Pᴇʟᴀʀɢᴏɴɪᴜᴍ ᴄʀɪsᴘᴜᴍ {open
Petunia grabs a basket and squares her shoulders before walking further into the grocery store. It runs for 24 hours and smells weird, but she doesn’t expect a place that sells everything for less than ten dollars to smell fresh like flowers. Truthfully, the female dislikes shopping but does it because it’s necessary to survive and no one will do her shopping for her. She especially dislikes this store, but it’s cheap and the closest to the complex she lives in. Despite what the sign says name of the store is, everything is not sold for a dollar like the others, but they do have a wider range of things, so it’s okay depending on whatever she’s getting.
She never gets a lot, just packets of ramen and a few sodas and waters and chips, maybe a pack of candy or two if it’s something that she craves. The store isn’t big and doesn’t have a lot of people considering the time of night it is, not that it’s late. Oddly enough, the store is usually more packed around midnight than nine at night, so she guesses it’s mostly college students that come here needing a quick snack to get themselves through studies for the night.
She collects her things quickly, knowing exactly where to go without really looking having frequented the certain aisles enough times. By the time she reaches the ramen, the basket is nearly full and weighs heavily on the crook of her elbow where it rests, but Petunia deals with it.
Her head tilts when she notices that the shelf in front of her is empty and looks higher up, immediately frowning at the sight of the ramen packets on the highest one. With a sigh, the female stretches her hand to reach, fingertips barely brushing against the packs. She returns to both feet and frowns again and stares for a few seconds before trying again. She’s stretching as far as she can, cursing her short height all the while. Still trying to reach the desired item, Petunia turns her head, soon locking eyes with someone else.
Feeling embarrassed, she steps down with a small laugh and steps back a few steps to give them room. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to get in your way.”
Zuko is really kind of bad when it comes to food. He's picky, likes the finer things in life, not to mention he worries about his colon as if his youth won't take care of it. His body is a temple, mostly because he's hoping that a healthy body will at least pave the way for a healthy mind--
The validity of that theory is still pending, by the by.
But lately he's realised it isn't feasible to live like he's still dependent on his parents. Of course, his current situation isn't dire, but-- when it comes to Uncle, Zuko is always just a little bit less thoughtless.
So he'd excused himself from home at an odd hour of the evening to go grocery shopping. For himself. And that in itself was enough to warrant praise, because Iroh sent him off with a sleepy smile and a warm pat on the back as if Zuko had made some sort of grand leap in his life.
Granted, maybe Uncle was just proud of him for leaving the house past 5pm. Zuko doesn't make plans or do things, really-- once, having been eyed by a girl in the tea house for a short while, he found himself on a date, and it was probably around that time that he decided going out wasn't exactly his strong point.
('How do you like your job?' She asked, and he said 'It's okay.' 'What do you like to do for fun?' She asked, and he said 'Nothing.')
Maybe Uncle was hoping that 'grocery shopping' was some sort of secret code; surely it wouldn't be the first time the old man had read into something that wasn't there. Zuko's words hardly ever go deeper than the surface, and on that note, he feels himself frown a bit deeper underneath the flourescent lights lining the tall ceilings.
He found himself constantly sifting through the aisles, picking out things and then putting them back because-- well, what was he supposed to get? Milk? Eggs? Rice noodles and tamarind extract for the chow fun that was such a common dish in his household? What did college students eat? This all leaves a deep, contemplative scowl across his face and he lifts his eyes to peer down between shelves of canned soup and instant lunches.
This is it.
Yes, this is precisely it, he realises, some part of his mind opening as if suddenly enlightened by a hidden chakra. Not the frozen dinners, but the ones that have been dried and preserved-- the nonperishables that last forever and come at forty cents a unit. In the midst of it all, he is staring-- a girl in a lavender cardigan is inching her toes up to reach at something.
Top ramen, it looks like. She can't even touch the packaging on her own. Blinking, he wordlessly starts to lift his hand and is beyond a start when she speaks, as if people couldn't speak in grocery stores somehow. (It is deadly quiet in the place, for whatever reason.)
"No..." Zuko blinks twice, once at her, once at his hand, still half up in the air. His mouth is open for half a second longer before he closes it, then opens it, then gives up and just grabs a few of the packages off the top shelf and hands them to her.
He closes his eyes, flustered only with himself and grumbles to her. "I was trying to help you."
