Chapter 9

The next morning, the three friends walk down Flower Road towards Sun Pavilion where they saw the disgruntled chef carrying out boxes of supplies from the restaurant and stacking them on top of each other.

"Oh no." Fretted Katie.

"Looks like we made it just in time, whis~." Commented Whisper.

The three run towards the chef as he stacked another box. "Excuse me sir," Katie began. "But is it true that Sun Pavilion is closing down? My family and I love this restaurant."

"Sorry kid, but it's all over." The large-nosed, stout chef replied with his pointy mustache drooping down out of sadness. "I have no one but myself to blame in the end." He then opened one of the boxes to pull out a large golden cat figurine with its right paw raised. "Are you familiar with figurines like this?"

"Yes. That's a maneki-neko, or beckoning cat."

"A SOLID GOLD MANEKI-NEKO OR BECKONING CAT!" exclaimed Sailornyan.

"Well I think we know why those cost cuts happened now." Commented Whisper.

"I see them in restaurants all the time." Katie continued. "They're supposed to attract customers or bring good fortune depending on which paw is raised."

"Yeah well this cursed piece of junk did neither for me." The chef claimed.

"Cursed?"

"Yeah, all my bad luck started when I bought this stupid thing from that antique store around here three weeks ago. I closed up for the night and thought I'd take a trip to there to buy myself something nice, and there it was. Trying to cat-ch my eye was a solid gold maneki-neko."

"Boo!" Whisper jeered, holding his thumb down and a gilded fan that had the Japanese kanji for, warui jōdan (bad joke). Sailornyan shushed him and he shrugged. "What? He can't hear me."

"It would cost me a whole month's salary, but I didn't care. With something like that, my restaurant would have so much good luck that I'd easily make my money back! So I foolishly purchased it and took it back to the restaurant the next morning. Sure it looked right at home and gave my restaurant a nice shine, but it didn't exactly attract customers like I expected it to. In fact, I think I started to get less customers the moment I brought it in, and everything just started getting worse from there.

Because of how much money I spent on this glorified paperweight, I had to start making financial cuts, substituting the crab in the crab omelette for imitation crab and selling it at the same price until I could eventually afford to use real crab again. Then we started having a gnat outbreak in the kitchen and I couldn't afford an exterminator, so obviously they got into some of the dishes, especially the mapo tofu, and I tried to pick them out or hide them as best as I could. The final nail in the coffin was last week when it felt like something came over me and I couldn't help but reveal everything that was going on to the customers. I don't know if it was my conscience getting the better of me or what, but it was like I had no control over what I was saying at all."

"Tattlecast." Katie muttered under her breath.

"I mean, I know I should've been honest to begin with, but how else was I gonna make my money back? In this business it's either sink or swim. Needless to say, I sank as word spread out that I was a crook and people stopped eating here. So here I am now without a restaurant, in debt, and hoping I can pawn this cursed garbage for at least half of what I bought it for."

"A combination of bad choices and bad luck." Whisper commented. "Poor guy."

"Luck has nothing to do with it." Sailornyan replied. "This is all the work of those two Yo-kai Katie was talking about."

"I still have my doubts, but if Katie believes there's Yo-kai involvement then I'll take her word for it."

"I'm sorry this happened to you sir," Katie began. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to go in and, uh, say my last goodbyes to this place. I mean my family and I REALLY loved this restaurant."

"Do whatever you want kid." The chef nonchalantly replied. "If you feel like it, keep an eye on these boxes for me while I take a break to eat at Sushi Springdale. I already lost my restaurant and am about to lose my dignity by eating from my competition, so I'd rather not lose anything else if it can be helped." The chef walked off leaving Katie and her Yo-kai friends to investigate the now barren Chinese restaurant.

The inside was dark and gloomy. It looked like it had been abandoned for years despite only being that way for a little while. Tables were overturned, chairs were stacked on one another, and the barstools were ripped up from their original places. One could only wonder what state the kitchen was in.

"It's so sad." Lamented Katie. "It used to be so full of life. Now it almost looks like a haunted house."

"Which makes it the perfect spot for troublemaking Yo-kai." Sailornyan inferred.

"No time to take in the atmosphere, you two." Advised Whisper. "Katie, use your watch to see what you can find."

Katie nodded and popped opened the Yo-kai Lens on the watch to scan for any Yo-kai lurking around the restaurant. She looked all around the overturned tables and the deserted bar only to find nothing but dust and gnats. "Well I see the gnats, but no Yo-kai."

Whisper closed his eyes and held his index finger up. "See? I was right. Everything can't always be blamed on Yo-kai. Sometimes people just make bad choices and-"

"Found them!" Katie exclaimed.

"Whis~?!"

The two Yo-kai revealed looked almost exactly like how Lie-in Heart described them, a boy and a mosquito creature. The boy had big yellow lips as if he had just dunked his face into a vat of mustard, a chipped tooth, and a single tuft of beige hair that looked like a flat-bottomed teardrop. He wore a battered cape with a patch and pale-yellow swirls on it, red shorts, and a pair of geta that were too big for him, yet he seemed to walk in them easily.

The mosquito creature had black hands that resembled an old warlock's, leaves at the tips of its antennae, purple wings which were even darker on the outer edges and formed a swirl at the tips, and wore a purple robe with two dark stripes on the arms that covered its whole ghastly body, plus a hood that covered its head revealing only its two round, sad looking eyes and yellow proboscis.

"It appearzzz the jig izzz up." The mosquito creature said.

"Crud!" The boy huffed. He then took a closer look at Katie's face and to him she was like a Venus sent straight from heaven. "Hubba hubba!" He exclaimed as his closed eyes suddenly turned into hearts and smoke came from his nostrils while his hair kept pointing up and down. "If we were caught by a hottie like this, I don't care how much trouble we're in!"

"Eugh." Grimaced Katie. "Whisper, who are these Yo-kai?"

"Those two miscreants are Moskevil and Lodo!" Whisper replied with confidence. "Moskevil causes homes and small restaurants like this to be crawling with pests. First it starts off as a simple gnat infestation and before you know it, there'll be roaches, mosquitos, and flies everywhere to the point you'll have to call an exterminator! That's assuming you can afford one, however, as Lodo here causes you to make bad money investments that will inevitably drive you into poverty or in this case, ruin your business! These two are responsible for small restaurants closing their doors prematurely!"

"Wow, someone's been studying after all! I'm proud of you!"

"He's holding the Yo-kai Pad behind his back." Sailornyan snitched. "He looked it while they were talking."

Katie then gave Whisper a glare of un-amusement causing his face to turn blue.

"Well here's a fun fact I can tell you without looking at the Yo-kai Pad! Did you know Lodo's hair is beige and his cape is green and not red like Lie-in Heart said? That also means Lie-in Heart must be colorblind."

Whisper was hoping those facts would impress Katie as he smiled nervously at her while sweating, but her expression did not change. "We'll talk about this later, but right now we have bigger problems." Katie looked and pointed at Moskevil and Lodo who weren't worried about being caught in the slightest.