Chapter 1
"How much are these?" I asked the old man selling a vast collection of dusty old books. I was particularly interested in the one that said Ancient Hindu Mythology and another mildew-smelling book of short stories that I carried in my hands.
"10,000 berries!" the old man stated, making up the outrageous price on the spot. I protested, trying to bring the price down to 6,000 berries, which was all that I carried in my wallet. And that was including the emergency cash that I carried for, well, emergencies. Being only nineteen years old, the only money I made came from my minimum-wage job at Kat's Kafe or was from my neighbor, whose cats I watched when she went on vacation.
"Isn't that a little... much?" I hinted hopefully.
The man violently shook his head. "These been in family long time!" he replied in an obnoxiously loud, oriental voice. "10,000 berries!" He wouldn't budge, the stubborn old git.
I sighed and answered tiredly, "All right, I'll put them back." Turning around to go put the books back, I accidentally tripped over the foot of a man standing in line behind me.
"S-sorry," I stumbled over my words as the guy grabbed my arm gently to steady me. He had designs running down his arms, in a tattoo sleeve-like fashion. Looking up, my eyes were met by a man so picturesque that I froze. Then, being so close to someone this amazing-looking, I was instantly self-conscious. Instinctively, I took a step back.
"The fault is mine," Tattoo Man apologized in a heavy French accent as he stood up straighter. "I was just listening in on your conversation and I heard that you don't have enough berries to pay for those books." He gestured to the two books I had in my hands. My tongue bunched up and my brain went blank, a strange phenomenon that happens when I make eye contact with a man, specifically a hot one.
"Er, what, these?" I replied stupidly, seeing as, obviously, he was talking about the books. "Yeah, they were priced at 10,000 berries, so I have to put them back. Stupid, right?" I tried to smile, which probably came out as a grimace. Nervously, I twisted the studded bracelets on my arm, staring down at my shoes. My feet look very small in these shoes, I thought. In actuality, my feet look small in any pair of shoes, most likely because they are small. I like to think of them as "fairy feet".
Tattoo Man pulled out his wallet. "What are you doing?" I asked, bewildered, as he placed 10,000 berries on the counter.
He ignored me, saying to the old man, "Here, I would like to purchase these for the young lady." Grudgingly, the old man took the money, the tattooed man scribbled something, probably a proof of purchase or whatever for two crappy books, and I was the surprised owner of them.
I turned to Tattoo Man. "T-thanks!" I stuttered. "But you really didn't have to do that, I already have a ton of books!" He turned to me, interested.
"What is your name?" he asked randomly. Briefly, a picture of my mother saying "Stranger Danger!" popped into my head, but I pushed it out of my head. He didn't look creepy. She was always too paranoid, anyways.
"My name's Donnikko. Friends call me Nikko." After pausing for a second, I added, "I haven't seen you around before. Do you live in Venor Falls or are you just passing through?" Tattoo Man, like a true gentleman, grabbed my hand and kissed it lightly, causing me to blush fiercely, which wasn't that hard to do. I hoped my face didn't look like an overly-ripe tomato.
"I, Dracule Mihawk, am pleased to make your acquaintance," he replied with a small smile on his face. "And, no, I do not live here. I've just bought an apartment here because I will temporarily staying here for the summer, which I've heard is extremely pleasant."
"Oh," I said, slightly disappointed. "What part of town are you staying in?"
Mihawk thought a moment, then said, "I live on Magnolia Street." My eyes widened. That was a really nice part of town. Where the rich people lived.
"I live sort-of nearby," I squinted my eyes. "Well, actually I live on the other side of town. On Thurman Avenue. Know where that is?"
He paused, thinking, then shook his head. He was wearing a pointy hat, like Robin Hood, only it was black.
"It's kind of a poor area, but I get by," I half-smiled. There was a short, awkward pause. Then, since there was nothing else to say, I concluded with, "Well, it was really nice of you to buy these for me. I guess I'll see you arou-" But Tattoo Man, er, Dracule, interrupted me.
"What types of books do you read?" he asked curiously.
I stammered, "Er, I don't know, every type I guess." Then, after another moment's pause I added, "Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Douglas Adams, y'know. I like Sarah Dessen a lot. You've probably never heard of her, she writes teen-"
"Romance," Mihawk finished for me. "I know who she is." I must have looked confused because he then told me that he had a younger sister who used to read Dessen's novels. It was a relief that he wasn't the one who was into girly teen love books. For a brief horrible moment I thought he was gay. That would've been just my luck.
"What interests me most are the classics." He cleared his throat, and nervously - nervously? - tapped his foot and wrung his shirt in his hands. "Some of my favorites include Dracula, Oliver Twist, A Cather in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms. There are so many that I could name."
