Final Fantasy 7. Tifa Lockhart: Journey to Midgar.

27. A year later.

It was just after Tifa’s nineteenth birthday when the owner passed away.

He had semi-retired after six months of employing Tifa. At some point during which the teenager had turned eighteen but having little recognition of the passage of time – being far too busy working hard in the bar and restaurant, as well as having long preparatory conversations with Barret about what they could do to help the planet and take on Shinra’s powerbase - she completely missed her birthday. And so, everyone decided to make her nineteenth the big, noisy, celebratory bash.

As for the owner. With Tifa proving almost immediately to have a great handle on the running of the business. And that just about every patron came to the Seventh Heaven as much to see Tifa and sample her cooking and drink-mixing skills as anything else, he chose to take a step back, let her manage things, and just to help her out whenever the place got overly busy.

Once April turned into May in ‘06, Barret and the owner, with the help of Biggs and Barret’s other two friends, Jessie and Wedge, along with quite a few of the regular patrons; threw Tifa her big nineteenth birthday party with a number of little presents and a huge cake. And that was when the boss had unveiled his own present to the girl.

He had, in secret, renamed the bar “Tyfer’s Seventh Heaven Bar and Restaurant”. And as part of her birthday celebration he had secretly hooked up a new large, crescent-shaped signage in glowing yellow-gold neon.

Though Tifa noticed at once that he had spelled her name wrong, changing the large neon sign above the door and the welcome mat inside the inner door would surely have cost too much so she never bothered to correct him on his mistake.

And then one morning toward the end of May, Tifa woke early as normal. She completed her two hours of martial training and exercise, before she showered and dressed and then made them both breakfast as she always did.

However, the owner didn’t appear at his normal time and when she went to check on him, she found him lying there tucked up in bed, quite dead, with an inextricably satisfied smile on his face. She fetched Barret and then went and brought the local Doctor, who made the pronouncement and then the necessary arrangements.

Tifa closed the bar for a couple of days in tribute to the owner, during which time she received a minor ‘afterlife blessing’ from her ex-boss. The local elder of Sector Seven paid a rare visit to the Bar and Restaurant with a letter from the Owner, essentially a last Will and testament. He had left all his Gaian belongings, including the Bar and everything in it and whatever savings he had managed to hide away in his vault in the cellar, to “his beloved new daughter, Tyfer Lockhart.”
In his will, he had also made a farewell statement saying that: “…Having found such happiness with his new found success, most of which being down to my beloved new daughter and, because of that feeling of satisfaction with my life, I can and at some point will, pass away happily with no regrets, whenever that will come about.”