Yuria and the Seven Tables, Chapter One
Here’s the first chapter of my fanfiction. For the previous chapter click here!
The sun shines through the windows of little farm, drenching it in glorious sunshine. The warmth from the light rays covers Yuria’s round face, waking her from her slumber. After stretching, she leaps out of her bed and heads to the washroom to clean herself up, then to the closet to put on her work clothes. She quickly scoffs down a bowl of rice and pickled vegetables and readies herself for work.
Opening the front door, Yuria can feel the cool summer breeze. It is harvesting season for her melon farm, and she is ready to finally pick the fruits of her labor. She spends the rest of morning harvesting her melons, picking the largest and ripest ones.
By nine, Yuria is exhausted from the three hours of hard labor. Sitting on the porch she decides to crack open one of her melons for an early lunch. Looking at her freshly cut melon, she takes a bite into one of the slices. It is extremely sweet and juicy. Yuria is known for having the sweets and juiciest melons in her village, but to Yuria, they are never sweet or juicy enough.
As Yuria continues to eat, she begins to reminisce about the times when she and her sister were running the farm together. Yuria lost her parents when she was young, so her sister was the one who raised her. Yuria remembers her sister being a very kind, but strict person. She taught Yuria many things like how to start a fire, how to fish and most importantly, how to grow melons. But Yuria has never been able to grow melons like her sister. It has been four year since Yuria last tasted her sister’s melons. On that day Yuria’s sister brought Yuria to the orphanage. After sharing one last melon with Yuria, she told her younger sister that she must stay strong and that she was meant for great things.
As tears started to flow from Yuria’s eyes, Yuria hugged her sister. “Don’t Go! Don’t Go!” Yuria blubbered.
“Don’t worry Yuria.” She replied as she patted her on the back. “We will meet again, and we will share a melon when we do.” She left town the next day. That was the last time Yuria ever saw her sister.
Yuria, at the time, didn’t know what to think. She spent her days at the orphanage looking out a window, hoping her sister would return. Yuria continued to remain depressed, until one day she was offered some melon. The melon tasted nothing like how her sister used to grow them. Remembering all the happy faces the other villagers had while eating her sister’s melons made Yuria decide that she would reopen her farm. Ever since then she has been growing melons in place of her sister.
As Yuria continues to ponder about her melons, a loud “GONG~~” sound comes from the village. Yuria slowly turns her head towards the village and takes another bite of her melon slice. After waiting a couple seconds, she decides to get up and starts heading back to her melon field, when a second “GONG~~” sound is made from the village.
Yuria immediately jumps. She runs into her shed and grabs her wagon, then starts loading it with all the melon she harvested that day. She then heads to her stable to grab her horse, Peace. After tying her wagon to Peace, Yuria starts to head down the road to town. Yuria hasn’t heard the village ring the gong twice in a row for almost two years. This means that foreigners are coming to town, and foreigners often bring with them unique items. Yuria is very excited, this will be the first time she ever been in the market with foreigners, so she doesn’t know what to expect. But she heard from other villagers that the foreigners often bring many beautiful dresses, shoes and other nice pieces of clothing. Yuria always wanted be able to wear something very cute and pretty, so this was her chance.
As she arrives in town, Yuria starts looking for a place to set up shop. Not registering for a booth earlier, she has to look around for an empty spot.
As she strolls down the Market Place, a familiar voice calls out for her. “Yuria!” Turning towards the direction of the voice, Yuria spots a small round faced girl with a big straw hat, waving and screaming. “Yuria! Over here! I saved you a spot!”
Yuria dashes towards the round face girl. “Rumi! Arigatou! I didn’t think I would have gotten a booth, it got so full so fast.”
Smiling, Rumi takes off her hat and starts shaking her hair. “I know right, I came as fast as I could to get you a booth. Knowing you as well as I do, you probably didn’t know they were coming so you didn’t register one, even though you’re always talking about opening up shop when foreigners pass by.”
As Yuria’s face starts turning red, sticking out her tongue, she replies. “Ahhh, I just forgot that’s all! Anyways I’m glad you’re looking out for me.”
Shaking her head, Rumi grabs on to one of Yuria’s melons. “What are friends for? Anyways this one is mine!”
As the two continue to talk, Yuria starts to unpack and set up shop. The market place starts to get more and more crowded. Every villager is out today, trying to get their hands on some foreign goods. There are many things to buy. From weapons, fishing rods, dresses, to edible things like fruit, vegetables and pastries, the village is lively. Rumi is selling some of her personal hand crafted fishing reels, as well as her huge inventory of fish. Yuria thinks it was odd to be selling her melons beside Rumi’s fish, but she is delighted none the less to be there.
Throughout the day many people come to visit Yuria's stand. The Kizaki family is well known in the village, especially for having the sweetest and juiciest melons, but Yuria is surprised by how many foreigners knew about them. One by one people line up to buy her melons, as word quickly spreads around the marketplace. The size of the line grows and grows, and by noon Yuria sells most of her inventory, it’s as if the line hadn’t changed at all.
