Tokyo Mew Mew Fan Fiction ❯ Held Loosely ❯ Cafe Mew Mew ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter Three: CafÃ© Mew Mew å’–å•¡å±R 49;å·¢å·¢

“One fire burns out another's burning, One pain is lessened by another's anguish.” -The Tragic Tale of Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

That morning I woke up still expecting to be in my usual dark, dirty room, but awoke to a clean, pink….fluffy one instead. This is gonna take some getting used to… I dressed in my usual black and attempted to go downstairs, yet again. After I got there, I saw Keiichiro and Ryou waiting for me in the lobby just outside of the kitchen.

“Good morning, Komori. Would you like to go down to CafÃ© Mew Mew with us?” Keiichiro offered.

“Yeah, sure.” I yawned, still half-asleep.

“Oh, you already know about the cafÃ©. That saves me from having to explain everything!” Ryou said happily. Keiichiro rolled his eyes and led us out of the house and into the warm summer morning. The limo that Keiichiro and I had ridden in from the airport yesterday was parked to the side of the driveway. I ambled over to the limo, fully expecting us to ride in it, while Keiichiro and Ryou continued to meander the other way. Huh? I saw Keiichiro pause and look around in bewilderment. He spotted me leaning against the limo with a stupid look on my face. Keiichiro motioned for me to join them with a wave of his hand.

“Komori! We're walking! The cafÃ©'s only around the corner!” he laughed good-naturedly. I sprinted over to them with my head tilted down, trying to hide the flush of red that blotted my face. Ryou and Keiichiro laughed for a while over my act of stupidity, but got tired of it after a while and started blathering away about some sort of cake mixture. Living with these two clowns is gonna suck… As we turned the corner, I spotted what I thought was a giant cupcake. When we fully turned the corner, a sign that was brimming with more pink than my room hovered over the giant `cupcake' that read `CafÃ© Mew Mew'. This wasn't exactly the kind of look for a cafÃ© you'd think two (straight) grown men would choose. The cafÃ© was embellished with hearts and several candy-like designs, which could have passed as real candy. What the frickin' crap? Keiichiro saw the look on my face and laughed.

“You'll be surprised when you see how much business we get!” he said and led us through the oh-so-feminine door. The inside didn't improve my opinion at all. It was just as (and if possible, worse) than the outside. The whole cafÃ© reminded me of an icing-covered gingerbread palace.

“Welcome to CafÃ© Mew Mew! Hmm…I guess since you're going to be working here, you're going to need a uniform…Where did I put those again, Keiichiro?” Ryou proclaimed.

“Oh, the old ones are in the storage room.” Keiichiro replied, tossing Ryou the key.

“I guess I'll go dig it out then.” Ryou said as he ran through a pair of swinging doors, of which I assumed led to the storage room.

“Don't tell me,” I said warily, “The uniform's pink.” Keiichiro looked at me and smiled knowingly.

“Nah, we decided we used too much pink while decorating the cafÃ©, so we decided that having the uniform pink might be going overboard.” After I was about to ask what color it was, Ryou bounded in holding something that was red and frilly.

“Here, this should be about right.” he said as he tossed it to me.

“Well, what do you think?” Keiichiro asked eagerly.

“Well, it's….very interesting.” I said, which was the only nice thing I could say about it.I held the semi-skimpy uniform up to me. The end of the dress landed about six inches above my knee, and underneath the skirt was a sort of overly-inflated undershorts. The dress came over a collared shirt as a heart-shaped apron.

“Looks like it'll fit,” Ryou said, “How about starting work tomorrow?” I was pretty okay with starting work, but one thing was bothering me.

“Wait, how can I work if I can't even speak Japanese?” I asked.

“Eh, don't worry; I have an invention that can fix that. I can hook it up tonight.” Ryou said. I sighed blearily. I was concerned about what sort of invention Ryou was going to `hook up' and where he was going to hook it up. It looked as if there was no way around it.

“All right. I'll start tomorrow.” I said in defeat. Later on, as I was going to bed, Ryou marched in with what looked like a gigantic microchip in his hand that had small probes emanating from its center.

