little personal care section. To make matters stranger, he was mumbling something that could only be interpreted as teenage confusion. It took an absurd amount of self-control for Yusha not to shout at him to slow down. He took a deep breath and unclenched his fists.
“Can I help you look for something in particular?” Yusha started his usual script, except he was flat-out ignored. Not a big deal perhaps. He tried to listen in on the teenager’s disorganized ramblings until he noticed peppered-in, slightly broken Classical Japanese. Oh, it was that kid . Masamune. He wasn’t used to him coming in by himself, he was usually paired with another much quieter, and well-behaved kid around his age. Yusha quickly shook his head before being greeted with a mess of random medications at the counter. His patience was immediately running thin to the point where he let just a smidge of non-corporate frustration slip out.
“Do you have any clue what half of these medications are for?” His tone of voice immediately caused Masamune to stand up straight and give the same type of eye contact one would give a “not mad, just disappointed” parent or authority figure. He felt a little bad that it frightened him, but at least it meant he had his attention. Masamune certainly picked an interesting assortment of medications, the majority of them were actually from the subsection of hangover cures. That couldn’t be right. The eyepatched teenager took a breath before he continued to babble.
“I am SO sorry - I think my friend might be sick I know he gets migraines and his anxiety gets REALLY, REALLY bad so I just picked up anything that could help with your head or your stomach because like WHAT IF HE THREW UP, WHAT IF HE HAS A BAD MIGRAINE -” Yusha gestured to Masamune that he really needed to slow down and lower his voice.
“Slow down. Why don’t we start from the beginning - without the unnecessary parts. Your friend is sick, probably? Right?” Masamune nodded yes, his eye wandering around the store for a moment before returning right back to Yusha, who tried to be a bit more aware of his tone.
“Okay. So I don’t think your friend needs all of these. He probably needs maybe two of these if it’s either his stomach or his head.” Yusha started to sort the medications into two piles - one to actually ring up and one to eventually restock once this was taken care of. Masamune stopped the part-time hero from moving the unnecessary items out of his reach.
“Oh - uh, I’ll put them back. That’s my fault.” At least he was using the closest approximation to an inside voice. Yusha slowly removed his hand from the separated pile of medication, normally he would refuse an offer, but he could tell the teenager felt remorse for his oversharing. He recognized that Masamune wasn’t stupid by any stretch, just disorganized and hard to handle in large doses. Despite his employment-centric frustrations, Yusha felt for him a little. There were plenty of times when he acted similarly in reaction to Leon getting sick. He took a second to reorganize himself.
“If you insist, I really appreciate that. Now, where were we,” Yusha moved the packages of generic migraine and stomach relief tablets, “He’ll probably only need these two here. If I were you, I would probably also buy him something he likes, he might appreciate that.” He couldn’t help but let a bit of his own love language intertwine with his customer service. Masamune lowered his previously tense shoulders before gathering the strange assortment of medicine to put back on its respective shelf. For once, Yusha trusted a stranger’s judgment and hoped that he would only have to block afterward. He couldn’t let himself watch, however, instead, he scrolled through the various screens on the point-of-sale software until Masamune returned with an assortment of snacks and a bottle of Pocari Sweat that he personally considered to be comically large. He quietly sighed in relief as he caught a glimpse at the wannabe-samurai’s attempt at restocking the store - he was surprisingly close! Some things just needed to be adjusted to an endcap, not a big deal.
“That’s everything for today?” Finally, he could go back to his usual script. Masamune nodded yes as he placed all the scanned items in a tote bag. Despite his bull-in-a-china-shop demeanor, Yusha recognized that it was because Masamune cared. He handed Yusha a surprisingly well-organized, albeit thin stack of yen bills.
“Yup. Oh - and - sorry about all that. I just worry about him, y’know? Nakaji - the friend I was talking about, uh, usually takes care of me .” His cheeks flushed for a moment before collecting his change back from Yusha.
“It happens. You have a good one, alright? I hope your friend feels better too. I think he’ll appreciate that you went out of your way to get all of this for him.” He couldn’t help but grin a little at Masamune’s sudden humility.
“Thanks! He should be fine - I mean -” Masamune stopped himself from oversharing and simply gestured towards himself before flipping a stray piece of hair out of his face. Yusha playfully shrugged to himself as the young man made his way out. He took a much longer sigh of relief as the door played the same old “Come Again!” jingle. He’s a good kid . Yusha thought to himself before walking outside of his post to rearrange the endcap of the personal care section. At least it was an excuse to go stretch his legs.