All that Noa wanted to do was stay as far away from Hikaru as possible.

She didn’t go looking for him when she came into work three days a week; in fact, she sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t work with him at all whenever she went in. All she wanted to do was come in and earn a little extra money to supplement her scholarship money for the semester; if she never saw Hikaru again it wouldn’t have been soon enough. But the universe didn’t seem to agree with her. Every shift that she had worked for the past week and a half she’d had the misfortune of working with Hikaru, either in the same department or in the same building, at least. She even went a step further and did her best to avoid him once she realized that they were working together, but they always seemed to run into each other over the course of five hours, and, just like dogs fighting over territory, or natural born enemies, they would fight at least somewhat every time.

The universe wasn’t satisfied with her effort to steer clear of him, either; this was evident when she showed up to work her closing shift, only to find that it was her, Hikaru (who usually only worked morning shifts), Amanda and a manager working for the night. Her only saving grace was that she had been designated as the cashier that night, which kept her isolated up at the front of the store, while Hikaru did whatever it was that Hikaru did – rob kids of their lunch money? Boil live puppies, maybe? – far, far away from her. It was slow, except for the occasional student looking to stock up on a very specific snack or last minute necessity that they couldn’t get at the corner store nestled amongst the Houses, but Noa was glad for this; she used her downtime to do a little homework, reading Black Like Me in order to keep up with her History class. This activity and the distance made it extremely easy for Noa to forget that Hikaru was even there; she kept her attention on her book, her customers and her phone as she texted Frankie Caldwell about the Algebra class that they took together.

It wasn’t until she heard the higher pitched, whiny tone of a flirting girl nearby that she turned her attention away from her book and phone, looking up reflexively and doing a quick scan of the store, in search of the speaker. She could feel her face settle into a slight frown almost immediately as her eyes located the source of the voice; it was none other than Amanda, smiling and laughing up into the face of Hikaru, of all people. He worked diligently as she spoke to him, the brunt of his attention focused on the sales tags he was taking off of and placing onto the shelves. Noa wasn’t even enti