Chapter 8

Beta'd by Black Sparrow

In the days after moving into the Inoue compound Shiori developed a new rhythm, she now worked on her tea house concept whenever she wasn't occupied with working on the small projects around the house.

Shiori had already filled out the forms needed for a tea house permit and was now waiting for the approval of the right departments. In the meantime she worked herself through the different properties that were available in Konoha; unfortunately for the black haired female she didn't find even one house with high placed windows that suited her needs. Instead she grudgingly settled on a property that was close to the stadium and had floor length windows, quite the opposite from what Inoue-san had said. The renting price was relatively cheap because the restaurant that had been in the space before hadn't worked out very well. The ninja avoided it because they felt too much like a goldfish in a fishbowl and the civilians avoided it because of the proximity to the ninja stadium as well as the training grounds and weapon shops that were in near vicinity. The area was generally frequented by a lot of ninja that had either settled in the surrounding apartment blocks or came to shop here and so with time the civilians had started to avoid the area somewhat.

But back to the windows, Shiori knew that with help of Fuinjutsu it was possible to turn the windows into a reflective surface from the outside and she had decided to pay the hefty amount so that the paranoid ninja didn't feel like they were sitting in a fish bowl. The longer Shiori thought about it the happier she became, through the Fuinjutsu the glaring weakness became now a major selling point. The floor length windows now offered a perfect view on the main street leading up to the stadium, perfect for a stake out Shiori thought wryly while she ticked the location of her list.

The next thing that she had planned was the alteration of the restaurant. Instead of two service rooms, a kitchen and some back rooms, Shiori had the building converted into one single room with only some small rooms that ran along the backside of the building and contained the changing rooms for her personnel and an access staircase to the cellar and the floors above, beside it and only accessible from the service room were toilets for the clients.

In the middle of the service room was the kitchen in a rectangular form and instead of normal brick walls were glass panels installed, again with Fuinjutsu seals, this time they were used against fogging, greasing, smell and noise. The guests would have a perfect view into the kitchen without having to deal with the noises or smell whenever the kitchen door or the specifically installed sliding windows opened. The kitchen was a state of the art and could easily hold up to ten cooks at any time; Shiori figured that was more than enough for the size of the service room. Shiori was so unbelievable glad that her landlord had allowed her to renovate and remodel the place as much as she wanted. Directly under the kitchen was the storage room for the groceries, the cellar had been easy to convert and now also held the additional furniture and tools for the tea house as well as a dirty laundry room.

After thinking over the costs, Shiori had decided to outsource the washing of the tea house laundry. The next thing she had had commissioned had been a wooden stage in the back left corner of the room, the stage would serve for the more traditional tables and tea ceremonies that Shiori had in mind, she had already started to write a protocol about the changes a tea ceremony would undergo because it took place on western style tables and so the attendant would be standing instead of sitting.

The tables and chairs were easy to purchase after that, they were made out of a slightly more refined but still sturdy Konoha wood as was the wooden flooring. The ceiling had evenly spaced roof lights which bathed the whole room in warm but sufficient bright light. To be on the safe side Shiori ordered two times as much water glasses, tea cups, dishes and etc than probably would be needed to equip the whole room.

When the renovation was complete the restaurant hadn't opened yet because Shiori was still waiting on her other orders to arrive, the black haired young woman started to put up job offers around the district and Konoha. A lot of people came during the allotted interview times and a lot of them left when they found out where the tea house was located and what kind of duties they would have.

But some of them stayed, the people that especially caught Shiori's eye were the forty five year old widow Tachibana Emiko and the thirty two year old Kouken Sora.

Emiko-san was a cheerful, childless woman who had lost her husband some five years ago. Unlike other Fire country civilian women she hadn't drowned in the despair and uncertainty of the death of her spouse, instead she had kept living her life as fully as possible. And that was quite the accomplishment because you could practically hear the love that she felt for her deceased husband when she talked about him. The rotund woman was not only delightfully frank but also didn't shrink back from taking charge and leading others. It also didn't hurt that her food was delicious, her cooking clean and precise and she expected the highest hygienic standards from herself and the people working with her in the kitchen. Emiko-san hadn't even found it strange or even too forward to be expected to whip up some food in the new kitchen during her interview. After tasting her food Shiori hired her on the spot and left it to her to interview the other kitchen personnel and decide who to hire. After the elder woman had signed the working contract and additional secrecy contract concerning her recipes Shiori had also invited her over every day for a week and showed Emiko-san her own creations. The middle aged widow had been over the moon and had instantly started to practice to be ready on the day of the opening.

Kouken Sora-san on the other hand was a stern, nearly grumpy early aged man with silvery temples and stress wrinkles around his eyes. His austere manner would probably have turned off potential employers but Shiori was intrigued by the air around the man. She didn't ask him what had happened to him that he needed to work at her tea house but already after the interview in which he gave an impeccable presentation of a tea ceremony she knew that he was vastly overqualified for just being a simple waiter and made him promptly the head of the serving staff. His stunned expression was quickly hidden but Shiori was sure that she had made the right decision.

Other than with Emiko-san, Shiori kept sitting in on the interviews of the serving personnel, after all she wanted to cater to ninja primarily and that meant good nerves and a steady hand.

