The day went smoother than she thought. Then again, it was as they had predicted with the slow day. Over the last two hours, there was only a grand total of four customers. She had no idea what was happening on Tuesdays, but it was practically deserted in here. Not that Alice minded considering that it was a nice change to hear music coming out of the speakers overhead for once.
They had rules of not having phones behind the register desk, but homework and textbooks were fine as long as one didn't forget the main reason they were sitting in the seat behind the desk in the first place. Both she and Noah had their working on different assignments only for Noah to glance over her shoulder to point out what she already knew.
"That's wrong," he said.
Alice huffed out a breath. "I was working on it. What would you do differently?"
Handing him her white calculator that was decked in cute stickers, she held her laugh at the foreign object that he seemed to be holding in his hands. He punched in the numbers that she had written down for her physics class which wasn't her forte, but she worked hard to make sure that the material would remain in her head.
His pencil easily slid across the sheet as he got the answer with ease, and she watched him carefully. More on his face, dragging her eyes down the side of his working jaw and the sharp edge of his nose. His hair was down which she preferred, and the long strands were in his eyes before they shifted over to her.
"Look at the paper, Alice. Not at me."
Alice coughed. "Sorry. What were you saying?"
He tapped the paper as he went over to the work that he had just done with his words going around in her head, and she covered her laugh as she slid a look to the side when he got irritated at seeing her random tangents on paper. "What were you even writing here?"
"It's a random grocery list that I didn't finish," she answered with a lilting voice. "Oh wait, what was I writing there?"
"Don't get distracted," he chided.
"Once again, I just wonder what is going on in your head," she said as she leaned her chin on her propped-up hand. "What do you do to study?"
"I don't," Noah muttered. "I don't have time."
"I remember you saying how you could memorize it all," Alice said. "You use all of your spare time to work so just don't overwork yourself, okay?"
"That's no problem on my end."
"Are you sure?" Alice snickered. "I'm glad to see your attendance rate going up."
"Glad to know that I practically have two class representatives on my heels."
Alice rolled her eyes knowing that Madeline did speak to Noah about the same matter a few times. "Do you go to cram school?"
"I don't," Noah responded slowly.
"Hmmm, I thought that you would have, but now I see it."
"My parents didn't bother with that, so I didn't bother asking," Noah expanded. "Not that I would like to do it in the first place."
She tilted her head at him. "You're fine without it."
Noah seemed as though he was going to say something, only to go back to the quick lecture that he wanted to finish. Alice sighed and tapped her pencil at a random beat knowing that it would tick off Noah since she personally also got annoyed by such measures, and it didn't take long for him to pause.
"Are you listening?"
She looked over at the glass doors waiting for someone to come in. There was no one there to placate her. His voice was low and deep as he continued, and she normally would listen intently, but these days there was definitely something up with her. She just couldn't pin it down no matter how many times she thought about it.
He spun her chair around to face the wall, and she burst out in laughter. "Noah. I'm listening, I swear."
Noah shook his head only to pull the chair that she was on closer to him, and she was startled by how easily he did so. "Weren't you wondering what was going on in my mind?"
She nodded, only to become more conscious of their proximity, and bit her lip knowing that all of their actions had the possibility of getting caught in the cams. Alice had no idea what was wrong with cameras nowadays, but her parents were toying with the idea of just getting rid of them due to the constant amount of fixing that they all had to do.
Alice went through the same process as he did, and after a moment, she was able to get the correct answer. Clapping her hands together lightly in celebration, Alice smiled as she marked that answer to come back and review since that formula seemed to be more crucial than she had first expected.
She would have been able to figure it out, but it would have taken her a couple more hours to piece the evidence together. Noah continued going at his work, so she left him to be while she finished up some computer work the register with the routine checks while still keeping a close eye on the enemy that she had kept closer than what was comfortable.