The Nun and the Orgasm
Yui was slumped against the counter, tipsy on alcohol and the sweet haze of the room, when the sanctuary door opened at the worst possible moment. It was Clara. She stepped inside with a massive axe in one hand — a weapon nearly as big as she was, absurd on that small, tidy frame — as if she had only just walked off a brutal fight. Exhaustion sat heavy on her face, yet she held herself perfectly upright, the way a faithful servant of the Lord ought to, and there was something almost admirable in it. Even so, I still couldn't quite reconcile the little nun who had knocked back a B&B in one swallow and stamped her feet because she was on fire with the girl who had apparently been out swinging that enormous axe at Aberrations.
"Oh? Clara! Welcome!"
Yui waved brightly, still draped over the counter. Then she launched into the one thing she absolutely should not have said.
"Clara, today Yui learned the real grown-up world! It was so amazing!"
Ah.
I took an instinctive step back behind the counter.
"Bartender Oppa taught Yui what an orgasm is?! Pleasure just pours right out of your brain! It's incredible!"
The air in the café froze solid. The wry jazz, oblivious, kept drifting along at its own lazy pace.
"...What?!"
Clara's footsteps locked in place as if she had turned to stone. Thud! The axe hit the floor, and the sound boomed through the sanctuary. Her golden eyes blew wide, ready to pop from her head, and the flush raced from the nape of her neck all the way to her hairline until that snow-white skin was the red of a ripe tomato.
"Or... org... wh-what..."
A strangled sound escaped her young lips, trembling with horror — she couldn't even bring herself to shape the blasphemous word.
"What did he teach you?!"
If this was not sacrilege, nothing was. She had shouted that word — proudly, with a bright, tongue-tangled smile — straight into the ears of a devout nun who rejected pleasure and indulgence down to the bone.
"Y-you... you minion of Satan, Bartender!"
Clara didn't even think to retrieve the axe. She clamped both burning cheeks in her hands and jabbed a finger at me.
"What dreadful, impious thing have you done, dragging a pure and innocent young sister into this?!"
Tears sprang into her round eyes.
"Yesterday you desecrated the holy Blood, and tonight you cast Sister into a pit of pleasure! Repent at once! Do you not fear the Lord's thunderbolt?!"
She was shrieking with tears clinging to her lashes, and I stood behind the counter with my mouth shut, unable to produce a single excuse. Explaining that it was only the name of a cocktail would have ended it — but anything I said now felt likely to feed the lightning. Yui, the one who had actually thrown the bomb, was merely grinning in a drunken haze and cocking her head.
"Huh? Clara, why's your face so red?"
Yui tipped her head, cheeks flushed pink.
"Oppa's explanation was really hard, but does Clara know what it is? You're a nun, so of course you're smart!"
"In the Lord's name, I shall punish this den of corruption!"
Clara snatched up the axe she had dropped and strode toward my side of the counter. The pressure rolling off that small body was nothing like yesterday's little nun. Fresh from battle, the venom clearly hadn't left her yet.
KRAAANG!
The enormous axe came down without mercy on the bar. Wood split with a dull crack, and the shock rattled the whole counter. Clink. Yui's glass lost its balance and toppled. The Baileys and Kahlúa, layered so prettily a moment before, flooded the table, and a brown stream ran along the grain.
"Hieeeng...!"
Tears welled in Yui's eyes.
"Clara, you're such a dummy! Yui's precious... o-orgasm all spilled!"
The word rang through the café again.
"Oppa worked so hard to explain it, and it was the really yummy grown-up world...!"
Yui started sniffling, looking from the spilled cocktail to Clara and back again. A nun who had brought her axe down in holy wrath, and a magical girl weeping because her precious grown-up world had been stolen. I stood behind the counter in the middle of the wreckage. This was the moment. I answered in a perfectly calm, unhurried voice.
"The grown-up world, yes. That was the name of the cocktail."
"C... cocktail... name..."
Clara, who had been panting with the axe clenched in both hands, stopped dead — like a robot with its plug yanked out.
"...It was?"
The blood drained from her blazing face in an instant.
"A... a drink with such a shameless name... exists openly in this world?"
Her voice went thin.
"I... I just spilled an innocent person's drink... and destroyed property..."
She clapped both trembling hands over her mouth. Her panicked gaze crept across the scene: the poor bar split clean in two, her own enormous axe buried viciously in the middle of it, and the sweet brown liquid soaking everything above. Look at it from any angle and it was the same thing — a major accident, one hundred percent her fault, with nowhere to hide.
