Welcome to Gaia! ::

The cafe is the same as its allways been, bursting with female customers... and the mews stayed working here even after the project had ended.. and.. they had supposidly won. God only knew what had really happend... Kisshu's "betrayal" Ichigo apparently dieing to revive everyone else. Then she was revived... It all seemed so surreal to the group.
Ryou had grown acostum to them being there, it had given him more time to work on the project further. Though.. this was kept secret from the girls, Ichigo seemed to allways get mad at him when he talked about her being a neko again.

But everything had gone well over the past year... it was all pretty much the same. Minus the fact everyone was a year older.

Nyah...school sucked so badly...she was in trouble, again, for missing an assignment...she hadn't learned, had she? It had been a year, and she still didn't do all of her work...even with the lack of activity, besides her job, but that was to her own will...To her own social life, etc etc. But, anyway. She would move down the path, through the park, towards the said Cafe`, chin tilted slightly downward as she sighed...staring down at a book in her hand.

Pushing it open slightly between her two palms, she looked through a few of the pages...merely flipping through momentarily, before slamming it shut. She had a feeling this wasn't going to be the best day--the lack of activity should have helped her with this sorta` thing! And those powers...they never went away. She still got the ears and tail whenever she got horridly embarrassed or something like that.

But, that didn't happen too often anymore. That was always a plus, right? Pushing the door open to the cafe`, she glanced around...first one here? Strange. "Shirogane san? Akasaka san..?" ...No response yet. Oh well.

Ryou sighed, making his way to a stopping point and heading upstairs to make sure ichigo actually showed up. Anyone else would have fired her by now... but he felt a bit responsible for the reasons she was late. For example.. her need of cat-naps.
Well, actually was all his fault.

He smiled inwardly as she was actually here on time "Ichigo." he drew her attention "Take out the trash." he pointed at three stuffed garbage bags before going on his merry way. Sadly, Ichigo was the only one he could trust with it.
Zakuro would kill him.
Purrin would probably try to juggle them and end up with it all on the floor.
Retasu would probably trip and have it end up all over the floor.
Mint just wouldn't do it.
So that left Ichigo. and if she dfidn't do it.. no cake.

He grinned, moving along to the kitchen with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Only removing them to grab a few things to snack on from the fridge and head back down to his work. Not that it was uncommon... just now he was just working on a different part of the project.

A small girl poked her head out of the bushes, "watching" as ichigo dumped the trash into the cans. Her eyes were covered by bangs.. making her sight more than useless, but she could still see alittle bit. Besides she had her.. other sight.
She slipped out of the bushes as soon as she heard her leave, digging into the trash bags for some old food that had been thrown out.

She glanced up, a bit startled.. you could tell by the way hermouth was partialy open, frozen in the spot she was in. It was shocking.. someone actually noticed her. Normally she went unseen, only being noticed when someone needed to hear something.

She slowly let her arms lower to her side, shifting a bit nerviously. "Moms in jail... Dads dead." she muttered softly, seemingly unphased by the question. She tilted her head to the side. "Why is there a cat in your soul..?" she asked curiously. There were alot of things in peoples souls.. but never.. cats.

The girl showed no signs of emotion, silently noting her question had been avoided. That was okay... Maybe it was kinda rude to ask straight out about ones soul like that.
"Cake?" she repeated after a moment of silence or two. Giving a tiny little smile "Okay...thankyou. I would like that." she seemed a bit mature for her age, no doubt as to why. "I'm Amai." she carefully closed the bag of trash back, returning the lid, before shuffling up to the older girl.

Amai followed along behind the teenager like a duckling. Staying suprisingly close to her... She froze at the doorway.. "But.. I don't have shoes." she stared at the "no shoes no service" sign. She hadn't gone inside anywhere in.. so long. It seemed wierd.

The girl immediatly stiffened as she was touched, going rigid before relaxing some while reminding herself the girl was nice. She nodded slowly, stepping inside cautiously.. still a bit worried they'd chase her out. But no one seemed to notice her, as allways. So she relaxed and went back to just following her.