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He waltzes in asking for direction. Directions.
Perona, unimpressed, stares him down from over the top of her Gothic Chic magazine. ‘Can I help you.’
In front of her, the boy—teenaged, green haired, wholly unfashionable save for the three gold piercings in his left ear, and even then just barely—scratches at his neck. He’s presumably aiming for a look of courtesy, but with an irrepressible look of irritation underneath, landing him somewhere between restrained violence and pissed wet gerbil. Wet, because the man is drenched in sweat as though he’s been running for hours. Which Perona doesn’t get. This mall only has so many floors.
‘I’m looking for the convenience store here, and I can’t seem to find it,’ he says through gritted teeth. It’s as if having to ask for help physically pains him. ‘Could you—please—point me to where it is?’
Oh, Perona is so not in the mood. ‘The convenience store?’ She asks, disbelievingly. ‘You mean the one that’s right by the entrance? That convenience store?’
The boy glowers. ‘I’m talking about the other convenience store.’
‘This mall only has the one convenience store.’
‘Are you going to give me directions or not?’ He snaps.
Perona sighs with all the beleaguered world-weariness of the truly put-upon.
‘Oh, if I must,’ she says.
She gives the directions, the boy thanks her (the same way a man might thank a barracuda, which is honestly so very rude of him), and that should’ve been the end of it, except she’s just watched the stupid green lug walk past the store she’s working in eight times in the last half hour now, and she doesn’t think she can stand it much more. The first four times were funny, but now? Jesus.
She stomps over to her store’s entrance, sticks her head out to yell. ‘What are you doing?’ She demands. ‘Do you even know where you’re going? Why did you even bother asking me for directions if you’re just gonna disregard everything I say?’
‘Your instructions were confusing!’
‘How is go out, turn right, and take the escalator down confusing in any way?’ Perona, offended, stands with her hands on her hips. That he would pin this on her—!
‘It just—it just is.’
Perona narrows her eyes at him. Uncowed, the boy glares right back. They stare each down for a few seconds. Perona feels, deeply, viscerally, that if she looks away she loses. It feels like an animal showdown. Primal instincts. You know, that sort of thing.
‘Do you,’ she says, slowly, testing out the idea, ‘have just, like, a really shit sense of direction?’
The boy flushes all the way up to his (thin, terrible) hairline, and stomps off. Perona grins victoriously.
‘You’re going the wrong way!’ She calls after him.
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Two hours later the boy wanders back into her store. Turns out, his sense of direction is shit. So shit, in fact, that it took him three whole hours to find the convenience store that he was supposed to have started his first shift of part-time work at. Which, of course, means that he’d been two-and-half-hours late. Which, of course, means he had been fired. On the spot. In front of everybody. Including apparently a harried-looking mother who had shielded her child’s eyes from view when he’d trundled his way out of the store, miserable.
After Perona is done cackling her ass off, she asks, ‘well, do you wanna come work at my store then?’
‘ This store?’ The boy—whose name, Perona has learned, is Zoro—asks, doubtful. He flicks his gaze across the punk industrial-themed interior, the purple-pink lighting, the rows of black band t-shirts next to ripped denim jeans, the gothic lolita dresses, the rack of studded spiky belts, blah blah you get the gist—before looking back at Perona. ‘I doubt I’d li—fit…in.’
Perona snorts. No shit. Zoro’s wearing a white t-shirt that looks like it’d been purchased as part of a pack of fifty at some tragic chain store sale somewhere. His jeans could’ve been black from dirt for all she can tell. And his haircut! Or lack thereof, more specifically—his hair seems as though he cuts it by laying himself down next to a lawn mower every month and letting the chips fall where they may. How did a guy like him get the idea to pierce his ear thrice and dye his hair? That’s what Perona really wants to know.
But. Perona’s sick of being the only employee at the store. She’s delicate, you know. She could use someone else to do all the heavy-lifting around here. Plus, the guy’s hilarious. He’d be great for entertainment. Win-win!
‘Do you have any other choice?’ She asks, archly. ‘You said you needed the money, and I guarantee you that the convenience store manager isn’t going to hire you back now!’
Zoro grimaces. ‘I’ll—I’ll go in and ask tomorrow.’
‘For- get it. I know that guy—Galdino’s a hardass, he’ll never give you a second chance.’ Perona grimaces. The guy had come into her store once to nag at her about slacking off. As if he had any jurisdiction! A girl couldn’t touch up her nails in peace.
‘Fuck.’ Zoro thunks his head down onto the cashier counter Perona’s perched at, right next to the display of chunky leather cuffs and silver bracelets.
Perona pats his head sympathetically. ‘There, there,’ she croons. ‘Poor little moss-boy doesn’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll go talk to my manager for you, put in a good word! How’s that?’
His voice comes out muffled, smushed against the counter as he is. ‘Don’t call me that.’
Perona drops her hands, glares into the back of his fluorescent-green head. Hopes she’s beaming her disapproval directly into his skull. ‘Is that any way to talk to the person about to save your life?’ She sniffs.
Zoro turns his head to one side to scowl at her. He does a lot of frowning, Perona notes. He should do something about that. In the meantime. She cups a hand behind her ear.
‘...Please may you help me get a part-time job so I can have more than two dollars in my pocket at any given point of time, Perona,’ Zoro says, finally. He’s learned her name over the course of this conversation. He sounds absolutely dismayed at having to use it.
Perona sniggers, hops off the counter.
‘You got it, little guy!’ She chirps, ignoring Zoro’s outraged sputtering. ‘See now, was that so hard? I’ll go call my manager right now! Be right back.’
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Of course, all that effort in coaxing and teaching Zoro to say please almost goes out of the window when he learns that Dracule Mihawk is the owner-manager of the store. The look of betrayal he shoots her way when the man himself emerges like some stern-faced ghoul vampire through the worn and battered plastic backdoor for STAFF ONLY is offensive, frankly. How was she supposed to know the two of them had some kind of dumb macho enemies-to-the-death sort of situation going on?
In the end though, Zoro manages to ask for a job (barely) and Mihawk agrees to give it to him (mostly willingly), so Perona thinks it all works out.
‘You start next week,’ Mihawk tells him.
‘Don’t get lost along the way!’ Perona adds.
Zoro groans.
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