A Seed of Hope [Kaede, Violet]

After months of being either rejected or ignored, Kaede had finally managed to get accepted for a job as a server. It wasn't the best work, nor was it something she had any real sense of passion for, but, it was something. She was getting paid, she was able to feed herself, but most importantly...she wasn't useless. She wasn't just some deadweight in Ehefra's place. She finally had a job, she was finally able to properly try and get back on her feet.

But, server work was far from sunshine and rainbows. People yelled at her, insulted her, gave her nasty looks on a daily basis. She was always the one to blame for whatever went wrong. But, she was used to it. She gave her best customer service smile, no matter how much she wanted to flip the table, break off a leg, and bash someone snobby asshole's head in with it.

One day, however, she was waiting a table, and...

"Hey, you look familiar..."

"S-Sorry, you probably have just...mistaken me for someone else."

Kaede's fingers tightly laced around the tray, praying that they would buy it.

"Nah, nah, I'd recognize that cuttin' board look anywhere. As well as..."

All of a sudden, Kaede's skin crawled and her blood run cold, feeling a hand reach up to smack, then squeeze her ass.

"That ass. The one thing that was actually kinda nice about you. Well, outside of you being pretty cheap for a whore. Then again, couldn't charge much with that skin-and-bones look."

Kaede quickly brushed his hand away, taking a few steps back and huffed quietly.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you're mistaken."

The man gave her a smug, knowing expression, despite how firm she tried to be, but, she tried her best to shrug it off. Throughout the rest of her shift, she noticed the man leering at her whenever she walked by, but, he didn't say anything else. Like he was some kind of bad luck charm, her tips ended up being as shit as they usually were, made worse by her boss requiring all the servers pool their tips together and having everyone take a percentage of the total.

But, she couldn't complain about it. She needed this job. So, walking outside through the back as she untucked her uniform shirt, having half a mind to kick the dumpster, but refrained. As she was about to start walking home, suddenly, she was grabbed from behind, then shoved against the wall. The guy from before had followed her out.

"Get the fuck away from me, you-"

She didn't get to finish before she was slapped across the face. Then, the guy said something in her ear that made her freeze -- that she should go along with it, if she didn't want her boss to find out that they hired a whore. She tried to fight back, but the guy was taller and bigger than her, and no amount of thrashing she tried did her any good. Her attempts to get free only got more and more panicked as she heard the rustling of clothes and felt a hand go up her skirt, before the guy just gave up and started pulling it all down.

Even if she kept getting smacked whenever she nearly got free, it didn't stop her from trying. Her cheeks were already red from being slapped, but, just as she started to feel something press against her, the weight of the man suddenly lifted. In the midst of thrashing to try and get him off, Kaede stumbled from the displaced wardrobe and fell down, quickly scrambling to get back up.

To her surprise, it was...another girl. She was just beating and brutalizing the guy...and it didn't seem like she was going to stop. She slowly found herself pressing against the wall, eyes wide, unsure of what to do. On one hand, the fucker deserved it, but, at the same time, seeing her just hit him over and over...it scared her. Her voice only came out as a quiet whisper.

"S-Stop...you're gonna kill him..."

But, she didn't stop. Kaede doubted she could even hear what she was saying, and she was scared that talking any louder would just direct that anger to her. So, Kaede just kept her mouth shut, unable to pull herself away from the situation. Eventually, though, she finally stopped, and as Violet pushed herself up, Kaede's eyes went to her, managing to eventually get out something in response.

"...Thank you."

Kaede jumped at the girl's last act of violence, remaining as quiet as a church mouse as Violet put an arm around her. She went to stand and take a step forward, but stumbled, forgetting about her displaced clothes, and was quick to readjust them before wrapping her arms around herself. Nodding softly, she followed Violet around to the front of the restaurant.

"I'm...I'm okay."

She lifted a hand to quietly point at Violet's bloody knuckles, now sharing the other woman's expression of concern. She seemed weirdly fine for someone who just turned a guy's face into a pile of raw hamburg. That...was kinda scary. Either she had a really high tolerance for pain, didn't realize how fucked up her hands were, or...worse. She didn't want to imagine the worst.

"What did you hear, by the way...?"

As she fought, she had remembered him saying all sorts of nasty shit while he was tearing her uniform off. If she heard any of it, then, that was a whole new problem.

She didn't hear. Good, that was one less person knowing that she had to worry about. Though, it was entirely possible that this guy was gonna blab the first chance he got. She'd...just have to take that chance. She needed this job, and all she could do was hope that she wouldn't get fired for this. She sighed softly, trying to fix up her uniform as best she could.

Even though the size was supposed to fit her, because of how thin she was, it still looked baggy, like it was a size or two smaller than it should. The blunt question from Violet suddenly made her freeze up, looking at her like a deer in headlights.

"N-No...not anymore, at least."

The terrified look would slowly dissipate, turning to one of shame as Kaede's eyes went to the ground, rubbing her arm.

"...How could you tell?"

The mention of her weight instinctively made Kaede wrap her arms around herself, hunching over slightly, as if to try and make herself look smaller. Even when she was wearing something like this, someone could still tell that easily? She needed to get to her paycheck so she could try and eat more. Kaede's nails dug into her arm, her gaze only shifting from the ground as she heard that this girl had gone through something similar.

She scanned Violet up and down, noting the sheepish smile. She was probably clean for a while. How else would it explain her...sizeable assets? But, her attention was pulled away as Violet asked about cleaning up. The fact that she was still so unbothered about her own hands being bloodied and mangled, and that she wasn't reacting to the pain she would normally be in was...unsettling, to say the least.

"Well, I...could let you in here, but I dunno how well that would go over with my boss. Um...there's a gas station not too far from here, though. Does that work?"