(A/N): I forgot to add last time, but yeah, in this story, I'm making Mai and Takigawa siblings. I don't know why. I just felt like it.
This is my first time writing an au, and I'm enjoying the flexibility you get when you write one. (Though it's sometimes hard to get that balance between staying in character and adding your own traits for the characters).
I decided that I wanted Mai and Masako to be friends in this, because personally, I find their rather stormy relationship in the mangas a little irritating. (I know they get a bit friendlier later on, but still.) Also, I think it will be interesting describing Masako that isn't just "She wore a kimono" all the time. Yay for aus.
Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!
That night, I was late to my shift at the Seagull's Point Restaurant, and I had to use my bike. Unfortunately, it left me feeling sweaty and my hair was a complete mess. Trying to make my appearance a little less dishevelled, I locked up my bike by the entrance and head to the door of the restaurant. The building was situated on a road that faced the sea, a short distance from the pier. Because of this, it was well visited by tourists – and, more fittingly, seagulls. They were often given scraps of food by the tourists who didn't realise the nuisance they were seen as by some of the locals. Tonight, a few seagulls were lingering around the pavement, and I shooed them away, though they didn't retreat very far.
As I reached the door, it swung open, and I stepped to the side as a large drunken man was propelled out of the building. Falling to the floor, he looked up towards the doorway.
"Aw, come on, missy –" He slurred indistinctly.
"That's Ms Matsuzaki to you, idiot! Go sober up, or don't come back!" The restaurant owner noticed me and smile. "Oh, hi Mai. Come in."
I practically had to step over the drunk man to get in, and Ayako – the restaurant owner who also turfed out any unsavoury customers – slammed the door on him.
The restaurant bar – nicknamed SPR by the locals, considering 'Seagull's Point Restaurant' was such a mouthful to say – was large, but like always, was packed full with people. It also doubled as an inn, and I worked there as a waitress with Masako. Like many shops in Carlingford, the restaurant had a heavy maritime theme, and seagulls were all over the restaurant in some form or another, along with the various anchor, fish, shell and even a mermaid. Despite this, Ayako always liked to have potted plants dotted around the restaurant, and it made a nice change from the nautical theme.
Quickly, I hurried to get changed into my uniform, a blue dress with the restaurant logo – a seagull in flight – embroidered on the collar.
"Oh, hello Mai." Masako had already arrived, and already changed too. Right now, she was clipping her hair back in front of a mirror. "I heard a bit of a commotion back there."
"Oh, just some drunk guy." I stepped behind a changing curtain to get dressed. "What's the crowd like?"
"I haven't seen for myself, but I spoke to John before getting changed. He said we have a good haul of tourists today, and the usual locals."
Hearing we have a lot of tourists was always good news; they usually seemed to tip higher than the locals.
"What about him?"
I stepped out, slipping a white apron on, and Masako shrugged
"I don't know. I haven't checked yet."
We hurried back to the restaurant, and stood by the bar counter, slightly out of view from the rest of the restaurant.
"Where is he? Where is he?" I whispered into Masako's ear as we peered into the crowd of people.
"I can't see him…" Masako muttered, sounding worried.
As we searched intently, another co-worker of ours passed by.
"You two alright?" He asked, a tray with various empty glasses in his hand.
"John! Come here!" I beckoned him over. "Do you know where our guy is?"
He tilted his head. "The one you two are always talking about?"
I began to protest. "We're not always…" Masako gave me a look. "…Ok, yeah, maybe we do talk about him a lot. But he's really good-looking! And young! And he has a British accent! We might actually have a chance with him!"
John pointed to the centre of the restaurant, underneath a chandelier shaped like a ship steering wheel. Sure enough, there he was. "Who's going to serve him, then?" John asked, looking between us. Masako and I stared at each other for a moment, then held out our fists.
"Rock…Paper…Scissors!"
"Scissors beats paper. I'm serving." Masako declared triumphantly.
"Ugh…fine."
