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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 23, 2009 23:38:39 GMT -5
Normally, Fusae didn't mind her job so much. It was repetitive, it was the food service industry, it was by no means a start to a career that meant something. It paid the bills (or what few she had considering she was splitting them with her cousin and cousin's husband) and she had enough left over to stash away for whenever. It was something you dealt with because, in her experience, any steady income was rare and totally worth it; there were worse things she could do with her time, normally.
Normally. This time wasn't so normal. Because damn if she wasn't stuck here while Seta and his little crack team of persona users had headed over to Hanamura's to use his TV as soon as school was out, to find that Kaede kid or whatever his name was. Started with a "K", and since she wasn't actually there it wasn't like it was important to know at the moment.
No, no she wasn't the least bit annoyed by it. Or life in general. Not like she needed a good reason to go running around and bashing shadows' heads in, or anything. Even after the last dungeon in the TV she'd been to. Damn Yuu-chan, getting in over his head like that, and now the kidnappings had just gotten worse. Seta had barely found Kaede's dungeon before another person - a girl, this time - had shown up on the TV, wearing a different uniform than the one from Yasogami.
Stupid, stupid timing and not being able to switch her shift around. She couldn't help the way she annoyedly flipped through her magazine, half happy that no one was stopping by after school for a snack even if it meant less tips. She didn't think she had the patience to deal with them when who-knew-what was going on just right on the other side of the TV.
But of course quiet moments like this couldn't last. Ever. She should have learned that a while ago.
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 23, 2009 23:53:17 GMT -5
It wasn't the typical day for Shizuka, and she was already wishing for it to end. Not only had she had to fend off an overzealous reporter who'd wanted her to do some readings for the murders, but then she'd wound up on the news, and her parents had found out. The blistering lecture that followed it (vocalized, for once, as they hadn't wanted Hideo to find out) still had her ears ringing, she'd had her cards confiscated and, to top it off, she'd gone to bed with a headache, went to school with an even worse headache, and was now suspecting some sort of fever.
Well, what did you expect...? Hideo's been coughing and sneezing all over you.
Shizuka sighed irritably at her own pitiful state, rubbing the back of her neck as she meandered through the district. She had been planning on going straight home and lying down, but the sight of the steak stand had her pausing and reconsidering. She'd just be subjected to her parents' glares, and buying the stray dog that hung around the neighborhood a croquette or two wouldn't hurt things.
"Umm..." Spotting the woman idly staring at a magazine, she cleared her throat awkwardly-- a mistake she realized immediately when it turned into a cough. "Excuse me, miss? I'm sorry to interrupt!"
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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 24, 2009 0:09:42 GMT -5
Fusae quirked an eyebrow at the young girl who was currently hacking and coughing in front of the stand, lowering the magazine a bit as she stared. Stared (and was very, very grateful for the glass shield in front of the grill top, otherwise who knew what this kid had?), and then got up, tossing the magazine onto her chair, behind her, as she straightened out her apron. Customer. Right.
"No prob. S'not my job to be slacking off, y'know?" Fusae shot the kid a smile, hopefully one that didn't look half as tired or forced as it really was, and rested a hand on her cocked hip. "What can I do for ya?"
The older woman was about to ask if the girl was running errands for her parents or something, but the uniform cut that idea out. It wasn't Yasogami, more like the blazer that Kubo had worn before he'd gotten his creepy ass arrested. Some better-ranked school across town, one that had a pretty bitter rivalry with Yasogami or something, or that was what she'd gained from Oshiro's reactions to the other kids. Really, school wasn't something you argued over... it was still a highschool no matter where you went. If you went. She hadn't really, when she was their age. Not like Class Prez could ever approve of that, but whatever.
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 24, 2009 0:22:22 GMT -5
She looked tired; Shizuka knew the look of a forced smile all too well, but also knew better than to even bother questioning it. The woman was probably just looking forward to getting back to her magazine, so she'd just have to oblige her, order her food, and get out of her way.
"Can I get two croquettes, and five steak skewers, please?" She smiled in response as she rummaged in her bag for her wallet, miraculously keeping the strain she felt out of the expression-- or so she hoped. She probably wouldn't even wind up eating half of what she'd ordered, but she had no idea what kind of meat preference the dog had, and it couldn't hurt giving the poor thing some options.
