You entered the burger shop, ten minutes early for your first day working there. A mixture of nerves and excitement filled your stomach; you wondered what your boss and co-workers would be like. You'd never actually met any of them before, as there hadn't been an official interview before you were hired. The application process had revolved around filling out an application, and then there was a quite extensive background check- but you'd never spoken with anyone involved in the business in person before now.
Whatever you were expecting, the reality was quite different. There were only a few occupants in the shop at the moment, though that wasn't too surprising considering it was mid-morning and any potential lunch rush wouldn't begin for another hour at least. Plenty of time to adjust to the place. Probably. Of those who were in the shop, there was a tall, cheerful looking skeleton wearing a suit and waiting behind the counter, as well as a few monsters of varying species seated at random tables. Some were eating, and some were occasionally sipping from a glass and taking advantage of the free wifi.
"You must be the new employee! Right on time- a little early actually, which is great! You must be as passionate about burger creating as employees of this fine establishment are expected to be!" the skeleton announced. You walked over, stepped behind the counter, and waited for him to explain what your role would be. "I will give a brief explanation of how everything works before I have to leave for a job- Uh, forget I said anything!" Well, that was a bit suspicious, but you decided not to worry about it.
"Okay," was all you said, glancing around the shop some more. There were all the burger preparation materials you would expect to see, with plenty of space for preparing the food, behind the counter. In the seating area, there was a fair number of tables and chairs. The shop looked oddly undecorated, though. Aside from the menu, nothing adorned the walls of the shop. Then again, it was a relatively new restaurant, so perhaps they just hadn't had time to set anything else up.
"First, the burgers!" the skeleton continued, before giving a step-by-step demonstration on how to make a simple burger, talking through what to add for different specials. After that, he discussed making french fries, onion rings, and the other items on the menu. Once he was finished, he smiled. "Great! You're ready! Now, I have to go, but my brother will show up eventually to check on you. Don't expect him to be much help though, he's really lazy." With that, the skeleton headed out the door, not giving you a chance to say anything else.
At first you weren't too concerned. Then you realized there weren't any other employees around. Which meant you would be in charge of filling everyone's orders... alone. Suddenly you were a lot more nervous than excited. Fortunately, only one or two customers showed up in the following hour, and while you'd been bracing yourself for a lunch rush and the absolute insanity that was sure to follow, nothing of the sort happened. There was the occasional customer, but there was never more than two people in line to order at once. You were confused (but also very relieved) about this, and wondered why there weren't as many customers as you'd been anticipating. Maybe the people in charge of advertising were really bad at their jobs? Come to think of it, you'd never actually seen it advertised. You'd just seen a "Currently Hiring" poster stuck in the window of the restaurant building one day back before it opened, and decided to apply.
Anyway, you certainly weren't complaining about the lack of customers considering you were the only employee present at the moment. You had to wonder whether there was supposed to be other employees and they just decided not to show up, or if this was going to be a usual occurrence. If it was the latter, the fact this didn't seem to be a very popular shop would probably be a source of great relief until more employees were hired.
Eventually, another skeleton walked in, this one significantly shorter than the other. "sup." the skeleton said, sitting down in a chair near the counter. "you must be the new employee."
"Yep. Nice to meet you," you reply, wondering if he noticed or cared about the lack of customers. After all, without customers, the business wouldn't stay open for long, and though you didn't have a lot of experience with restaurant finances, this didn't seem like a healthy amount of customers.
"pass me the ketchup, please?" the skeleton asked. A bit confused, you pushed a bottle of ketchup towards him. The skeleton immediately began drinking from it as if it were a bottle of soda. You decided not to question it, considering he was probably co-manager with his brother or something. The last thing you needed was to be fired on your first day of work.
After he finished off the ketchup, the skeleton fell asleep. You decided not to question this, either. The taller skeleton had said he was lazy, so this was probably not that unexpected anyway. By the end of your shift, the short skeleton was still asleep, and no other employees had shown up, so you were a bit uncertain on what to do. There weren't any customers at the moment, so you considered closing the shop for the day, but figured that might annoy the skeletons. Maybe the employee for the next shift was just running late? It wasn't like you had any plans, so you might as well wait a bit longer before deciding anything.
