2025-08-27: Strange Things Are Afoot at the Triple Seven
- Log: 2025-08-27 Strange Things Are Afoot at the Triple Seven
- Cast: Umie Akabane, Yoko Hirano, Kurou Ryouhara
- Where: Shibuya - Triple Seven Convenience Store
- Date: August 27, 2025
- Summary: Umie's job brings her into contact with the /weirdest/ customers.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Umie isn't supposed to have her phone on her when she's on the job.
However, the phone, being an older model (specifically not a smartphone) passes under the radar as it sits just out of sight under the cashier register counter, the view of it sheltered by the hot foods display from any passing eye of other staffers.
At least it's a relatively quiet period; there's nothing she specifically needs to look at, so down her eyes go, trying to glance at the glowing square of light to decipher some words.
..... (+bbread 5/31 for info)
Holy crap, it actually happened.
.... Did they all.. do this?
Is it right that they did it? To force a man to confess his sins...
She wishes she could glance and read more, but her boss is looking out; Umie feigns ignorance by adjusting her hair buns.
She can't even *talk* about it; to talk about it is to convey connection, and interest, and ughgh the next rush of people will be here soon!!
<Pose Tracker> Yoko Hirano has posed.
Sliiiide. Pin-pon~
The tread of sneakers on the tile is a little slow, the weary kind of shuffle that comes from the double sin of a long day on one's feet and flagging energy reserves. Yoko Hirano, art student and Tokyo native, trudges in from the evening streets. Her Gekkoukan uniform marks her as being a ways from home, and the heavy messenger bag slung over one shoulder might be a goodly part of what's got her so weighed down.
Ugh... school all day, then taking the train here to study some more...! Her hands are smudged with graphite, a few unfortunate scuffs of the stuff present around the edges of her skirt, and forget about keeping her blouse clean - there are fingerprints on it! And her hair looks like it could use a good combing too, but that might just be the texture.
A stop by the refrigerator section for a bottle of jasmine tea and the shelves for a packet of hand wipes, and Yoko trudges up to the counter. Mmmm... hot food...
Her eyes follow the rollers with a glazed over kind of interest. Has she even seen Umie, standing right there???
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
Kurou Ryouhara has been here the whole time.
He's still in his uniform from Kasu High, but has pulled on his grey hooded vest over it for reasons that aren't entirely apparent given it doesn't have the sleeves to keep him especially warm. Given Kasu's reputation, it's possible he'd be doing it to deliberately disrespect his uniform.
But the loudest thing about him is his stare as he surveys the products, eyeing each one more critically than the last until finally picking up a box of cookies from the shelf. But another thought appears to vex him as his brow deepens. Kurou checks his phone -- a green smartphone with the screen cracked, and the back of it covered in scuffs and scratched off stickers -- it runs out of the last of its battery and goes blank. Oh.
He approaches Umie at the counter. "Excuse me. Do you know if Triple Seven gifts are supported by the Konan detention center?" Not all prisons allow gifts, and of those who do, it's usually only specific, approved convenience stores, and particular items.
...Which the prisons would be more aware of than the stories, probably!
But even in the midst of asking this question, his gaze starts to wander to the hot meat buns on display, and his eyes get just a little bigger... which is how he ends up sort of colliding at the counter at the same time as Yoko.
Kurou takes a step back and bows at a perfect forty-five degree angle. "... My apologies."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Pin-pon~
"Welcome to the Triple Seven," Umie answers, rattling off a short welcome by rote in response to the sound of the doors opening.
... Wasn't there someone else in here, come to think of it? As distracted as she was, she doubts she would have-- ah, there's that weird resonance.
Two Persona users in the store that she doesn't know. Crazy. Gekkoukan uniform, and... the grey hooded vest covers the uniform of the young man, who comes up to ask an odd question.
"I'd have to check... I think so?" Umie starts, swaying her body behind the counter to try to get her co-worker's attention. Alas, they're on break--
Umie's phone jostles to the ground from the massive i m p a c t.