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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 24, 2009 1:25:04 GMT -5
Seemed like she wasn't the only one on edge today, and that suited Fusae just fine. Misery loving company, and all that. Well, maybe not enough to be glad that the tiny girl poking through her bag seemed to be getting sick, but at least she wasn't painfully cheery when Fusae knew that Seta and the others were currently slogging through whatever sort of depressing, dreary dungeon that Kaede kid had come up with.
She did manage a quiet sort of laugh at the size of the order, setting the grill back up to it's usual searing heat and drizzling a bit of seasoned oil on it before she went to grab some steak out of the freezer chest (set low, to a refrigerator temp) and a pack of croquettes. The meat was sizzling on the grill in a few moments, enough time for the older woman to at least try to strike up conversation. It was always so weird when they stood around and didn't at least small talk, but maybe that was just Inaba getting to her.
"Rough week, eh? Seems that way for ev'ryone at least," Fusae mentioned, almost idly in that sort of way that gossip and typical chatter started. The woman paused and stretched her arms over her head, keeping a careful eye on the cooking food. "Forget this bein' a quiet town..."
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 24, 2009 1:46:18 GMT -5
"It's not anything too rough--!" Accustomed to the golden rule of THOU SHALT NOT COMPLAIN TO COMPLETE AND TOTAL STRANGERS OR ANY MEMBER OF THE STUDENT COUNCIL OR BORED HOUSEWIVES OR LITTLE CHILDREN, Shizuka shook her head quickly, her fingers forming the word "no" several times until she had to stop in order to get a better grip on her wallet.
"Not completely," she continued in a quieter voice. "It's just a little chaotic lately, with the media and people... everyone's nervous." That was true enough; people had been approaching her both in and out of school as if she was some kind of celebrity now that she'd been on the local news, but when every single question revolved around fortune-telling, she'd immediately backtracked. It was highly uncomfortable, and she hadn't even been able to make it to her only place of solace today: the student council. Her head had been hurting too much for her to do more than drop by with some finished paperwork for the other members.
... Just thinking about it made the headache worse.
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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 24, 2009 2:16:56 GMT -5
"Hey, hey, it's not like every doesn't have 'em. Might not want to mention it around some of the crowd down here," Fusae gave a slight nod towards one of the housewives hanging by the shrine entrance across the street, smirking slightly. " 'Fore you know it, everyone in town'll know. Not like the local stations don't make enough of a mess of things."
Like she didn't know that, firsthand. And after Seta and Hanamura had started guessing that the victims on the midnight channel had been featured on the news before their kidnapping, and Shirogane had made backed them up, Fusae had started to make sure that she checked it when she could. It always helped to keep some sort of eye on it, right?
Wait, then. Had this girl been caught by the same network, too? Because Fusae could have sworn she'd seen someone similar, and not exactly just from seeing her around town. You tended to know who walked by your stand every day, when it was your job to feed them.
"They get you too?" She gave the younger girl an exasperated, knowing look with her comment.
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 24, 2009 2:47:52 GMT -5
Shizuka blinked and paid more attention to the thought tugging impatiently at the back of her mind. The glance the woman was sending her way was not only familiar, but understanding. And... now that she gave it some thought, hadn't this woman been...?
"You were on the news!" As if this was some great revelation that would lead to the cure for cancer, she couldn't have looked more triumphant and thrilled that her memory hadn't failed her, foggy senses or no. "It wasn't for that long, and it's been awhile, but you were definitely there! And you were so cool, like a--"
She had to stop herself before she started rambling any more than she already was, and fastened her eyes to the ground instead. "Um, but... yes, they interviewed me. It wasn't... anything too important, but people seem to think it was a big deal. But it was just a reading..." A reading that had not only been interrupted, but had resulted in the loss of her deck.
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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 24, 2009 3:24:15 GMT -5
The older woman couldn't help but let her smirk widen a bit at the girl's awe and continuing babbling. Cool for being interviewed as the coworker of a high school murderer, and one from this girl's school, too? "It wasn't that great of a fifteen minutes of fame..."
Oh, wait, she did see this girl on the news, later that night and only for the last two minute or two of it. One of those little spot interviews, fortune telling or something like that. Fusae flipped the steak tips on the grill, making sure that the croquettes didn't get overly toasted, and quirked an eyebrow at her.
"Reading? Ohhh, you were that fortune-teller or whatever. Heard it was getting pretty popular around the schools again." She gave a shake of her head, letting out a little "hmph" as she did so. "The local stations'll cling onto anything around here, it's so slow. After the shit earlier this summer they haven't found much of anything, so they're ready to pump up whatever they can into an actual story."
