The Vanilla Kou
Chapter One: Welcome to the Vanilla Kou!
--One Week Ago--
The final bell of the school year rang releasing a torrent of children from the high schools onto an unsuspecting city. Two such students walked down the street towards the apartment building they both lived in, Taichi "Tai" Kamiya and his best friend Yamato "Matt" Ishida.
"No more text books, no more school bells, we're free dude!" Tai cheered.
"Only for a few months, though, then we're right back to it." Matt reminded him.
"Why do you feel the need to kill my good mood?" Tai asked
"Besides you should get a job for the summer." Matt said
"What about you Ishida?"
"I have one. Since we're all out for the summer, my band is going to be having a ton more gigs." Matt said
Tai groaned and said "You're so lucky to be in a band, where am I supposed to find work?"
"Tons of places are hiring extra help for the summer." Matt said
"Like where?" Tai asked as they walked up to their building.
Matt grabbed a newspaper off the ground and opened it up to the classifieds "There, Lilly's Gardens is hiring."
"Working in a garden supply store all summer? Pass."
"Then how about the pet store?"
"That place smells nasty."
"You're going to find something wrong with all of them aren't you?"
"That's my plan." Tai said unlocking his front door
"Well then how about this." Matt said walking inside Tai's apartment and taping the newspaper to his dart board. "Throw a dart, whatever it lands on is what you'll go for."
"Fine whatever." Tai said grabbing a dart and throwing it without looking.
"And the winner is…" Matt said walking up to the newspaper "The Vanilla Kou"
"But that place-" Tai began
"Is the one you hit. No rethrows. Besides, a lot of hot girls frequent the place. Trust me you'll love it there."
--Present Day--
Tai walked down the street with a very large and very full duffle bag slung over his shoulder. He had gotten the job at The Vanilla Kou and was moving into one of their employee dorms for the summer. In his bag he had enough to get him through two summers, Kari, his sister, had made sure of it. After reaching his destination Tai got in the elevator and rode it to the floor his room was on and got out. He walked to the door marked 4-E, his room.
When he opened the door he was greeted with a rather nice room. It had a bed, television, dressers, a large walk-in closet and a bathroom. In short it was like a ritzy hotel room. Tai dropped his duffel bag on the floor and flopped down on his bed until he heard a knock at his door.
"Come in!" he said without bothering to get up.
"Hello." A girl said walking into his room "Are you all settled in?"
"More or less, all my stuff is still in my bag." Tai said
"Well you can unpack tonight; we need an extra pair of hands over at the Kou." She said
"Alright, what do you need?" Tai asked
"I don't know, the manager just asked me to get a guy to help us unload the truck." She said
"Ok, I'll head on over." Tai said "By the way, what's your name?"
"Yoshi Fujieda."
"Tai Kamiya," Tai said "See you around Yoshi."
Tai walked over to The Vanilla Kou and walked around to the back and saw a large truck and a few people unloading boxes.
"Hurry up will you? I've got to go deliver another shipment." The driver said
"Can it will you Marcus? We're going as fast as we can." One of the guys shouted back
Tai ran up and said "Yoshi sent me over to give you guys a hand. I'm Tai; I was hired to help for the summer."
"Thanks Tai, if you could just start grabbing boxes and stacking them over there," he said pointing "we can take them inside after we get everything off the truck. Oh, my name is Takato Matsuki by the way, and the guy that was yelling at Marcus is named Davis, he's summer help too but he's been helping for a few years now."
"Can you two quit chatting and help me with this?" Davis asked carrying several boxes
"Sorry," Takato said rushing over to the truck and grabbed a large box as well
Tai chuckled and grabbed a box too thinking 'Well even if Matt was wrong about the girls these two are bound to keep me from getting bored.'
'Matt wasn't wrong' Tai thought looking over all the guests. There were some real lookers at a few of the tables.
"Enjoying the view?" someone asked from behind him
Tai laughed and said "How could I not?" as he turned around.
"Jeri Katou." She said extending her hand
Tai shook it and said "Tai Kamiya, who's working today?"
"Well there's Davis and Takato who you've already met , Davis is a annual summer worker, like you only he comes back every summer, Takato on the other hand is the head chef. The only other people working today are Mimi Tachikawa and Ken Ichijouji. the manager. He's probably up in his office right now but he'll come down in a while to check on things." Jeri said
Tai nodded and said "So who else works here?"
"There's Henry Wong, Yolei Inoue, and Yoshi Fujieda, who all have the same job as you, and then there's Izzy Izumi, our tech wizard."
"Quite the crew." Tai said
"You forgot someone." Takato said walking out with a tray of food and handing it to Mimi who ran it off to table 4.
