The True Endgame

No.

It was Alice.

The moment they arrived at the pet store and found the cage with all the ferrets in it, an attendant was over in a flash and offered them sticking their hands into the cage to pet the ferrets.

Alice reached her hands in to pet them.

One of the ferrets, a fat one with white hair and a couple of black spots, immediately clung to her hand, climbed up her arm, and made it out of the cage before the attendant could stop it.

Since then, Alice has been so happy that she was, and still is, crying.

"Are you sure you"re alright?" Ryouta asks her.

Alice nods and looks up at him with teary eyes as the ferret rolls around on her lap. "Can – can we keep it?" she asks.

Serra and Ca.s.sandra look at Ryouta as well to wait for his answer.

They all want the ferret just as badly as Alice does.

Ryouta does, too, so he says, "Yeah, but it"s going to need friends."

"Do you already have a cage and supplies?" the shop attendant asks.

"Nope. Nothing. We"re… going to need everything."

"If you would like me to, I could go ahead and get together all of the recommended items for new ferret owners?"

"Yes, please!" Alice says.

Ryouta cringes at the thought. Usually, when an employee of a store offers something like that, they"re going to go and pick out all the most expensive things and include items that aren"t really necessary.

"I think we"re good. I already have some things in mind and know what we need," Ryouta says.

"Are you sure?" the attendant asks.

"My hero?" Alice says, earning a confused look from the attendant at her name for me.

"Yeah, we"re fine," Ryouta confirms.

"Alright! Come and get me when you"re ready to take this cute little guy home. I"ll be up at the front," the attendant says.

"Sure thing, thanks."

As soon as the attendant leaves, Alice asks, "My hero, why did you send her away? Would it not be better to use her a.s.sistance when she has more expertise in this than us?"

Ryouta pulls out his phone, searches for what ferrets need to have a happy home, and shows it to Alice. "We know what we need, we can look up reviews of anything as we look around, and we won"t have to pay for more than we need or expensive things that aren"t any better than the cheaper versions. When you accept offers like that, you"re accepting them to charge you as much money as possible, and I don"t want to spend more than we need to."

"Really?"

"He"s not wrong," Ca.s.sandra says. "They"re not trying to be greedy a.s.sholes or anything like that. It"s just their job to make sure we spend as much as we can."

"Don"t worry. It"s kind of adorable how naïve you are, you rich little princess," Ryouta teases Alice.

Alice pouts and then notices something. "The – the ferret is still on me," she says.

"Oh, yeah. Probably should have put it back in the cage before leaving us," Ryouta says before picking the ferret up much to Alice"s disappointment, holding it over the cage, and lowering it.

Then it bites his finger which makes him drop it.

The ferret is fine, but Ryouta"s ego is bruised and he looks around to make sure that none of the employees or other shoppers saw him drop the ferret.
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Alice looks shocked. "You dropped him!" she says.

"He"s – he"s okay," Ryouta says as he closes the lid over the cage.

"Must just be having one of those days," Ca.s.sandra says, looking over to the attendant now idly stocking a shelf.

"Yeah, s.h.i.t happens. They messed up, but not gonna worry too much about it. Let"s grab a shopping cart and get everything."

And so, that is exactly what they do.

They get: a nice, tall cage with multiple levels in it for the ferrets to climb around; water bottles for them to drink from as well as bowls to put their food in; one of the biggest debates ends up being how many toys to buy, and they end up filling up the entire bottom of the basket with toys and extendable tubes; they buy hammocks for their cage and litter for their trays; and they buy several different brands of food and snacks for the ferrets to so that they can experiment with which the ferrets like most.

"I… think we probably ended up getting more stuff than the worker would"ve gotten us," Ryouta says, looking over the shopping cart stacked high with various necessities and non-necessities for their future ferrets.

"I am still disappointed!" Alice whines. "Why don"t they have clothes for them? Mr. Chubs needs a suit!"

