The Sanctuary Is Over!
The moment my apology scattered into empty air, the fierce gale swirling above the stairs faltered for an instant.
Haru had been heaving rough breaths, her face flushed red enough to burst—and now she lost the momentum that had threatened to blast every fixture in the sanctuary skyward. Her lips twitched.
"Y-you crazy bastard...! If you know you screwed up—!"
The tail of the shout she'd meant to bark split and cracked. Cool air from the first floor touched the bare skin beyond her off-shoulder top, and her shoulders flinched.
"Wh-why the hell was I lying in your bed?! It's not like you stripped me... no—why'd you drag me in there in the first place!"
She snatched the fabric at her chest in one hand and yanked the short skirt's hem down hard with the other. Her gaze, busy trying to cover herself, lingered a moment on the wreck around the counter. Then she shook her head hard, and instead of apologizing for the rampage, she glared at me even more fiercely.
"Ah, shit... this is seriously pissing me off. Hey, eyes down! Where—where the hell are you looking, you perverted bastard!"
Her mouth was spitting vicious curses, but watching her clutch herself tight in both arms, face burning, huffing and puffing, I started to feel like the sorry one. I'd done a decent thing and still caught the abuse for it.
I didn't drop my gaze or look away. I met her eyes, calm and steady. The instant they drifted even a millimeter downward, there was no telling what she'd do to me.
"You fell asleep after the Godfather. If other guests came in, they'd get the wrong idea... so I moved you to my room."
The answer, wrung out as calmly as I could manage, reached the air between us, and Haru's bloodshot eyes flew wide. She stared at me blankly, mouth half open.
"Uh...... ah."
She made a dazed little sound and slowly unwound the arms she'd wrapped around herself. Then she jerked her gaze aside and scratched at her cheek.
"I mean... even so, you don't just dump someone in your bed like that..."
It was a sullen mutter, but the sharp anger and killing intent in her voice had vanished clean. Her lowered eyes landed on the split scraps of wood scattered across the first-floor floor. Haru nudged the broken wreckage with the toe of her shoe, hesitant, and spoke in a voice that wanted to crawl into a hole.
"...Sorry. For leaving the shop looking like this."
I opened my mouth carefully as she stared down at the fragments.
"Ah... it's all right. I heard that wherever magical girls gather, explosions and accidents always follow."
Half of that was true. The other half I'd invented to patch the situation. The sudden boom and the smashed ceiling had rattled me plenty, but I kept a calm face and added the rest.
"That said... I did tell you before I moved you. You were sleeping so deeply you must not have heard."
The moment the words dropped into the air, Haru's shoulders twitched and locked again. Her cheeks, red with embarrassment a moment ago, now flushed from the nape of her neck all the way to the rims of her ears, as if they might burst. Just as when Rin had collapsed, a magical girl's abnormal detoxification must have burned the alcohol out of her system in a single breath.
"Ah... uugh..."
Haru buried her face in both hands. A low, stifled groan leaked between her lips, and the legs bared beneath the cheerleader outfit twisted together, trembling in small shivers.
"I—I... that's... ah..."
Through the gaps in the fingers covering her face, her eyes wavered, uneasy. She couldn't look straight at me. She kept dodging her gaze and scraped the innocent floorboards with the toe of her shoe. Unable to lift her head, her hand clenched the hem of the cheerleader skirt until it wrinkled.
"Th-this isn't... my will, it's... yeah! Hormones...! No, that's not it...!"
In the end a blinding flash burst from her body. The ring of light exploded and flung even the nearby tables and chairs into the air, and Haru let out a sharp scream as she shot toward the lakeshore like someone fleeing.
"Kyaaaaaaah!"
Crash. Shatter. The bar tables and stools were caught in the gust and slammed into the wall, and beyond the window her small back crossed the night sky, shrinking to a dot and vanishing in an instant.
"Didn't she say she was a supporter...?"
I stared blankly at the traces of the blast that had swept the sanctuary—at the wreckage a magical girl had left behind—and figured I was going to have to seriously consider how I'd sleep tomorrow. No. How I'd sleep tonight.
The next day...
From somewhere, a light, rhythmic tapping of wooden planks knocked against my ears at steady intervals. The moment I hauled my heavy eyelids up, what filled my vision was blinding morning sun pouring through a hole punched clean through the ceiling.
