2

Downtown Quintz had a little eatery, something people simply called "The Cafe." It had no real name, just the letters C-A-F-E on the front outside. Naturally that was where I worked.

It was part coffeehouse, part diner, part tavern, so all my old drink-mixing skills came into play again. ID was required if you wanted something alcoholic, but it was easy to fake one considering there was no electronic means of checking them. ShinRa had that kind of setup in the cities that depended on it long ago, but like I said, Quintz was self-reliant. Bartenders had to rely on good common sense. In other words, unless you looked really old, we carded you. And oh, you should've heard the excuses we got. Here was a good one: because Meteor nearly crash landed into a city on a totally different continent separated from us by miles and miles of ocean, some guy managed to lose his driver's license. But then again, I did get dumber excuses back when I ran Seventh Heaven.

The man who ran The Cafe was a typical father figure guy. He had a home in Reine, a happy wife, and two daughters whom he thought the world of. He always looked out for his female employees when he was around, almost like they were his daughters too. That's what I loved best about him, really.

I was hired practically on the spot. I would meet my second best friend in the whole world there, after Cloud and Barret: Georgette Stutt, but the whole world called her Gigi. Because the whole world didn't want its shins kicked.

I showed up at The Cafe at seven in the evening and the owner---his name was Mr. Weiss---led me to the break room down a hall in back so I could meet my new coworkers. Three of them were there, all seated, two girls and a guy. Mr. Weiss had me introduce myself, and then he introduced everyone else to me.

The guy's name was Antoine and he didn't say much. I could describe him best as tall, dark, and quiet. Very quiet. The girl on the right was busy cracking her gum loudly and twirling her hair around her finger. Bleach-blonde hair, with black roots. She looked really young. She didn't seem like a bad girl though. The girl in the middle... I should've known she'd be trouble at first. She was a redhead, after all---well, blondish red, but you get the idea. Now I thought I was thin, but this girl was downright skinny. And she had freckles. Lots. All over. You could have played connect-the-dots on her arms and face.

Antoine's greeting was a shy nod; the bleach-blonde girl---her name was Jessi, something that had me mentally going all the way back to the day when the plate fell in Midgar---smiled brightly and waved a little. The redheaded girl's eyes fell right to my chest and got so wide, I thought they'd fall out of her head.

"Oh my GOD," she gaped at me. "You hired this..." There she gestured over and over again with her right hand, trying to come up with a nice way of putting things. "...Full-figured girl, and now every guy who comes in here's gonna notice her instead of me. God, I should've seen this coming..."

"Gigi," Mr. Weiss started.

"What about Roger, Gigi?" said Jessi, still cracking away at her gum.

Gigi looked confused for a moment, then said simply, "Oh, well, he doesn't mind if other guys look at me." Then she turned back to me and asked, "What's your bra size? I betcha she's three times my size..."

I could have died. Jessi started laughing, but from the way her face was turning red, she seemed almost as embarrassed as I was. Antoine shifted in his seat and looked away from me, and Mr. Weiss told Gigi bluntly to cut it out.

"What? I'm just asking a question!"

"You know I don't hire based on appearances," Mr. Weiss said. "Tifa can tend bar---said she used to run one all by herself back in Midgar."

"She might be lying," Gigi was quick to point out.

Mr. Weiss sneered. "Why would she lie? Look, I gotta get back out front. Jessi, break's over in a few more minutes, okay? And Gigi---Tifa's hired, so you're just going to have to get used to her." He left the break room and a very mortified me who wanted to crawl into a corner and hide.

"But I didn't say I didn't like her! Ugh..." Gigi looked disgusted, then looked back up at me. She had the palest blue eyes I ever saw. "Don't listen to him; he's always bitching about everything I say. You look like a nice girl." She shocked me then by offering me her hand.

I took it while running through a mental list of things to say to her, since I felt I was being too quiet. I felt almost like an outcast. Everyone here already knew each other. I wasn't used to being the outsider who wanted in. "Gigi... That's a pretty name." Lame, and not really sincere either, but I couldn't think of much else.

Gigi smirked. "Better than my real name."

"Georgette," Jessi said illustratively. Her index finger seemed to be permanently wrapped in her hair. I guessed it was a nervous habit, or some kind of subconscious thing.

Gigi let go of my hand and turned to kick Jessi's shins.

