#grr this project will eat me up from the inside out

[2truehearts]

okay i feel guilty

[ketsuyuki-hibana-typed]

I just take one request so I'll go with modern one!

Sabito x Reader (Domestic ModernAU) (Slight NSFW warning)

Being Sabito's childhood friend means knowing almost all of the behaviours and habits, and so does Sabito. And when he finally confess to you after both of you graduated from High School, you were so happy because you've been waiting for this moment.

Being in the same university made it more easier for him to reach you out. Sabito proposed you to live in his apartment until both of you graduated and you happily accepted it.

He called this, 'A simulation before the real one.'

"What real one?"

"Marrying you." He winked. Damn, that's smooth please shut up.

And now, you and Sabito were in 3rd year.

When Sabito woke up in the morning, he will just play with your hair until you wake up by yourself.

"Mm... Morning, Sabito. Playing with my hair again?"

"Hm."

"If you're awake, wake me up too, geez."

"I can stare at your stupid face for hours."

"Seriously, what is that for."

You raised your body from your bed and stretched out, planning what breakfast you should make. Both of his arms snatched your hips.

"I'll make breakfast, you should get ready first. Your project will start at 8 right?" Sabito mumbled.

"Um yeah." You yawned, caressing his messy hair. "Thank you."

Today, the role reversed. He's the one who wore apron while flipping eggs and you helped him with the tables and coffees after done with your clothings.

"Sabito, you make lunch too?" You peeked from his shoulder. "Uwah, the legendary bear-shaped onigiri rice."

"Yeah, after you finished on your project, let's eat them together."

You usually went to uni with him, but this time, you'll go first.

"Why are you wearing scarf?" He crossed his arms, standing in front of the door, while escorting you to outside.

"You dare to question why?" With embarrassing and mad face, you revealed some hickies on your crooks. "Whose fault is this?"

"My bad." He raised his hand while smugly smiling.

"Grr..." You grabbed both of his shoulder, tip-toed and planted kiss on his neck, leaving red marks. "Fufu, fair play."

"Ugh.."

"Bye Sabito!" After another quick peck landed on his lips, you finally headed out to your university. He covered his reddened face with his palm, swearing that he will revenge you.

Like usual, you ate lunch with Sabito and your other childhood friends, Giyuu and Makomo at the mini park.

"You know, (y/n). The other day, Sabito was sleeping in the class and he called your name!" Makomo giggled. "I got the video!"

"Whaaat, show me, show me!"

"Wait, Makomo!!"

Being university student means both of you don't really much time to meet, but you always made sure to pay Sabito a visit on his kendo club activity.

But Sabito didn't want you to sat near his kendo friends, because of constant eyeing from the boys and death-glaring from the girls.

Nah, it's just his natural jealousy. You didn't really mind about them anyway, you just wanted to see him training.

"Why can't I sit with them? I want to befriend with your manager too."

"No. Just no."

"....I'll go home then."

"Wait, no! I'll lost my morality!!"

"THEN WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?"

So, here you are, seeing his training at second floor. When your eyes met with his, you grinned and smiled while waving your hand.

"Fight, Sabito!"

Then he waved back, making peace sign. That some sort of morale make him more brutal while swishing his wooden sword towards his team.

Sabito probably looked soft and all but he's really become fierce when it comes to other people. But apparently, this didn't apply to you.

He wanted to make sure that you got enough attention from him, even though both of you were busy.

So, dating-days is all of your choices. You're the one who decided where do you want to go.

He likes to take your picture from behind on dates and send it on InstaStory

"With (y/n), lol she's smol." "Bby would deadass fall into that water fountain." "Love it when she said 'Chimkin nugget'"

And please do not question about how he made long ass threads on his pinned Twitter, all contained about you and your photos.

You also have your own habit, like slipping your hand inside his hoodies' pocket, ran with your hand pulling his shirt while showing him something interesting, accidentally stepping on his back shoes.

Sabito literally loses his mind when he can't find your figure behind him while both of you walking, but he stayed cool and started looking for you. This is just your another behaviour when dating, but still, gave him heart attack.

Until he saw hands of yours waving on the air, the method he taught to you in case you lose him.

"Again?!"

"Sorry, I got distracted by the student disc- awawawawa." He pinched your cheek. You grabbed his hand while whining in protest.

"Tell me if you wanted to go somewhere, stupid!"

Dates will be always ended with shopping for 1 week-stocks

Sabito never let you bring a single groceries bag and often snatched it from you even though you said you wanted to carry half of them.

"What kind of man who let girl bringing these much?"

Both of you knew how to handling with eachother's moods.

One day, you slammed the door after a shitty day.

