Prejudice

Asuka and Konomi walked down from the Harajuku station toward Takeshita street. The gyaru fashioned girl was always looking for clothing, makeup, and accessories that fit her style and helped her express how she viewed herself. Meanwhile, the young tech genius didn't feed into the notions of fashion or lifestyle, but rather joined Konomi while she waited for Shingo to get off work. The streets and stores were bustling with excitement as usual which unsettled Asuka.

"Are you hungry?" Konomi asked with a sisterly tone.

"Yes." Asuka answered in short as they continued to walk.

"There's a dog café near here!" Konomi almost cheered. "Would you want to eat there?"

"Not if there's a lot of people." Asuka responded.

"Hmmm." Konomi pondered where they could get food that wouldn't have many people around.

"Vending Machines." Asuka blurted out as if she knew what Konomi was thinking.. "Food without the people."

"Oh, you just want something like that? Not a meal where we can sit down and enjoy each other's company?" Konomi verbally prodded Asuka.

"I'm not even sure why I'm here." Asuka mumbled to herself low enough for Konomi to barely hear it over the noise of the city.

"If that's what you want, then that's what we'll get you!" Konomi spiritedly howled. "Today is our day out. I promised I'd get you some nice clothes and take you to get a nice meal, after all."

Asuka, pulled on Konomi's sleeve slightly before saying, "We can go to the dog café. I need to get more used to being around people."

"Just remember, we can leave whenever you feel like." Konomi reassured her young friend.

The pair walked together through the crowds of people. Asuka stuck close behind Konomi and eyeballed each of the people who passed. Contrastingly, Konomi proudly walked through the crowd unaffected. Harajuku was her most visited part of town and she was well known in the fashion community of the area.

"You know, you have such a sweet voice." Konomi professed to Asuka. "I'm so glad you're talking more now."

"Thanks?" Asuka suspiciously responded. "It's just my voice. It's not like I can change it."

"It's not just your voice." Konomi reassured her as the pair approached the restaurant. "It lets me hear your thoughts and personality."

Konomi reached to open the door as Asuka replied, "That's what Shingo has been telling me too. He's been trying to convince me to talk more with the group."

"So what did make you want to talk more?" Konomi inquired as the pair entered the dog café.

"Ichiro said that he felt like we were more of an adventuring party now and that he would try to open up to the group more. What he said made me think about how I'd been acting so I thought I would..." Asuka was saying as the receptionist cut in on the conversation.

"I'm sorry, we don't have room for you here." The receptionist said curtly.

As all the dogs came to greet Konomi, the pair looked around to find the café surprisingly not busy.

"I see a lot of tables open around here. Are they reserved or something?" Konomi confusedly asked.

The receptionist leaned in before whispering to Konomi, "The new manager doesn't like red-eyed people and told me to tell you to leave. I'm so sorry about this."

Konomi and Asuka looked around the room again and found a middle aged man sneering at the pair from behind a counter.

"Did you tell her to have us leave?" Konomi shouted to the man.

Without responding, the man's sneer turned to a look of disgust. The embarrassed worker, unsure of what to do, slowly backed out of the line of sight between the manager and Konomi's death glare. Asuka moved to hide more behind Konomi, reached up, and tugged on Konomi's shirt. Without breaking eye contact, Konomi dug her phone out of her purse and typed a phone number into it. Once the phone began to ring, Konomi held the phone up to her ear.

A muffled voice came through the phone to which Konomi responded, "Hi Kenji!" Small silences broke up the conversation. "I've been better." More murmuring from the phone before Konomi said, "There's some guy who apparently has a problem with me." After another pause, the gyaru fashioned woman described the man with, "Middle aged, ugly, really good at a mean scowl." After one final pause, Konomi responded, "Thanks Kenji! I owe you."

After hanging up, Konomi returned her phone to her purse. The phone at the restaurant started ringing. The middle aged manager refused to break eye contact. The other workers knew what was happening and were too dumbfounded to move, but rather looked upon the situation unfold before them. The tense mood of the situation even had the dogs on edge.

After the phone rang three times, Konomi loudly spoke down to the man, "That's for you. It's not for the front desk. It's not for the other workers. That's for you."

Just after the phone rang a fourth time, the newly hired store manager moved and answered the phone. Startled, the manager looked at Konomi, then back down, then to Konomi, then back down.

