Chapter 1
A Strange Customer

Today, The Green Donut was unusually busy for a Saturday, many customers (primarily tourists) were visiting in droves.
Although this is certainly great for business, the number of customers became quite overwhelming, especially when there were only three employees: Ben, the Green Donut's owner's son, Francis Huffman, and Heidi Yip.

While Francis took over as the cashier for noon, Heidi and Ben were juggling trays full of donuts just to keep up with the sudden increase in demand. "Ugh, I'm so tired!" Heidi moaned, and her arms ached from carrying so much in a short period of time. "I agree, dude," Ben replied "let's just hope we can close the place for lunch."
A simple hour flew by and then, the Green Donut now only had two customers much to the trio's surprise, relief, and delight. Finally! They can take that needed breather!
A couple of minutes later, the customers have since left happy with their donuts.
"That was the best matcha donut I've ever ate!" One of the customers yells out, "thank you all so much, I'm coming back here for sure!"
Francis gave them a thumbs up whilst quietly mopping the floor and Ben grabbed the keys to close up shop for now.
In the break room, the three enjoyed their lunches with the TV turned on as entertainment/background noise.
As a joke, Heidi picked up the remote and switched to Channel 5 to see what news stories to laugh at this time. Then, the most absurd one they've ever heard was beginning.
"This just in," Sophia Tucker announces "we got reports of two fish people gangs attacking each other in Downtown Wharf City!"
The employees were intrigued but skeptical. A video clip was shown of those fish people knocking one another into buildings and cars with some of them having superpowers to boot.
"This just has to be a real good marketing scheme," Francis commented "I mean, this looks like people with amazing costumes with special effects mixed in."
Heidi agreed with him. "Yeah, this is so ridiculous." Ben shook his head with amusement, joining in with the comedy.
They began to laugh about the whole fish people story, from the nonsense premise to how Sophia took the whole thing seriously and with a straight face no less.

Unfortunately by 1:30, it was time to open back up for the afternoon and not as many customers were coming in. On one hand, it was back to the store's normal, slow pace but on the other, it got super boring. Heidi was cleaning the floor this time but would often stop and check her phone every ten minutes.
Whilst texting a friend of hers, she heard the bell ring but then saw something peculiar; a light green rabbit wearing a blue tracksuit.
"Hi, welcome to the Green Donut! What would you like?" Ben said, greeting this rather odd customer. The rabbit gave Ben this sweet, innocent look, eyes twinkling pure cuteness with their arms reaching out to him.
"Aw, you're so adorable!" He cooed, "Do you want a donut?" The rabbit nodded cutely and pointed to a jam-filled donut.
"Fantastic choice, that'll be $4.75 please."
The rabbit stopped and stared at Ben, no longer doing the puppy dog eyes. He flinched a little but clarified that they still needed to pay for the donut. However, it seems this rabbit did not take no for an answer as it immediately climbed on the counter and crawled into the display case, shoving some of those trays down to the floor. "Hey, you can't do that!" Ben yells but to no avail. No amount of "get downs" or "stops" well, stopped the rabbit from grabbing the donut and running out of the Green Donut.
"Catch that thief!" Heidi shouted, and Ben began chasing after the thieving bunny. Running from one street to the next, he tried to keep up but the thief was much faster and had a heading start.
Then, Ben saw something both amazing and strange at the same time; it was those same "fish people" he saw on the news earlier today, and he could not believe it.
"I guess these fish dudes are real after all," Ben thought to himself, "or possibly what Francis said, a really good live performance and I'm seeing it all in person!"
As he approached the scene to find that scoundrel thief, he was halted by an invisible force and was now a few feet off the ground.
Then, he saw this fish woman wearing purple and pink clothing walk closer to him with one of her arms being lifted up in place.
"What is someone like you doing here?" The woman asks Ben, "this is far too dangerous for a civilian to get tangled up in. Please just get back to a safe place."
She gently placed him back down, which still surprised Ben greatly. "Thank you miss, I'll go now," he said to the woman as he ran back to the Green House.
As Ben returned, Francis greeted him. "Yo man, what happened to our donut thief?"
Ben explained everything to him, or at the very least tried to. He was impressed to know that the news story had some truth but wasn't fully convinced just yet. Though for the rest of the afternoon shift, everything went back to normal like nothing ever happened.
When he came back home, his mom greeted him and asked how work went. He explained to her about the waves of tourists visiting the shop and how many customers in general arrived that day, intentionally not bringing up some of the weirder stuff that went down today.
His dad also greeted him and was quite proud of his son for the amount of work he did.
"Not too shabby for dealing with visitors coming for Sakura Season," his dad remarked, "you have promise with running the Green Donut when you become an adult."
Ben felt this was a compliment but had his worries regarding that future.
The Mizuyama family ate their dinner for the night and Ben went to his room preparing to go to bed.
Unfortunately, he couldn't sleep at all with all that he saw today but after a few glasses of water and a good book, he finally fell asleep.