The first time she meets the woman, it's when she's on a shift for Mukuro's general store.
Well. They call it a store. Certainly its wares are very general, in the broadest possible definition of the term. Chrome almost isn't entirely sure if it counts as any kind of store, instead being a more board sort of dumping ground for the varied and occasionally strange. She thinks it actually might be a pawnshop instead, only she can't really prove it. She just has no idea where Mukuro picks up half the things that he does for "Kokuyo Land", a deceptive store that looks small from the outside but which she thinks might actually take over a few of the neighboring buildings and possibly even go underground. A part of her kind of wants to call them a thrift store, honestly. Some of the things they carry in the neon-lit gloom seem second-hand, if not third-hand, or twelfth-hand. At the same time, there's no denying the fact that they carry what seems to be... literally anything.
In one corner of Kokuyo Land, Ken has set up what is basically a gas station pitstop but without the gas, or the cars, but with plenty of pre-packed or prepared foods that are mostly unhealthy save for the sparse amounts of fruits and water bottles Chikusa insisted he carry on hand for selling. If she can be certain about nothing else, Chrome is pretty sure that Ken eats most of the snacks he's actually supposed to sell. Maybe that's why there's an insistence on some actual healthy foods, which he never even bothers to sniff at.
Chikusa has claimed just about most of the basement- or the first level of the basement? Even after a year of working at the place, Chrome is sometimes a little unsure of how big it is or how many floors it actually has, a fact which isn't helped by the constantly changing inventory. At least Chikusa's section of the shop is perhaps the most stable section of the whole building, if perhaps the darkest and most bizarrely lit. Neon signs are a regular sight within Kokuyo Land. In fact, they're the primary source of light for most of its interior, with even the front windows having been blacked out with thick paint that Mukuro has decorated with grim skull and owl imagery. However, the light is still fairly manageable on her floor all things considered, and Chrome rarely has a problem there. Downstairs? Is different. Downstairs is even darker, with the glare of neon being almost blinding in some ways, but placed in a few select spots. The rest of the light actually tends to be blacklight, which doesn't help with how many mirrored surfaces are down that, compromising even shelves or CD racks, while a low throbbing dubstep pounds up from the ground. It's horrendously easy to get lost down there, which she thinks might be on purpose so that Chikusa doesn't have to sell some of his DJ equipment. Or, really, interact with people at all. The only reason he even goes upstairs or sees the sunlight is because Ken occasionally dives down into the depths to drag him out again. Unlike literally any other human being, Ken never gets lost. Mukuro tells her he relies on following Chikusa's scent trail like a dog. It's hard to tell if he's joking when he says that.
That just leaves the entire rest of the store, stocked at Mukuro's discretion and interest. A lot of it is almost bizarrely mundane, the kind of things which could be found at any quick grocery store like baking soda, canned pasta sauce, noodles, or even things found at dollar stores, such as bags of glitter, cheap plastic cups, and painkillers she's not entirely sure they can legally sell. Somehow, that only makes all the weird objects stand out even more. The first thing she ever was introduced to when she began working at the place was a glass coffee table, curved in an unusual shape, with two skeletons holding it up while one skeleton tried to choke the other with one hand. These days, she's not sure if it's still in the store. If it is, she's not been able to stumble onto it again. Another notable example was a giant T-Rex made out of dozens of specifically colored balloons that Ken had adored before it had inevitably been bought for what Chrome thinks might have been a children's birthday party. In a surprising twist, when he bothers to be dragged out of his EDM music hellhole, Chikusa seems to have a fondness for the homeware they've collected such as a vast collection of mugs that can be both simple or strangely complicated, or a soft green pillow with plush mushrooms "growing" out of it. As for Chrome? The longer she's worked there, the more things she's found interesting, but one of her favorite things would be the collection of strange transparent Christmas ornaments that tend to be filled with things such as snake skins or the skulls of small animals.
It's hard to say if there's any item in particular that Mukuro likes. Presumably it's literally everything in the store.
