These Will Help!

"This one....this one too...and this one!" In a quiet, but quick voice, books were being picked out rather enthusiastically from the bookstore shelves.

There were a lot of books she needed to get! There was plenty she needed to read up on! There were quite a few she already owned, and so she skimmed over those briefly before finding new ones that would help her in her studies.

Stars, planets, study on the zodiac signs as well... All of it was important!

Ikue was subtly sparkling in excitement at the new books, her overall expression composed, but her emotions showed clearly within her eyes. She had about...six books in hand already, and was looking at a seventh.

She had her textbooks for her classes, but these would be even more helpful to go along with them!

It was monthly "Work a job" day for Testament. He'd found it a good way to get associated with the human world and learn more about it in ways he couldn't get just from scanning information. It was also fun to interact with people face to face. He'd been alone for so long that everything seemed fantastic to him.

Today he had taken up the role of a bookseller. The previous employee had been rather loathe to give up the position for the day, but the few thousand dollars Testament gave him made up for it. He didn't know why money was so valuable persay. It was just lying around in boxes. Some day Testament would work as a police officer for the day and then he would solve the case of the ATM thief plagueing the area.

For now though, just a bookseller. He noticed someone perusing in the back and leaned over the counter to see who it was. He kept leaning until he had fallen right over the counter and righted himself up, walking over with a friendly smile. "Hi! Anything I can help you find today?"

Seven books so far, this...this would be enough, but...buuuuut.... There were more she could look at, and it wasn't like she couldn't afford these things. There were so many she could look at... She wanted to look at more, but she had plenty right now...

Ikue jumped slightly as she heard a....crashing(?) sound behind her, and she turned just in time to see someone approach her. An employee? "A-Ah, well I'm getting books on stars, and space, and galaxies. I need them for school, so..." She looked down at the books already in her arms, and then back to the shelf. She...she could buy more later...she could come back another time and buy more later...

They would be there when she visited next time. She just had to tell herself that. There were multiple copies! They'd definitely still be there!

Testament tipped his head to the side. Huh. Books on space and stars and stuff? That was... Well kind of mundane to him, but fantastic nonetheless. He looked at what she had in her hands and grabbed matching copies off the shelf. He flipped through them each, glancing over the pages for a few seconds per book before putting them back.

"You don't want to use those, they're riddled with errors. I happen to be an expert on space and a lot of these concepts don't even take into account the shape of the universe, much less spacial anomalies or astral hollows. It's real back water knowledge." He turned his nose up slightly.

And then he grinned. "But it's amazing that there's even books on it when nobody has even gone into space!" He said cheerily. He had at least learned to stop saying 'you people haven't gone into space.' That had caused some issues.

These were...

Ikue glanced down at the books in her hands, so these had lots of errors in them. This man was an expert on this...so he might be able to help her find good books! "Um, are any of the books here for such studies good? Would you recommend any? I-I'm a major in astronomy, and I also like to dabble in astrology as well so I'm really interested in these subjects!"

If he were an expert he would know!

It was...amazing how much they were able to learn about space, even though at most the farthest people had ventured was to the moon. There were machines on Mars, and scientists were doing their best to study even further than that! Aa...she'd love to be able to do that... So that's why she had to study hard!

Testament was a little surprised to hear that of all things, his first customer at a bookstore was an astronomy major. Did that make her part of a science army? Wait no that was what they called fields of study in school. Interesting! He knew the bookstore would help him meet Knowledged people!

He looked around the bookshelf before spotting one. 'Spiritualism and the space time continuum.' He leafed through it before handing it to her. "This is by a wide margin the most accurate book on astronomy or astrology mankind has produced. It's startlingly keen." He said with a nod.

"Aaa~ Thank youuu..." Ikue replied, accepting the book from the man with a small smile, her eyes sparkling with excitement over the book. This one was the most accurate available by a wide margin according to him, and he claimed to be an expert in the field so she would believe him!

She was excited about getting to read it, she would definitely buy this one!

He'd just saved her a load of books to carry around!

Testament, unaware that while he was absolutely correct about the book, the college would feel differently, felt like he had helped. He felt excellent about this. "Anything to help a fan of space. The more minds at work on the subject, the better." He said with a nod. "In fact, you may have that book for free. It's on me!" He grinned and wondered if it was being a good bookseller to give away books.

