By the time lunch came around, Ranma was starving, and very glad he still had his original bento from this morning in his desk. Ranma was out the window, under a shade tree, and eating before the last echoes of the lunch bell had truly faded away.
He was all but done eating it eight minutes later when Nabiki found him. "Didn't they let you stop to eat in that place, Ranma?" asked the mercenary girl as her shadow met Ranma's.
"Lay off, Nabiki" he grumbled as he polished of his bento. Ranma looked at the empty dish longingly as he moved the last edible bits from it to her mouth. He didn’t really feel like admitting that it was more of a breakfast for him right now than the lunch it was supposed to be.
Nabiki played with her own, unopened bento for a second, shrugged to herself as if considering something, then handed it over to Ranma. "So tell me all about it, Saotome," she half requested, half ordered.
Ranma looked at the offering apprehensively for a moment before accepting it and digging in. The martial arts eating machine was a third of the way into Nabiki's bento before he delivered any of the requested information. "Mostly all I did was memorize tag descriptions and re-price stock. Problem is, aside from everything being totally perverted anyway, was that the store's got a lot of . . . 'variety'. I did get a promotion today though," Ranma informed Nabiki between ravenous bites of food.
"Ooh, promoted, huh? And on your first day too, Ranma, that’s so . . . impressive," Nabiki noted, reluctantly impressed by the news. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with your curse would it, Ranma? I mean, you are working for a perverted wizard after all,” the mercenary added teasingly, ruining what otherwise would have been a compliment.
"Nope, boss didn't lay a hand on me all day, even when I had to come back from lunch as a girl. Well . . . not like that anyway," Ranma replied flippantly, overlooking the possibility that she wouldn't necessarily know if that was true or not. "I just convinced him to break down part of the 'miscellaneous' section by taking out all the objects with similar effects and grouping them together," he corrected her proudly.
"So you impressed the boss? . . . Fair enough. Now what kind of promotion are we talking about here, Ranma? Just how big of raise did you get out of it while you’re at it too?" Nabki asked, slightly impressed. Ranma was reaching the halfway point of Nabiki's bento by this point.
"I got a ten percent raise and I’m the branch manager now. Apparently each shop has its own production team connected to the store somehow. Come to think of it though, I still don’t know how big my commission’s supposed to be yet," Ranma replied, belatedly remembering that he and his boss hadn’t worked out all those little details just yet.
Nabiki raised an eyebrow at the revelation. Somehow, despite how embarrassing she'd expected the job to be for Ranma, it didn't sound like the outright humiliation she'd assumed he'd been enduring. "So how many hours did you get today, Ranma? Paid time that is,” Nabiki asked, carefully hiding her growing interest in Ranma's new job.
"Eight or nine, I’m not entirely sure. I was late getting back from lunch because my pants got soaked at the food court," Ranma answered, visibly more interested in Nabiki’s bento than the conversation just now; Ranma really liked Kasumi's pork buns.
"That's not a bad paycheck for one day Ranma, so how much did you say you were getting paid now?" Nabiki asked, pretending to have forgotten. Wording it the way she did, Ranma would tell her how much his raise was without Nabiki directly asking him.
"Um, ten percent of 10,000– I guess I'm getting 11,000 yen an hour now. But then again I don't know if that's on today's pay or not, for all I know it won't start until tomorrow," Ranma supplied, savoring the last of Nabiki's bento.
"You know, Ranma; even though you're working out of a magic adult toy store, I'm almost jealous of you. Even if you are only working part time, 11,000 yen an hour is pretty good pay for a minor. Of course you could still be getting the short end of the stick here and just not know it yet. So I'll try not to get too jealous of you just yet. After all, it's unseemly for girls like myself to work in a fetish store like that, you know," Nabiki remarked, mixing insults with complements.
“Airen* have job now? How come no tell Shampoo? Ranma always welcome to come work at Neko Hanten,” Shampoo asked curiously, dropping out of almost nowhere. Ranma had to fight down a full body cringe as yet another fiancée found out about his unwanted new job.
“I didn’t ask for the job, Shampoo. I kinda just got stuck with it; trust me, I’m not exactly thrilled about it myself,” Ranma told her, hoping that he could avoid going into details. He knew it was a vain hope at best, but sometimes even he got lucky, in a good way that is.
“Oh? Why is airen, needing job this time? Is dojo having no money again?” the violet haired girl asked with concern. She gave Nabiki a look that Ranma couldn’t quite make out, but it was only for an instant, so Ranma decided not to worry about it.
Nabiki rolled her eyes and replied as if Shampoo’s comment were completely beneath her. “Don’t blame us, Shampoo; Ranma got into this particular mess all on his own. Besides, money isn’t exactly the issue this time, even if Ranma is getting paid about three times what you used to pay him before, after tips.”
“Ayah! That some job! So why Mercenary girl no working there too?” Shampoo asked, scoring a hit that Nabiki couldn’t fully hide, even from Ranma. Nabiki was generally the calm, composed, and dignified type in Ranma’s eyes, even if she was the sneaky vindictive type at the same time. Only when it came to money, she could get a little bit . . . passionate at times.
“As tempting as Ranma’s paycheck is, Shampoo, I’d prefer to avoid the type of reputation that comes with working in such a place. Although I happen to know a few things about Ranma’s new job that you will definitely find . . . interesting, for a price of course,” she countered with barely perceptible venom.
“How interesting?” Shampoo asked with folded arms, forgetting about the carry out case in her hands. The Chinese girl eyed Nabiki suspiciously as she waited for a reply, wary of the other girl’s growing smirk.
“Come on, Nabiki! Haven’t you done enough damage already?” Ranma complained forlornly at the short haired girl. He knew it was futile, but he had to at least try to stop her, even if he did have a snowflake’s chance in hell at talking her out of it.
“Keep quiet, Ranma, and I won’t raise the interest on the tab you owe me,” she warned him in an aside. Ranma instantly gave up arguing, between his current balance, and Nabiki’s fluctuating interest rates, paying off what he owed her was all but impossible already.
Unable to prevent the disaster happening before his eyes, Ranma quietly retreated from the scene. Fortunately both girls were too focused on their impending deal to notice him slinking away. So Ranma gloomily slipped back into his classroom, knowing that yet another fiancée would soon know about his unlucky situation.
* Sorry, but I genuinly don't know how to spell Shampoo's tittle for Ranma. So I just picked a spelling and ran with it.
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(Posted Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:04)
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