That couldn't be all of it, though, right? She couldn't just have seen this girl from the news; something was nagging at the back of her head, about it, and it wasn't just Kurao being annoying, either.
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 24, 2009 3:44:18 GMT -5
It had been infinitely better to focus on the coworker than on her schoolmate; she hadn't known Mitsuo Kubo very well, other than the occasional greeting in the hallway (always started on her end), and one time she had helped him pick up a handful of yen that he'd dropped near the lockers, but that had been the extent of their interaction. His intense stares had made her feel vaguely uncomfortable, but never would she have thought he was a murderer.
And after that...
Shizuka closed her eyes briefly, both to ward off dizziness and any further thoughts of Mitsuo. "It's kind of more popular with the women around here than my school, but..." She shrugged, smiling tiredly. "I never did it to be popular in the first place. It's just... what I did. But you're right, miss. If there were other things to report on, I don't think they'd ever have considered talking to me."
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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 24, 2009 17:11:55 GMT -5
"Eh, stuff like that comes 'n goes," She replied, prodding at the meat on the grill. "Back when I was in school, everyone was into this cellphone download or something. Just depends if you're lucky or not, when it comes to fads like that."
Fusae looked up then, eyebrows furrowing a little at the girl's reaction; she had sounded ready to cough up a lung, earlier, and the look that had flitted across her face couldn't be good. And Fusae'd be damned if some kid just went and got sick all in front of a food stand, because who knew what'd that do for business.
"You don't need to call me Miss or whatever, y'know. I'm not that old, " she teasingly grumped. Really, Seta was bad enough when he did it, even if he'd already mostly dropped the habit, no need to inspire more kids to call her that (at least she didn't get labeled an "auntie" like her cousin had, by some of the youngest brats, but Fusae had a feeling that her lucky streak with that wouldn't last much longer).
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 25, 2009 1:48:07 GMT -5
"I'm sorry--" Another automatic reaction, the apology left her lips before Shizuka even realized she was forming the words. "I don't think you're old a-and you don't have any wrinkles or gray hairs from what I can see-- although the man by the floodplains doesn't have any wrinkles, either, and he said he was well past seventy-- wait, that's beside the point--"
Who knew how long the soliloquy of sorts would have continued, had she not been interrupted by another minor bout of coughs. This time, Shizuka was quick enough to press her hand to her mouth, effectively muffling the sound, and didn't even bother trying to speak until she was sure her throat wouldn't rebel again.
"... Your name," she tried again, a little hoarsely this time, but with a tentative smile. "If it's all right, could I call you by that instead? Steak griller-san seems a little rude."
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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 25, 2009 10:17:49 GMT -5
The only thing Fusae could do was stare, a little wide-eyed she mechanically took the skewers off the grill and slipped them into their wax paper bags, while the girl babbled into another set of coughing fits. What did you really say in the middle of all that? Fusae was almost tempted to call this girl a ditz, but... well, Kujikawa had seemed like a goddamn airhead and she'd been proved sorely wrong on that. Besides, you waited until the customers had already payed and left before you went on about shit like that.
"Don't die there." She managed to grin (really more of a smirk), continuing to work as she spoke: sliding the bag of steak tips onto the countertop and scooping the croquettes off the grill with her steel spatula to dump them in another paper bag, popping them next to the skewers. "That'd be the last damn thing I'd need."
Maybe it wasn't the best thing to say, and Kurao certainly thought so, judging by the way he was getting more and more insistent on sending little twinges of static through Fusae's mind the longer this girl stuck around, but you couldn't expect much better from Fusae. She shook her head slightly, as if to rattle the persona into behaving (which didn't work in the least), and focused back on her work.
"Name's Fusae," she said, between scraping down the grill and fighting back the urge to grimace at Kuraokami's niggling. Next time she called the persona out, she was giving it a goddamn smack to the nose.
"You?"
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 25, 2009 17:08:09 GMT -5
At last, after all the questions that had been hurled at her, here was one that she didn't need to think over in order to answer. With a small smile, Shizuka drew a few bills and coins from her wallet and placed them on the counter besides the two bags.
"Shizuka," she replied, replacing her wallet and picking up the bags. She was now almost guaranteed to have something that the dog would find appetizing, which made it well worth the wait and the additional exhaustion of what felt like a worsening head cold. "Shizuka Nakano." She grinned now, almost mischievously. "And I promise not to die anywhere near your stand, Fusae-san."
