As he pushed open the door hung with a Chimecho-shaped wind chime, the clerk hurriedly said, "Thank you for coming! Please visit us again!"
"Thanks," Ash called, holding the door open.
"Oh, your Pokéblocks are almost ready. Do you want to wait a little longer?"
Ash: "..."
After all that rambling earlier, now you tell me they're almost ready?
"About another half hour..." Chen Liyun's voice drifted out from inside the Pokémon Day Care.
Ash told Classmate Yang to head home first, planning to take the bus back himself later.
The clerk brought a chair out from behind the counter. "Here's a chair. Would you like to sit down?"
"Oh, no, that's all right. Thank you." Ash smiled politely and instinctively declined.
The clerk didn't insist. He merely hesitated, then asked, "Did you already know the manager?"
Ash shook his head. "No, we only just met."
"Oh... I see..." The clerk nodded in understanding. "Then, how did you meet?"
This clerk sure asks a lot of questions.
Ash gave the clerk a puzzled look, only to realize that he seemed a little nervous.
"My sister commissioned something from the manager, so she came over to check a few things with me."
"Oh..."
After getting an answer from Ash, the clerk stopped pursuing the subject.
Still, he kept trying to strike up conversations with Ash now and then. Awkward ones.
"Is your sister close with the manager?"
"I'm not really sure."
"What did your sister commission from her?"
"Pokéblocks."
The clerk pressed his lips together, feeling increasingly self-conscious after all those awkward attempts at conversation.
Chen Liyun had said half an hour, but an hour passed and they still weren't ready.
"...Could you please ask the manager roughly when they'll be ready?"
It wasn't that Ash couldn't wait. He just couldn't