"He-"

You just ignored him and went straight to your shared room, slamming down your whole body onto the bed.

Sabito immediately knew that you're in super bad mood, so he prepared hot tea and your favourite snacks, bringing them to bedroom.

He lifted your body, and positioned yourself between his lap, rolling you around and making you hugged his body. After that, he will read books or played with your phones while caressing your back, letting you stay in silence until you started to tell what made you upset today.

Or, when he's the one who stressed, he will say nothing while hugging you from behind and put his head on your shoulder.

"Care to spill?"

"..."

"Okay, then. Anytime you ready." You'll do your usual activity inside the house with he clinging onto you, regaining energy by claimed that it's called 'recharging'.

Day-off like Saturday and Sunday is the most precious day. Well, not really, just doing a normal bunch of what couple would do in the apartment.

Also, he's literally... Your mom.

"Hang it here!" "How many times do I had to tell you to not put your pants and shirts on the chair?" "Don't forget turn off the water." "You haven't cook the rice? Geez, I almost done with the other foods!" "Your bra, missy. I really have an issue with that if you carelessly put them in the living room. What if someone's barge in?"

"I don't think someone will barge in unless they're thief, Sabito."

Not to mention how he forced and dragged you all the way down on Sunday to jogging and running.

"Ok, one more lap!"

"Wha-?! Didn't you just say that this is the last?"

"Go! Go! Go!"

Bathing together after long one day? Sure! But please bear with his groping on your breast when you bathe in with him on the tub.

"I'm not groping, I massage them. They said it will grow bigger."

"...where did you hear that. Also, I'm insulted, you know."

"Hmm, I don't really care but isn't it more-"

"Shut up, you pervert!" You splashed water onto his face.

Other affections like kissing and cuddling were done when both of you about to go to bed. He didn't kiss you outside the house because he wanted to feel the simple intimacy from you.

He usually offered you 'pillow-hand' when you're about to sleep or when you still wanted to talk to him with his feet cuddling yours under the blankets.

"The scar..." You slowly dragged your finger at the reddish mark from mouth to ear. "...If I'm not so stupid to go near the wild dog when we were 10, you probably don't have-"

"How many times do I have to tell you that this is not your fault?" He pressed his temple onto yours. "It was my decision to protect you, this scar is also my responsibility."

"But, I'm still not-"

"Oh, but if you kissed my scar everyday, it probably helps."

"You just wanted to be kissed, do you?" You slowly smacked his head while giggling.

"Yeah, maybe? Just- don't think about it anymore. It's all in the past." He butterfly-kissed your nose, telling you to sleep afterwards.

"Umm, can you pat my back?"

"If it made you at ease, sure." He started to move his hand, dragged his palm on your back.

Now, this is new. He didn't know you like it when he caressed your back.

Even though both of you have been together for a long time, Sabito is still eager to discover other real side of you more, so please be prepared.

[rachelfinder]

Denver County Fair: Post-Morteum

So.

The Denver County Fair.

What. A. Bomb.

I don’t mean The Bomb. I mean a bomb. More on that in a minute. This was our first sales event. So unlike our initial soft “open” at Creative Mornings, here we offered the Instax for rent throughout each day of the Fair.

This event presented an opportunity to experiement with our presentation before we get ourselves into a kiosk on the Mall. Experimenting included both our table layout and the verbage of the sales pitch. Over the three days, we tweaked and tested the layout of materials, promos and stock changed. We also tried different ways of sharing about the camera and it’s price points. All of it was in an attempt to connect the right message with the right customer: SnapShotz is an instant camera rental company and you can rent a camera for today at the Fair.

Going into the event, we had a few of challenges:

CHALLENGES AT THE COUNTY FAIR

Venue: First off, the Denver County Fair is held at the Western Stock Show complex. The complex is design as both a convention center and a stock show performance arena. There are multiple buildings that house the elements of the fair. The only part outside is the carnival rides out in the large parking lot adjacent to the main hall. As a result, all the vendors, exhibitors and the exhibts are inside the concrete convention center.

Booth Location: Our inside location was on at the end of an aisle, right next to a couple of vendors promoting some local history museums. Across from us was the kids stage where they held the watermelon eating contest (among other things). Moving in, our booth location seemed promising.

Weather: As with all things Colorado, weather was a big issue. The County Fair took place over one of the hottest weekends this summer. Friday’s outside temperature exceeded 95 degrees F. On Saturday, we had back to back thunderstorms. And the swamp coolers blew out. Whelp. The humidity inside was as bad as outside. Sunday was the only remotely decent weather day of the whole weekend.