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Post by Fusae Umezono on Apr 27, 2009 23:49:24 GMT -5
"Good. Don't need those reporters hanging 'round here again." She paused, apparently pleased enough with the state of the grill, and wiped her hands off on a towel hanging handily near her waist before collecting the money and flipping through it. It was a good thing that one of the few subjects she'd been any good with in school and math had been dealing with money, otherwise she would have lost track of where she was counting out taxes and change -- Kuraokami seemed determined to distract the hell out of her with headaches and static.
Fine, he could throw a temper tantrum all he wanted. She just slid Nakano's change down on top of the counter with a smile, probably one that looked a little fake to the girl but the most decent she could muster with her persona bouncing around in her head like he was, especially considering she was determined not to let the persona in her head win. Kuraokami wasn't quiet - not in any way, shape, or form - but she hadn't seen him this annoyed in a while.
"Not like it'd be a good thing if it happened anywhere else, but at least don't drop right after eating the steak from here. It's not amazing, but it sure as hell isn't that bad. We need all the good advertising we can get, anyways."
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on Apr 28, 2009 15:53:25 GMT -5
"Yes, ma'am," Shizuka replied meekly, feeling somewhat like a chastised child. The feeling itself wasn't anything new, especially given that she was the only member of student council that occasionally (mostly) lacked seriousness, but just because she was used to it didn't mean that she enjoyed it. "Oh, and you can keep the change. I'll just keep cluttering up my wallet at this rate." And maybe the additional cash would help reassure the woman that her customer wasn't just going to keel over and die right in front of her-- not when she had a wallet to clean out! If that wasn't a good reason to live, she didn't know what was-- other than the obvious.
"Um, but..." She couldn't help herself, going up on her toes to peer a little more closely at Fusae's face. "Are you all right? You don't look too well..." She looked disgruntled and vaguely annoyed, but there was also a tightness about her face that didn't seem natural. Or maybe that was just her imagination...
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Post by Fusae Umezono on May 3, 2009 22:16:14 GMT -5
Tips were always appreciated, although Fusae left the coins on the countertop instead of shuffling them right into the tip jar off to the side, if only out of common courtesy. That, and she hadn't been called Ma'am in a long time, certainly since she'd trying to stop scaring people as soon as she stepped foot in Inaba.
"Eh? Oh." She blinked but didn't move back as the much smaller girl peered more closely, a bit taken aback that someone was paying enough attention to the tiny little changes in expression that Kuraokami caused. She wasn't like Seta, who could probably keep up a full chorus line in his head with barely an outward flinch when it really mattered, but even then Fusae figured she handled Kuraokami's attitude well enough (well, no, not really, because you didn't exactly handle a 30-foot eel in your head, you just dealt with it), at least to the point where it could just be chalked up to being annoyed and disillusioned at a dead-end job.
The attempt at a smile was a little too stiff, a little lacking in the cheer department (although not for lack of trying), and eventually she gave it up in favor of a harried sigh. "Yeah, just kinda beat. But, hey, happens to the best of us, what can ya do?" Everyday small talk, but they sounded oddly sympathetic for the stand worker; some sort of unspoken "Well, aren't we a pair?" that hung in the air between them.
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Post by Shizuka Nakano on May 4, 2009 1:35:08 GMT -5
Shizuka couldn't shake the feeling of camaraderie with this woman whom she'd rarely spoken to before today, if at all, and it was unsettling. Even if they'd both had to deal with highly annoying and obnoxiously persistent reporters-- slightly overenthusiastic the polite portion of her mind automatically corrected-- and they were both tired today, the similarities didn't mean she'd made a new friend.
But she understood. She hadn't meant to, but her perusal of Fusae's expression had been more out of habit than anything else. People tended to take their cues from others' tones and volume levels, but she'd been shut off from that experience at home, so Shizuka learned from expressions, from the smallest twitch of an eyebrow to a quick blink and shift to the side. It'd helped tremendously with her accuracy rate in fortune-telling, and she could tell enough from just looking at the worker's face: she was frustrated.
That was a feeling she knew all too well, but the girl knew better than to pursue that line of thought, and instead nodded politely and settled back on her heels.
"Just try to get through the day," she returned, feeling obligated to at least try and provide an answer. "And hope you and tomorrow get along better."
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