♚♚♚
AFTER that, Rock saw Ebel off as he left for home.
Then she headed to her shop, where a whole bunch of unwelcome customers came in droves after she opened her doors—as she feared.
“Krister Gionet told me to come here.”
The lowest of the low came crawling out of the slums into Floria Clothes Shop as if they had conspired together to do so beforehand. Their orders varied from cheap custom-made pieces to the purchase of ready-made garments, but whenever Rock told them the price, they looked uniformly dissatisfied.
“Krister doesn’t charge that much!”
“This is our standard price. We won’t keep a tab or give discounts either,” Rock decisively stood up to the customers’ dissatisfaction—she wasn’t going to undercut herself. “Of course, we confidently guarantee the quality of your purchase.”
“Ya talk big for a little brat. Yer ripping me off, aren’t ya?!”
As for the customers who started throwing around threats, Phoebe would roll up his sleeves and show them out—peacefully or by force. Anyone who dared badmouth him found themselves chucked out the door the next second, yelping in pain. Thanks to him, Rock wasn’t directly harmed.
Her shop, however, suffered huge losses just by having that sort of customer lined up out front.
In addition to wasting her valuable time, they scared away decent customers who actually paid.
“…What the bloody hell?! They’re obstructing business!”
Phoebe was reasonably annoyed by having to deal with dozens of unwelcome customers all morning. Complaints flew left and right from his rouged lips.
“Damn Krister! You sure that little punk isn’t lying about being busy? What’s the big idea, sending all his trash our way?!”
“But His Excellency saw him working through the night.”
Rock had already told Phoebe all about her run-in with Krister the prior night. They could complain all they wanted, and it still wouldn’t get them out of this one.
“My little girl is the better tailor by a mile! That customer must be a crazy cheapskate to place an order with that bastard instead of you!” Phoebe huffed in an indignant tone, his parental bias showing. “I can’t stand for this a minute longer! Let’s go take our complaints directly to the perpetrator!”
“That’s not a bad idea. Our shop is doomed if this keeps up any longer.”
Rock was all for it.
It was really going to damage business if she couldn’t get him to at least stop sending his nastiest customers her way.
✦ ✦ ✦
♚♚♚
ROCK and Phoebe closed up shop just before nightfall and headed for Hawker Square on Market Street. That was where Krister usually set up his stall. They searched for their frustrating business rival in a frenzy but couldn’t find him for some reason.
“Krister? He packed up his things just past noon,” another stall keeper told them. He seemed surprised by it too. “He almost always hawks his wares, even if he has to set up in the middle of the road. He seemed distracted and closed early today.”
“…I wonder if he got the jump on us,” Rock whispered in Phoebe’s ear.
“You got away this time, Krister,” he snorted. “Tomorrow, you won’t be so lucky!”
They returned to the shop discouraged, vowing to get vengeance the next day.
But Rock and Phoebe never got a chance to level Krister with their complaints.
Despite visiting Hawker Square every day for a week, they never saw the silver-haired tailor again.