"Ow...!" Jessi cried, then started laughing again. Okay, the hair twirling was subconscious. The laughter was a nervous habit.

Gigi smiled at her evilly, and then she looked at me again. "See? That's what happens when people call me by that hideous name. I kick them. Ask Antoine; he knows a lot about that. Hey, stupid!" She pounded her little fist on his thigh. He'd been so quiet I almost forgot he was there, until then.

"Ow, stop!" he whined, and that was when I realized that around Gigi everyone was either eternally embarrassed or eternally afraid. I figured I'd be taking turns being in both shoes.

"Show her your bruises!" Gigi ordered him. "I kick Antoine all the time, since he's always doing STUPID things," she explained to me. She seemed to be proud of the fact that she could kick people and get away with it.

"You do stupid things too," Antoine came back defensively. "What was that dumb thing you said that one time? 'My contempt for you could fill thirty shopping carts'...?"

"How's that stupid?"

Antoine shrugged nervously and got quiet again. "I don't know..."

"Ass face."

"Leave me alone, damn it..."

"Why should I?"

While Gigi browbeat Antoine, Jessi leaned over in her chair toward me and whispered, "She's always like that."

Great, I had a lot to look forward to. "How do you work with that?" I asked, hoping I didn't get overheard. Finally, normal conversation.

"Oh, I don't work with Gigi. I'm on a different shift---"

Gigi abandoned her argument with Antoine. "Yeah, me and Jessi don't work together. And that's so sad," she added, getting melodramatic, leaning over to hug the girl, "'cuz she's like my little sister...!"

Jessi didn't look like she wanted to be hugged then; she was smiling nervously.

"'Little sister'?" I repeated. I thought she looked young. "How old are you, Jessi?"

"She's only SIXTEEN!" Gigi poked her head up, it having been buried in Jessi's shoulder. She announced that like it was a tragedy.

"I can't even tend bar!" Jessi whined. "I can't even touch anything alcoholic..."

So why was she working here, I thought, but I didn't say anything.

Mr. Weiss came down the hall and into the break room. "Jessi, break's over," he announced, and I watched the girl get up and leave the room. She was a really tiny thing; she was lucky if she made the five-foot mark. She was all the way out the door before she peeked back in really fast.

"Nice to meet you," she said, and then she was gone.

That was when I got my schedule from Mr. Weiss and learned how things went around The Cafe. It turned out that I would be working with Gigi and Antoine, for better or for worse. The Cafe was really small, so it needed only three people per shift more or less, aside from the people who worked in back. That was a totally different setup, and it didn't involve me. The shifts rotated on some irregular basis. At the most I'd work five days a week; at the least, I'd work three. There was a uniform too, which was something I wasn't used to, but this one was kind of cute: a white shirt with really tiny sleeves and a red dress scarf that went around the neck and got tied in front, making the knot about mid-chest. There was a pleated white skirt that went with it, short but not as short as my old leather one. Of course in winter you could substitute with white pants if you wanted, which I did since I got cold easily.

My job didn't require anything that working at Seventh Heaven didn't. I cleaned tables, made drinks and sandwiches and coffee and things, washed dishes, and either locked up or opened up shop, depending on my shift. Things were pretty easy, but Gigi occasionally got trying. Really early on, I came home with a bunch of complaints and a bruise or two.

"I can't DEAL with her!" I told Cloud once. "She's impossible!"

"Well why do you take it so much?" he asked me. "Why don't you start giving it back?"

Because I'm not as tough as everyone thinks I am, I wanted to say, but I didn't. And that was the truth. I was cursed with shyness. For the longest time I took a back seat at work. Gigi ran the whole show. She seemed to really want to be my friend though, so that was a blessing. She was a scary person, really.

One time I had an afternoon shift. It started at one o'clock and was on a weekday, so everyone in town was at work and things were slow. Gigi and I were washing dishes in the little sink behind the counter, and Antoine was at the counter with a single customer.

"I love washing dishes," Gigi said with relish, scrubbing away at a glass. She abandoned it momentarily and stuck her hands all the way in the water. "Mmm, warm soapy water..." She shot me a silly look and I laughed at her.

Then her silly look turned coy and she splashed me a little. With Cloud's words in mind, I splashed her back. A little.