"H-hey, you two okay?!" Umie's body leans over the counter, confirming that Persona user #2 is at least alright, given his extremely deep bow, but the other...?
If Yoko's down for the count, Umie will free herself from the shelter of her counter (after stashing her phone away secretly) to get a better look. "Hey, is your head's okay? No dizziness or anything, right??"
No potential concussion will get by with Umie on the clock. She's too used to being paranoid over them as it is!
<Pose Tracker> Yoko Hirano has posed.
Voices talking about something that doesn't concern her. Prison gifts? It's sad. She didn't even realize that maybe you could bring gifts to a prison though. She should buy a meat bun. No, she should buy two. A meat bun and a vegetable one. It's got leeks and corn. It'd be sweet.
And then-- whump.
Fortunately, her low center of gravity and the fact that she wasn't moving let Yoko get off easy! She stumbles back a single step, but doesn't fall. But still, it's a little disorienting! And it made her forget about the vegetable bun!
"Uh-- sorry," she apologizes too, bowing right back. Her angle isn't that perfect. She was probably in the way...
Wow, the boy who ran into her is stylish. The cashier, too, but in a more casual way. Yoko picks up the wipes that she dropped (oops) and carefully places them on the counter, along with her bottle of tea. "I'm okay. It was just an accident." Is it more than the usual kind of bad news if someone gets injured in a combini? Does the cashier get in trouble too?
"Um. Um, I want to buy some food," Yoko continues. Look, see how healthy and non-concussed she is! "Two nikuman. Please."
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
"Thank you," Kurou says as Umie goes to check, despite the oddity of his question.
The packaging on this bag is ideal for his next gift, but the plan's dead in the water if Triple Seven isn't an approved store... But he thought his phone's battery would last longer. It was at half before, and then suddenly drained... (Well, it's very old, isn't it.)
Unfortunately, THE COLLISION. But thankfully, he doesn't knock Yoko into a concussion.
"I am unharmed," he reports to Umie, as if there was some sort of battle afoot and not a bump. Oh, the girl did drop the wipes she brought, though... She does appear to be out of it, and the cashier seems quite concerned.
Kurou reaches into his inner vest pocket and produces a packet of smelling salts, looking intently over Yoko for signs of distress, paleness, and any restless anxiety that may indicate an oncoming fainting spell.
... As if the intent, blank stare of his is not cause for unease.
also he just carries those around apparently
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
There is a certain stylishness to the otherwise ordinary Triple 7 clerk: the light makeup that adds just enough pop of color without it being overwhelming, the ash blonde hair (obviously dyed), and the nails, colored red violet this time, a shade that seems dark until it hits the light, just so. It sets off the uniform and cap nicely, if such a thing were possible.
Seeing the two (especially Yoko, due to how Kurou seemed to be okay when she was moving from behind the counter) alive and well despite her _terrible earthshaking accident_, Umie clears her throat, realizing how awkward her actions just were. "Ah, yeah, just... checking."
Kurou, however, also seems to be concerned. "... Well, aren't you a gentleman?" she says with a small half-grin at Kurou, as he whips out some admittedly antiquated smelling salts. "But it looks like she's good, unless she wants a whiff for good luck's sake..." A bit of sardonic humor, but not meant at Kurou's expense, it seems, as his heart's in the right place.
Even if he may not be entirely with it, gaze-wise. She takes a moment to look at Kurou now, wondering if *he's* the one she should be examining, when Yoko asks for some food.
"O-oh, yeah. Right on it." She's slipping back behind the counter, and gets out the two nikuman, bagging them up. "Have you tried the pizza buns? They're very good." Nice, normal conversation, with two other Persona users, who do not know she is a Persona user. Do they know that they're Persona Users to each other?
It'd be fascinating to find out, but impossible to do.