But how could he help it? She was an eager learner about such a wonderful subject. "What makes you so eager to learn about space? It's a relatively rare field of study from what I can discern." Doing the math, it was certainly a minority.

He suddenly put his hand out. Wait, what did he call himself? Testament wasn't even in Japanese. Well, the word translated to Yuigon in Japanese... although the word will translated as Ishi. Yuishi? Ehh, didn't roll off the tongue right.

"Hi. My name is Yuigon. You can call me Yui for short." He said, unaware of even the concept of gender specific names at this point.

Ikue nodded, though she was definitely shocked by his following words. Free!? Aaa, but...but-! It would feel wrong to just have him pay for it! She'd just met him, and he was an employee just trying to help a customer! Even if they did share a space interest!

"I can pay for it, it's really no problem! I meant to come and buy books today!" Ikue stated quickly, though her voice never rose much. "Ah...I'm just really interested, I love the stars, and I love learning about them, planets, and galaxies...it's just really interesting..."

Yuigon...Yui? That was typically a girl's name, but that was his name! So she would refer to him as such.

"It's nice to meet you, Yui; I'm Ikue, Ikue Iseri." She replied, introducing herself as well.

Testament nodded, leaning forward. "Ahh, see? That's amazing. Most people these days, especially attractive young women just seem to want to talk about television shows or celebrities or music or the internet. I checked out the internet. It had its ups and downs. Interesting use of media." He was vaguely unaware the internet was not a work of fiction, but a form of mass communication.

"Nice to meet you, Miss Isari." He said with a smile. He paused, wondering how he said hello. A handshake? No, Emile told him that if a girl was pretty, handshakes were a no no. Her face was symmetrical and held all of the objective points of being physically attractive, so he had to.. oh right!

He reached out to take her hand and leaned down to kiss the back of it. He wasn't going to say what Emile had told him to say. He had tried it a few times and been physically assaulted.

Squeak.

One of them threatened to escape her due to surprise at Yui's words; the way he was phrasing things was...odd, but...but she pushed that aside. H...Hearing those things...

And then he'd...

This time the squeak did escape; it-it was just a greeting by hand...hand k-kiss, but...but she was still flustered by it! Her face easily became red. Th...This was a c-common way to greet a woman in some places, or in...in royalty or...or other things! It... She'd never seen or experienced such a greeting until now, b-but-!

"Y-Yeah." She replied, giving a small nod.

"Hmmm?" He leaned in close, noticing something odd. She was... red, stuttering, heart rate quickening. Was she scared of something? What had he done? He hadn't meant to scare her or anything of the like. He leaned in close to investigate what was going on with her physiological response. "You're blushing. Does that usually happen when people say hello to you?" He asked, looking back up to her eyes when he asked.

"Hopefully I haven't caused you any distress." He added, feeling bad if he'd startled her somehow. He thought people liked formal greetings? Maybe she was feeling social pressure because of it.

"N-No, y-you haven't distressed me at all!" Ikue attempted to reassure, "I-I am just e-e-easily embarrassed or fl-flustered so I react like this..." She became flustered way too easily, embarrassed way too easily...it was a currrrseee...

Normally it was just a hello and a conversation when it came to her meeting people, she'd never experienced such a formal introduction...

He tipped his head again, still confused. He smiled though. "Oh. I'm glad I didn't distress you." still... she got embarrassed or flustered? Ohhh, he had some knowledge of how that worked. That made sense. Still, what was there to be flustered about? People got flustered when someone flirted with them, didn't they? Especially shy people. She must be shy. It made sense.

"I apologize. There's no need to be flustered. I wasn't making any sort of advances. Just noting you are objectively very pretty." He said with a nod. Hrm... That sounded... cold... insulting almost? Not quite, but... "I'm sorry. I'm not... particularly good at talking to people myself." He said with an apologetic smile.

"N-No it's fine, I understand; I know you weren't..." Ikue gave a small shake of her head; "I become like this...way too easily, ahaha...." A small, sheepish laugh escaped her, unsure of how to further reassure him.

It was fine, he didn't need to apologize; he was not good with talking to people as he'd said...and she was easily embarrassed so...

