IshiMondo Collection

‣ major malfunction [part two]

Kiyotaka did his job just fine on his first official morning after training.

He had arrived with the garage boss, in his car, after having spent the night at his place. Boss-man didn't trust this area enough to leave the expensive persocom there overnight and Mondo didn't blame him one bit. Kiyotaka was dressed a bit too formally for their workplace— nicely pressed jeans and a crisp white button-up— but that was all Fujisaki had. It was better than dressing him in the boss' oversized sweatpants and ratty t-shirts.

The boss took the day off, more or less, to go get more parts and things and left the new persocom at the front desk instead. Kazuichi suggested that maybe it was too early to leave him by himself, but the boss said he'd only learn by being thrown headfirst into the thick of it. Kiyotaka insisted that he would be alright.

Mondo's work wasn't especially hard that day. He was fixing motorcycles, so he could just sit down instead of having to roll underneath of something on his back. He also happened to like working on motorcycles. Most days. Other days, it made his mind wander back to stuff he preferred not to think about.

His head was so firmly in the clouds— stormy grey ones, if he had to describe it— that he didn't pay much attention to Kiyotaka. Whenever he tuned in, he would barely register the persocom's voice, perhaps a bit too loud, speaking to customers, whether in person or on the phone.

"Look at that!" Mondo heard one of their regulars, an old lady, coo. "You must really be moving up in the world if they were able to afford something like you!"

"Not so! I was found in the garbage!" Kiyotaka said cheerily.

The customer didn't really know how to respond to that. Maybe Kiyotaka didn't know what he was supposed to keep to himself. Honesty was supposed to be admirable, wasn't it? How would he know any better?

Once that customer was gone, Kazuichi pulled Kiyotaka aside and tried to explain the concept of "leaving certain things to the imagination". Kiyotaka said that he understood and that he would be more careful from then on, but Mondo wasn't so sure.

Fujisaki had said that Kiyotaka didn't know where to draw the line. Mondo got to see firsthand what he meant. With the next customer, Kiyotaka was intentionally vague. About everything. He'd taken Kazuichi's words far too literally and left the customers wondering if their appointment had actually been scheduled or not. This time, Miu had to take him aside and explain that he was only supposed to keep something to himself if it was unnecessary or could be upsetting while Mondo clarified things for the confused customers.

That seemed to set things straight. Kiyotaka acted normal enough for a while. But Mondo's lunch break came, and he looked over in that direction to find that when Kiyotaka didn't have anything specific to do, he just... sat there, completely still, and stared into space. It freaked Mondo out.

"You know, y'don't have to just sit there doin' nothing," he shouted at him from the other side of the garage as he grabbed his lunchbox from the mini-fridge. "If there's no calls you could always just clean up or somethin'."

Kiyotaka looked horrified as he spun around.

"But what if the phone rings and I'm not there?!"

"Just... stay within earshot. In the garage area. Go an' grab it if it rings. Simple."

"Understood! I shall clean."

Mondo assumed that Kiyotaka knew what to do, somehow, and didn't look over to see where he had gone after hearing him get out of the creaky chair. He nearly yelled when he turned around to find the persocom standing directly behind him, gazing up at him with unblinking eyes and waiting for something. He didn't think the machine could move so quickly, especially without making any noise.