The Fake Cocktail and a Healing Matcha Latte
"Oppa, you act all incredibly sweet on the outside, but inside you're a genius at the push and pull, aren't you? Picking people up and dropping them whenever you feel like it."
Hina pouted as she said it, and still the look she threw me was sticky with intent.
"I'm telling you, you're a seriously dangerous man."
Rin, who had been watching the whole display, broke into a snickering laugh.
"Ahahaha! Hey, Hina! You are seriously hopeless when it comes to Oppa! You might have had men wrapped around your finger everywhere else, but the bartender oppa here is the god of the iron wall!"
The same person who, only moments ago, had been squirming and begging me to bury her dark history was now proudly dragging out last night's story in front of her junior. Of course, the part about her whining had been considerably sanitized from the version she herself remembered.
"Rin-senpai, be quiet! You're the one who made a scene right in front of Shinano-senpai!"
"W-what did you say?!"
"Blehh!"
The two Magical Girls, who had frozen stiff the moment Shinano appeared, were already back at a childish spat, noisily warming the air of the sanctuary.
I gave a wry smile and stepped over to the espresso machine.
"Brewed four times over... understood, Shinano."
Locking the portafilter into place, I turned the order over in my mind. Honestly, no matter how exceptional a Magical Girl's body might be, stacking four espresso shots on top of one another stopped being coffee. It came uncomfortably close to poison. My conscience would not allow me to pour four shots in as they were. In that case... rather than adding four shots, a coffee drawn from four ingredients would be better.
I took my hands off the machine and brought out the fine matcha powder I had been keeping deep in the cabinet. The moment I whisked the matcha thick, the air in the café changed. In place of the fragrant coffee, a fresh, deep scent of matcha began to drift out around the counter.
First I laid a deep green of matcha along the bottom of the glass. Over that I poured the milk slowly—the trick was to let it run down the inner wall, so the green and the white would not mix. Next I set a freshly pulled shot of espresso on top, and the dark brown settled over the milk, drawing a clean line between them. Last of all, I finished it with a light crown of sweet cream.
Green, white, brown, and the ivory of the cream. In place of four shots, four layers: a matcha espresso latte, complete.
I slid the glass across the counter and spoke.
"A little something special, for our Shinano, whose nerves are strung far too tight. A bit of healing."
Shinano's green eyes dropped to the glass.
"The weather's fine enough that I considered a slice of cake with black tea, but matcha's been rather in fashion lately."
Shinano stared down at the glass that had come to rest beyond the counter. Inside it, four beautifully divided layers each kept their own color.
"...This kitty is quite sure she asked for four shots, nya."
Her voice was low and calm, yet a curious glint of interest hovered over those green eyes. She took the straw between slender fingers and slowly stirred the four layers. Green, white, and brown blended at a leisurely pace into one gentle color. Then she set the straw between her lips and drew a slow sip.
"Haa..."
A quiet sigh of pleasure slipped from between Shinano's lips. The tail that had been drooping stood bolt upright, as if to show itself off, and began to sway happily from side to side.
The deep, clean bitterness of the matcha would have wet her tongue first, chased by the softness of the milk and the heavy lingering of the espresso, until at last the sweetness of the cream wrapped the whole of it and melted it into one. For loosening the neck of a cat-eared senior buried under paperwork, I was certain this was far better than a four-shot poison.
"Four ingredients instead of four shots."
Shinano lifted the glass, the faintest smile caught at the corner of her mouth.
"Twisting your superior's orders with a clever bit of wordplay is impudent... but what's more infuriating is that the taste is good enough for the trick to land perfectly, nya."
She took the straw again and drank a second mouthful.
"With a refined sweetness like this, I feel as if I could shove those variety-show proposals from the bastards at the networks straight into the shredder and not feel a twinge of conscience, nya."
From the seat right beside her, Hina—who had been watching the whole thing—fixed her gaze on me once more.
"Wooow..."
Without thinking, she drew both hands in against her chest and let out a small gasp.
A bartender who gives not what the guest wants, but what they need. The sense to bend a superior's order and still win them over with the result. That whole sequence seemed to mean something entirely different in Hina's eyes.
"Katsune-senpai... I think I'm in real trouble."
Hina flushed as she whispered it toward Rin in the next seat, and Rin snorted, rolling the ice in her empty glass with her straw.
"Heh~ What did I tell you? I said that oppa was no joke, didn't I? Charge in on a whim and get your soul cleaned out, and don't say I didn't warn you."
Hina paid Rin's scolding no mind. If anything, she pressed herself closer to the counter and locked her eyes on me.