He crossed his arms, giving a small reassuring smile. "Well I don't know. I think everyone should be themselves. If this is you, it's a good thing, right?" He nodded, agreeing with himself. "There's several places I have worked where that kind of bashfulness was a vital sales asset and drew great deals of customer attention."

It's true. Many of the otaku establishments he'd worked at, the girls who blushed and couldn't say much got a great deal of attention. The same was true of the strip club he'd filled in at.

"I will refrain from saying anything else to make you blush though, Miss Isari. You are already my best customer and I would hate to ruin that."

"R-Right..." Good, if it was her... Ikue gave a small nod at that; if it was who she was then it was good. It was... He had a point, but it was still hard to accept. Sometimes she really hated being so bashful.

A vital sales asset, in some places yes... Yes it was...

"M-Mhmm, thank you; aha..." B-Best customer!? Aaaahhh, she came to this bookstore a lot, but still to be considered a best customer by someone working!

He clapped his hands together. "Good! I'm glad you realize that!" It was always best to be oneself. He grinned. "No need for thanks! I mean, I've only been a bookseller here for like... a day or two, but I think I'm doing pretty well at it. Then again, you're the first person to actually listen to my suggestions. The couple in here earlier looking for some book that was part of the Opra club or something didn't seem to listen when I told her the books contained traces of mind control mechanisms and that old lady REALLY didn't like it when I told her about the ghost that was following her."

He crossed his arms, puffing his cheeks out a bit. "Really, until you came in, this whole thing was starting to seem like a disaster."

M...Mind control? Opra Club?

Ikue blinked, but otherwise made no comments. Yui was... He had only been working here a day or so, so... so he was new to this whole book selling thing! Though again, he'd said some odd things.

Gh...Ghosts?

"I'm glad I could be of some relief to such a day." She was...not sure whether to ask all things considered. Still, she was glad she could help relieve him from a wacky day of working here!

He glanced at her, noticing an expression he seemed to get a lot. One day he would know it as identifying him as a weirdo. Right now it was just a weird expression. Hrm. "I apologize miss Isari. I tend to forget most people actually plan to leave the store when they come in and are usually doing other things. I've probably held up your day quite a bit now." He said with a bashful smile before walking over to the counter.

"I would not want to hold up my best customer, after all."

"Aaah, no it's fine! Really, you weren't holding me up at all!" She had planned on being here for quite a bit today, considering she'd had a lot of books to go through and look at.

This Ikue Iseri had no schedule to keep to today! Anything super, super important had already been handled! She'd gotten her work done, and was now enjoying the rest of her day~

"Oh? Good!" If she wasn't being held up, she must be enjoying it here. Well, she would hardly be his best customer if he made her peruse the aisles aimlessly. "Would you like to join me for a drink then? I have tea, coffee and juice boxes here at the counter." He gestured to the little room behind the counter where a few appliances were visible, as well as the other chair behind the sales desk.

"Besides, you are very interesting. I'd love to talk to you more." He said with a grin, patting the other chair.

"Are you sure it's okay for me to go back there? And I won't be butting into your work?" She questioned, she wouldn't want to get Yui into trouble or anything by going behind the counter! Usually customers weren't allowed back there...

She wouldn't want to interrupt his work either, he was an employee and currently on duty wasn't he? He had to help more than just her! She would accept his invitation though, just so long as she wasn't butting into his schedule...

"Of course it's okay! And really, I have not had many customers. I'm starting to think this job is boring. That's okay. It's fun to try things." He laughed a little, wondering if he should explain monthly job day to her... maybe... not... not right now. We'll see.

"Really, I promise, it's fine. Make yourself at ease. Really, if you wanted, I'd let you keep the bookstore." He said. Someone who appreciated real knowledge deserved a bookstore and he was PRETTY sure he had enough money to buy it. Still, that was an odd amount of work even for a best customer. Hm.

Th..The whole bookstore!?

Ikue tried not to show her surprise at Yui's words, though her eyes had widened slightly; he definitely didn't need to do that...even if it sounded outright impossible. He didn't, even in impossible standards it was too much!

"If you're sure it's okay then..." She would take him up on his offer, he seemed sure it would be alright so she would believe him. She guessed since he didn't have that many customers to deal with, it would be alright to sit and have a talk with him. That way he wouldn't have to just sit at the front desk all bored!