After the day at the beach, we went back to the hotel and left the next day back to Japan. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit my old house, I would have liked to show all the others our original house, the one my father bought when he was young, and although it is still on our property it has been unoccupied for quite a while now, so it would take a lot of time to clean it up. Surely it can wait a couple more months for when we have time to go and make it as good as new.
The flight was again in a military plane, there was not much problem in letting a US military plane land on our territory, as it was only a transport plane and our country has very good ties with them, after all, most of the tourists that maintain our country are from the United States. With them, it was easy to take us to Levia without many questions from anyone. Although what made me most nervous during the flight was the discomfort. Since I was so deep underwater, and unlike my body with respect to Levia, going to such a high altitude in such a short time could even be lethal for me, due to the pressure sickness, but fortunately, nothing like that happened. What I had no luck with was the weather, we left Costa Rica on Thursday morning and arrived in Japan on Saturday night due to the long trip and the time difference, I had lost a full day flying and the other day simply disappeared because of mathematics.
When we arrived at the house there was still a lot to do so we were not able to rest from the long trip. First, my mother hadn't worked much with the Alliance due to her week of vacation and Maria's unforeseen event, but also the cafeteria was without its staff for most of the week, so there was a backlog of orders and the poor Saeko was stressed to the point of collapse. There were also problems in the house because it wasn't until Levia's arrival that we realized that the house was not made for someone with a disability. Momo and I set to work to try to improve the house and make it a place where the mermaid could have a decent life. The main problem? the bathroom. The door was not wheelchair friendly, and even with that Levia is so heavy that having handrails won't work, plus it's so big that its glue stuck to everything. I had to knock down part of a wall to make the bathroom entrance bigger, we had to use a curtain until the new door arrived. On the bright side, she did fit in the tub and wanted to sleep in it, so to avoid having to make a room for her we decided to have Levia sleep there at night.
As for the new girl, well her fate is a little different than the rest of us. She can't really move by herself unless she is in a wheelchair, but even then she can't do anything by herself, things such as going to the bathroom, eating, or sunbathing, she needs someone else to do a lot of things. Unfortunately, there are only a few people who can lift her, Tamamo and Lisa can do it completely, then there is me with great difficulty and short times, finally, my daughters between them can hold her. She was sad about all the inconveniences, but we told her that it wasn't a problem, just another one of our adventures and that it was okay for Levia to depend on others to live, after all to some extent all humans went through the same thing in one way or another. Many people don't produce their own food or need a doctor. Helping each other was a key characteristic of humans. Maria was particularly interested in helping the mermaid. Despite what she had done to her my sister was the one who was watching over the mermaid whenever she could, surely to some extent seeing her reminded her of when she was in the hospital and also needed others to keep her going, it seemed to be her way of repaying the kindness of them all.
One particular story was that when she arrived we started to bathe Levia so that she would stop smelling like a fish. The smell was a consequence of never having had a bath before, as I knew that mermaids didn't really give off any smell. She was so big that she could not reach beyond her waist. So we all got to work and washed her so much that she almost lost her scales. My mother brought a lot of sea-scented soap because apparently, a mermaid must smell like the sea according to her.
And speaking of my mother, she was the happiest about Levia's integration, as she spared no expense to help her in everything she needed. Then I realized why, since the mermaid is basically a girl in a wheelchair, she wanted to use her to see how accessible the cafeteria was using her as a reference, after all, if she could handle it surely the others could too, and because of our previous work she put Momo, Levia and me in charge of the project again. We closed the coffee shop much earlier because of the remodeling and started to make everything accessible. The counter was a little smaller on one side, we put a ramp at the entrance, and once again we had to install a bigger door in the bathrooms, in general, make more room for the wheelchair, then my mother proudly put a handicapped accessibility sign at the entrance, even though she was rushing us with the work. But that wasn't all, Adelis had already planned well enough what to do with the mermaids regarding the job, we were still finishing the final adjustments when a truck arrived making a new delivery, and not of ingredients. It was a huge fish tank, lighting equipment, and a huge stone, she wanted us to set up one of the corners to have all that and prepare a stage for Levia to sing for the customers. The idea was great, but the work to make it happen was a challenge.