I started laughing. But then Gigi said, "Oh, you wanna splash fight now?" And she started splashing me over and over again. Now I knew she was joking---she was smiling the whole time---but she always got so rough. She had me squealing and raising my hands, trying to defend myself, and it only stopped when she remembered something I told her a while ago.

"Oh, right, you can kick my skinny little ass," she said. She stopped splashing. "Martial artist that you are."

By then Antoine was finished with the customer and came over to us. "What're you doing? Why're you soaking wet?" he asked me. Poor Antoine, he tried so hard to be bossy early on, on occasion, and in the process he always managed to irk either me or Gigi or both of us. It was when he got that way that I understood where Gigi came from. Thing was, I tolerated Antoine's annoying moments, where Gigi usually snapped his head off.

Before I could say anything, Gigi came to my defense---sort of. She spared Antoine a little look over her shoulder and said quaintly, "Shuddup, balls eater."

I doubled over laughing. Above me, I heard Antoine sigh and watched him walk away, shaking his head.

Later on I learned to assert myself around Gigi, and it worked. In fact, I got the impression that she really wanted someone around who wasn't afraid of her. But it took a while for things to get into that nice, comfortable routine.

That was my life then. I worked at a cafe and Cloud and Barret did odd jobs around the city. Barret amazed me with his capability of being able to last in a job for a long time, while Cloud just jumped from job to job. More proof of his having not settled down completely, I thought. It caused me some anxiety, but most of the time I kept it in the back of my head.

January passed, and February and March came and went, and now it was early April. Life still carried on, even if in other parts of the world things were far worse than where I was.

One thing I learned was that time did funny things to people. It made them soft, you could say. I started forgetting a lot of things, like this: Aeris still lived on in my memory, but sometimes I had trouble remembering what she looked like. ShinRa, Rufus and especially his father, and Hojo and Scarlet and even Sephiroth... Time wiped them away. I was grateful for it, actually. Those memories weren't pleasant ones. I let them fade willingly.

I would live to regret that, of course.

Gigi and I grew close outside of work and pretty soon we were hanging out a lot. She lived all twenty-four years of her life in Quintz, so she showed me around. We were at a ratty little magazine stand one day, a few blocks down from The Cafe. I wasn't really much of a reader, so I wasn't there for anything, but Gigi was there to buy porn.

I learned two things about her very quickly: she loved gossip and was obsessed with sex. It came up a lot in our conversations. I didn't care to discuss that myself, but she loved to hear about my pathetic little love life, so I indulged her, as much as I wanted.

There was a little line at the stand that day. Newspapers and things were big sources of entertainment considering there wasn't really much else. There must've been three or four people ahead of us by the time we got in line, and to top it all off, it was raining pretty badly. Gigi and I shared an umbrella---her umbrella; it was red, her favorite color. I was holding it, and higher than I normally would too, since Gigi was two inches taller than me, give or take. I was patient about the wait, but she was anxious, trying to look around the people ahead of us to see what was going on up front.

"God, I need an electric cattle prod," she whispered. With Gigi, a whisper was a little bit louder than what I would call a whisper. She had no embarrassment whatsoever. "Will this line move faster or something? I ain't gettin' any younger back here!"

"You're not old," I pointed out, and she nudged me in the ribs with that pointy elbow of hers.

That was when someone else came in line behind us. I didn't really notice him right away, but I did get a glimpse---from the chest down of course, since I had the umbrella over my head. He seemed very tall, and he was wearing something long and black and buttoned.

For some reason, I got the impression that he was very sad, but I got something else too: goosebumps. Something about him didn't settle well with me. I got the repeated urge to abandon Gigi and wait for her somewhere else, but it seemed so stupid. He was just an ordinary guy. Just because he was tall and dark didn't mean he was a psycho-rapist-pervert or something.

Gigi, of course, reacted differently. She looked over her shoulder once, twice. That was when she lifted the umbrella up slightly and I felt rain on my back. I got annoyed. "What're you doing?"

She lowered the umbrella and faced me. "Look behind you." She was smiling, like she was about to let me in on a big secret.

So I looked. I tried not to raise the umbrella much, since I didn't want it to be obvious. The whole time Gigi was speaking right in my ear.

"Did you see him? Did you see him yet?"

"I can't, the umbrella's in the way..."

"Then get rid of the fucking umbrella! Just look!" She took the umbrella out of my hand and closed it up on me.