"Mr. Chubs?"

"The one I was playing with!"

"You already named him "Mr. Chubs?""

Alice nods and then goes back to pouting.

"You"re so silly. Anyways, I"m pretty sure you"re going to have to stick to the internet to buy things like that. Especially with how fat he is. I doubt they"d have clothes in his size here even if they had ferret clothes."

Alice pulls out her phone and starts ordering ferret clothes despite them not even technically owning any ferrets yet.

"This must be what it"s like to have disposable income," Ryouta says.

"I know, right?" Ca.s.sandra agrees. "I feel guilty even just buying all of this. I keep thinking "how am I going to afford food for the next month if I buy this?""

"Yeah – wait, what are we missing?"

"Cage, food, toys… I don"t know. Is there – where"s Serra?"

While Alice continues ordering ferret clothes, Ryouta and Ca.s.sandra look around for Serra.

She"s nowhere to be seen around them.

"I"ll look around for her," Ryouta says.

And so, Ryouta looks around for Serra.

He checks the fish aisles, stays away from the insect aisles but still peeks into them, checks on where the cats are, and finally checks on the worst section in the entire store: the bird area.

It"s in a closed off area from the rest of the store because of just how noisy all the different birds are inside of it.

"I don"t know how anybody could own birds," Ryouta says to himself as he looks around.

He finds Serra.

She"s standing in front of a cage looking a parrot face-to-face.

They"re just standing there staring at each other.

Serra opens her mouth and makes a noise, and then the parrot copies the noise back at her.

Ryouta doubts that she can tell the parrot mimicked her, but she"s smiling and looks happy nonetheless.

Serra looks over, sees Ryouta, and beckons him over. Then she signs to him to ask him if the parrot is copying the noises she makes.

Ryouta signs that the parrot is.

Serra smiles even brighter than before and tries making more noises for the parrot to copy.

Unfortunately, the parrot only copies the very first noise that she made.

Serra signs to Ryouta asking if it"s still copying her.

Ryouta doesn"t know whether to lie and tell her that the parrot is still copying her to make her happy, or to tell her the truth.

He"ll just ignore the question instead and answer by teasing her. "It says it wants a b.l.o.w.j.o.b," Ryouta says.

Serra reads his lips and snerks before lightly punching him in the abdomen. "Didhint cawpy me?" Serra asks.

"Sorry, nope," Ryouta tells her honestly.

Serra shrugs, waves bye to the parrot, and drags Ryouta back to where the ferrets are.

Back at the ferrets, the store employee has a few st.u.r.dy boxes ready to have ferrets placed in them.

"There you are!" Alice says. "I told her that we wanted all of them. There are only four, and they need friends, and I would feel bad about taking them away from each other!"

Ryouta initially wants to ask if she"s crazy for wanting to go from no ferrets to four ferrets, but then he remembers the whole "disposable income" thing which calms him down.

Plus, it"s not like they have jobs or anything, so they have the time to take care of the ferrets.

"Now we will each be able to name our own!" Alice says while excitedly watching Mr. Chubs get placed in one of the boxes.

Ca.s.sandra points at one particularly thick ferret with brown hair. "Is this one a boy or girl?" she asks the employer and gets told that the ferret is a girl. "Then I"ll name her… Lily."

Serra points at one of the ferrets which is pure white and signs that its new name is Shark.

That leaves Ryouta with the last ferret. "What about this one?" he asks the employer, and after the employer checks, he gets told that the ferret is a boy. A boy ferret with all black hair. "How about… Damian?"

"That"s way too human," Ca.s.sandra says.

"Lily is a human name, too."

"But it"s also a flower. Damian isn"t a flower."

"His name is Damian. So, we"ve got Damian, Lily, Mr. Chubs, and Shark."

"Sounds like a wonderful group!" Alice says.

Serra signs to the others that she"s going to train Shark to be a true shark, and that Shark will eat their ferrets.

None of them relay that information to the employee.