At 9 AM, Anon arrives for work at the yukkuri shop "Yuumin."
The manager is already in the office, e-mailing suppliers, scrambling to find an adequate supply of Da-je Marichas–over 20 customers have made reservations to buy one. Until recently, Da-je Marichas were an unexceptional item mostly bought by abyusers, but the heroine on a current TV drama has one as a pet, and now their popularity is skyrocketing and they are in short supply. The usual breeder who supplies the store will send them five tomorrow, but that isn't nearly enough. The manager asks Anon to bring him a pair of bronze-badge Marisas for breeding.
Pushing a cart of food and supplies, Anon heads into the main part of the shop. The shop is long and narrow, with cases of yukkuris against both walls, laid out like this…
Cashier | Rare | Rare | Silver | Discount | Live Food | No Badge
Entrance | Gold | Gold | Goods | Predators | Bronze | Bronze
…with a walkway down the middle and the door to the office behind the cashier. To appeal to customers, the gold-badge and rare-type yukkuris are closest to the entrance, and the further in you go, the lower the ranks get. Anon starts the day's work in that order as well.
Each gold-badge yukkuri is her own 60-cm square case equipped with soft matting, a fluffy cushion, and toys. The gold section appears a bit understocked–they only have two Reimus, a Chen, and a Patchouli. The three Marisas they used to have have all been sold, perhaps thanks to the Da-je Maricha boom. Anon wakes them up and gives them their food and water. In pleasant, moderate tones, they greet him and thank him, then begin eating quietly.
Next is the Rare-type section. About a year ago, there was a rare-type boom, with celebrities buying expensive rare-types and people rushing to imitate them. Even Anon's mother bought a Sanae because her favorite actor had one. The boom has died down somewhat, but rare-types are still something of a status symbol.
The rare-types' cases are bigger than the gold-badges', and they have special supplies for each type. The shop carries M-type (short for "Moriya-type") rare-type yukkuris, a category that includes Kanakos, Suwakos, and Sanaes. Rare-types are known for being intelligent and resilient, but they are only yukkuris, after all, and they find it stressful to be around types that they don't know. That's why yukkuri shops generally carry stock of the same category. The other categories include K-types (Kouma-types: Sakuya, Meirin, Remilia, Flan), E-types (Eiya-types: Teruyo, Eirin, Udonge, Tewi, etc.). The manager is thinking about trying to get some of the recently-popular S (Seiren)-types, like Byakuren and Murasa, after the M-types are all sold.
Next, instead of the silver-badge section, Anon heads way back to the no-badge corner. He passes the bronze-badge section, where the yukkuris seem to be ranting and yelling at him, but their cases are soundproof, so he ignores them. All the yukkuris are in soundproof cases except for the gold-badge and rare-types (so the customers can talk to them).
Anon opens a big case at the back of the store that contains innumerable sleeping baby-yus and koyukkuris. There's pee and poop all over, and some of the yukkuris are dead. Anon picks out the corpses, dumps some soggy food into the food dish, and grabs about ten little yukkuris and puts them on the cart.
The baby no-badges are squeaking, "Weimu ij a pet yukkuwi!" "At washt, shomeone shaw Awiche'j vawue!" "Now ish ij the ewa of Mawisha, je!" until Anon wheels them in front of the predator-types. Then they fall silent and huddle in fear. Observing that there seems to be a Da-je Maricha among them, Anon sets her aside and tosses the others into the predator case.
The predators are another big draw–they're in a case that reaches to the ceiling so customers can see them flying around. Right now, the shop has two Remilias, three Koremilias, a Flan, and two Koflans. Without fighting with each other, they settle down to eat their live food.
After seeing this, the no-badge Da-je Maricha has thrown up her bean paste and is twitching, so Anon stuffs it back into her mouth along with some ramune.
Anon goes to the silver-badge yukkuris next. They're in narrow cases, about 30 cm square. The predator case is set far from the door so as not to cause stress to the gold-badge yukkuris, and also to teach the silver, bronze, and discount yukkuris to know their place. It doesn't have much effect on the bronze-badges, but it works on the silver-badges. They're trembling and crying, and if Anon listens closely, he can hear them begging, "R-Reimu is a good girl, Reimu is a good girl" and "Marisa doesn't taste good, please don't eat Marisa!" Costing one-tenth of what gold-badges cost, silver-badge yukkuris are the store's bread and butter, so of course they won't be fed to the predator-types.