Last night's storm had smashed every piece of furniture and every wall in my second-floor room, so in the end I'd folded myself onto the one narrow sofa still intact in a corner of the first floor and snatched what sleep I could. A dull ache climbed my lower back and pressed into my joints. When I lifted a hand, sawdust and dust sifted out of my hair, and the thin blanket I'd pulled over my shoulders was plastered with unidentified leaves.
I slowly pushed my stiff torso upright, and there was Shinano, legs crossed on a stool in front of the half-ruined bar counter.
"When... did you get here?"
The voice that scraped out of my dry throat was badly hoarse. I scratched the sawdust from the back of my hair and looked around the counter. Across the first-floor floor and walls that had been shattered last night, faint ripples of light were wavering, unfolding a strange sight.
A flutter of short wings, and yellow-and-white fluffballs—impossible to tell whether they were chickens or chicks—bustled through the sanctuary, flying here and there, repairing the broken space. One plump little thing fitted a nail into a hole, and three smaller ones waiting beside it launched into the air together and tapped the nailhead in with tiny hammers. Tap, tap.
"This body's clock-in time is always the same, meow. More importantly, did you fight a war yesterday, meow? The main venue for the Exchange Tournament was somewhere else—why is this place such a disaster, meow?"
Shinano's eyes glittered with interest. I brushed the leaves stuck to my shoulder and shirt collar and laid last night out, piece by piece. Haru in that short cheerleader outfit, slipping in here to vent her fury. Me serving her a stiff Godfather, then carrying her, collapsed in sleep, up to the second-floor bed. And the whole of what followed—her waking, blowing the sanctuary apart, and fleeing.
The longer my account ran, the higher the corners of Shinano's mouth climbed, beyond her control.
"Puhahaha! Kk—kuhuhuh... ah, my stomach hurts, meow...!"
In the end she folded over the broken wooden counter and burst into a belly laugh. She threw aside even the dignity of the ever-flawless, ever-strict senior and laughed as if she might pass out on the spot, the sound filling the hollowed-out sanctuary.
"That Haru...? Kk...! Funniest comedy in the whole world, meow!"
Shinano wiped the moisture at the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand, thumped the floor with her tail, and drew a deep breath.
"I was stressed to the top of my head yesterday, prepping the Exchange Tournament and cleaning up after it... Hearing about that sorry state of yours and Haru's dark history, it all just melts away at once, meow. An excellent morning report, meow."
I swept the sawdust off my shoulder with my palm and let out a small sigh. When I looked up, the torn remains of a mattress jutted through the gaps in the smashed second-floor floor. Shinano, who had laughed until she clutched her stomach, wiped the moisture at her eyes with a fingertip and steadied her breathing. Her tail swayed easily from side to side, announcing she was thoroughly satisfied.
"Haa... could you stop teasing me... Until it's all fixed, I can use my leave, right?"
At the fatigue thick in my voice, Shinano stopped the hand that had been petting the chick climbed onto her knee.
"Leave? As if this kitty would hand out a sweet word like that so easily, meow."
She propped her chin on the one stretch of counter that had somehow survived unbroken and looked up at me, staring.
"From the look of this mess, restoring the sanctuary will take a full three days no matter how we rush, meow. But even if I meekly handed you the time off, you'd just go back to the city, hole up in your room, and sleep. That's obvious, meow."
Shinano pulled a tablet from her arms and started scrolling down the screen.
"As it happens, there are other brats whining that they need extra hands, meow. Rather than sit here breathing dust and watching these little ones work, go somewhere else for about three days and do a dispatch assignment, meow. You can play bartender and caretaker there too. Casually is fine, meow."
"Isn't that too much...? You should at least file it as a workplace injury and tell me to see a doctor first."
But in a world tangled up with magical girls and Aberrations, normal words like social insurance and work-life balance were never going to get through. Instead of answering my complaint, Shinano lightly caught one yellow fluffball that was tugging the hem of her apron with its beak. She flicked the little thing up toward the smashed roof, and the small body that flew into the air flapped its short wings and settled neatly on the edge of the second-floor ceiling.
"Haa... then where am I supposed to go?"
I was still grumbling, still carrying the conversation—and that was the exact moment. The morning sun pouring through the hole in the ceiling was blocked, and a deep shadow fell across the counter. Before I could even look up, a light wind tousled my hair, and Rin—showing herself after a long while—descended without a sound from the air onto the first-floor boards.