Masako strode over, and John patted me on the shoulder. "Better luck next time, Mai." He then set down the glasses, and went about serving more customers.
"Hey, Mai!"
I turned to see one of the local regulars sitting nearby, leaning on the table.
"I didn't realise you were into surly, moody men." He remarked, an eye brow raised. I realised he must have hear our conversation.
"Well, I'm also into handsome men, but since I can't serve any, I guess I'll have to serve you instead." I retorted.
"Ouch. That hurt." He was grinning, though. "Now, could I have an apple cider?"
"One apple cider coming right up!" I wrote it on a piece of paper. Before I walked away, he said,
"Oh, by the way…" He glanced at the person sitting underneath the chandelier. "…What's his name?"
"He's called Kazuya Shibuya. Why d'you ask, Yasuhara?" Yasuhara wasn't much older than I was, and according to Masako, his family owned a fishing business here. Although he would be applying to university soon, I think his parents wanted him to continue the business, and I wondered if the issue caused many problems in his household. He certainly seemed clever enough to get into a good university, so I hoped he was able to apply.
"Oh, nothing. I just thought I recognised him from somewhere."
I hurried over to the bar counter, searching for a glass. Ayako was just finishing serving a customer.
"That drunk guy didn't give you any problems, did he?" I asked, pouring out the liquid into the glass.
"No. He comes quite a lot, and he normally leaves in the same way." She was clearly used to this type of behaviour; not even a single strand of red hair was out of place.
In no time at all, I was hurrying back and forth, fetching drinks, bringing food, a smile on my face at all times. Whenever I served a tourist, and I could tell that they weren't Irish, I forced my accent as much as I could, using every single clichéd and stereotypical phrase as possible. I think I've even said 'Top of the morning' a few times before – as long as the customers tipped, which they always did, I'd say as many ridiculous phrases as I had to. I knew John and Masako did the same, though John stuck to 'G'day, mate' being Australian, and Masako would throw in various Japanese vocabulary to help rake up the tips. We actually got the advice from Ayako, and it never failed us - the tourists always lapped it up.
As I hurried to bring a drink for another tourist, I almost crashed into someone. The drinks on my tray rocked, and I ended up with alcohol soaked on my clothes.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Thankfully, none of the spillage seemed to have gone on the customer.
However, the customer didn't even say anything. He just stared down at me, towering above me with a scowl on his face. His appearance had a very rough, rugged feel to it that made me a bit nervous.
I was saved from any more of the tense silence by John, who approached us with a smile. "Oh, Lin! I didn't realise you were coming tonight!"
The man – Lin – broke away from his intense glare at me, and looked over at him. "Hello. Is there a table free?" His voice was surprisingly quiet.
"Yeah, your place by the window. I'll come over to serve you in a moment."
The colossal man nodded, and slowly went over to a single seat by a window. I muttered to John,
"Who was that?"
"Oh, that's Lin." He didn't seem even a little intimidated by the giant of a man.
"L-Lin?" I frowned. "Does he come here a lot?"
"Yeah, he's a regular. But he doesn't really speak to anyone here. He always sits over there, orders a beer, stays for a little while, then leaves."
"Oh. I don't think I've seen him around town at all."
"That makes sense. He works in a light house, and he keeps to himself. But he's really nice."
"Nice? Huh. I guessed 'scary', but…wait. Do you know him or something?"
"Yeah. We're friends. I visit him in his light house from time to time."
Friends?! "O-Oh." Somehow, I couldn't imagine John – cute, small, innocent-looking John – being friends with a man like that.
"Here, let me take those." John suggested. "I'll clean this up and get some new drinks. You go dry yourself."
"Thanks." Gratefully, I passed him the tray, and hurried to the bathroom. Inside, I frantically tried to wash the sticky substances from my clothes, thankful it wasn't something staining like a fruit drink. We were responsible for our own work clothes, and needed to keep them clean. It'd be a pain if Ayako had to buy a new one, and I didn't want to cause her bother when it was only my few weeks there.