"Are you crazy? Open that up again; we're gonna get soaked!" I reached for the umbrella, but it was too late. She'd already turned around again.

"Hi," she said, and I could've smacked her over the head. I didn't know what she'd been whispering about earlier, so I decided to turn around again and see who was going to get embarrassed along with me this time.

He had no umbrella, but he was wearing a dark hat with a brim that cast a shadow over his face, so I couldn't see it very well. I could see enough to tell that he was actually kind of nice looking though, but in a strange way. I usually notice eyes first with people, but he seemed to make a real effort to keep his lowered. It didn't seem right, for some reason. Throw in the long black coat he was wearing and you shouldn't be surprised that the first thing I thought of was a news reporter. You know, the kind that used to be on TV, back when TV was useful?

He answered Gigi. "Hi." And he smiled, halfway at least. He seemed almost as shy as I was. His voice caught me though, because it was familiar. Yes, I heard him somewhere before...or did I? It was deep, but there was a softness to it, something that made it sound kind of exotic. It was chilling, actually. Yes, I heard it before. Wait, no I didn't. Oh, that didn't make sense. I grabbed the umbrella from Gigi and opened it up again.

There was quiet for a time, but it didn't last long. Gigi never allowed silence to reign for more than a few seconds. "You know, I know everybody in this town. I lived here all my life. But I don't know you."

Oh, I should've known what she was trying to do! I shot her a glance. She was trying to flirt with this guy. Normally whenever she did that, I'd be nice and remind her that she had a boyfriend. But she probably wouldn't listen---she never did---and I wasn't the guardian of her relationship anyway. Besides, I wasn't that crazy about Roger. I met him briefly a while back and he looked a little shifty. So I just stood there and tried not to be too embarrassed. From the look of the poor guy behind us, he seemed to feel the same way I did. Figured.

"I don't live here," he answered her. Again the familiar voice. Again the chill. Something wasn't right about this.

"Where do you live?" Gigi persisted.

"Reine. The line's moving up." He pointed ahead of us.

"Oh." Gigi whirled around, ducked under the umbrella, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me up a few paces. Then she leaned in closer. "Jesus Christ he's hot." She said that through gritted teeth, and she was digging her fingernails into my arm. I jerked it free.

"You have a boyfriend," I whispered back. I couldn't help it. Better late than never to remind her.

"Who cares? God... Didn't you see him? Damn..." She turned around to look at him again.

If I hadn't been so spooked I probably would've agreed with her, partly maybe. But I had every bone in my body begging me to just run away. On top of that, I knew I couldn't leave Gigi there without looking dumb, so I was trapped. And I was cold and wet, the two worst things to be at the same time.

Gigi turned around all the way again. She stood under the umbrella this time. I really wanted to take out a marker and scribble on her forehead "desperate." Then underneath, "with no reason to be so." She didn't say anything yet, so I looked at her curiously. She was just staring. It must kill her to be even the least bit discreet.

I was too embarrassed to turn around, but I heard the guy ask her, "What?"

And she said, "Oh, nothing. I just like staring at people sometimes. Just to freak them out." Then she laughed, which was followed by more quiet.

The line moved up a few more times and Gigi managed not to say anything more the whole time. I was starting to get proud of her. Maybe she remembered Roger by then, but of course I thought too soon.

By the time we were at the front of the line, Gigi announced very loudly, "You know what? I don't wanna buy anything here after all. C'mon, Tifa." She grabbed my free wrist and pulled me out of the line, off to the side where the curb was. But we didn't go any further than that. We watched while the guy behind us bought a magazine or something. He seemed to know exactly what he wanted, because he hadn't been standing at the counter for more than a few seconds. When he was done, he tucked whatever he'd gotten in the crook of his right arm and began to head in our direction.

His eyes were green. I caught them the moment he tried to walk by us because he stopped to stare at me. A glowing green, and very pretty actually, but creepy too. And I saw recognition in them. It hit me like a slap in the face. He knew me, .and just a few moments ago I could've sworn I knew his voice. I froze. Neither of us said anything for an eternity.

Leave it to Gigi to shatter peace and quiet. They were her enemies by nature. "You live in Reine?" she asked him, and he had to forcibly tear his eyes off me. He gave Gigi a nod. She looked like she was considering that piece of information before she spoke again. She was eying him up and down shamelessly. "How'd you get here then?"

"I walked," he said simply.