I nodded my head in agreement. He looked down at his shirt in his hands and quickly straightened it out. He was wearing a black tank top under a colorless flannel.
"Mythology is really something I love reading about," I replied, brushing my long hair out of my face. "All of the religions are different, so it's pretty interesting to read up on all of them and then compare them. Plus, it's just hard to believe that ancient people actually believed some of that crazy stuff. I mean, there's this one Hindu god or goddess that was an elephant with a hundred arms or something. How can you make that stuff up? It's like some crazy guy said, Oh, I just saw an elephant in the sky, I think he was god, Let's follow him. And then everybody just goes along with it or something."
I don't think I was making much sense, but he seemed to follow along. People never really understand anything that I say because I just randomly spout off thoughts that just pop into my head, and in no certain order either.
The conversation tapered off and I racked my brains for something extremely witty to say. Alas, all my mind coughed up was dust and nothingness. That was my signal. "Well, I best be off. Thank you for buying me these." I held up the books. "Maybe I'll see you around," I added, smiling.
Mihawk smiled back mysteriously. "Maybe you will," he replied in his thick accent.
Then he went on my way and I went on mine. But as I was walking away I looked back at him, only to catch him looking back at me. We both quickly turned around and kept on walking to wherever we were headed. Shaking my head, I tried to put him out of my mind. Someone as amazing as that would never go for an uninteresting girl like me. But I would still definitely keep my eye out for him, just in case.
ooOOoo
After the run in with Tattoo Man (I refuse to call him by his real name), I went to a couple more old thrift shops and musty, moldy bookstores. No luck with the bookstores, but I found an old band t-shirt at one of the nicer, more respectable secondhand shops in the city. Even though I'd never heard of the artist, Jet-Black Ink, the screaming gargoyle the covered the front caught my attention. Who cares if it was two sizes too big for me? I also bought a necklace pendant that was a pickle. It was green and had the pickle bumps and everything. I couldn't pass it up at only 200 berries, so I bought it and put it on my necklace chain. Power to the pickle.
Finally, when it was the end of the day and I was done milling about the city, I reached my street. Venor Falls wasn't that poor of a city, but I lived on one of the less spectacular avenues. With me working at a minimum-wage job, the most I could afford without blowing all of my money was a small second-floor apartment that had blankets for curtains and stains from I don't even want to know what. Even though it had a run-down appearance, it was my dream apartment. And, since it was so cheap, I could spend the rest of my hard-earned cash on something I really wanted. Like skinny jeans or something.
Clomping up the stairs, the sounds of my shoes echoing off the walls in the cramped stairwell, I reached for the tarnished doorknob, fumbling with my keys. The door creaked open and I set my crap down on the end table, tired from a day of shopping. Plus, I was still thoroughly surprised and overly happy that someone as amazingly delicious as Dracule Mihawk had talked to me. I mean, the guy had kissed my hand! No guy ever even approached me and talked to me, let alone bought me something. I'm not sure what was wrong with me, but I just didn't attract men. I think I had two relationships my whole life, and one of them lasted two weeks. So yeah, it was shocking that Tattoo Man had flirted with me. Shockingly amazing.
Kicking off my shoes, I flopped down onto my small, broken couch that I had found dumpster diving with my friends, Brody and Mina. I looked over and grabbed the book of short stories I had bought earlier. Sitting back and crossing my feet, I opened it to the front cover. And when I glanced at what was written on the title page, I could not believe my eyes.
Written there, in elegant black scrawl, were two words and seven numbers.
Dracule Mihawk
7241375573
I almost died with utter joy.
Oh my god, he had left me his number! A beautiful guy who was, hopefully, intelligent had left me, someone nobody talked to, his number! My brain spazzed out, I was so happy. How romantic! It was the most interesting and romantic thing that had happened to me in my whole life. Pinching myself, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them back up, nothing had changed. An opportunity of a lifetime still sat before me, waiting for action to be taken. "FINALLY!" my brain screamed. After years of waiting for my soul mate to approach me, this was an answer to my prayers - Not that I prayed, mind you. I'm not a particularly religious person, and wasn't so desperate that I'd get on my knees to ask some spirit in the sky for a boyfriend. Since it had taken so long for the love of my life to find me, I'd half-given up. Oh, I still checked guys out at the mall and whatever, but I didn't actually expect any of them to come up to me and make conversation. And now a man who looked like the exact man of man dreams had given me HIS NUMBER!
This ain't no joke.