EXECUTION

Day One’s Set-Up:

This layout was pretty straight forward. Two banner signs--one with price information and the other explaining how it works--a small assortment of display merchandise, a groovy light-up sign that said “Rent Instax Here,” and rack cards and stickers placed across the table top.

To show people what was possible with the camera, we put out a bunch of photos that we took at the Fair. We also offered to take people’s picture for free, wrapping it in a cute little PhotoFlyer sticker I had printed up. That was a big hit...almost too big. Most people asked for the photo, had it taken, then walked away while it developed. And to make matters worse, kids would walk up, get their photo, then bring back a sibiling who wanted a photo too. Grr...not exactly what I had in mind for the freebie.

However, the biggest issue is that people thought we were just advertising the fact that we do event rentals. We can do event rentals, but the point is to get you to rent a camera for your adventure TODAY. Frustratingly, we didn’t get our first one until sometime around 4:30pm. Our second one of Friday came exactly five minutes later. Whoohoo! Those were our only sales for Friday. But it was Day One so I was happy we sold anything at all.

Day Two’s Set-Up:

This time, we went with one sign explaining how instant photography works, the same promo materials and light up sign and a whole big row of cameras out. Five of each color totatling 20 cameras on the table. Whoo! We changed the sign to say, “Get a free photo!” And we kept out the photos to display what was possible. And we also put a paper star that said, “rent me” on the table in front of the cameras.

This time, there was definitely interest in the cameras. But there was still a disconnect that we were renting cameras for the day. A number of people thought we were selling them (nope, sorry). But we did make a couple of good connections with other local businesses that want to bring instant photography to their venues. Thumbs up!

Because we didn’t use the sign saying how much it cost, folks had to ask us the rental price. This ended up being a good thing because only the folks truly interested asked us what it cost, meaning they had a higher likelihood of actually renting a camera. It weeded out folks who didn’t have any intention of buying so we didn’t have to try to sell them as hard. But, we didn’t have that many bites. Over all, we had two sales for the whole day. Ugh.

The lack of sales may have been influenced by the fact that we had two back to back thunderstorms on Saturday and the swamp cooler went out in the convention hall. Talk about muggy. And unhappy people. The carnival outside was shut down due to rain, so most people just walked around the stuffy and humid convention center trying to find fans. And the convention center is not exactly the most photogenic location in Denver.

The “Get a free photo” worked good. I think a lot of folks thought we were giving away the photos that we took, but the reality is that we wanted to give them a photo of themselves. The one’s that got it enjoyed their picture, but again, they just walked away with it after saying “thank you.”

Day Three’s Set-Up:

I flew solo on Sunday, meaning it was just me trying to make sales. I put cameras on both sides of the table with the banner in the middle. This sort of made me feel like I was hiding behind a shield, but having the cameras on both corners definitely brought interest. Everybody wanted to know if I was selling the cameras (again, no). I also limited the number of example photos on the table so folks didn’t think those were the freebies. And I changed the light up sign to say, “Take a free photo!”

That seemed to work better than “Get a free photo.” It encouraged others to interact with the camera and piqued curiosity to use the camera. That then opened the door to show how the camera worked which further gave me the opportunity to sell the camera.

Oh yeah. And I had a nice big “rent me!” star on my tabletop banner.

Again, I tried the trick of not posting the price anywhere. That strategy worked again as only the people truly interested in buying asked me how much it cost. But everyone snubbed their noses when I told them price. EVERYBODY. I had absolutely no sales on Sunday. That sucked. BIG TIME.

So...four sales in three days.

Yeah. A bomb.

Other Stuff That Happened At The Fair:

Apparently my bad sales were not an anomaly for the weekend. Every vendor that I talked to also had a dismal result of being at the Fair. Even the anchor vendors at the convention all, like the pizza and hamburger kiosks, were down 50% in revenue. That’s a really terrible return on the weekend for everybody.

Our location on the end cap ended up being a bad spot too. When folks passed us by, most of them were on their way out of the fair instead of coming in. The traffic route put us at the end of the road for most vendors, meaning that when people finally passed us, they all said, “Oh man! I wish I saw you earlier in the day!”

The Fair is a relatively new event in Denver. It’s only five or six years old and still trying to get it’s legs under it. So there’s hiccups and goof-ups that happen when an event is still trying to figure itself out. And I’m sure some of that played into the way things went over the whole weekend.

The Fair is also not very photogenic. Drab concrete interiors combined with fluorescent lights do not make for nice pictures. It doesn’t matter if it’s a picture of your kid with a face filled with food during the pie eating contest or if it’s the best of show prize turkey. Pictures like these suck, whether on your phone or on an instant photo. If the only photogenic area of your event is the carnival rides, who wants to rent a camera anyway?