“Um, Ryou, is this going to hurt?” I asked nervously, staring at the sharp points of the probes. He placed the chip onto my head and bore down on it until it was firmly stuck to my head. He applied a small touch on the top of the chip and a sharp sting rippled through my forehead. I felt the skin around that was around the chip, then lowered my hand to see a small trickle of blood smeared on my forefinger. Oh, that's just lovely…

“It's relatively harmless. It just feeds information into your brain while you're asleep, when you're most susceptible to memorizing information. I used it when I first moved to Tokyo.” Ryou explained. Wait, relativelyharmless?

“Right, well, thanks.” I said, looking down with my eyes watering from the pain of the probes that were fixated into my skull.

“No prob. Be sure to get some sleep, you've got a busy day ahead of you.” He said as he walked out of the room and shut off the lights. I hate my life…

Chapter Four: Minimum Wage and Locked Doors æœ€ä½Žå·¥ èµ„å’Œé” 3;—¨

When I woke up I could feel the microchip digging into my head. When I tried to pull it off, a huge surge of pain enveloped my head and I was forced to stop pulling. Well, maybe Ryou knows how to take it off. I mean, it's his invention after all. I looked over at the armoire and spotted the revolting cafÃ© uniform hanging from it and knew it was going to be a very long day. All I really wanted to do was sit in my room and play my guitar and get the year over with. Was that too much to ask for? None of this was my fault anyways…Well, okay, it sort of was:

Let's just say I made friends with the wrong people. You know the kind, piercing everything, doing drugs, that sort of stuff. My trouble started with this gang that had formed at school. They were the cool people. Everyone wanted to be in their little coterie of juvenile delinquents. I had just transferred to that school, so I didn't have that many friends; I was looked upon as `that weird new kid'. One day, the ringleader of the group (his nickname was Crusher or something like that…I don't remember.) came up to me.

“Hey. You're the new kid right?” he said. He sounded like he was stoned.

“Um, y-yeah…” I stuttered tentatively. `Crusher' had a very extensive reputation.

“Hm. Ya' know, I been watchin' you. You seem pretty cool. How `bout hangin' out with me an' a couple of friends tonight?”

“You mean, you want me to hang out with you guys?” I asked hopefully. It had been a dream come true.

“That's what I said, ain't it?” he said in an exasperated tone.

“Well…okay. Sure.” I replied quietly, trying to keep myself from jumping up and down and screaming at the prospect of having friends.

“Cool. We'll be down at the skate park. Nine o'clock. Don't be late.” he announced then nonchalantly strolled down the hall. The skate park was filled with the Future Drug Addicts and Serial Killers of America along with their skateboards. `Crusher' and the rest of his crew sat out to the side and observed the skaters, occasionally commenting on a `way rad move'. I sat at the edge of the crowd, watching everyone have a good time. `Crusher' motioned for me to come to the center of the circle of conversation that had formed. I did so. `Crusher' stood up.

“Hey guys. This is ….uh…” he said, forgetting my name.

“Komori Hoshi.” I answered.

“Is that Spanish or something?” said a girl that sat next to `Crusher' that had at least twenty piercings in each eyebrow.

“No,” I replied, “It's Japanese.”

“Right, right.” She said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.

The grey ring of smoke drifted up to me and made my eyes water, while the smell made my lungs feel like they were caving in. She looked up and offered one to me. “Here.” I forehandedly picked the cigarette from her outstretched palm at and stared at it in disgust. Everyone was staring at me and noticed the face that I made.

“What's wrong? Scared of a little smoke?” the girl taunted as she stuck a lighter into my other hand. A wave of mocking laughter rippled through the crowd.

“N-no. Of course not.” I said, lighting the cigarette and taking a deep puff. Everything started to burn, like I had swallowed a bonfire. My eyes squinted as I coughed up the smoke that I had been dumb enough to exhale. `Crusher' patted me on the back.