A normal person would wonder if such a... peculiar business model could really succeed in any way, let alone thrive, yet Mukuro has somehow made it work through a combination of factors. First of all is the impeccable and bizarre social media presence him and Chikusa maintain together, with the latter patiently maintaining all the essential housekeeping while the former oozes out his unique brand of charm and humor that somehow seems to attract people. (Chrome can't really judge. After all, she's here.) That's enough to get regular tourists wandering through the store on any given day, and even occasional people who live in the city sometimes visit for a unique gift. Secondly would be that there seems to actually be some sort of method to all the strangeness, because there are actually fairly regular customers who drop in for their more mundane items or a quick grab of food. Mukuro has somehow managed to find just the right location where they're nearer to some people than any of the grocery stores, filling in all the little niche areas that local delis don't usually stock. And finally, well... Chrome has to admit that Mukuro certainly sniffs out any and every chance to twist his way, such as the multiple times when he's lied to various ghost hunting shows.
...Well. She supposes she can't really says it's a lie. If there's any one modern place in the entire country that could be haunted, it would be Kokuyo Land. Chrome can't say she's ever personally experienced a haunting but she'd also be the first person to admit that she's desensitized to all sorts of bizarre sights, sounds, and smells that can be found in the entire building from top to bottom. Is it a ghost? Ken scuttling among the shelves and furniture on all fours with an umaibo stick held in his teeth? Is it Chikusa lurking like a long dead Victorian era ghost looking for their murderer, when really all he wants to know is what time it is because his watch broke? Is it Mukuro hanging up what may or may not be a real skeleton right behind regular and unaware visitors so that they scream when they turn around and see it, because he finds it funny?
It's a mystery.
Regardless of the exact methods, everything seems to have somehow worked, and, not only is there a fairly regular stream of customers, but Chrome has found that it's been the most diverse group of patrons- or people in general- that she's ever had to deal with. There are the average tourist types, looking for a neat story or a fun memento of the time they went into whatever one could reasonably call Kokuyo Land, and then there are the people who are just there to gawk and giggle in ways Chrome is all too familiar with from her time in middle school. A lot of the time there are the gothic types, or the punk types, various niche groups who find what they're looking for in the wild darkness the shop seems to embody and who all often seem to offer Chrome their phone numbers. There are even some collectors of varying types who drop by, hoping to stumble across a rare or interesting find. Some people even become collectors after spending some time there. And then there are the regulars who are just there to pick up some salt, grumbling all the while about Mukuro's bad taste in.... everything.
So it's nothing new when she hears the small computer ding go off, letting her and everyone else know that someone has come through the front door. Chrome doesn't even bother to look at the security cameras. All she does is stay curled up in the extremely comfortable chair which functions as the cashier's station, fiddling with Love Nikki on her phone. Sometimes people end up wandering into her view, or actually purposefully seek her out, and other times they end up wandering, lost, throughout Kokuyo Land. On rare occasions, they end up at Ken's register to get slobbered on by Bon. Chrome is content to stay within her Schrodinger's Expectations. If someone shows up, then they show up. If they don't, they don't. Yet even with that work philosophy in mind... She still doesn't expect what ends up swanning past the shelf full of knit toys that all looks like vivisected small animals.
It's a woman, much taller than Chrome, and she realizes most of the reason for that would be the mile high platform boots that are on her feet with every centimeter covered in a deep amount of glitter. They match the visor on her face, worn even indoors, and the fingerless gloves coating most of her arm. There are leggings underneath what look like a pair of transparent shorts, also covered in glitter, and a scale-patterned bikini top. All of this would... definitely be some sort of look all on its own. What it's literally topped off with, however, is the woman's hair style: everything completely shaved clean save for a extremely short and straight set of bangs, and what looks like an 'S'... tattooed on?
For the first time in a long while, Chrome has some questions.
As she does with most of the customers that come in through the store and in direct conflict with normal retail sense, Chrome doesn't interact right away. Instead, she watches with a wide eye partially from behind the cash register as the woman stops in front of a small rack of hanging necklaces. One in particular is a round pendant filled with glitter, small plastic pink pearls, and a rodent's skull. With a sort of reverent delight, the woman delicately hooks her finger through the chain and pulls it up to admire in the neon light. It's only whens he looks over her shoulder that Chrome realizes there's a man following right behind the woman, holding up a camera and dressed in fairly normal hipster fandom. Yes, including the fedora. Or trilby. Chrome has never learned the difference and doesn't care enough to.
