𝚈. 𝙸𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚛𝚘 ~ 𝙱𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚊𝚕𝚕

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You absolutely hated this. There was nothing even remotely pleasant about the situation you were currently in. Ichiro was sitting next to you, uncomfortably close and yet not close enough. Neither of you had said anything for a solid three minutes and the mortifying silence was showing no signs of ever disappearing. How did things turn out this way? What did you possibly do to deserve this?

~

It all started two months ago. You had recently started college, and as the student debt continuously crept in on your lifestyle, you decided "who needs time to rest?" and got yourself a job at one of the many anime stores around Ikebukuro. If you were going to throw half your day away on shitty pay, might as well do it at a place you can enjoy. You loved seeing all the different otakus come up to the counter, excited over the fact that their favourite anime had some limited edition merch at your store, and you sometimes let yourself get excited with them as it was hard to keep your own feelings at bay.

You had the last shift, meaning you would have to close up the shop and tell any lingering people to kindly leave as you did not want to miss the last train home. This particular day there had been a single gentleman testing your patience as he had been in the store for about two hours without buying anything. The store was quite large though, so how did you know he had been there for that long? The reasoning behind that was his eyes. You had never seen any pair of eyes like them before. The left eye was red, whilst the right one was green.

Seeing as this man was also clearly an otaku, you couldn't help but think he was still in his chūnibyō phase as his eyes could hardly be real.

You checked your phone; five minutes until you had to close. If this man did not hurry up, he would witness a wrath greater than anything his little chūnibyō mind could imagine. As you laugh to yourself at your thought, you don't acknowledge the red- and green-eyed man approach your counter. An almost shy "hi" shoots your attention to him though as you were not expecting him to have such a timid voice.

You smile at him as you realize you might seem a little intimidating, but your smile quickly drops as you see what he is planning on buying. As you stare at his yet-to-be items, you sense his awkward shifting in front of you. Without a second thought, you lift one of the items to his face, almost threateningly, before asking him as relaxed as you possibly could "Where did you find this?!"

The thing you were holding was a piece of merch from one of your favourite underrated anime. So underrated, in fact, that you had never in your life seen a piece of official merch from it. And now this multi-coloured-eyed man was telling you that it existed in your own shop all this time?! Said man had finally seemed to pick up on your excitement. "You... you watch this anime too?!" he looks at you with gleaming eyes.

You supress a squeal before answering. "Of course! It's one of my favourites! I didn't even know we sold merch from it!" the man got so excited he dropped his wallet on the floor and had to awkwardly pick it up again before his eyes met yours for a second time. "Who's your favourite character?!" he then proceeded to almost shout at you. You answered him with twice as much excitement, only for him to shout you another question with equally as much enthusiasm.

You went back and forth like this for a while, completely forgetting about closing time. Somewhere along the lines you had scanned his items, putting them all in a bag while he paid for them, none of you paying any attention to what you were doing as you were to engrossed in your conversation. You then continued to automatically close the shop, still not paying attention to it as all your attention was fixated on this chūnibyō. As you unconsciously walked through the store, getting your things and locking everything up, he was following you like a lost puppy as he too seemed to be eager to talk to you.

𝙷𝚢𝚙𝚗𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚜 𝚖𝚒𝚌 𝚡 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 ~ 𝙳𝚘 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 ?Where stories live. Discover now