"My boss is on break, so I can't check just yet," Umie offers Kurou. She's never done it before, somehow, either. Maybe her boss'll say 'no' and she won't have to pretend she knows what she's doing? Only one way to find out!!
<Pose Tracker> Yoko Hirano has posed.
Don't worry, Umie! Yoko seems unharmed and more importantly, unbothered by your hasty jump to first aid mode. Nobody knows you're a worrywart! In fact, Yoko is so very extremely busy arranging the things she wants to buy that she very nearly misses something on the other side of the counter - her eyes snap up towards Umie, but all she saw was... a flap of cloth or something, maybe. Not real, not there. Residual, she categorizes it, and doesn't worry.
The bone thing trying to chew its way into the bun display is a little more distracting, anyhow. (Don't look at it don't look at it.) Besides, the boy is staring at her. And holding something. Salt? Yoko, glad to have something to look at besides bone thing, turns her own seldom-blinking gaze onto Kurou.
*jiiiiiiiiiiiiii*
"A whiff?" Yoko squints at it a bit, finally breaking the stalemate. "Is it air freshener?" Wouldn't that be kind of overwhelming, laid out over the aroma of fast food and floor cleaner? If he opens it and it's gross she's gonna retreat...!
The package with the food inside is hot, almost too much so. But it feels good, too. Her fingers are a bit stiff. Yoko remembers to dig into her messenger bag for a wallet shaped like a novelty fish. "Thank you. I haven't had one. Maybe next time I'm in Shibuya."
Complete the transactiooooon. She wants to clean her haaaaaands. Everything will taste like pencil...!
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
With Kurou's nails painted blue -- except the yellow on his ring fingers -- and the same color streaks in his hair, he presents a contrast to Umie's warmer palette. Perhaps this is fitting with his stiller energy to Umie's urgency, but...
... But Yoko sees Gashadokuro. A Persona, a skeleton made of skeletons, far too massive to fit within the area comfortably. There's only its giant head and huge hands, clawed around the nikuman display as it gnaws at it. It pauses, craning the skull around to look at Yoko with haunted eyes of bright gold, maw open in a silent scream.
Then it goes back to gnawing.
Kurou blinks owlishly at Umie as she mentions luck, then regards the smelling salts with a faint squint. "... I was unaware of this superstition." He regards Yoko again, as they mirror one another in forgetting what blinking is, and that most people do that. It's jiiiii in stereo.
"Smelling salts," is all he says. He does not open it.
On closer examination, it does seem Kurou's eyes are a little sunken, and though his complexion is naturally on the darker side for a boy of Japanese descent, there's an ashen nature to it. But he's alert and standing. So it's... probably fine?
"I see..." Kurou murmurs with Umie's answer to his inquiry. He looks to the cookies with an intense thoughtfulness. It would be a waste, if he's not sure, but he wants to maximize the time he has to tamper with the packaging. Sometimes the glue doesn't set right.
But Gashadokuro keeps gnawing the display. So hungry...
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Kurou himself may have experienced that appearance of a resonance from Umie during that brief burst of alarm, though it's unlikely not in the same unorthodox way as Yoko.
The resonance resolves itself, tucking itself in tidily like a folded cloth into a drawer, unseen, unknown. Tidy and polite, until the battlefield calls for the Badb to arrive.
The Triple 7 is the opposite of a bloody battlefield, unless someone gets a nosebleed in aisle 3. (The Badb does not care for delicious Nikuman buns, but Umie does.)
Umie stands there, looking around to see if there's something around her that they're staring at. She does not notice the Gashadokuro's... manifestation to Yoko's senses.
They're staring in stereo. Do *they* know she has a Persona? Or is it...
Umie itches her right cheek with a fingernail. "... You're... not here to try to buy my work badge, are you?" She can only give in to temptation so many times without it making her boss angry! "Strict policy, no selling work badges." There's even a sign for it, hand-written, which Umie points to.
Besides, it's her means of protection! .... She thinks.