"Who?" Jeri asked
"That summer girl, Sora Takenouchi." Takato said
Tai perked up at the name, something about it seemed to charge the room, it seemed almost familiar.
"Oh yeah, well we should get to work or Ken will give us an earful." Jeri said
The day was long and after Tai got back to his room he flopped down on his bed and looked over to his bag.
'I'll unpack later.' Tai thought
Once again a knock at the door interrupted Tai's laziness. "Come in." he called
"Hey Tai, We're having a little party back at the Kou. A welcoming thing for all the new employees. Ken told me to round some people up, you going to come?"
"Sure." Tai said "Lemme take a shower first."
Tai got to the party what he would call fashionably late, most people would just call it late though.
Tai saw Takato, Davis, Jeri and Yoshi quickly as well as everyone else he had worked with that day, though Tai made an effort to introduce himself to everyone else and work to get a good impression with everyone he worked with rather than sticking with one small group. After a half an hour Tai had met all of the people who worked at Vanilla Kou, though he had somehow missed that Sora girl Takato had mentioned earlier.
Suddenly a girl ran through the door. She had fiery red hair and eyes that seemed to burn an even brighter color than her hair.
"I'm so sorry everyone, unpacking took longer than I thought."
"It's cool." Tai said walking towards her "No harm no foul. Sora right?"
"Yeah, how'd you know?" she asked
Tai grinned and leaned into her and whispered "Don't tell anyone but I'm psychic."
Sora laughed and said "No way."
"Yes way." Tai said
"Alright, what am I thinking of right now?" Sora asked
Tai paused for a moment and pretended to look like he was thinking and said "The color blue."
"A lucky guess." Sora said
Tai laughed and said "You mean I guessed right?"
Their conversation was cut short when Ken stepped in front of the group and tapped a fork on his glass to get everyone's attention.
"Now that everyone is here, allow me to introduce the owner of The Vanilla Kou, Gennia Kinoshita." Ken said
Everyone clapped as a young man with brown hair pulled back into a pony tail walked around the corner.
"Hello everyone, enjoy the food, and eat as much as you like. I'll just take it out of your paycheck!" He joked
Everyone laughed and returned to their own conversations as Gennia approached Tai and Sora.
"So you two are my new Summer helpers?" he asked
"Yes, sir." Sora said
Gennia laughed and said "No need to be so official, I won't bite."
Tai and Sora talked to Gennia for a while before he left to talk to a few other people. The two of them continued to talk on their own and walked back to the dorm after the party still talking and probing each other with questions. Tai walked with her to her room where she said "This was a lot of fun, Tai, I wish I had gotten there earlier."
"It's no big deal, we're going to be working together all summer, we'll be seeing plenty of each other." Tai said
Sora smiled and said "Looking forward to it."
Sora closed the door and Tai whistled as he walked back to his room "That's some girl."
"Is it now?" Takato asked as Tai turned the corner to the hallway with his room
"Takato?" Tai said
Takato laughed and said nothing as he walked into his room.
'Yep,' Tai thought 'This is going to be an interesting summer.
DT- Chapter one of a fantastic new series, This is going to be my big project... For the next year... Every month I'll puplish a new chapter to fit that month's general feel and then in one year, July 9 2010 the final chapter will be publshed and by longest project will be complete.
My god, has it really been a year? Man it feels like I just started yesterday! Looking back I've done a lot this past year, yes there was a few months where I didn't publish any new stories, but I was working on a big project, and I still am, I'm just taking a little break from it. I've gotten much better over the months, so much so that I can't stand to read my early stories and wonder how anyone ever could. I don't like sounding egotistical but I really feel that I have matured as a writer, and…well, I friggen deserve to say so. Don't get me wrong, I know I've still got a long way to go, but I'm dead set on making it. Now that I'm done with my own selfish ego-inflation, there are some people who deserve some thanks, first and foremost I want to thank all of my fan fiction friends, M M, Pranksta, Thunderbird, Solar, and Skipper, you guys (or girls I should say) rock! Thanks also need to be given to some other very important people in the real world who have supported me and more importantly kept their mouths shut on who I am. You know who you are, so thanks so much! Thanks also need to be given to my Gaia friends, Draco, Drag, Rap, and everyone else in the good old Tamer Island Guild, thank you! Thanks should go to for giving me a place to publish, and to Digimon and its writers for giving me something to write about. Last but most certainly not least, I want to thank every last person who read my stories over the past year, you guys, with your kind and wonderful reviews, make it all worth while... Wow, reading this makes it seem like I just won some kind of award... Well people deserved to be thanked. Anyway, You should all go to my web page and sign my guest book, seriously, it will be fun, and I'll... uh... give those Agumon Cookies to everyone who does. Review too, you know how I love the reviews.