For the opening she had hired five waiters and three cooks, not including Emiko-san and Sora-san. Shiori thought that this was a good size for the beginning and so after some more training days she opened Mariko's tea house as she had called it in honor of her benefactor on a warm August day.
The week before she had not only had her desserts patented but also placed notices of her tea house on the black boards all over Konoha.

For the first hour not a single guest walked into the tea house becoming impatient Shiori decided to send out her two youngest workers with samples of her desserts into the street to offer it to the passing people for free. It took less than an hour to have the tea house half full.

The first few hours was slightly chaotic, it took some time for her personnel and clientele to get used to the food and beverage preparation directly at the table but then the performance of her workers smoothed out in the late afternoon and when they closed down the tea house for the day, all of them were glowing in satisfaction that everything had worked out so smoothly.

The next day the tea house was a lot fuller then the day before and Shiori thought that she recognized some of the ninja that were described in the Naruto manga, keeping her head on the job she soon forgot about them to turn her thoughts to more pressing matters.

On the second day after the opening Shiori recognized the Chunin team that had disengaged the traps in her home, she happily talked to them for awhile until their orders came and the black haired young woman had to return to her duties. The days and weeks following the opening Shiori's good name-face memory was getting a hefty workout with the amount of ninja that came and went.

Her desserts were becoming very fast, very popular in Konoha and after the first week Shiori had to have a dessert show case added to the kitchen area with one waiter standing behind it most of the time so that he or she could keep up with the steady demand of desserts to go.
The few civilians that had frequented her tea house in the beginning nearly completely vanished and only came back to get some take out, which to be honest didn't bother Shiori that much.

The young adult had an appreciation for the blunt and sometimes a bit crude honesty of the ninja visiting her tea house and they in turn appreciated her prompt, polite and most importantly discreet service. Shiori also took the time to hold her personnel back in the evening for an hour to discuss mishaps and positive occurrences and so drilled in a certain behavior concerning the ninja clientele into the heads of her civilian workers.

Three weeks after opening Sora came up to Shiori with the request to hire some additional workers, he was the one who had a better overview of the amount of work inside the tea house because Shiori had taken to primarily work the six traditional tables in the back, only occasionally she was supported by another worker during rush hour.

Going over the numbers of the first few weeks after opening the tea house Shiori quickly agreed and so Sora and Ai, who was one of the younger waitresses that had proved herself as very reliable and a good character judge, took over the interviews for more workers. While Shiori had the last say, she was glad that her workers showed initiative and independent thinking; as a result she upped Ai's pay and made her second in command of the service personnel.

The two employees hired an additional four waiters and after Emiko brought up the same problem, another two cooks and an apprentice were included into Mariko's tea house.

Shiori had noticed that the biggest part of her clientele were the career Chunin that kept Konoha's administration running as well as kept the caravans protected. While there were more Jounin than in the beginning, most of them hadn't set a foot in her tea house yet.

With the additional personnel and the ever increasing clientele, Shiori decided to put the ground rules her workers had to follow on paper. The list was hung up in the changing rooms as well as the storage room in the cellar so that whenever they passed through these rooms they got an eye full of the principles of the tea house.

.) The customer is king! So stay polite! This doesn't mean that you have to agree to everything, if there is a problem that you can't solve get either Sora, Ai or Shiori!

.) Mariko's tea house caters primarily to ninja, so be prepared to encounter eccentric individuals. Remember they are your clients! Polite, quick and friendly behavior is expected from ALL personnel, no matter who it is!

.) If a ninja requests a different table and said table is free, do what he/she wants.

.) There may be emergencies to which a ninja has to respond immediately and isn't able to pay at the moment, write down either the name or description of the ninja and the sum they owe us. Most of them will return some time later to take care of their debts. If they don't politely remind them the next time you see them. DON'T accuse them, they could have genuinely forgotten about it.

.) Should there be a fight between two ninjas in the tea house and they take out weapons, STAY AWAY! You don't want to get between two fighting ninjas. Remind them from a far enough distance that fighting is prohibited in the tea house and they should please take it outside. Most of the time, their comrades will stop them anyway so try to stay out of the altercation until you think there is no other way.

Those rules had helped to diffuse more than one tense situation after they were first hung up. With time the personnel learned to bring any irregular situation that wasn't written on the rule of conduct lists to Shiori who expanded the lists and worked with Sora and Ai on solutions to problems that appeared while serving food and beverages.

Shiori's next contact with one member of the Rookie nine was through the Hyuuga clan who nearly exclusively occupied the six traditional tables in the back. During one of the tea ceremonies she was introduced to Hiashi-sama's daughters, Hinata-san and Hanabi-san, who were eleven and five respectively. It took Shiori three visits of the main family to coax Hinata a bit out of her shell and have Hanabi drop her overly formal behavior. Shiori's polite, calm and always friendly behavior seemed to endear her to Hiashi-sama, although Shiori had the feeling that it also had a lot to do with the fact that she seemed to be a good influence on his daughters. Hinata's stutter decreased in her presence and Hanabi seemed happier.

After accompanying her father for some months Hinata also had started to visit without the presence of her family, most of those times she arrived in the afternoon, probably right after the end of the Academy to take some desserts with her. During that time Shiori would take the time to talk to Hinata, they discussed some general topics and Shiori was able to discreetly slip in some breathing or self-esteem exercises that she could remember from Eliza's life which would hopefully help with Hinata stutter.