Dynamite And A Laserbeam - Redux

Vol 1 - 1: Welcome to Musutafu - Part 1

The chime of a bell echoed out throughout a relatively empty convenience store on a late Friday afternoon. The person who sat behind the counter was too busy looking down at his phone, completely disinterested in the fact that someone had entered the building. The only reason he was aware that someone had entered the store was because the bell had rang.

"Welcome to Q-Mart, have a good day," the man said, his tone dry and uncaring whilst he flipped through his phone, reading over text messages and laughing at jokes he came across. Every once and a while he would glance up from his device just to make sure that the person who had entered the store wasn't robbing them—that had been happening a lot as of late, and his manager was starting to get annoyed.

However, much to his confusion, no one was there. At least, at first glance, anyway. His eyebrow raised, he put his phone down on the counter, a slight frown worming its way onto his face.

The man's eyes scanned through the immediate area, and after a few seconds of looking around, he finally saw someone at the back of the store where the drinks were kept. The person in question had a rather uninteresting appearance. Their face was obscured by the fact that they were facing away from the cash register, which didn't help much with identification.

They had chin-length blonde hair, and they were wearing a rather basic school uniform, consisting of a black long-sleeved sailor-esque uniform top with a thigh-high frilled skirt and white stockings. It wasn't hard to tell that she was a female student, though from which school the cashier couldn't tell. Uniforms all looked the same nowadays. Oh well, not that it mattered.

The man huffed, waiting for the teen to approach the counter. A few minutes went by, and the girl never came to the register. Confused and worried that the store potentially got robbed again, the cashier looked up, only to find that the girl hadn't moved from the back of the store. She stayed by the drinks area, which was adjacent to the slushie machine and the chips aisle.

The cashier was confused about the girl's behaviour. It was almost as if she didn't want to be noticed. He could tell that was the case with how she was looking around at her surroundings every now and again. Another few minutes would pass, and the teen still had yet to move from the spot she was in.

If the cashier didn't know any better, it was almost as if she was trying to act normal. Was she with someone? Was there going to be a robbery? Or, on a darker note, was she trying to hide from someone? A stalker, perhaps? It was possible, all things considered. From the angle he was looking at her from, she did kind of look a little attractive.

Not his type though, and a little too young for his taste, but it wasn't hard to see how a girl like her could have someone follow her around. He was ashamed to admit it, but she had some good-looking thighs. Nothing too outrageous, but just enough to make a guy her age ogle at them.

If only she was a little older. She looked to be around fifteen, maybe sixteen. He was twenty-three, so he knew it was bad for him to be staring. So instead, he shifted his attention to something else about the girl.

The more the cashier looked at her, the more he noticed just how small she was. She was barely as tall as the shelf in the store, maybe around five foot three inches, at best. He was guessing because that was how tall he was, and he stood around the same height as her. Another thing he noticed was what she was doing.

The blonde was eyeing up a red Rabbit Boost—a Miruko-themed energy drink—flipping it in her hand a couple of times. It was strange. Why flip the can? Was she planning on buying that? If so, why was she inspecting it? Maybe his theory about someone stalking her was right. He was about to ask if she was going to buy the drink, until someone came bursting through the front door, the bell chiming once again, earning a glance from the teen and the cashier.