SOUR CANDY | killua z. ✔

29 | pit

tw: sen gets thwacked a few times (what else is new) but it's not really malicious, descriptions of blood and injury of a child, & sen's moral ambiguity jumps out

SEA JADE BATHHOUSE, INARIYAMI ISLAND

"I THOUGHT the doctor put you on bedrest," Sen said as she tied her apron.

Kalani, her very pregnant cousin, looked up from the beverage recipe booklet.

"Brat," she stared at Sen coolly. "Keep talking and we'll see who needs bedrest."

"I'm not scared of you." 

Kalani thwacked her shoulder with the booklet. She followed up with a vehement lecture in Japponese that made the nearby child workers wince.

"And re-read the recipe booklet," Sen's cousin gave her one last thwack. "We added some new drinks while you were gone."

Sen, grumbling and rubbing her shoulder, acquiesced. She looked at the first recipe and frowned. As she flipped through the rest of the booklet, her irritation mounted.

"Who fucked around with the recipes?" She slapped the booklet on the counter.

"Yuta, probably," said Kalani, inspecting the blender for lingering stains. "He was the one who took your shifts. Is it that bad?"

Sen spent years perfecting those recipes. Her peers always ribbed her for the obsession with numbers, but it was economically beneficial, damn it. These people threw all their jenny at the smoothie counter for her Pina Banana 2.0's. 

"Tch. All the ratios are wrong," she snagged a pen from under the counter, viciously scribbling out Yuta's 'corrections'.

She hadn't tried the new drinks yet, but if Murasaki Yuta created them, they were definitely shit.

Sen was going to kill him.

"It's nearly eight," Kalani reached over and snatched the pen. "Get another yogurt tub from the kitchens before morning rush."

"Why can't you get it? I'm busy planning a murder." Sen made an unsuccessful grab for the pen. 

"Because I'm the one reporting your hours to Ito-san."

Touché.

Sen made it halfway to the kitchens when a younger girl ran up to her. 

"Inoue Sen, I'm sorry for disturbing you," she bowed politely. "But one of your siblings got into a fight."

Sen groaned. Damn short-tempered idiot. "Kotaro can handle himself."

"Uh, no, not him," the girl shifted uncomfortably.

The symbol on her uniform shirt pocket indicated that she was a laundry worker.

Mai worked in laundry.

▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁

"Blood!" Yamamoto cried. "Blood in the laundry room!"

Some child workers hid behind laundry carts, watching the spectacle curiously. Others were stiffly completing their tasks.

Much to Sen's surprise, not only did Mai get in a fight, she initiated it. Sen held her little sister to her chest, pressing an ice pack to Mai's bruised cheek. The other girl was being tended to on the opposite side of the laundry room.