"Yes." He said into the phone. "How did you know? What? No, Please? I understand and I'm sorry."

He handed the phone to the nearest employee before nodding to that employee and walking past Konomi and Asuka out the door. Konomi didn't even glance at him as he passed. Asuka couldn't take her eyes off him as he walked out and down the street, disappearing into a crowd.

Once the worker hung up the phone, she rushed over and said, "I'm so sorry that happened. The owner said you could eat for free today."

"Oh, he knows I won't eat for free. I demand that you charge me extra!" Konomi said with a smile.

"He said that you'd say that too. Feel free to sit anywhere you like and I'll be over to take your order directly." The worker said.

Konomi led Asuka to a round table next to some windows and all the dogs followed along.

"What just happened?" Asuka asked curious and confused.

"Oh, I guess that guy was a new manager here." Konomi smiled as she leaned over to pet the multitude of dogs.

"I figured that part out. What about the rest of it." Asuka wondered.

"I spend a lot of time in Harajuku and if I'm going to eat somewhere, I usually prefer the company of animals so I'm kind of a regular here." Konomi continued, "The owner had a sister that went black-eyed early on so he's a little more sympathetic than some other people. I've spent a lot of time with him in here."

"So you called him." Asuka surmised.

"I doubt he knew about the prejudice of the new manager he hired, and at the same time, I knew he wouldn't tolerate that." Konomi smiled hiding some other emotions she was feeling. "Not everyone likes us, but I value the people who do."

"Does that kind of thing happen to you a lot?" Asuka questioned.

Konomi, after a few moments of contemplation, dodged the question and instead responded with, "I'm sorry you had to endure that. You probably didn't have to experience a lot of that yet since you've been so reserved, but part of being more outgoing means you'll probably experience it more often."

"I don't know if I'm too excited about being hated for living." Asuka lamented softly.

"No," Konomi reassured the young girl. "If you spend your life hiding from them then they win. You can't be afraid of the world. With everything we've been through, we should be able to handle what life throws at us."

As Konomi finished up what she was telling Asuka, the waitress came to take their order. The menu was small, but, unlike most cafes, also included a few different light meals. Asuka ordered some edamame while Konomi asked for three orders of gyoza. Asuka, having heard Konomi's order, looked at her confused as the waitress thanked them and walked away.

"I'm not going to eat all three." Konomi chuckled lightly to herself. "Sometimes, these pet cafes don't take very good care of the animals. This is one of many that take amazing care of them, but I still like to give the pups a couple bites to eat whenever I come. I just can't help it."

"You really do love the animals a lot don't you?" Asuka leaned forward, inquisitively leering at her.

"Well, yes, but not just that." Konomi was pleasantly surprised at Asuka's interest. "I've spent so much time on that animal side that I think we just get each other."

"You were some kind of demi-human right?" Asuka asked having picked through the little bit that she knew about Konomi's world.

"I was a cat person." Konomi revealed. "Which, I have to say, if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be eating gyoza for lunch at a dog café." She chuckled slightly.

"What does being a cat have to do with dogs?" Asuka asked her honestly.

"I wasn't a cat. I was a cat person." Konomi responded jokingly with feigned indignance. "Also, I was a beast tamer so I couldn't pick one animal over another because it was cute. It's like there were ability points across several metrics and whenever I tamed an animal, I added their scores to my own. It was nice, even though I could hear their thoughts and talk to them. Animals are much more accepting and intelligent than we give them credit for."

"You could hear their thoughts?" Asuka didn't seem surprised. "I would have done so many tests with that." She continued before she started muttering to herself. "Eat this and this. Which is better? What color is this? What does this smell like? Fantastic!" Asuka paused momentarily before asking Konomi, "You got their scores added to yours? So why not just tame five thousand bees and run faster than light?"

Konomi chuckled, "I thought something similar. Why not just tame every cat I see since there's so many stray cats everywhere. Turns out I could only tame one of each species so that plan went out the window pretty quickly."

"It seems like you brought some form of your power back with you since all these animals love you." The young genius surmised. "I guess the knowledge of how they think and what they typically worry about and want feeds a lot into how you can get along with them."

"Just like your tech knowledge came back with you!" Konomi finished as the waitress brought their orders to their table.