Gigi was incredulous. "What? Reine's a half an hour away by car! You couldn't have walked!"

I saw her point there. I didn't know exactly how far away Reine was until she said so, but I knew it was a good distance. It was something else to add to this guy's creep-out factor, too. He walked that whole distance? I tried putting everything together in my head, but I couldn't make sense of it. None of it made sense. I didn't know anyone from Reine; I'd never been there.

All the guy said was "I walked" again.

And that was when Gigi got nasty. She usually did whenever she couldn't understand something. "You're full of it. You're so full of it your eyes are turning brown!"

I almost burst out laughing, but I recovered pretty fast. The guy sort of glowered at her, but there was this weird touch to it, almost like he wanted to say "how little you know," or something like that.

I finally decided to say something about my wanting to leave. "We should get going, Gigi. We're gonna get soaked." I should've known she wouldn't have gone anywhere, but I'd been keeping quiet about that for too long.

I also should've known that she was definitely going to play what she heard me say to her advantage. "Yeah, speaking of soaked, look at mister 'I walked here from Reine' with no umbrella! Have you been here before? There's a little cafe up the street. I work there. You should stop in for a while and dry up or something. I could wring out your jacket right now and get enough water to end a famine."

"You mean a drought," the man corrected her, and I almost had another laugh at Gigi's expense.

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Just come on. It's not far ahead. You're going that way anyway aren't you, since Reine's up north...?"

"I'd rather be on my way, actually. I have to get back."

"Right away?"

"I'd like to."

"What if I begged you? What if I asked really nicely? What if I said I'd DIE if you didn't come with us? What if I said I'd be all worried 'cause you got no umbrella and it's cold---"

"Then I'd say that you have nothing to worry about. I don't get sick easily." His tone of voice turned icy there. I started to get sick, as in actually physically ill. What had been just strange earlier turned into something almost terrifying now. I wanted more than ever to just go home, sit down with a cup of tea, and relax, without worrying about an umbrella or rain or Gigi's hitting on people right in front of me and putting me in an awkward position in the process.

So I said something again. Honestly, I was worried about sounding like a nag, but this was getting really annoying and I was really disturbed. "Look, Gigi, let him go. He doesn't want to stick around." Then an idea hit me so I added in really fast, "If he starts walking now, he'll spend less time out in the rain." Yes, that made sense. Gigi couldn't argue with that...although she could find a way; I wouldn't totally put it past her.

My speaking up got the guy's attention again. Yes, it was written all over his face: he knew me from somewhere. So that means that I must've known him, but for the life of me I couldn't place him. I was frustrated and awkward and sick and cold and wet---and the sick part was getting worse and worse.

God must've heard me then, or something like that, because Gigi didn't push anymore. "Shit. Fine, fine, don't let me keep you from leaving." She said those last few words in a sort of mocking tone of voice. The guy seized his chance and started walking away again. It was the first time I saw him from behind. There was a thick tail of hair hanging partway down his back; it was tied in a loop, which meant that his hair must've been at least twice as long as it looked. Going by the length of the ponytail, that would've made it down to his waist at least.

That long?

I didn't get to think much more on it. My stomach felt like it was on fire. Everything about this guy was bothering me so much. There was a little voice in the back of my head and it was saying something over and over again, but I couldn't make it out. That just made me even sicker.

Gigi saw him off for a bit, then called after him. "Wait!"

He looked over his shoulder, more than a bit irritated. "What is it?"

"I didn't get your name!"

"Oh." He paused a little, kind of like he was searching for something at random to put her off. "It's Sef."

"Oh. Mine's Gigi. And this's Tifa."

Wow, that was nice, she actually remembered I was there.

As soon as he heard my name, Sef turned around completely. He was saucer-eyed. "Tifa?" And there went that recognition again. At that point though, I was too sick to give any of it more thought. Suddenly it got really cold out, more than it had been already.

"Yeah, that's it," Gigi answered. She looked as confused as I should've been, if I hadn't been feeling so terrible.

Sef just nodded, to himself it looked like, then turned around and walked away.

Gigi snorted. "How do ya like that? He says your name like mine didn't even matter. I'm the one who got him to talk to us in the first place..." She stopped mid-gripe; she must've seen me hunched over. That was when she got really concerned. "Hey, what is it? You sick?"

I opened my mouth to answer her...and ended up hurling all over the curb.