About twenty minutes later, the taller skeleton rushed in. "Wake up, lazybones! I've been trying to call you for the past ten minutes!" he shouted, shaking the shorter skeleton awake. "The boss says-" at this point, the taller skeleton noticed you were still there. "Didn't your shift end?"
"Well, yes, but no one came to take over the next shift so I figured I'd better stay..." you explained.
"Ah, well, you are the only employee..." the tall skeleton replied. "Feel free to just leave at the end of your shift." You blinked. That seemed a bit unusual... It was almost as if the skeleton wasn't really concerned about the restaurant at all. Only hiring one employee, telling them to just leave when their shift ended, whether or not anyone else was around at the time. What was going on here?
Oh well, it wasn't your place to pry. "Alright... Well, uh, see you later," you said, walking towards the door.
"See you!" the tall skeleton called after you, echoed by the short one in a sleepy tone.
When you arrived at the shop for your next shift, the tall skeleton was nowhere to be seen. The short one had fallen asleep at a table again, and there were no customers. Glancing around, you noticed a small sign in one of the windows. You headed back outside to read it, and saw it had the words 'temporarily closed, come back at 11:00' hastily scrawled on it. Had the skeleton literally closed the shop until your shift started? Laughing to yourself a bit, you headed back inside.
The day went quite similarly to the previous one; a few customers entered from time to time, but there was no lunch rush, and barely ever a short line. The short skeleton eventually woke up and left without a word, leaving you to wonder why the skeletons were so unconcerned about the shop once again. They were leaving it completely unattended aside from a single employee, and even if it wasn't a very popular restaurant someone could still potentially decide to rob it. Which you hoped wouldn't happen since you weren't likely to be able to stop any robbers from stealing anything by yourself, and you doubted the customers- if there even were any at the time- would do anything to help you. Maybe one would call the police, but that still wouldn't be much help at the actual moment the robbery was taking place. This was becoming a rather stressful job, not due to workload but due to the fact that someone could literally show up any minute and rob the place and you were the only employee around. However, there was no way you were going to quit over it; you hadn't even been there a week! Surely things would get better. They'd hire another employee at some point. Right?
A week went by, and nothing changed. At one point, you nonchalantly asked the taller skeleton (the shorter one was usually asleep if he was there, which made it hard to ask him anything) whether they had plans to hire more employees.
"Nope!" the skeleton replied. "You seem to be handling everything just fine." Well, the customers, yes, the anxiety over whether or not the shop would be robbed, not so much.
"W-well, I meant more along the lines of someone to watch over the shop, especially when it's not my shift..." You'd actually arrived at the shop one day and there hadn't been anyone there. It had led to quite a bit of panic as you rushed around the shop to make sure nothing had been stolen or damaged, though neither of the skeletons had seemed particularly concerned about it when they'd showed up later in the day.
"Don't worry, it's not necessary." the skeleton said reassuringly. Either he was wayyyy too trusting of people in general, or he was hiding something. While he definitely appeared the overly-trusting type, you doubted that was all there was to it. Something didn't quite add up about this shop.
During your entire time as an employee, you'd never seen more than two or three customers in line at a time. Even new restaurants generally ended up with lines longer than that around lunch time. Even though this one wasn't one of the popular fast food chains, you still would have expected a larger line at some point. Furthermore, you would have thought the skeletons would get in trouble for leaving the restaurant unattended, or attended by only one employee, as often as they did. Then again, perhaps whoever their boss was didn't know about it? You supposed that was a possibility. After all, you certainly hadn't told the boss about it- you didn't even know who the boss was, actually- and none of the customers had any reason to.
"Are you sure?" you asked, uncertain. It was getting more stressful to be the sole employee by the day, and you'd really been hoping that this conversation would lead to another employee being hired.
