Chapter 2: A Magical Girl Eats a Frappe
"Introduce yourself properly, nyang."
At Shinano's sharp rebuke, my shoulders hunched of their own accord. I swallowed a sigh and opened my mouth again.
"Welcome... to the Witches' Gathering."
A beat.
"Would you care for a cookie kissed by pink magic, and a cocktail blessed by moonlight?"
It was just as corny the second time. If it belonged anywhere, it was with the track the café had on for background music—a song that had been popular about ten years ago.
I swallowed what was left of the cringe and looked up. The magical girl standing blankly in front of me looked more unsettled than I did, and I was the one sighing.
No. Unsettled didn't begin to cover it.
"Y-you're kidding, right?"
She glanced around the café, eyes jumping from the corners of the ceiling to the walls and back.
"This is some hidden-camera thing, isn't it?"
She let out a hollow little laugh, as if she couldn't believe any of it, but beneath all that glamour her voice was soaked through with exhaustion.
"And that song—that's something my mom... I mean, the seniors way above me used to sing."
Her gaze drifted up to the old speaker on the ceiling. Even now, that ten-year-old classic was flowing out of it at an unhurried pace.
"What kind of place even is this...?"
Wary eyes made a slow circuit of the interior. All there was to see was a worn wooden counter, a wide window opening onto the lakeshore, and a cat-eared maid sprawled in front of the counter, rolling macaron crumbs under her fingertips.
Then Shinano cleared her throat and set her teacup down. Porcelain met wood with a short, bright clink that rang through the café.
"Hmm~ The hospitality manual I wrote. Memorized perfectly—not a single character out of place."
She flicked her tail in satisfaction and gave me a nod.
"Consider yourself thoroughly praised, nyang. Just as expected of talent this kitty handpicked herself, nyang."
Being praised was nice. Feeling happy about it was another matter entirely.
Chin propped on her hand, Shinano turned slowly toward the entrance. The languid posture stayed. Her eyes did not—they had gone sharp.
"And you, Katsune Rin. Frozen stiff in the doorway."
The moment her name was called, the girl's rigid shoulders tightened a fraction more.
"This is a sanctuary reserved for magical girls, operated under the Association President's approval, nyang."
Shinano's tail swayed slowly from side to side.
"And treating a classic from ten years ago like that is not something I can simply let slide, nyang. If it bothers you so much, why don't you go and put out a hit that'll still be sung ten years from now, nyang."
The drowsy cat who had been rolling macaron crumbs a moment ago was gone. What remained in her voice was the weight of a magical girl with ten years on the front line.
"S-Senior Shinano...?!"
The girl called Katsune Rin went wide-eyed with dismay. Even from behind the counter, I could see her fingers tighten around her sunglasses. The confident air with which she had been looking down on the café had vanished; up on her heels, her whole posture had subtly shrunk.
Quietly, I took a fresh glass from behind the counter. Judging by the atmosphere, this one was going to need a drink too.
"Wh-why is Senior Shinano out in the middle of nowhere like this..."
The rest of it faded, and her eyes dropped to the floor.
Among active magical girls, Shinano was known as someone more awkward to run into—and more frightening—than your average Aberration. Why that person was sitting in a café tucked into a corner of the mountains, slacking off... no, resting, did not seem to add up in Katsune's head.
Shinano popped the last piece of macaron into her mouth, chewed, and swayed her tail at her leisure.
"A patrol, and a sanctuary inspection while I'm at it, nyang."
Once she had swallowed, those green eyes turned on Katsune.
"And Katsune Rin. The fact that you climbed all the way up here—wrangling your shikigami, facing down the camera lights—means you're in need of some healing, nyang."
At those words, the strange wariness wrapped around Katsune melted away like snow. What took its place was the exhaustion of a girl who had been hidden under all that glittering wrapping. Katsune's shoulders sagged. From behind the counter I could see the line of her back, drawn tight until a moment ago, come undone all at once.
She dropped the designer handbag onto a nearby table, closer to a toss than a placement.
Thud.
Nothing like the sound of her entrance. This one had no strength in it.
"Haa... I seriously thought I was going to die."
Katsune dragged a chair over, sat, and stretched both arms across the table. It was the exact posture Shinano had taken earlier.
"As if that weren't enough, those shikigami of mine have caught some kind of celebrity disease lately. They throw tantrums demanding TV appearances, and I've been cleaning up after them all night..."
The end of it muffled itself against the tabletop and faded.
I came out from behind the counter and approached her table.
"Miss Katsune."
Still face-down, she lifted only her head a little.
"As you can see, this is a magical girl sanctuary with Shinano as the direct supervisor, so you can relax. As for people, the only ones who ever show up are the occasional hikers."
Only then did Katsune raise her head and actually take the sanctuary in. No blazing downtown neon. No stares pouring in on her. No Aberration ready to burst through the door, and no camera shoving a lens in her face. Just old wooden floors, a quiet counter, a ten-year-old song drifting along, and a still, empty lake shivering in the sunlight.
