Chapter Text
The scent of freshly cut grass. Tea brewing on a stove. The ocean lapping upon the shore, the soft crashing of the waves. Hundreds of flowers and other plants. These were the familar things that surrounded Rei Ryuugazaki every day of his life. For the past 10 years, Rei had been running his family's flower shop in a small coastal town called Iwatobi. Here, there were no loud cars or traffic or planes. The stars could be seen by the millions every night and boys from the local high school swim team would jog by every day during their daily workout. Rei would wave to them as they passed, having once been on the team himself. He had considered becoming a teacher and coaching after he graduated, but when his father passed, Rei had taken up the family shop instead. His parents had always been old, older than most other parents of kids his age, but Rei was thankful for that. They made his life a peaceful one and while other kids around him had been loud and brash and ignorant, Rei had been quiet. Quiet and respectful. He had rather disliked Tokyo anyhow and the other people he was around in college were just like the kids he'd grown up with. They'd been unrealistic, going to school to be actors and famous writers. He remembered one boy from his first year of junior high say, "I'm going to be a basketball player one day!" Rei scoffed at the memory. The likelihood of one becoming a famous basketball player was one in over 3,000.
The bell on the front door chimed as a customer entered. Rei put his book down and galnced over at the entrance.
"Hello! Welcome to Ryuugazaki's Flowers! Let me know if you're looking for anything." A shorter man with curly, blonde hair looked around. He wore sunglasses and a long sleeve, black colored shirt. He took his singlasses off and Rei noticed tattoos on the back of his hands and across his knuckles. Rei simply rolled his eyes, returning to his book. The man looked around the shop for awhile, sniffing every bouquet he looked at.
"Do you grow these yourself?" the man asked. Rei noticed gages in each ear and a rather unsightly septum piercing. He kept a straight face as he answered him.
"Yes, my family does on a farm outside of town. A few of them are imported because they aren't native to this area and won't grow, but they're still naturally grown." The man nodded at this response, turning to look at a bouquet of heathers. He was silent for a moment as he admired them.
"This is a cute little town. I really love the home-y vibe it gives off," he said with a wide smile. It made Rei's heart flutter for a moment, which confused him. The man was handsome, sure, but he looked like a troublemaker and that was something Rei wated to avoid. Rei simply nodded at his comment, flipping to the next page in his book. Silence again.
"How much for 10 of these?" he asked, pointing at the alstroemeria. Rei thought it odd that anyone would want 10 of those, seeing as they were usually used as accents in mixed bouquets, but he didn't really question it. The man was a character.
"They're 199 yen each, 2200 for a dozen."
"Alright, I'll take a dozen then," he said, smiling once again. He pulled out his wallet and Rei took a closer look at the tattoos on his hands. He couldn't quite tell what the ones opposite his palm were as they appeared to continue from a larger piece running up his arms. His knuckles said ' シ ン ク ま た は 泳 ぐ (SINK OR SWIM)' across them from left to right. Rei took his money before grabbing a bag and a dozen alstroemeria and placing them inside. he handed the carefully wrapped flowers to the man who thanked him before replacing his sunglasses and leaving. Rei took his spot back behind the register with his book, not thinking twice of the handsome man with the tattoos and odd taste in flowers.
Rei closed shop at 5 like he always did, walking next door to the little tea shop run by a kind elderly woman in her 80's. She let her cat roam about the shop and always told him the same stories from her youth and about her late husband who'd been in the Japanese army during WWII. She'd give him 50% off his tea for being such a good listener and her cat would curl up next to him and purr. These were things Rei felt only he could appreciate and enjoy.
The next morning when Rei walked down to his shop to open it, he saw the old woman's cat sitting outside the door of the tea shop. He thought this odd, seeing as she usually let him in by now.
"What's wrong Hige?" he asked, reaching down to pick the cat up. It meowed at him and purred as he lifted it up on his shoulder. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. "Huh, strange." He looked in the window and saw the dark outline of her shop. But what he saw when he looked down sent a deep sense of dread through his body. The old woman lay there, motionless.
A week later, he attended her small funeral, one of only three people in attendence. He left behind a small bouquet of flowers containing statice, Queen Anne's lace, and anthurium. It was about a month after this that Rei became aware that someone had bought the old tea shop next door. People flowed in and out of it often, taking out the old furniture and other fixtures. They repainted it and starting loading odd things inside. Large black chairs and pictures of morbid, classless things like skulls and lewd women. Rei became wary of this new store, unsure of what exactly it was going to become. He worried it would draw in unwanted customers.
The morning Rei came to open shop and saw the big 'TATTOO' sign where it had once said 'Nagasaki Tea' was the first day of winter. He cursed under his breath as he unlocked the door to his shop, his breath showing in the cold air. He struggled with the lock, his fingers too frozen to keep the key steady. Hige meowed at him impatiently, rubbing between his legs. "I know, I know," he muttered at the cat as he finally managed to open the door. The bell on the door chimed as he walked in, brushing dirt off his shoes at the entrance. He walked towards the back and hung his coat before putting on his apron and grabbing shears. He turned on his radio, turning it to a pop station. The one thing Rei had always secretly liked was pop music. Even though it was usually about crude things like sex and parties, there was something about the beat that drew him in.