Then reality set in. How was I supposed to approach this situation? Having never come across anything like this, I had to ponder what in the hell I was going to do. After thinking a bit, I decided that I'd call him tomorrow. That way I wouldn't seem too desperate. Or maybe I should wait two days, just so he'd kind of been waiting for me to call. Or maybe - I stopped myself. I'd call him in two days, I thought firmly. For now, I would just have to sit back, relax and take the next two days easy. I'd start off by reading my book. With that thought, I opened the book to the first page. Ten minutes passed and I was still reading the first sentence over and over again. I couldn't stop thinking about what he was like. Did he like sushi? Was he religious? What do he do for a living? Something really awesome if he had enough money to by a summer house on Magnolia Street.
Trying to shake all the crowding thoughts out of my brain, I grabbed the remote off the couch cushion and flipped on the TV. I don't even remember what I watched. After staring at the screen for an hour, I went to bed at nine o'clock.
The next day I went to visit my best friend 'till death, Gwen Barton. I had texted her that morning for about two hours and told her about yesterday's encounter, but she wanted all the details. So now I was driving up to her giant, ancient house in my beat-up, multi-colored 2000 Monte Carlo Grand Prix that I had bought extremely cheap at a large auto-shop in another town. One car door was orange, the other was a sea-foam green, and the hood was blue. The rest of the car was a paint-chipped silver. I have no idea how the previous owners found car doors in those colors or why they replaced them, but I loved my car. It had history.
Gwen's place was in a nice neighborhood where nobody fought and the neighbors knocked on each others doors to get sugar from each other. Everyone else's house was normal. Just regular houses that really didn't have anything about them that stood out. But Gwen's house, the red-brick, ivy-choked house that was built in the nineteenth century and had crooked-teeth steps leading up to the front door, stood out. Everyone loved her house. In fact, when we had lived in that part of town, even my mom wanted that house. It had that strange, old-fashion charm that made everyone sigh as they drove past. In our high-school years, Gwen's family had moved into the neighborhood and bought the house, becoming the envy of the town. Now Gwen owned the house after her parents had moved to another country, her older brother was living in a trailer park or a box somewhere, and her sister had become a famous journalist and moved to a prestigious part of the country to interview all of the interesting people who resided there.
I pulled into the driveway and opened my door, only to be greeted by a gigantic black blur rushing into my car and slobbering all over me.
"Chopper, stop!" I cried, pushing her giant Cane Corso off of me. Chopper was the most lovable, most slobbery dog in the entire world. And his farts smelled extremely bad. His little stub of a tail wagged wildly as I slammed my door and walked up to the house. Before I could even knock on the door Gwen threw it open.
"Hey," I smiled, but was interrupted by her yelling, "Chopper! Chopper, get over here!" Then, after the dog bolted for her and almost ran her over, she turned to me.
"Hey!" she greeted me breathlessly, trying to fend Chopper off and hold the door open at the same time. I could smell something exotic cooking in the oven. "Come on in." Then the stove timer beeped and she rushed into the kitchen
Crossing over the welcome mat, I glanced up to find that she had added yet another new painting. This one was creepy and Gothic, a dead, scraggly tree sitting hunched in front of a giant, ghostly moon. The tree sat on a dark hill and had a black, door-shaped hole cut out of its trunk, leading into some dark, unknown abyss.
"When did you do this one?" I asked. Gwen turned around from where she was standing in the kitchen doorway and looked to where I was pointing.
"Oh, I did that a couple of weeks ago, I just hadn't got around to putting it up. You like it?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "This one might actually be my new favorite." After pausing a moment I peeked into her extremely cramped kitchen. "What are you cooking?" I sniffed. I was fearing her response, hoping that what was in the oven wasn't as spicy and strangely spiced as I thought.
"I wanted to make that bread I was telling you about, the one I salted with that sea salt?" I nodded, and she continued. "And I tried out my grandma's spaghetti sauce recipe last week and it was really good, so I thought that'd taste nice with the bread. Plus, I made meatballs! Just make sure to tell me how they taste, alright? I added some oregano and-" She named about fifteen other spices. I don't know why she added so many crazy herbs. I would've been happy with a pizza, or a box of Ramen noodles. But I knew she liked experimenting with a bunch of different styles and flavors, so I just smiled and nodded. The flavors made the food taste either really weird or really good. I crossed my fingers for the latter.
"Do you want me to set the table?" I offered, not wanting to stand there idly while Gwen added the finishing touches on the food. She nodded, motioning to a stack of plates and utensils that rested on the counter. After I had put everything in place and the food was set out, we both sat down to eat. The food looked delicious and fancy, or at least as fancy as a plate of spaghetti can look. As I twirled the noodles around my fork, Gwen cleared her throat and gave me a look, much like a hawk eyeing its prey.
"Tell me everything."