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This time of year was a particularly hectic time to be shopping, and Sean had been tempted to avoid the stores. But he wanted to get Christmas gifts for his family, and while he could get away with sewing more toys or a cool piece of clothing for his foster siblings, he needed something else for his parents. He had an idea or two in mind, but he had to get to the stores and see what was available before he could settle on anything. Shopping online could be a possibility, but shipping this time of year was slow and unpredictable, so he'd really rather just pick something up in person.

So it was that when Seen had some free time from school, he caught a bus to the biggest department store he knew of. If he wasn't sure what he wanted, he figured the best policy was to go somewhere where he could see the widest variety of stuff. Even if he didn't see what he needed there, it might give him some ideas of a more specialized store to look into.

He had flipped through the store's advertisement flier to get an idea of what sales were currently running, then started wandering aimlessly through the store, browsing any department that caught his eye.

Sean was heading to the jewelry section when he noticed some sort of commotion nearby; two people shouting over something they both wanted and tossing insults back and forth. One of them sounded like a kid, which caught his attention. He looked around and quickly found the source, or at least the direction of it, since a crowd of people had gathered to apparently watch the spectacle. Just like schoolkids watching a fight, only here there didn't seem to be a teacher to break it up. So instead, Sean went to see what he could do.

The onlookers were only loosely gathered around, so he was able to squeeze through them with little trouble, tossing out "excuse me" a couple times as he went. Once he was inside the ring of people, he took stock of the situation: a middle-aged woman and a kid or young teen playing tug-of-war with a small box. Whatever was in it, it likely wasn't worth this kind of trouble.

Sean planted his hands on his hips, a smile on his face, and asked brightly, "Hey now, what's all this fuss about?"

Oh, dear. This was looking more and more like a fight between children. Sean almost expected the two to start pulling each other's hair. Then the confrontation seemed to escalate when the woman snatched the box out of the boy's hand, and Sean finally got an explanation.

So they were fighting over a watch, was it? And now that only one set of hands was on it, Sean managed to catch a glimpse of the item. It looked like a perfectly average watch, not even a smartwatch or something.

Better try and calm the two down before anything else. He clapped his hands together once to get their attention, and said, "Hey now, let's hold up and see if we can sort this out."

To the pink-haired boy he said, "Young man, that insult wasn't called for. Calling names never makes things better."

He turned to the woman and continued, "And ma'am, snatching it out of his hands wasn't very nice, either. You're setting a bad example for the boy." He was trying to gently remind her she was the adult in this situation, and ought to act like one. If this were an argument between any of his foster siblings, he'd ask the two to apologize to each other now. But he doubted these strangers would comply with that request, especially when one of them was older than him, so he skipped that. Instead he just waited a moment to see if they were listening to him or not.

Sean continued to smile as the two went back and forth, but the expression started to look a little strained. The two clearly didn't want help, and now that they were no longer physically fighting over the object, there was the temptation to just walk away. Maybe find a staff member to help mediate this. But if his interference had resulted in the kid losing the item he was after, Sean wanted to at least try to help him out.

It seemed that calming the shoppers down wasn't very likely, so perhaps he should move on to trying to help them find a solution. At least the woman hadn't just walked off once she got the watch in her hands. He asked the pair, "Maybe we can still work this out so everyone's happy. Is there anything unique about that exact watch that makes you both want it? Have you looked around to see if there's another copy of it in this department, or if there's a similar one? Or asked the sales clerks if there's another one in storage somewhere?"

Well, at least the two shoppers had stopped fighting. Even if the woman stayed obstinate, the boy backed off and let her leave peacefully, even though that meant he ended up empty-handed. With her gone, the crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle seemed to be losing interest, now that the excitement was over.

But Sean still felt bad that the boy was left without anything, so he offered, "Would you like me to help you look? I'm in no rush." He didn't know if he could find the same sort of thing, but he was willing to try anyway, if he was given a description of what to look for.

Sean nodded when the boy turned down his help, and replied, "OK. Good luck finding something."

He was starting to turn away when the boy spoke up once more...to thank him, which was was unexpected. A grin spread across Sean's face as he said, "You'er welcome! Glad I could help. The holidays are supposed to be fun, no need to let a little nastiness sour them, right? Oh, and Happy Holidays!" he added. He waved at the boy before heading off to continue his own shopping.