Through Potions and Books it's still, you isn't it?

Chapter thirteen

After the first dinner the four had spent on the rooftop together, everything seemed to go uphill. Tommy spent three more days at the tower before he deemed his apartment and the area around it safe again. For him to feel safe. There had been no further incidents, no people with red eyes or the man stalking him during the times he left the tower unsupervised and Tommy finally felt like going back to his flat again. Logically, he knew that he wasn't in too much danger, after all, one of the SBI kept hanging around his apartment and it's not like he was defenceless. He was a vigilante and his ability was more than helpful in the worst-case scenario after all.

The bookshop had also opened up again which meant he finally had something to do during the daytime again. When he first entered the shop again he found that nothing much had changed. There were a couple new bookshelves, some of which looked much less out of place than others, and Techno had also installed a new ceiling light for whatever reason, but other than that, not much had changed. He soon found himself falling back into the old rhythm, getting up early to open up the shop, help out customers and recommend the latest titles, reorganise the storage, you name it.

Funnily enough, he and Techno were the only ones working in the shop for a while as Niki was absent, she had taken time off according to Techno, which was absolute bullshit of course. The woman rarely took time off for anything. It didn't help her case that Nihachu suddenly popped up during the day shifts to ask for a small coffee to go, almost as if he was taunting him. Quite rude if you asked him, but he assumed Techno didn't know about her second profession, so he kept his mouth shut. Today wasn't any different.

"You're not slick, you know?"

"Am I not?" She asked, a friendly smile on her face.

"Not at all," the teenager huffed as he finished her order, "coming in here to taunt me about having to work in a lame bookshop while you're out there kicking the arses of wronguns."

Nihachu laughed, already reaching to grab her coffee, eyeing the name scribbled on the paper cup. It was one of the various variations of misspelt 'Nihachu', this time 'Nichachu' simply because he knew that would amuse the woman. And he was right, she snorted again before taking a sip, then quickly pulled out a ten-pound bill and put it on the counter.

"Keep the change," she said with a wink and then swiftly left the shop. Tommy smiled to himself before putting the bill in the register, pocketing the change just like the heroine had told him to. They hadn't talked about the entire 'identity reveal' at the tower at all, the teen had just accepted her to be a hero once he noticed that nothing changed in their dynamic. She was still friendly towards him and he was still friendly towards her. Sure, it was a little weird seeing the coworker you got to know as a rather shy person as the badass heroine who fought big-time villains like Jester from Las Nevadas, but it also meant he got to cheer whenever she kicked him in the balls.

The rest of his shift went by uneventfully, there hadn't been many more customers after Nihachu so Tommy mainly tended to the plants on the window sills and cleaned up the break room. He scrunched his nose as his eyes fell on the sofa, painful memories of the disgusting illness crawling up again. With the memories still clouding his mind, the teen swiftly walked into the bathroom and grabbed the small bucket and cloth from under the sink. He'd have to scrub the sofa, if not to get rid of the germs then at least to get rid of the make-up stain on the fabric.

Unfortunately scrubbing didn't do much to the fabric, no matter how much soap he added to the water or how much lemon extract he added from the small fridge in the corner of the room, the stain wouldn't budge. If anything, it seemed to have only gotten worse.

Well, an attempt was made. This was Techno's problem now.

The pink-haired man had just walked into the break room as well, stopping in his tracks when the smell of lemon and the weird floral scent of the soap hit him. He eyed the teen, who had still been crouched before the sofa, the bucket with slightly dirty water to his right, the green cloth in his hand. Techno's eyes then flickered over to the clock on the wall, which had shown that it was well past six already and with that well past Tommy's time.