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Chapter 7: Investment Candidate Detected!

Chapter 7: Investment Candidate Detected!

The GPS dropped him into a strip mall lot that looked nicer than the neighborhood had any business producing. Clean storefront. Big display windows. Mannequins dressed better than he’d managed on any given day of his adult life.

Sin’s Peace. Again, weird name for a place that looked like it actually washed its floors.

He parked, sat there a second, then went in anyway.

The bell above the door barely registered before the air-conditioning did. Cold enough to notice, clean enough to smell the difference between this and the store he’d just come from. Racks organized by color instead of chaos. Actual folding tables instead of a bin.

Huh. He paused for a moment, genuinely surprised. Not bad. Not bad.

Less intimidating than he’d expected for a 3.8-star boutique with a name that sounded like a wrestling finisher.

This isn’t about fashion. He reminded himself. This is about not looking like a guy who wandered out of a funeral to buy groceries.

Low bar. He could clear a low bar.

He drifted toward the men’s section and, purely on autopilot, pulled a shirt off the rack.

Black.

He looked at it. Looked at his own hand like it had made the decision without consulting him. Put it back.

Grabbed another.

Also black.

The hell? He cursed. Was he doing it on purpose? Even he didn’t know the answer to that.

"Need a hand with anything?" A charming feminine voice called out from behind.

He turned. A sales assistant, easy smile, already reading the situation faster than he’d like a guy standing in front of forty different colors, somehow holding two identical shirts.

"...Yeah, actually." He set both back on the rack like they’d personally betrayed him. "I’m trying to replace basically my whole wardrobe. I don’t really know what I’m doing."

She laughed, not unkindly. "That’s honestly easier to fix than you’d think."

She was already moving before he’d finished agreeing to it.

She worked through the racks with the kind of speed that only came from doing this a lot. Pulling things without really looking, like her hands already knew what would work before her eyes caught up.

"What’s your size, usually?"

He told her. She asked about fit, did he like things loose, fitted, somewhere in between, and he answered honestly, which was to say he had no idea and said so.

"So, no opinion. Got it. That’s actually easier for me."

"Is that a compliment or an insult?"

"Little of both."

He almost smiled. Almost.

"So..." He dipped his hands casually into his pocket. "You work here full-time?" he asked, mostly to have something to say that wasn’t about himself.

"Part-time. I just got into NorthGate, so this is more of a ’keep gas in the car’ situation."

He blinked. "NorthGate?"

"Yeah, why..." She caught his face. "Wait. You go there?"

"Starting this semester."

"No way." She held up a shirt against him, decided against it, put it back. "Small world for a school with like eleven thousand people in it."

A faint huff escaped Adrian’s lips.

She pulled two more shirts off the rack, a green and a blue top, colors he wouldn’t have picked in a hundred years.

"Well..." She pointed him toward the fitting rooms. "Go. Surprise yourself."

He paused for a moment. Then he collected the clothes.

The fitting room mirror wasn’t flattering exactly, just honest, which was somehow worse. He pulled the first shirt over his head. Deep green, something which felt like new territory and stared at himself for a second too long.

Weird.

Not bad-weird. Just weird, the way anything unfamiliar takes a second to process as belonging to you.

He stepped out.

She looked him over with the same fast, practiced eye she’d used on the racks.

"Close. Not quite."

Pff. He took a sigh. At least she’s being brutally honest.

She pulled a different shirt off the hanger in her hand, held it up next to him instead of just handing it over. "Try this instead. Same idea, better on you."

Two more outfits went the same way. A small correction each time, nothing dramatic, the kind of adjustments that only made sense once he saw them work. Then the fourth one.

He stepped out and didn’t immediately look at the mirror. Looked at her instead, gauging her face before he trusted his own.

"Yeah." Her eyebrows went up. "That one."

He turned to the mirror.

It wasn’t just that the color worked, or that it fit right. It was that the guy looking back didn’t look like he was still wearing what Maya picked out eighteen months ago. Didn’t look stuck.

Looked like someone who’d actually moved somewhere. He actually looked...

Good. He paused at the thought as a smile drew on his face, before he returned his glance to the sales girl. "You got any pants?"

In time, the worst part arrived. The payment part. The register total came to a number that made him do quiet math in his head before he’d even reached for his wallet.

$74.99

His expression tightened slightly. He’d budgeted seventy.

He started running through the pile, already deciding what to put back. The green shirt, maybe, since it wasn’t strictly necessary, just the one that fit best. But then, she cut him off before he could say anything.

"I’ve got an employee discount." A beat. "I’ll just run it through."

He paused. "You don’t have to do that."

"I know. You bought enough goods." She was already scanning the last item like the conversation was over. "I just want to make you a regular."

"I’ll pay you back. If I ever see you again."

"You go to my school now, remember?" A small, easy smile. "Pretty sure you will."

He didn’t have a comeback for that one. Just nodded, and let her fold everything into a bag she handed over like it cost her nothing at all.

With that, the payment was done.

She said something about getting back to the floor before her manager noticed she’d spent twenty minutes on one customer.

"Thank you," he said. "Seriously."

"It’s my job." A small shrug, easy smile still in place. "Good luck with school."

She turned to go.

He watched her walk off toward another rack, another customer, and somewhere underneath the thank-you he’d just given her, the mission surfaced back to the front of his skull, patient as ever.

Female. Stranger. Already talking to him, already comfortable, already gone out of her way for him twice in the last ten minutes.

He wasn’t a moron. He was well aware. This is probably the easiest opening you’re going to get.

He stood there a second doing the math on it, the same quiet calculation he’d been running on grocery prices an hour ago, except this time the thing on the other side of the equation had his dignity attached.

A beat passed. Then...

If I can’t ask this one. He thought. ...asking the next one isn’t going to be easier.

He took a breath.

"Excuse me"

She turned, still smiling, not even surprised. "Yeah?"

You’ve got this. He strengthened himself. Just ask her out. And don’t make it weird.

He opened his mouth.Then he paused. A dozen ways to ask ran through his head at once, and every single one of them sounded either insane or like a bad pickup line from a show he’d have made fun of six months ago.

The silence went on a beat too long.

"...Thanks again. For helping me."

She paused for a moment and then laughed, warm and a little confused, like she’d expected a follow-up question that never came. "You’re welcome." A small wave. "See you on campus, maybe."

Then she was gone, back into the racks.

He stood there holding a shopping bag and absolutely nothing resembling a plan.

First attempt. Didn’t even get to the actual question. Maybe the system gave him twelve hours for a reason.

"Smooth move."

He turned.

A few steps away, shopping bags in one hand, stood the girl from the dumpster. Pretty red hair. Denim shorts. A white crop top beneath a light denim jacket.

She raised an eyebrow at him, clearly enjoying this more than she had any right to.

"What do you know." A small, amused tilt of her head. "The man in black has moves."

He blinked. Dumpster girl?

Yeah. He probably shouldn’t call her that out loud.

Bzzzt.

His phone buzzed in his pocket before he could figure out how she’d seen any of that.

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☎️ New Notification.

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MISSION UPDATE

Investment candidate detected. Continue interaction player!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He looked down at it. Looked back up at her as she stepped closer to him.

~~~

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