"Cleaned out down to my soul? I'm not an Aberration. I'm just an ordinary person."
Ordinary person—the words had left my mouth meaning only that. I had none of a Magical Girl's superhuman power, and none of an Aberration's danger. Just a safe, harmless existence. But to Hina, they seemed to have been translated into an entirely different meaning.
"An ordinary person?"
Hina's tone dropped all at once. The playfulness drained from her eyes, and something else began to fill the space it left.
"Ehehe... so even if Hina hugs you tight and handles you however she wants, you won't be able to resist even once, and you'll stay nice and quiet right by my side...?"
She tilted her silver twin-tails and leaned her upper body even farther over the counter.
"Oppa?"
She looked ready to climb the counter that very second and throw her arms around my neck.
"Hey, Hina!!"
Beside her, Rin shot up in alarm.
"Are you insane?! What are you trying to do to the bartender oppa?! Get down, right now!"
"Ah, why, senpai! Hina thinks she just found her destined one, that's why!"
Hina didn't give an inch, and when she talked back, Rin seized her by both shoulders and tried to haul her off the counter. The girl in the gothic-lolita dress only flapped her frills and held on, stubborn to the last.
Through that noisy fuss, Shinano—still stirring her cold matcha espresso latte with the straw—pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed.
"Haa... to think I'm sitting here listening to the rose-tinted racket of juniors so much younger than I am..."
Her green eyes turned toward the ceiling. She had come to rest quietly, away from the mountain of paperwork, and what had been waiting for her was her juniors' love-struck uproar. It was a moment when I understood exactly how she felt.
Vrrt— vrrt— vrrt—
A loud vibration went off from all three of them at once. Rin's designer handbag, Hina's gothic-lolita pouch, and the inner pocket of Shinano's maid uniform.
The air of the sanctuary, thick with a lovers' quarrel only a moment before, froze solid. Hina and Rin's childish push-and-pull, Shinano's leisurely scolding—all of it cut off at once, and three pairs of eyes turned to their own phones.
The moment Shinano checked the screen, her green eyes flashed sharp. The languid cat who had been sipping a matcha latte and teasing her juniors was gone. In her place were the eyes of a ten-year veteran.
"Signs of an Aberration appearing in a nearby sector, nya."
Her voice dropped a tone.
"Katsune. Happy Trigger. Break's over, nya. Get to the scene. Now, nya."
"Aaaah! Seriously! My sweet, honeyed break!"
The moment the order fell from the great senior Magical Girl, Rin put on a tearful face—and her body was already moving. She pulled a bundle of talismans from her handbag and scattered them into the air, and a blinding light of magical power swallowed her flashy street clothes. The crop top and jacket melted away into that light, and in their place a pure-white shrine maiden's robe, meant to guard the world, wove itself together.
They were the same shrine-maiden robes that had been slumped over the table last night, searching for a demon, but the eyes of the woman standing in them now were nothing like before.
"This ticks me off! I'm wrecking everything today!"
A battle flame lit in her ruby eyes.
Beside her, Hina thrust both hands toward the empty air, and her silver twin-tails whipped in a wind of magic. The frills of the gothic-lolita dress wrapped themselves in beams of light and turned blood-red, and at last the power condensed from the air settled over both her hands and took shape.
A Magical Girl, gripping in each hand a minigun larger than her own body. Happy Trigger, complete.
Standing there was someone entirely different from the girl who, only moments ago, had been acting cute over the counter and drinking a sweet cocktail.
And yet, even after dropping into combat mode, Hina whipped her head toward me.
"Oppa! Hina's going to go sweep those Aberrations up real quick and come right back, so don't look at any other girls—just wait here, nice and quiet. Okay? Got it?"
The wink thrown by a Magical Girl with a minigun in each hand was sticky, and lethal.
With that for a farewell, Hina and Rin kicked the café door open and ran. The white hem of the shrine-maiden robe and the red hem of the combat outfit fluttered beyond the door and vanished.
In the sanctuary that had been so noisy a moment ago, only the glasses they had not finished remained on the counter. Only Shinano kept her seat.
Working the tablet at speed, contacting headquarters, her profile was no longer the languid cat maid from the café. She was a veteran Magical Girl, through and through.
With the Magical Girls deployed, there was nothing I could do. The cheering would be handled by millions of fans far more passionate than I was, and I could not fight in their place. I had known that from the start.
All I could do was turn the speaker down a single notch, so that Shinano, tapping away at the tablet right beside me, might focus even a little more—and not make so much as the sound of wiping a glass. That was all.
I set down even the glass I had been polishing behind the counter, and simply watched in silence.