Quickly running low on melons, Yuria decides to limit each customer to one, but even then, she didn’t have enough to serve everybody. Unwilling to dissatisfy all her customers, Yuria decides to close shop to pick more melons. Knowing it was impossible to pick all her melons in farm and sell them too. Yuria goes off to hire a melon picking mercenary. Not being too sure if such a person existed, she enters the center of the market looking for a suitable candidate.
As Yuria made her way through the other vendors, she notices a group of singers. Anata ni agetai, MELON JUICE! The song attracts her, slowly luring her in front of a melon juice stand. After the song, she decides to line up to try some of their melon juice.
The line was very long, after a good long wait Yuria is greeted by three very young girls. The girl in the middle has every long black hair and a smile to match. The girl to the left of her is a small short haired girl who is eating some cotton candy. The final girl has long brown hair, very visible dimples and large chest.
“ Irasshaimase~~, what size would you like?” the three ask.
“Um… Actually I’m wondering if you girls can help me out. I’m Kizaki Yurai, I run a melon stand over there, but I ran out of melons. I noticed you got a big team behind you as well as a large carriage. So I was wondering if I can crack a deal with you?”
The three girls jump with excitement. “You’re the legendary Kizaki Yuria! We've been trying to get hold of one of your melons, but the line was so long. Nice to meet you; I’m Tashima Meru.”
“Hi, I’m Tomonaga Mio, let me go get captain!” The other girl says with a squeaky voice.
As the three girls call out “Captain!!!!” a young girl emerges from the carriage. “Is something the matter you there…..” the girl shouts as she falls down flat on her face. Helping her up, Mio and Meru explain to the girl what Yuria wanted.
Approaching Yuria, the girl extends out her hand and gives a bright smile. “Hi, I’m Anai Chihiro. But everyone calls me captain.”
Grabbing her hand, Yuria smiles back. “Pleasure to meet you, Kizaki Yuria desu. So do you think you and your team can help me?”
“Hmmm… well we’re not using our carriage right now. And about 14 of us are just standing here… So I guess we can help, but what’s in it for us?”
Kizaki pauses for a moment. “How about I sell you a wagon full of melons… and I will give this melon I have right here as a gift.” Chihiro takes the melon from Yuria and goes off the carriage. Minutes later she emerges with a knife. With it she then starts to break open the melon. After about 10 minutes with no success she yells out “AOI!!!!!!!!! Come out here!!! I don’t know how to use this thing!”
From the carriage emerges another young girl. She also has very long black hair and dark freckles below her very puffy eyes.
“Eh! I was gone for only 15 minutes. What could have possibly made you cry?” Chihiro asks.
The girl sniffled, “As soon as you left…. Natsu… came up to me, and then tried to eat me… then Sasshi-San came along and started grabbing me too... They chased me for 10 minutes.”
“Baka!! They were just joking around!! Do you actually think they would eat you?”
Aoi looks at Meru. “Maybe!! You don’t know! They could be like Meru! She eats everything!”
Shaking her head, Chihiro hands Aoi the knife. “Can you get this thing open please? I have been dying to try some.”
Aoi takes the knife and gets to work, cutting up the melon into 16 equal slices. The two girls each grab one and took a bite. Instantly their faces change, Chihiro starts staring at the melon slice with her eye’s wide open. Aoi starts to cry.
“Oiiii!!! Why are you crying!” Chihiro barks. Aoi starts to mumble something before starting to cry again. “Oh forget it… Meru, Mio, Mai come over here for a second.”
The three girls come over and each take a slice of melon.
Meru is the first to take a bite, “Ohhh…. It’s so sweet!!!” She quickly turns to Mio and grabs her melon slice and cotton candy stick before taking off.
Mio voice suddenly changes. “HEY!!! GIVE THAT BACK!! YOU CAN’T DO THAT I'M OLDER THAN YOU!!”
Yuria jumps. Wow her voice all of sudden became scary and deep.
Wondering how such a piece of fruit could have caused her captain to be stunned, Aoi to start crying and Mio to start chasing Meru, Mai takes a bite herself. Mai becomes speechless; smiling, it is as if sparkles were dancing around her. She quickly makes her way back to carriage.
Suddenly the ground starts to shake, as 11 girls stormed out of the carriage. Grabbing the melon, the girls start yelling and shouting. Not sure what was going on, Yuria starts to back off.
Slowly walking back, a tight grip grabs onto Yuria. “GIVE ME MORE!” a crazy looking girl says as she stares into Yuria’s eyes. The girl has a very odd expression on her face, that resembling of a monkey.
As Yuria tries to break free from the girl’s strong grip, Chihiro comes along and punches the monkey looking girl on the head.
“Hey let her go!” she screams, before turning to Yuria and saying. “Ok you got yourself a deal.”
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Thanks for reading! For a list of all the chapters click on this link here! For the previous chapter click here. And to read the next chapter click here! I also want to hear your feedback!