"Haa... Fine. Well... I'll give you this much. I do like that there's nobody here."
She set her sunglasses on the table and let out a sigh.
"Downtown, people stare if I so much as breathe, so I have to force the energy up."
It was hard to believe this was the same person who had stood surveying the café with a designer bag hooked on one finger.
Still sprawled across the table, she lifted her head just enough to crook a finger at me.
"For now... give me something sweet."
The finger crooked again.
"That pink-magic cookie thing you mentioned earlier, or whatever it was. All of them."
"All of them...?"
"And a drink. Something insanely cold, piled with whipped cream."
The mumbling reached me half-buried against the table.
"They've had me chewing weeds and chicken breast for three straight days—weight management, bloating, whatever the excuse was—and my blood sugar's so low I feel like I could pass out any second."
It was oddly funny that the first order from someone who had walked in and called the interior a turn-of-the-millennium anime set was every last pink-magic cookie. I decided to let it go.
Just then Shinano crossed her arms and clicked her tongue.
"Katsune. This is not a place for fussing over your food, nyang."
The tip of her tail tapped the floor.
"And if you stuff yourself with food that high-calorie and your figure falls apart later, you don't think the Association is just going to sit quietly, do you, nyang?"
"Oh, come on!"
Katsune, face-down on the table, shot her head up.
"Senior! I am completely exhausted right now! The Association and those shikigami brats nag me enough already, so please, just for today, let it gooo..."
The whine stretched and sagged at the end, spreading long through the café. Katsune buried her face in the table again. The glamorous girl who had walked in was now completely defenseless.
I watched her quietly from behind the counter. The same person who had clicked across the floor in heels, scattering perfume, was now sprawled on a table, groaning. The claim that she had eaten nothing but chicken breast for three days didn't seem like an exaggeration. The wrist visible between her arms was thin, and beneath her eyes—glimpsed when the sunglasses came off—lay a shadow makeup hadn't quite managed to hide.
"Right. Something intense enough to make you forget you're tired."
I turned back into the counter as I went on.
"And I'll get you a snack with plenty of magic in it, too."
When I opened the refrigerator, the ganache chocolate tart I had made that morning came into view. The ganache had set just enough: a fork would meet a little resistance on the outside, then split the inside into that dense, fudgy break. Right at the perfect moment. I lifted it out carefully and set it on a plate.
Next, the drink. Something that could blow crushing stress away in a single hit would be best. I pulled another espresso, the same as before. While the crema settled slowly over the shot, I loaded the blender with chocolate syrup, milk, and ice.
The blender roared, briefly tearing through the café's quiet. I poured the pulled espresso over the finely blended frappé, mounded whipped cream on top, and drizzled chocolate syrup in a slow spiral. A handful of chocolate chips scattered across the crown finished it.
I took a step back and looked at the result. Even to my eyes—and part-time café work had left me fairly fond of sweets—this overwhelming calorie bomb was enough to make my head throb just from looking at it.
"A ganache chocolate tart and a chocolate-chip mocha frappé, made with a little cheering magic for the exhausted."
I carried the tray out and set it carefully on Katsune's table.
"Ah..."
A dazed little gasp slipped out of her. The torso collapsed on the table slowly rose. Her ruby eyes locked onto the tray.
Thick chocolate syrup sliding down a mountain of whipped cream. Beside it, a black ganache tart whose fudgy density you could feel just by looking. To someone who had spent three days swallowing nothing but salad in the name of weight management, it must have been nothing short of visual violence.
"Th-this is..."
Katsune's voice shook.
"This is insane. The calories alone... If I eat all of this, my face is going to be puffed up like a balloon tomorrow morning."
But her eyes stayed nailed to the tart.
"Everyone's going to tease me when they see my cheeks all filled out..."
Her reason was probably screaming every alarm it had. Her hands, meanwhile, had already closed around the fork and the straw as if possessed. The war between reason and instinct seemed to end in about three seconds.
The fork sank in, cutting through the soft ganache. The moment the brown cross-section showed and a deep chocolate scent rose over the table, Katsune squeezed her eyes shut and pushed the generous piece into her mouth.
That was the moment. Her ruby eyes, steeped in exhaustion, flew open. I could almost hear the last thread holding her reason together snap.
"I don't care... I don't caaare!"
Her hand tightened around the fork.
"This was unavoidable! You're the one who made me like this!"
I wasn't sure who she was talking to. It might have been the tart. It might have been me.
Still chewing, Katsune immediately caught the frappé's straw between her lips and took a long pull. Finely crushed ice and sweet mocha slid down her throat, and her expression changed completely. She looked like a desert castaway who had just found an oasis.
"Hnnn... I think I'm going to live."
She mumbled it around the straw.
"It's sweet. Insanely sweet... I can feel the stress just washing awaaay..."
The corners of her eyes drooped as if melting, and the shoulders that had been held so tight a moment ago sank loose.
I returned behind the counter and quietly picked up a dishcloth. I wasn't sure whether setting a calorie bomb in front of someone who had been starving for three days was the right call. But looking at that face right now, I had no regrets.