Closing on a Wednesday hadn't been an overly planned thing, more an admittance to the fact that he needed at least one day a week off, and that given how busy the weekends were, it would need to be sometime during the week. Monday had been his first idea, what with the exhaustion after the weekend, but it turned out a lot of people were miserable on Monday mornings and wanted (needed) their coffee fix, so he'd stayed open then as well. Friday had been the next idea getting a day off before the weekend rush. Sadly, that had been thrown aside as well, since people wanted coffee to celebrate the last day of the working week with a good cup of coffee. On Thursday, people were lagging and needed coffee to get through to Friday, and so on and so on, until he'd only really had Tuesday and Wednesday left to pick from.
A bigger place would have stayed open all seven days, and he idly wondered if he should be looking towards that too. In the end, he decided against it. Maybe in the future (if there was a future) when he had more staff. It wouldn't be something that could be fixed in the short term though, since even if he took on two or three people to man the store, they'd be screwed if something happened and he wasn't around to fix it. Whoever was in charge on the day would need to know how to run the diner in and out, and that meant he'd need to have had them working for him for a couple of months at least. The dreams of a `seven days a week` diner were a little out of his reach right now, but that was fine. Things were going okay as they were.
And here he was, still thinking about work on his day off. "I'm such an idiot," he groaned out loud, sat at a table at someone else's café, and doing his best not to pick and judge at every little thing they did. They had nice chairs and tables. They had a seating area outside good idea. Their waiters weren't bad, but one of them was less happy than the others and it kind of showed. Also, the menus were pretty boring to look at and- No, no, no. It was his day off. No working, no planning, and definitely no spying on rival companies.
Switching off, he'd found, was hard. The whole week, he'd been looking forward to having a day to himself, but by the time it came around, he was lost on what to do. The first idea had been to sleep in, but his internal clock had woken him up at five, and then proceeded to screamat him by six. Back home, he'd regularly slept late, and often had his sisters wake him up on the weekend. Here, however, his body seemed to have gotten used to rising early, and now felt like it was dying if he wasn't up before the sun. So, he'd given in made breakfast, cleaned his apartment, turned on the TV, gotten bored of the TV, and then gone down to clean his diner again. Anything he could to make the time go by, really. Come to think of it, that's pretty sad… when did I stop being fun? With a sigh and a groan, he put down the newspaper he totally wasn't reading and sipped his muck. Atlesian Black – the worst of the worst, and a reason why it would be the only drink he was having at the place, friendly staff or no. He'd thought to ring his family up and check on how they were doing, but it turned out his sisters were at work or school, and his father on a hunt. He'd spoken to his mother, who had sounded distracted and tired (since he'd called at seven in the morning). She'd wished him well and tried to muster some enthusiasm, but it was clear he'd caught her at a bad time and he'd promised to call again later when everyone was around. That would be sometime closer to six in the afternoon.
"Only ten more hours to go," Jaune sighed. "Great…" He couldn't even spend some time with Ruby and her team since they were at school, and when he'd wandered off to see if Miltia and Melanie were up and around, he'd instead found an exhausted and sleepy goon at the entrance to the club. The man, quickly recognising him, had warned him that the twins had been up late partying, and that friend or not, he'd be in real trouble if he woke them up before at least three in the afternoon. Everyone had something to do, it seemed, everyone but him.
It was with those thoughts that he pushed off the seat, leaving behind enough lien for the bill and a small tip for his waiter, who had at least had the presence of mind to ask him how his day was and smile at an answer he probably didn't care about. He'd tried, and that was what counted. Had he been paying more attention, he might have seen the disaster before it occurred. Sadly, he wasn't – and it was with a startled feminine cry that he looked to the side and realised he'd stepped directly into the path of two running women.
"Look out!" one of them yelled.
The warning was for the girl in front, not him, and she cursed as she realised how close they were. She was practically on top of him, and there was no time for him to dodge, but she somehow managed to slam a heel down at the last second and twist to the side. The girl behind her did the same, yelping and dodging at the same moment, pushing past him on his right as the first went by on the left. Both were off-balance from trying to avoid him, and both suffered predictable fates for their gracious actions. Jaune winced as they crashed to the concrete, spilling out with arms and legs across the sidewalk, and instantly drawing the attention of anyone nearby. No one moved to help, of course. They just stared, snickered or walked on by with a `tut` and a roll of the eyes.
"Dodged him," the girl on his left groaned, pushing herself into a sitting position and pushing her sunglasses back up her nose. "At least I think I did. Hey," she looked him up and down. "You okay? You're not hurt, are you?"
Jaune blinked back at her. He cocked his head, and then turned in the other direction to look at the brown-haired, rabbit-eared girl laid face-down on the sidewalk and mumbling something into the granite. He looked back to the first, also on her back, also a little scuffed. He, by comparison, was fine. "I feel like I should be the one asking you that…"
The girl with the glasses laughed and stood up. She brushed some hair back from before her face, then walked over to her friend and hoisted the faunus up with one hand. "Good eyes, Velvet. If you hadn't shouted out, we might have had to explain why we ran down some civilian."
"We shouldn't have been running anyway," the girl, Velvet apparently, complained. Her eyes widened and she spun around to face him. "Are you okay, sir? We didn't hurt you, did we?"
Jaune's eye twitched. "Again, I feel like I should be the one asking that. I'm fine. You two just… well…" He pointed to the pavement. "Thanks for not running into me, I guess, but are you sure you're okay?
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