"L-Lord... this lowly servant, blinded by pride and ignorance, has damaged the furnishings of a holy refuge and cast an innocent sister's daily bread upon the floor...!"
The cry was pitiful. She looked ready to throw herself down and wail her way through a confession on the spot. The imposing nun who had come to judge heresy was gone. All that remained was a little lady who had no idea what to do with her own mistake. Beside her, Yui stared down at the spilled cocktail with her lips pushed into a full pout.
"Hmph! Yui really hates Clara. Yui fought so hard today... and the sweet grown-up world, Yui only got one sip..."
As Yui whined, Clara's shoulders hunched even smaller.
"A lot of cocktails are made for parties, so plenty of them have names like the things people say when they're drunk."
I went on, carefully clearing the wreckage of the shattered bar.
"And... ah, would you like a sangria?"
"B-Brother Bartender..."
Tears trembled in Clara's wide eyes.
"Would you truly bestow yesterday's sweet drink upon this sinful one once more?"
The same mouth that had been jabbing a finger and calling me a minion of Satan was now saying Brother Bartender. The promotion seemed to scale directly with her guilt over the property damage. Yui, however, was not about to sit quietly through a touching reconciliation.
"Wait! Oppa! What about Yui's?! Who's gonna make up for Yui's spilled pleasure?!"
She smacked the counter and pressed on, full of spirit.
"Not sangria — make Yui another one of that really hard-name one from before! Clara spilled it, so Clara's paying!"
Suddenly on the hook for the cocktail as well, Clara couldn't even argue. She only opened and closed her mouth like someone who had swallowed her tongue. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and clasped both hands before her chest. Lips quivering as if she were begging pardon from an unseen God, she looked every bit the lamb being led to slaughter.
"It's all right, Yui. Clara. This is a sanctuary, so I don't charge. But Clara, as your penalty... instead of sangria, you're drinking what Yui had."
The color left Clara's face in a heartbeat.
"Ah... ahh... th-that impious name... that liquor of pleasure... I...!"
While she flailed as if she might faint where she stood, I took the Kahlúa — a black coffee liqueur — from the display. I laid the dark liqueur across the bottom of an ice-filled glass and poured a generous ribbon of white milk over it, and the layers inside softly gave way into each other. The ingredients were different from what Yui had been drinking, but it looked similar, and the color was far gentler.
"It looks the same, but the name is different. This is a Kahlúa Milk. A soft grown-up flavor, Yui."
Clara stared down at the glass before her — pale, as if a mist of milk had been stirred through it — as though she couldn't believe her eyes.
"Kah... Kahlúa Milk...?"
She took it in both trembling hands like a sinner who had just been granted salvation. Yui's eyes sparkled at the new name as well.
"Wow! Kahlúa Milk! The name is so cute! Oppa, does this connect to that grown-up world from before too? Yui loves anything with milk in it!"
As if she had never been sniffling at all, Yui burst into a bright laugh and put her lips to the glass, pink twin-tails swinging cheerfully to either side. Clara seemed to borrow courage from the sight. She carefully lifted her own glass and took a sip.
"Ah..."
The tears at the corners of her eyes vanished, and a faint blush rose in their place along with a deep sigh of relief. Yui, unaware of the white foam lightly staining her lips, kicked her legs happily on the chair. Clara, who had been frozen stiff, looked a good deal easier as well — perhaps thanks to the gentle sweetness filling her mouth. In that newly warm air, I wiped the counter and spoke as if it were nothing.
"Hina and Rin stopped by during the day and then headed out. Were there unusually many Aberrations today?"
After I asked, my eyes dropped to the nun's weapon buried in the middle of the split bar — the enormous axe Clara had driven in when her holy wrath broke loose. To finish clearing the table, I gripped the handle and hauled upward with everything I had. Veins stood out on my wrist. The silver axe did not move a single millimeter, as if it had become one with the wood. From across the counter, Yui watched my pitiful struggle, and at last she couldn't hold it in.
"Ahahaha! Oppa, don't force it! Clara's tiny, sure, but that axe is stupidly heavy! A normal person could never lift it!"
She set her thin glass down and went on, delighted.
"Just like Oppa said, today was a total mess! Senior Katsune was blasting talismans from the back, boom boom, and Big Sis Hina had this huge minigun and went dudududu! The Aberrations all turned into sieves!"
Yui seized an imaginary minigun in both hands and mimed firing, and the air in the sanctuary grew brighter and lighter still. Just then Clara, who had only now noticed the axe handle in my grip, startled and hopped down from the high chair.