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1
Well. They call it a store. Certainly its wares are very general, in the broadest possible definition of the term. Chrome almost isn't entirely sure if it counts as any kind of store, instead being a more board sort of dumping ground for the varied and occasionally strange. She thinks it actually might be a pawnshop instead, only she can't really prove it. She just has no idea where Mukuro picks up half the things that he does for "Kokuyo Land", a deceptive store that looks small from the outside but which she thinks might actually take over a few of the neighboring buildings and possibly even go underground. A part of her kind of wants to call them a thrift store, honestly. Some of the things they carry in the neon-lit gloom seem second-hand, if not third-hand, or twelfth-hand. At the same time, there's no denying the fact that they carry what seems to be... literally anything.
In one corner of Kokuyo Land, Ken has set up what is basically a gas station pitstop but without the gas, or the cars, but with plenty of pre-packed or prepared foods that are mostly unhealthy save for the sparse amounts of fruits and water bottles Chikusa insisted he carry on hand for selling. If she can be certain about nothing else, Chrome is pretty sure that Ken eats most of the snacks he's actually supposed to sell. Maybe that's why there's an insistence on some actual healthy foods, which he never even bothers to sniff at.
Chikusa has claimed just about most of the basement- or the first level of the basement? Even after a year of working at the place, Chrome is sometimes a little unsure of how big it is or how many floors it actually has, a fact which isn't helped by the constantly changing inventory. At least Chikusa's section of the shop is perhaps the most stable section of the whole building, if perhaps the darkest and most bizarrely lit. Neon signs are a regular sight within Kokuyo Land. In fact, they're the primary source of light for most of its interior, with even the front windows having been blacked out with thick paint that Mukuro has decorated with grim skull and owl imagery. However, the light is still fairly manageable on her floor all things considered, and Chrome rarely has a problem there. Downstairs? Is different. Downstairs is even darker, with the glare of neon being almost blinding in some ways, but placed in a few select spots. The rest of the light actually tends to be blacklight, which doesn't help with how many mirrored surfaces are down that, compromising even shelves or CD racks, while a low throbbing dubstep pounds up from the ground. It's horrendously easy to get lost down there, which she thinks might be on purpose so that Chikusa doesn't have to sell some of his DJ equipment. Or, really, interact with people at all. The only reason he even goes upstairs or sees the sunlight is because Ken occasionally dives down into the depths to drag him out again. Unlike literally any other human being, Ken never gets lost. Mukuro tells her he relies on following Chikusa's scent trail like a dog. It's hard to tell if he's joking when he says that.
That just leaves the entire rest of the store, stocked at Mukuro's discretion and interest. A lot of it is almost bizarrely mundane, the kind of things which could be found at any quick grocery store like baking soda, canned pasta sauce, noodles, or even things found at dollar stores, such as bags of glitter, cheap plastic cups, and painkillers she's not entirely sure they can legally sell. Somehow, that only makes all the weird objects stand out even more. The first thing she ever was introduced to when she began working at the place was a glass coffee table, curved in an unusual shape, with two skeletons holding it up while one skeleton tried to choke the other with one hand. These days, she's not sure if it's still in the store. If it is, she's not been able to stumble onto it again. Another notable example was a giant T-Rex made out of dozens of specifically colored balloons that Ken had adored before it had inevitably been bought for what Chrome thinks might have been a children's birthday party. In a surprising twist, when he bothers to be dragged out of his EDM music hellhole, Chikusa seems to have a fondness for the homeware they've collected such as a vast collection of mugs that can be both simple or strangely complicated, or a soft green pillow with plush mushrooms "growing" out of it. As for Chrome? The longer she's worked there, the more things she's found interesting, but one of her favorite things would be the collection of strange transparent Christmas ornaments that tend to be filled with things such as snake skins or the skulls of small animals.
It's hard to say if there's any item in particular that Mukuro likes. Presumably it's literally everything in the store.