“The first one's always pretty tough.” I hadn't realized it, but that had been some sort of initiation into the crowd. Before I knew it, I had too many friends to count. I also was out almost every night hanging with my `friends'. My mom started to worry at this point, after seeing me wearing more black than usual and also catching me attempting to pierce my tongue. After that, she started trying to `straighten me out'. Nothing really worked; it actually made me worse. I guess it had gotten so bad that the only thing to do was to send me away… So it's my fault for even getting involved with all those jerks. Oh well, they weren't that fun to hang with anyways…

I slipped out of my pajama pants and ripped up T-shirt and into the overly-flouncy cafÃ© uniform. The only part that I didn't completely loathe about the entire outfit was the shoes, which were a slightly faded grey. I looked myself over in the mirror.

“I look like a frickin' Barbie doll.” I muttered in self-loathing disgust. I shook my head and started the trek downstairs; surprisingly, I only took five wrong turns that time. I saw Keiichiro sitting at the table sipping a steaming cup of coffee. He looked up.

“No. I'm not really a morning person, you know?” I yawned.

“You're probably still on New York time…Um, I'm guessing Ryou didn't tell you how to get that giant microchip off your head?” he snickered.

“Nope, and I already tried pulling it off.” I said, shielding my forehead, fearing that Keiichiro would try to yank it off my head. Keiichiro laughed another one of his infamous laughs.

“Don't worry, I have no such intention.” He said as he leaned towards my forehead. After pressing the microchip in almost every imaginable place, it made a minute CLICK! and finally removed its cuspated probes from my head. I rubbed my forehead, hoping it would ease the pain of the minor wound.

“Nn.” I groaned. Keiichiro glanced at his watch and gasped.

“Ah! We'd better get down to the cafÃ©!” Keiichiro said as he grabbed me by the hand and led me out the door at full speed. He led me in a full-fledged sprint to the cafÃ©. By the time Keiichiro and I had reached the front door, we were both gasping for breath.

“I guess this is a sign that I should start working out more.” Keiichiro wheezed. He unlocked the cafÃ© and we stepped inside, still tired from the run.

“Okay, Komori. Your job is to greet the customers, seat them, take their orders, and deliver the food. Don't worry, I'll be helping you out too.” He instructed after gaining back his breath. Suddenly his watch flashed and made a slight beep; Keiichiro glanced down at it.

“But first there's something I have to attend to. I'll return in a little while...” He said and briskly ran down the hallway that led to the storage rooms. That's weird… I hauled myself up onto a table and sat there for a while, wishing I was back with my guitar and not in this stupid cafe. And then I heard a small jingling noise coming from the door. I looked up. Oh, goody. A customer. I jumped off the table, nabbed some menus, and rushed to the front to greet them. And then, to my surprise, said in fluent Japanese, “Welcome to CafÃ© Mew Mew." And that was pretty much what I did the whole day. I was lucky though; it wasn't very busy today. Maybe four parties per hour or so. I did wonder where Keiichiro had gone and what the crap was keeping him this long.

“I'm sorry, it took so much longer than I expected, Komori!” Keiichiro apologized. We continued to work a little longer, until it was about an hour until the cafe closed.

"Komori, could you go to the freezer in the storage area to get some vanilla ice cream?” Keiichiro called from the kitchen. I nodded and walked down through the hallway that led to the freezer. But my problem was that there were about five different doors along the hallway. Which one was the freezer, I could only guess. I opened the first door. Plain storage. Same with the second. I tried to open the third door, but it felt like it was locked. Thinking that it might be the freezer and the handle just froze over, I pulled and yanked on the door handle. And that's when I saw it. A deep, eerie green glow shone out from under the door. Surprised, I fell back onto the floor, staring at the door in shock. That's definitely not the freezer! I scrambled up and checked the other doors, finding the freezer and the vanilla ice cream, still shaken from what I had seen. At the end of the day, Keiichiro came up to me and patted me on the back.

“You did an excellent job today, Komori!” Keiichiro praised.

I leaned on the nearest table and took a deep breath.

“Thanks.” I sighed.

“Oh, before I forget,” he said holding up an envelope, “Here's your pay for today.”

“Pay?” I asked.

“Well, sure! You didn't think I'd make you work yourself to the bone for nothing did you?” he laughed. I gave him a small smile back. Yes, I did think you would.

But one thing still bothered me: what was behind that locked door?