She finishes ringing up Yoko's packages, and unfortunately-- her boss is back.
"Oh yeah, seems we do. Can you handle it, Akabane-kun?"
"U-uh sure." (She's never done it before...)
She looks at Kurou, trying to keep the look of a deer in headlights from falling over her expression.
Instead, she projects the next best thing: a *confident* deer in headlights.
<Pose Tracker> Yoko Hirano has posed.
This has been a pretty bad week for 'terrifying things that shouldn't be there, staring at Yoko'. It's almost enough to make her consider asking to review her Risperidone dosage. Almost.
"...Are smelling salts lucky?" she blinks. Finally, the horrible basilisk gaze is broken! She turns it on Umie's work badge next, but it doesn't become A Thing again, thank god. "Is it... I thought it was only Seven Sisters' crest that keeps away the Joker Killer." Yoko isn't even sure she believes in that rumor. It sounds weird and unlikely! Why would a serial killer, even a magical one, be scared off by a logo? It isn't that noteworthy of a design or anything!
Yoko hands over the appropriate amount of money, but rather than take her things and leave she immediately opens the packet of hand wipes and starts scrubbing at the pencil lead all over her hands. She has the good grace to move a little out of the way so Kurou can do whatever it is he does, but not by much.
And then she uses another one. And another one, this time dabbing at her clothes wherever she can see a grey smudge. Is that... actually helping...??
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
If Kurou does recognize resonance, he does not visibly react to it. Granted, he is not particularly animated at any point in time. Or is his just too loud? It's quite large, as Persona go... though perhaps only Yoko right now has a sense of that. Deeper resonance suggests Kurou's a walking corpse, but he's clearly alive. The dissonance is a quirk of his signature.
And the staring is a quirk of Kurou.
"Evidently," he tells to Yoko of salt luck. Maybe it's a new kind of Rumor he hasn't heard about yet...? But it could simply be an older legend.
His stare shifts from Yoko to Umie, unblinking. With Yoko. The gaze is unbroken, but now is double twice the power against Umie herself. "No. Thank you." That wasn't an offer, she just said...! "... Are you worried?"
About the Joker Killer. Hey, maybe that isn't a normal question to ask people.
Kurou easily slots in where Yoko moves away, unbothered by her cleansing her graphite debuff. As far as he's concerned, maybe this is entirely normal. (And why wouldn't it be?)
He sets the bag of cookies on the counter. "Then this with verification, please. ... And two nikuman." Pause. He jiiiiiiis at the display now. "Vegetable."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"Nah, nah," Umie says quickly, waving a hand. "It was just a joke. Smelling salts are... not particularly anything lucky or unlucky."
"W-well, it's a newer rumor, since--" Should Umie be openly be talking about how she was attacked by the Joker Killer? ... especially since it's difficult to explain how she survived? Then again, saying 'a group of Persona users were nearby and warded him off' seems to work, but that...!
There's now a Kurou staring at her, at double strength. Is she worried? "There was, uh, a rumor, about... an attack here recently, but that person got away, because... of the seven. Seven Sisters, 777..." Umie trails off. (You can't fix a rumor by yourself, Umie. The rumor will be whatever it wants to be, like a cat. You may've ruined it, even.)
"It's nothing," she concludes, giving Yoko her buns and change. "Here you go. Please shop with us again." Please do not associate a serial killer with our brand.
"Alright. Uh, Aoki-san, can you take this over?" Umie finally asks, allowing her co-worker come from the back to take the verification process in her stead. "... Ah, so... Right." She watches Aoki-san go through the process, while handling the two nikuman. "Gotcha... Okay, I'll surely remember that." She will not.
Ringing up Kurou's order completely, Umie bags the nikuman up, handing the complete order to Kurou. "There we go. Please, shop with us again."
Ah, this may be weird, but she's worked Satomi Tadashi during the Dark Hour. Demons are interesting to have as customers...
But even then, people still seem to rise to the challenge.