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The idea is quite simple, Levia would work in the coffee shop providing entertainment to the customers and singing from time to time. She would mostly be in the water swimming and playing games with the customers, things like playing simple games like tic tac toe or rock paper scissors, but coming up for air constantly to hide the fact that she could actually be there indefinitely. Twice a day she would come to the surface and sit on the huge rock where she would sing for the others, so Momo mainly took care of setting up the microphone and tuning the sound. Oddly enough the hardest job was to make the entrance to the fish tank, as it had to be easily accessible for Levia, but it had to be small to compensate for the space spent in the store. When the receipt for the expenses arrived in Saeko's hands she almost fainted again. My mother is betting big with Levia, I think it's no exaggeration that the future of the store depends on her success for the next few months.
When it was time to go back to school it was again a horror. Once again I hadn't been there all week, exactly the week that Xi'an had the idea to drop off homework. I just arrived and everyone was carrying models of the solar system. But the real problem this time was my appearance, as I am an albino, the sun affects me much more than the average person, normally it is not much of a bother as I spend a lot of time indoors and wear clothes to protect myself. But during my adventure, I spent 3 days under the sun on the beach. I got so tanned that my skin was no longer white, but light red like an oxidized apple instead. But my hair was still as white as ever, on top of that, I was so mentally tired from the job that I left my cap at home and didn't realize it until class started, so I left my fox ears and the tail in plain sight for all to see. I became a stranger on sight unintentionally that I look myself like as some time ofa Ganguro as it is called here in Japan. A subculture of gyaru, a group of young women, usually refers to women too childish. But mainly associated with delinquent and rebellious problems. A problem girl basically.
Haru had her mouth on the floor when she saw me coming through the door, and just imagine, your quiet friend disappears for a week and when he comes back he looks like he belongs to a heavy metal band. When I explained my reasons for my appearance, she burst out laughing at how she saw me just for forgetting a stupid umbrella for the sun. Damn, my family is originally a farming family! Being in the sun is already a factory default. Using an umbrella without hail rain is a disgrace to my ancestors.
The rest of the teasing from the girls in the class at least shifted focus, it was no longer my boobs that were the talking point. Kyouko kept teasing me by reminding me how stupid I look as if I didn't already know that. But the one who was most upset was Yuko and her group, the real Gyaru, and her associates, because I had beaten them at their own stupid game just by existing, she thought I was challenging them and trying to steal their boyfriends. First, they bother me because I am lesbian and now they say I'm looking for men in a hurry. If you're so insecure and worried about losing your boyfriend so easily you should be looking for someone who wants to be with you in a normal way instead of just being a bitch looking for a dick as quickly as possible.
To end the day, as could not be otherwise in my life, something else happened. I went with Tamamo back to the occult club room, only to run into Haru and a new member of the club. She joined exactly the week we were absent, Haru told her that we were still starting and still didn't have much. They were bored all week reading books and waiting for our return to see what to do. The new member is called Asuka, and unfortunately, I knew her a little bit before. She was the friend my sister had made and the one she had mentioned so enthusiastically. She was in our same year but in another group, but the important part is that I knew that she came from a Japanese temple and that she is a Miko. Which put me on my guard as to what her true intentions were in joining a club like this, were her parents in agreement?
At this point I was so married to being alive that I simply walked over and greeted her, she offered me her hand and I shook it without even thinking about it. In her hand, I felt that there was something strange. She then went to Tamamo and did the same, she thought it was strange because normally Japanese people don't shake hands to greet each other. When she finished greeting us she looked at her hand and there I could see that what she had was a Christian Rosary rolled up in her hand. A rather strange object for a Japanese priestess. She looked at it in disappointment and then exhaled in disappointment. The fact that she was expecting something to happen was what caught my attention. She apologized saying that she read on the internet that it was a way to discover bad intentions in other people and wanted to try it. But that technique was not to see bad intentions, it was to reveal demons. I knew it because it was a technique used by the Vatican hunters to find their enemies posing as humans, and that they tried to keep secret for the same reason, to catch them by surprise. Is this girl scheming something?