RESULTS:

The Good:

First off, there was a LOT of interest for Take Your SnapShotz! The people that stopped by liked the idea and those that went through our entire sales process were definitely interested. And those that did rent a camera loved the experience. Hooray! Happy customers. Plus, I know I can sell cameras at retail if I want to in the future.

I also connected with a few other businesses in Denver that want to work with me and bring in Take Your SnapShotz for their events. Two are music related, one being a karaoke event and the other a DJ for a number of music venues. The third is a businessman hustling on a number of different projects. I sent them all follow up emails today. :)

And we had four sales. Sales verified that the idea is good! It means people WANT to rent cameras. One of my customers rented even though they owned a camera--but they had left it at home. That says something.

Also, the people that rented cameras are our target customers. Everything about the customer profile I identified was there. That means my targeting is correct. Huzzah.

The Ugly:

Throughout the weekend, we dealt with software issues between our rental database and our payment processor. Our barcode scanner occasionally decided to input numbers one by one, rather than reading the whole string at once. Somehow a kid pulled a camera off the table and on to the floor...despite the cameras being well away from the edge of the table. Thankfully it didn’t break (that dad was so relieved) so I’m not out a camera. But two of my other ones decided to have a shutter issue so I have to send those back to the manufacturer. Fantastic.

We had only four sales. Four sales is not even half of what we paid to be at the fair. Ouch. Also, four sales doesn’t boost your confidence that you have a good idea. The first day of the fair I wondered if the whole thing might be a bomb. A failure. Four sales feels like a failure.

TAKEAWAYS

Based on the consistent “nevermind,” response we got when concluding our sales pitch, is it possible that our price point is too high. The sell is easier when we mention the fact that the cameras retail at $70 at local camera stores and that the film is often $10 a pack of 10 pictures. From there, we say that the $25 rental includes a free pack of film.

There’s two ways we can change this. Either offer the rental as a “$15 camera rental with a $10 purchase of film,” or just drop the price down to $20 per rental. I’m not a fan of the latter. It makes the camera rental itself the equivalent of a $10 rental with a $10 pack of film. To me, that cheapens the camera too far.

When we do other events and festivals, we also need to do a better job at vetting the venue for pretty pictures, thinking for things like interior space and environment. My expectations of the fair were based on my childhood experiences at country fairs in rural parts of the United States. County fairs in a big city look very very different.

We definitely need a different rental database manager and payment processor. Our current process is far too cumbesome, requiring round trip from web browser to app to other app back to web browser. Combine this with a futzed up scanner and the margin for error is too wide. At the moment, a checkout process takes 5 minutes and sometimes even longer if the system goofs. This is just far too long for something that should be a scan and swipe.

And figuring out the retail side of things needs to happen sooner rather than later. I was expecting to add this kind of inventory further down the road, but based on all the interest we had this past weekend I think we can add this into our revenue stream much earlier. Yeah!

FOR OUR NEXT EVENT...

Crazy enough, our next event is this weekend. As in this Saturday. This time we’re going to the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival.

To tell you the truth, I was thinking that this past weekend at the Fair was borderline disaster, but after recapping all of this, I think I’m in a much better spot for Dragon Boat than I thought I was.

First off, we have a working pitch. I know how I want to arrange the table (for the most part) and I know how to entice folks to come and try the camera. My “schpeal” for how to sell the camera is comfortable. And I have a good idea of who’s going to buy my camera.

Also, I know that the Dragon Boat Festival is going to be much more interesting to photograph. Not only are we outside (yeah!) there’s all kinds of stuff to see. There’s three stages at the event, plus the boats races in the lake. It’s a colorful celebration of not just Chinese culture, but all Asia-Pacific cultures. Just from looking at the website I know there will be a lot more photo opportunities than at the County Fair.

And fun fact: this is The Year of the Pig in the Chinese Zodiac. Every vendor is encouraged to have something “pig themed” so that will lend itself to photos too. I want to get some pig-related items for a photobooth set at our tent. Because why not? And apparently, Pig Years are great to start businesses in.

We’re still going to go with our current rental payment processing software. I’m not happy about that, but I don’t have the time to find another resource. I spent far too much time last week trying to find an alternative and I’m just not doing that again.

And I intend to test the price point. If by the end of day Saturday things seem to be a sour puss, I can adapt the price to $20 on Sunday.

Something I have to remember is that all of this tweaking, testing and learning is essential to us launching a successful kiosk downtown. As frustrating as last weekend was, we learned valuable stuff. This weekend I can iterate on those lessons. Despite the disappointment, I’m glad we’re learning this stuff now before we have to do all this stuff full time downtown. It would be awful to have a grand opening and discover our payment processor has a fatal glitch. Or have our price point be too high.