"Of course! The Great- I mean, I am always sure!" the skeleton replied. What.
Then you realized you'd never actually been introduced to either of the skeletons. You didn't know either of their names. Normally you wouldn't be concerned by this, but after a week of steadily increasing anxiety, you were significantly more freaked out by little things like that than you would be otherwise. "What were you about to say?" you asked.
"Who? Me? Nothing!" the skeleton said hastily. "Anyway, I must be going now! Bye!" That was another thing. Where were they going, exactly? What was so important they had to keep leaving the shop they were presumably hired to watch with little or no warning and even less of an explanation?
The skeleton hadn't returned by the time your shift ended, and neither had his brother. However, you weren't leaving until you got answers, even if you were waiting here for another three hours.
Exactly two hours and fifty minutes later, the door was thrown open and the two skeletons rushed inside along with a fish monster who they appeared to be carrying. Upon looking closer, you saw a large red stain on the fish monster's shirt. Wait, was that blood?
"Don't worry! You'll be fine!" the taller skeleton told the fish monster.
"Of course I will! Gonna take more than that to get rid of me!" the fish monster retorted, sounding quite determined though her voice came out in a much weaker tone than she probably intended.
Though you had no idea what was going on, you did know that if she was in pain, you had to help. So you rushed into the food preparation area and gathered a bucket which you filled with water, along with a literal ton of napkins (which were the closest thing you could find to a towel in your rush) and ran over to where the skeletons had placed the fish monster on the counter.
That was when you saw the bullet in her side and almost screamed, using all your willpower not to. She'd been shot. When? Why? What was even happening anymore?
"great, thanks kid- KID? what are you still doing here?" the shorter skeleton demanded as he took the napkins from you, not even waiting for your response as he began the tense process of carefully removing the bullet.
Suddenly getting answers about the shop and its lack of employees was the last thing on your mind. "That can wait! What happened?" you asked, worried about the fish monster. She was going to be okay, right?
"Don't worry about it! You shouldn't be here right now!" the taller skeleton spoke up, allowing the shorter one to focus on his task without interruption.
"'Don't worry about it'? How can I not worry about it?!" was your response, and you stared back at the taller skeleton. There was no way you were leaving until someone explained what was going on.
"Hey, since when did we let a human into the mafia?" the fish monster asked, seeming to have just noticed you were there.
"..."
Both skeletons and yourself became silent at this, just looking between each other.
"The... mafia?" you finally asked, unable to take the silence anymore, and half-hoping you'd misheard her.
"kid you should probably leave now-" the shorter skeleton began.
"Wait, you let a human into the mafia and didn't even tell them it was the mafia?" the fish monster asked.
"We didn't let them into the mafia! We hired them to work at the shop that's a front for the mafia." the taller skeleton explained calmly.
"Are you insane?" she questioned, looking completely serious.
"No." the taller skeleton claimed at the exact second the shorter one said, "yes."
"SANS!" the taller one shouted.
"bro!" the shorter one spoke up hurriedly.
"OOPS!"
Honestly, you were a bit scared. No, 'a bit' was an understatement. You were working for the mafia? Should you quit? Was it even possible to quit? At least now you knew why the skeletons were being so secretive, though maybe you would have been better off not knowing...
"Well, what are we gonna do now?" the fish monster demanded.
"Ask them nicely not to tell anyone?" suggested the taller skeleton.
"We can't just let them go! How do we know they won't tell anyone?" the fish monster argued.
"well we can't just keep them here, people will think we kidnapped them!" retorted the shorter skeleton- Sans?- with a shrug.
"Can we really trust a human not to say anything?" the fish monster replied.
"I won't tell anyone," you said quickly, trying not to look like you were inwardly panicking over the possibility of being kidnapped and/or trapped in a restaurant for the rest of your life.
"works for me," Sans said.
"Me too!" agreed the tall skeleton.
The fish monster opened her mouth to argue, then sighed. "Fine. Whatever. This is on you two, I take no responsibility for this."
