Mikamorra // A Mika fanfiction

Chapter 4

When I woke up it was already 4 pm. I felt as if I hadn't slept at all and actually did feel rather sick by now. Probably bad karma for lying to my mom, ugh. I got out of bed and went downstairs to make myself a cup of tea. I may not believe in God, but tea is a pretty good religion too. Anything can be solved with tea, really. Well, almost anything. Tea couldn't prevent my parents from moving to the other side of the fucking continent and completely fucking up my life and theirs as well.

In the kitchen I met my mom, who was just making herself a cup of tea as well. She looked at me and asked if I felt better yet. I nodded in reply, not wanting to give in to how I actually felt by now and took a mug and a teabag out of the cupboard. While I was pouring the boiling water into it and added some milk my mom told me that apparently Italians only drink tea when they are sick.

"But how do they live like that, without a daily cup of tea??" I exclaimed in disbelief. "Well, they just drink coffee, and their coffee is good!". I shook my head, crazy Italians.

"But hey, it fits the situation now that you are actually sick" my mom said while winking at me. I chuckled and she asked if I wanted to come sit with her in the living room to spend some time together. I was surprised at her request: "but don't you have to prepare things in the restaurant?". "Sweetheart, you've been asleep for hours and I already finished everything I needed to do for tonight! If you wanna help me serve the guests everything will be fine, or do you have a lot of homework to do?"

I assured her it would be no problem, I didn't feel like doing homework anyway and it had been a long time since we had spent some time together or that I had helped her in the restaurant. Usually I tried to stay away from it as much as possible, because I was that grumpy teenager that wanted to show her parents how much their plans ruined her life, but for some reason I didn't feel like acting so stupidly tonight. Seeing my mom smile because I agreed on helping her gave me a warm and happy feeling and I decided that maybe I should start doing my best to adapt to the situation and try to make the best out of it. Wasn't that like Mika would handle the situation too? After all he had had to move around a lot more than me as a child, sometimes living in poverty while having to deal with horrible teachers and bullies all the time, yet he still managed to keep that wonderful smile of him.

I got a bit lost in my thoughts, daydreaming of Mika once again. If only I could meet him and thank him for everything he had done for me... Even though he wasn't physically there, his existence and music were enough. Even now, he was helping me to change my mindset! He was someone I looked up to very much.

I caught my mom staring at me with a vague smile on her face. "What are you thinking of?" she asked. I blushed: "oh, eh, just Mika... I was thinking about how I want to be more like him, I want to be brave and optimistic like him..." I went silent for a moment, "actually, mom, I just want to apologise for the fact I've been so grumpy and uncooperative lately. I still really don't like it here in Italy, but I guess there's nothing much I can change about it and complaining only makes things harder than they already are... So uhh, yeah... uhh, I'm sorry and I'll try to change my behaviour from now on."

My mom almost teared up at my words: "oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry too! You don't have to apologise, it's my fault, me and dad's fault, that you're in this situation now. I completely understand how you feel and maybe when making our decision to move here we should have considered your feelings more... Especially now that running the restaurant isn't going as well as we expected... I'm really sorry, I wish we could have given you a better future. Maybe it would be better to just return to England..."

I got slightly annoyed by how dramatic my mom was acting, but I quickly remembered "the new me" would show more empathy. "Mom!" I exclaimed, "I just said I was going to try to adapt to the situation, there's no reason to go back, running a restaurant has been your and dad's dream since forever, and I would not want to ruin that dream!" I hugged her and she sobbed on my shoulder as I patted her back. In any other time and place it would have been awkward that I had to be the one comforting her, but I was just too happy that we had had an actual conversation again, so I didn't care and just tried to focus on calming my mom down.

Eventually she stopped crying and wiped her tears away. "Sorry, the past few months have just been very hard for me. For all of us, I assume". I nodded, it hadn't been easy indeed and we were probably going to face a whole lot more bad things. I desperately tried to find a happier topic to discuss and suddenly an idea appeared in my mind. "What if we try to gain some more attention for our restaurant by making advertisements!" I said. "We could hand out flyers in the neighbourhood? I can draw them, if you like. Maybe it will attract more customers!"

My mom smiled, "that sounds like a great idea Jane! But making flyers is quite expensive and we don't have much money for that I'm afraid..." I thought for a second, not wanting my excitement to get tempered: "we could also make a Facebook page, at least that, it's free!" This time my mom smiled even more and she seemed to approve of the idea. "But only if you take care of that, Jane, I'm horrible with technology" she chuckled. I laughed, "I know mom, don't worry, I'll fix it!

I also got another idea: "what if you start serving English dishes as well? The Italians will probably be more interested in foreign food than in Italian food made by people who aren't even Italian!"

I knew quite sure that Italians were pretty traditional when it came to their food. In the early beginning, when the restaurant had only just opened its doors, we served pineapple pizza and critics cried shame upon this. It was a mockery to the Italian kitchen! Now that I came to think of it that was probably also one of the reasons few people came to eat here. Who would want to eat imitation food made by imitation Italians when they themselves could do it much better?

The rest of the time until the restaurant opened for the evening we discussed our plans. We also came up with a slogan, because we didn't have that yet either. It said: "Ristorante Fiona, where the best of the English and Italian kitchen meet" but written in Italian of course. Fiona was the name of my grandmother by the way. She passed away some years ago but left my parents with a significant amount of inheritance money with which they could start up the restaurant. It wasn't enough to still pay the bills from by now, but my parents were nevertheless very grateful and hence they decided to name the restaurant after her as a way of honouring her.

I ended the day much more positive than I had started it and this night I didn't get disturbed by fires or anything, so I had a good night's sleep. If only I knew what was about to happen the next day...

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Anddd chapter 3 ends with a cliffhanger! *dramatic music*

It took me soooo long to update this story, I actually didn't think I would, but I found myself with a lot of free time on my hands all of the sudden and I got inspiration so I started writing again. And just when I was halfway trough writing this chapter and I was close to giving up I got a comment from Fiona, a.k.a. asking if I was going to update any time soon and that gave me the motivation to keep writing. So a big thank you and shoutout to her!

As you can see, Fiona, I also did a lil' thing for you, since I think you are probably the only person who's actually still reading this fanfiction, so I thought you deserved a special place in the story ;) Hope you like it!

If anybody else is reading this: do check out the fanfiction by as well, I just started reading it and it's really good!

Well, that was it for now, byeee!

Jaela ♥

(photo attached is what I imagine the restaurant to look like ☺)