Ten minutes after mister Gren had disappeared behind the back door for the store's warehouse, the door opened again only for his short figure to appear from it.
Carrying in his arms were the three rough fabric bags with what Alicia asked for.
With his trademark warm smile on his face, he began walking over to them after giving one of his employees a silent signal with his head.
By the time he reached them, his employee brought a plastic basket for him to place the bags in.
"Here they are misses Alicia. Everything you asked for and of the best quality we could provide too!" mister Gren pleasantly said.
Taking the basket from mister Gren, Alicia inspected the bags' contents for a couple of seconds with her hawk-like eyesight.
"Oh my, these are excellent!" Alicia said, satisfied with the ingredients and spices quality. "But their quality is too great, aren't they costly?"
Hearing payment, Theron ears immediately perked up, and his eyes focused more for the exchange. This is the first time he will witness this world's mainstream currency.
"Oh, it isn't much misses Alicia, just 52 black krestal."
"What? That doesn't seem right, mister Gren. Isn't that too little? These ingredients and spices should at least cost 65." Alicia countered.
Her mind as sharp as ever, she calculated the total price in an instant.
Anyone else in her place should not have said anything and just accepted the unmentioned discount, but not her.
Finding the price given to be incorrect she wasn't going to stay silent, no matter the reason behind it. She was a woman who didn't like charities and neither to owe others.
Rummaging a little inside her jacket, she took out from one of its inner pockets a leather pouch. Clinking noises were coming out of it as it moved.
Holding the pouch with her left hand, from where the basket was also hanging from, she unfastened its leathery strips and opened it.
For Theron it was too high above him to see what was inside, but from the clinking noises he was sure the currency was metallic.
Very soon, he got to see this world's currency's appearance too.
After a moment of finding the correct pieces from the pouch, Alicia brought her palm back out and spread it opened for mister Gren.
Stealthily tiptoeing a little with his feet, Theron reached a sufficient height to look inside.
Eleven pieces of a black metallic alloy rested atop the fare palm of Alicia. They were all round in shape and with a thickness of about two millimeters. Their sizes though differed. Five of them were smaller than the others, having roughly the size of a small marble each, while the remaining six had the size of a walnut.
For the mathematical mind of Theron only a couple of calculations were needed to determine their numerical value. Based on the total sum of 65 krestal mentioned by his mother, the five smaller pieces most likely represented the 5 krestal, meaning one small piece or coin, was 1 krestal. That left the six larger ones and the remaining 60 krestal. The outcome of that calculation was apparent.
"Here you go mister Gren, 62 krestal." Alicia said while smiling.
"T-This..." Gren Voger stammered.
Here he thought he could manipulate her to have an even better impression of him by giving her a discount, but the mother outright refused, foiling his scheme!
"O-Okay misses Alicia. I apologize, it was my fault for confusing the prizes, my fault h-ha, haha..." he awkwardly admitted his "mistake" in pretense and then took the coins from Alicia's palm.
Not wanting to argue with her and potentially lose the good impression he had already built so far, he was forced to abandon that part of his scheme.
'Well, at least the "free basket" seems to be working just fine' he thought, regaining his confidence.
"And what about the basket mister Gren?" Alicia continued, leaving nothing unchecked.
"The basket?" blurted mister Gren, momentarily becoming confused and uncertain.
"Ah, the basket! The basket of course is not included in the price. Misses Alicia can just return it when you come by next time." he said, trying to salvage the last piece of his scheme.
"No no, mister Gren, I can't possible agree with that reasoning. This is a valuable tool for your business!" Alicia said, not accepting the offer. Taking another small piece of black coin out of her pouch..."Here is 1 krestal. Consider it as loaning it to me, mister Gren."
Glancing at the single krestal in Alicia's open palm, Gren Voger was speechless.
Realizing the last piece of his scheme had been foiled too, he was fuming inside while kneeling over in despair and madness, banging his inner self's hand on the imaginary floor and cursing at the foiler in front of him!
"So be it misses Alicia." Nonetheless, in the outside world he could only take the money and warmly smile back at the hateful saboteur as to keep the façade of his identity intact.
Having purchased what she needed successfully, Alicia kept her leather pouch safely in her jacket and gently nudged at Theron as she turned to leave.
"Well, mister Gren. We will be leaving now. Thank you for the quality products."
"Have a nice evening misses Alicia and... little Theron! Thank you for your purchases!"
"Mhm." Alicia amiably nodded back as she walked with Theron towards the exit.
*Ding!* The bell over the door sounded again as Alicia opened it for Theron to pass it first.
Suddenly feeling a chill running up his spine, Theron instinctively looked back.
The moment mister Gren's face registered in his vision, Theron could have sworn he saw a muscle on his right upper cheek violently twitch.
Calmly turning his head back without showing any change in his expression, Theron's mental gears, fueled by his honed elder instinct and an engineer's paranoia for analyzing the tiniest of details, began turning on full throttle.
A fleeting glance as it was, what he saw was not a figment of his imagination, but a real occurrence. Knowing his eyes would never betray him, he took that violent muscle movement seriously and drew the related fragments from his memory.
During his seventy years of past life, he met quite a few people who displayed such similar muscle spasms. During his younger years he dismissed them as results of health problems or stress's physical manifestation.
But as he got older and wiser, he knew to judge better.
Although there were times where the causes were indeed health problems or stress, most of the time were because those people were trying to hide their inner thoughts behind false masks, wanting to deceive others of their true selves.
Mostly due to the sudden chill he felt up his spine, he leaned towards this time to be an involuntary body reaction caused by the disparity between inner thoughts and what was shown on the surface rather than because of health problems. And those inner thoughts most probably are of a malicious nature too, at least that was what his instincts told him.
He will need to be more careful around this "mister Gren" when he would be encountering him in the future.