Caught Red-handed +Ruyi
Ctnd from here with @mpxruyi
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“Then one should strongly consider gaining employment,” the surgeon says as he puts back the book that the young girl had seemed content to attempt to stuff under her shirt.
He had only noticed because he himself was in the very same aisle of the very same section in the very same book store, and he sighs as he looks at the cover of the book. It would seem also looking for the very same book. To think an infant with eyes bigger than her brain most likely would have a fascination with the medicinal properties of certain fungi. Ruyi eyes her with the same level of suspicion that one eyes a spider in the corner of a room- he has to know.
“Did you intend to read the book for its contents or are you one of those terrible and wasteful brats that is stealing for the sake of stealing from a place littered with rarities?” he interrogates her. Her answer could be the very thing that gets her the book though most likely not in the way that she had planned. “If I took that book right now, bought it and you never got the chance to see it’s pages, would it upset you really?”
*~*~*~*~*
“I have a job...” Anise watches with dismay as the book leaves her grasp and returns to the shelf. There’s no way she can afford that particular book, not with her current budget, not until she stops being a student or gets a second job. The first won’t be for a while and the second sounds unappealing at best. She would never have any time for sleep if she did.
Something about the man gives Anise the creeps, which is pretty unusual. Must have something to do with his god parent, she decides. Her eyes sweep from the re-shelved book right down to the floor where her gaze would burn a hole if her shame at being caught had turned into a physical beam. How embarrassing. She can only hope this stranger won’t rat her out or she is sure to get fired. Stealing a book from her own workplace? There would be no getting hold of the book then.
His first question brings her gaze up, but her eyes don’t raise higher than his shoulder even though her brows furrow in response. “Why would I steal a book I didn’t intend to read?” she asks with genuine confusion. She’s almost taken aback by the question. Of course she wants to read the book. If she didn’t she would have no use for it.
His next question is the first thing to push her into upset. Anise’s eyes flick up to meet the stranger’s for only a moment, but it’s long enough to give her the shivers for two very different reasons; she already hates eye-contact, but something in this stranger’s eyes is...unnerving. Weird. Creepy, even. Anise begins to hum softly, a physical manifestation of her obvious discomfort. She stops the noise only long enough to reply. “Yes.”