Chapter Text
Of course, Walter would forget his hat at home. Although at least it gave him a reason to buy a souvenir.
The school’s tour guide had taken them to a mall and let them wander around. While Walter would have preferred to have gone straight to the hotel from the airport, now was a good time to purchase his hat.
He and his two friends walked around the two-story mall until Walter found a store with baseball caps hanging on the wall.
His friends hung back as the salesperson took the hat off its hook. Walter could feel the man’s eyes on him as he looked at the tag. Being a teen in a foreign country he had never been in before, and hadn’t had any prior hat purchasing experience, he figured that it was fine.
Walter followed the man to the till and bought the hat. Once he had the hat in a bag, one of his friends pulled him aside outside the store.
“Walter- Why did you buy a 60-dollar hat?” he asked.
“What?” Walter asked, freezing.
“That hat you bought is like 40 euros, that makes it 60-dollars,” his friend said.
Walter could feel his face heating up. He pulled out the hat in question from the bag.
The expensive hat was very plain, it was gray and had the tiniest, barely visible logo of the store at the front. It had caught Walter’s attention in the first place because of its boringness. Nothing about it made it worth 60 dollars.
Walter followed his friends quietly around the mall as they bought ice cream. All he could think of was the hat of regret. He debated returning it but hated the idea of seeing the salesperson again.
But then he would spend the rest of the trip regretting his decision, and whenever he’d see his hat, he would feel terrible.
So finally, after some deliberation, Walter returned to the store. His friends hung outside, waiting with their ice cream.
He couldn’t make eye contact with the man as he asked to return the hat.
His friends congratulated him as he left the store with his 40 euros, a brighter mood, and no hat.
They had a little more time to kill before they were supposed to meet up with their group to go back to the bus, so the three went to go wander around the grocery store.
As they walked through the aisle, the clothing section caught Walter’s eye.
Hung where he could reach, was a green Mountain Dew hat. He took the hat and checked the price. 7 euros.
12 dollars for a hat with his favourite drink’s logo on it?
Much more reasonable.