A normal person would wonder if such a... peculiar business model could really succeed in any way, let alone thrive, yet Mukuro has somehow made it work through a combination of factors. First of all is the impeccable and bizarre social media presence him and Chikusa maintain together, with the latter patiently maintaining all the essential housekeeping while the former oozes out his unique brand of charm and humor that somehow seems to attract people. (Chrome can't really judge. After all, she's here.) That's enough to get regular tourists wandering through the store on any given day, and even occasional people who live in the city sometimes visit for a unique gift. Secondly would be that there seems to actually be some sort of method to all the strangeness, because there are actually fairly regular customers who drop in for their more mundane items or a quick grab of food. Mukuro has somehow managed to find just the right location where they're nearer to some people than any of the grocery stores, filling in all the little niche areas that local delis don't usually stock. And finally, well... Chrome has to admit that Mukuro certainly sniffs out any and every chance to twist his way, such as the multiple times when he's lied to various ghost hunting shows.
...Well. She supposes she can't really says it's a lie. If there's any one modern place in the entire country that could be haunted, it would be Kokuyo Land. Chrome can't say she's ever personally experienced a haunting but she'd also be the first person to admit that she's desensitized to all sorts of bizarre sights, sounds, and smells that can be found in the entire building from top to bottom. Is it a ghost? Ken scuttling among the shelves and furniture on all fours with an umaibo stick held in his teeth? Is it Chikusa lurking like a long dead Victorian era ghost looking for their murderer, when really all he wants to know is what time it is because his watch broke? Is it Mukuro hanging up what may or may not be a real skeleton right behind regular and unaware visitors so that they scream when they turn around and see it, because he finds it funny?
It's a mystery.
Regardless of the exact methods, everything seems to have somehow worked, and, not only is there a fairly regular stream of customers, but Chrome has found that it's been the most diverse group of patrons- or people in general- that she's ever had to deal with. There are the average tourist types, looking for a neat story or a fun memento of the time they went into whatever one could reasonably call Kokuyo Land, and then there are the people who are just there to gawk and giggle in ways Chrome is all too familiar with from her time in middle school. A lot of the time there are the gothic types, or the punk types, various niche groups who find what they're looking for in the wild darkness the shop seems to embody and who all often seem to offer Chrome their phone numbers. There are even some collectors of varying types who drop by, hoping to stumble across a rare or interesting find. Some people even become collectors after spending some time there. And then there are the regulars who are just there to pick up some salt, grumbling all the while about Mukuro's bad taste in.... everything.
So it's nothing new when she hears the small computer ding go off, letting her and everyone else know that someone has come through the front door. Chrome doesn't even bother to look at the security cameras. All she does is stay curled up in the extremely comfortable chair which functions as the cashier's station, fiddling with Love Nikki on her phone. Sometimes people end up wandering into her view, or actually purposefully seek her out, and other times they end up wandering, lost, throughout Kokuyo Land. On rare occasions, they end up at Ken's register to get slobbered on by Bon. Chrome is content to stay within her Schrodinger's Expectations. If someone shows up, then they show up. If they don't, they don't. Yet even with that work philosophy in mind... She still doesn't expect what ends up swanning past the shelf full of knit toys that all looks like vivisected small animals.
It's a woman, much taller than Chrome, and she realizes most of the reason for that would be the mile high platform boots that are on her feet with every centimeter covered in a deep amount of glitter. They match the visor on her face, worn even indoors, and the fingerless gloves coating most of her arm. There are leggings underneath what look like a pair of transparent shorts, also covered in glitter, and a scale-patterned bikini top. All of this would... definitely be some sort of look all on its own. What it's literally topped off with, however, is the woman's hair style: everything completely shaved clean save for a extremely short and straight set of bangs, and what looks like an 'S'... tattooed on?
For the first time in a long while, Chrome has some questions.
As she does with most of the customers that come in through the store and in direct conflict with normal retail sense, Chrome doesn't interact right away. Instead, she watches with a wide eye partially from behind the cash register as the woman stops in front of a small rack of hanging necklaces. One in particular is a round pendant filled with glitter, small plastic pink pearls, and a rodent's skull. With a sort of reverent delight, the woman delicately hooks her finger through the chain and pulls it up to admire in the neon light. It's only whens he looks over her shoulder that Chrome realizes there's a man following right behind the woman, holding up a camera and dressed in fairly normal hipster fandom. Yes, including the fedora. Or trilby. Chrome has never learned the difference and doesn't care enough to.