As I dabbed water at my apron, trying to dilute the spillage, I decided to open the bathroom window and let a little air into the room. That's when I heard it.
"…come on, it won't hurt to tell." I recognised the honey-coated voice as Madoka's.
"No, no…I can't…Doctor-patient confidentiality, after all…" I didn't know the second voice, but whoever it was had had perhaps one too many alcoholic drinks that night.
"Oh, no one will know it was you! Come on." Madoka asked hopefully. "Any drinks you want will be on me."
"Well…it's funny…no, I mean, it's a lucky escape for that man. Everyone else on the boat managed to escape into the life boats, but he fell in the water. He could have died, really. The water is still pretty cold in summer."
"Does anyone know why the boat went down?"
"No. They say the hold just suddenly started filling up with water, and they don't know why."
I could hear pen on paper as Madoka scribbled this down. "Really?"
"Yeah, but – listen to this. He could have been in shock or something from hitting the water, and he was drowning, so there are a load of reasons as to why he thinks this, but…"
"Go on." Madoka urged him on.
"Well…he says he was rescued by a mermaid." At once, the other person burst out laughing.
"…A mermaid?" Madoka asked, a hint of amusement in her voice.
"Yeah, yeah." The other person controlled their laughter. "Yeah. He claims he saw a flash of blue scales, like a fish, moving about in the water, and that he saw an arm or something as whatever it was swam away, I don't know…but he seems really serious about it."
A flash of blue scales? Where had I…
In my dream.. .I saw a flash of blue fish scales in my dream…
No way. I was not telepathic, and there was no such thing as mermaids anyway. It was just another weird coincidence.
"Mai?"
Yelping, I replied louder than I wanted, "Yes?!"
Masasko was standing in the door way of the bathroom.
"Are you alright?"
"Ah, um, yeah, I'm fine." I dried my hands briefly with a paper towel, and dabbed my wet clothes a bit more, I hurried back over into the restaurant with her. "Is it busy?"
She nodded. "Sorry to hassle you. It's just getting a little hectic."
The rest of the evening was, as Masako said, hectic. By the time the restaurant closed, I felt exhausted. Masako, John and I sat around table, pooling our tips and splitting the total amount equally between us. There were other waiters and waitresses at the restaurant, since it was fairly large, and other staff that worked for the inn, but today a few had called in ill, which only increased the amount of work we'd had to do. Still, we'd managed to do well today, so I left tired but pleased.
Outside, it was dark, and I picked up my bike as I looked out to the ocean. It was very calm tonight, and the sky was completely clear, allowing the stars to shine down on the water, their reflection shaking and shattering with each gentle break of the waves. It was hard to believe that a boat had sunk in those very waters the previous night. Thinking back to the conversation I overheard, the survivor of the sunken boat had suddenly started filling up with water for no reason. How did that happen without him noticing?
"Hey." A voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I turned to see my brother walking towards me.
"Hey!" I wheeled my bike over to him. "How was work?"
"Uh…" He sighed. "Like normal. What about you?"
He didn't seem open to talk about it, and when I realised he had probably been helping the life guard recover the bodies from last night, I understood why he was so reluctant to talk about work.
"It was busy tonight." We began to walk along the pavements back towards home, and Houshou wheeled my bike for me. "A lot of tourists."
As we turned the corner, a thought occurred to me. "Hey…you know that boat that sunk last night?"
"…Yeah?" He shuddered involuntarily.
"Does anyone know why it sunk?"
He hesitated before answering. "…Well, we think it was caused by a storm. There was one last night. But…" He trailed off uncertainly.
"What is it?"
"Well, it's just…four in two weeks…it's a big coincidence, isn't it?"
"It is." I agreed. "But it was just a storm, right?"
"Right."
The rest of the walk home, we didn't mention the subject of the sinking boat again. Yet I could tell, even as we talked of mundane matters, that there was a single thought tossing and turning at the back of our minds like a ship on the waves.
Was it all really a coincidence?