The North's Secret Retreat
Rin's gaze traveled in turn over the second-floor ceiling, half torn away; the bar table smashed into the wall; and then over me, standing there coated in dust, and Shinano at the counter.
Her ruby pupils lost their bearings and swayed wildly. The hem of her shrine-maiden robes gave one light flutter in the leftover wind of her landing and settled, but Rin's gaze showed no intention of settling with it. The look she ran down the once-intact sanctuary's wretched ruin drew closer and closer to horror.
"Wh-what kind of mess is this...? Did a bomb hit this place...?"
Her voice cracked.
"My—my oasis...!"
I remembered how she had looked a few days ago, the first time she came here, losing all reason in front of a ganache chocolate tart and a frappé. When I thought about what this café in the mountains meant to an idol magical girl who had held out for three days on nothing but chicken breast, the loss she was feeling now made perfect sense.
A paper talisman, scattered on the wind, drifted down weakly onto the shattered counter.
Vacant-eyed, Rin looked back and forth between the half-gutted ceiling and me, where I was working a stiff shoulder.
"Y-you're kidding, right...?"
Tears began to well in those ruby eyes.
"What about my chocolate tart...? I promised that disgusting glutton of a Raccoon I'd hand over three whole cakes today...!"
Rin's voice jumped an octave.
"And that stuck-up Nine-tailed Fox is throwing a fit too, demanding the finest macarons this instant as payment for wagging her tail yesterday...! I'm telling you!"
She had come having already promised dessert offerings to her shikigami. From her complaints on the first day, I had already heard more than enough about just how particular those shikigami were, so I didn't need her to spell out how she felt now that her supplier lay in ruins.
Rin sank onto the wooden floor and clutched her head in both hands. Set against the splendid, dignified white of her shrine-maiden robes, the look on her face was wretched beyond compare.
"Wh-where am I supposed to run away to now...!"
Shinano, who had been listening to that desperate cry, stroked the chin of the yellow chick familiar fluffing its down on her knee and let out a short laugh.
"Too bad. That sweet oasis of yours is temporarily closed as of today, nyang. The most galling part is that the culprit isn't an Aberration or some villain, nyang."
Shinano's green eyes turned my way. All around us, tiny chicks drove nails into broken timber in an endless clatter, and I brushed the dust from my apron and scratched the back of my head.
This wasn't the sort of thing that would stay hidden if I tried. The entire second-floor ceiling had been blown off, so the other magical girls—and the Association—would have the full story of the accident soon enough.
"Haha... well... it's all going to come out later anyway, so... I guess it's fine if I just say it?"
I let out a small sigh and laid out everything that had happened with Haru the night before: how I had served a Black Russian to Haru, who had fled here worn out by the Exchange Tournament broadcast; how we had knocked Negroni glasses together and traded the stories behind the magical girls; how I had carried her, asleep after a Godfather, up to my bed on the second floor; and that absurd little disaster in which Haru, waking, blew straight past the threshold of shame, went berserk, blasted the sanctuary's entire second floor into the air, and fled into the night sky.
When the story ended, the first thing to break the silence was Rin's trembling voice.
"S-so you're saying...."
Rin's lips quivered in fine little spasms.
"That cheerleader support girl... smashed this whole oasis and ran off...? The reason my sweet desserts got blown away is some excuse like that?!"
The fist clenched in the sleeve of her shrine-maiden robes trembled.
"This is insane! It can't happen like this! If I don't stuff something sweet down their throats right this second, that foul-tempered Nine-tailed Fox is going to siphon off my magic! And don't even get me started on that glutton of a Raccoon spirit whining that it's hungry!"
Rin kicked a splinter of wood across the floor with her toe and wailed. Any dignity a first-class magical girl might have kept, with a shikigami slowdown and a drain on her magic staring her in the face, had long since evaporated into thin air.
Shinano, watching the whole scene from her seat at the counter, reacted quite differently.
"Pfft...! Ahahaha! Oh, this really is a masterpiece, nyang!"
Shinano let the laugh she had been holding burst free and thumped the countertop with her tail.
"If you're that sore about it, Rin, tag along to the posting and scrounge some sweets yourself, nyang. We won't be able to do business here for a few days anyway, nyang."
In the middle of this complete circus, I stared blankly down at the shattered floor of the sanctuary. Caught between a whining Rin and a delighted Shinano, I had to figure out how I was supposed to clean any of this up.
"Oppa, please! I'll take really good care of you~ okay?!"
"Tsk."
The click of Shinano's tongue cut Rin's wail off in a single stroke.
"You think this cat is sending him out so you can work him like a housekeeper, nyang?"
Shinano shut Rin's wild plan down in a breath. Then she pressed a hand to her forehead and let out a deep sigh.
"Haa... just go visit the hot spring up in the northern region, nyang. I'll send you for three days—a business trip and a rest in one, nyang."
She said it in a voice thick with fatigue.
"That's less of a headache, nyang. Folding in that vacation you mentioned earlier keeps things neat on every side, nyang."
The strength slipped out of the hand Rin had locked around my shoulder.
"Hahaha... I hear it's a place money can't even buy your way into... I'm not sure someone like me is allowed to go."
The moment I scratched the back of my head under the weight of it, Rin—as if she had been waiting—seized my forearm all over again.
"See?! It's a place you can't get into even if you pay, so of course you shouldn't go! Going to my territory is obviously the right answer, I'm telling you?!"
She rubbed her cheek against my arm and clung on, desperate.
"Oppa, think it through. The north is freezing, and it's so far! Our place has the heat blasting, and the oven is the absolute best!"
Crack!
Shinano's tail came down sharp across the wreckage of the counter.
"Enough nonsense. Let go of him, nyang. Katsune Rin."
Shinano's eyes looked coldly down at Rin. Under that senior's gaze—cool, without a scrap of play in it—Rin's shoulders locked stiff.
"Look at the state of you, and all because there's no one to feed you right this second. What do you think happens if Hina, the one hauling that heavy minigun around, catches on that his place got blown away, nyang?"
"Ah..."
In that instant a chill crawled up my spine.
"That girl's possessiveness and obsession are a watch-list item even inside the Association, nyang. The moment she finds you drifting around with nowhere to stay, she might sweep the whole area clean with that minigun, kidnap you, and lock you in an underground bunker forever, nyang. You might never make it back to the sanctuary again, nyang."
Shinano's warning was so dreadful that even Rin bit her lip and could not muster a single word of protest.
"So quit arguing and go quietly to the north, nyang. It's a safe zone that neither Hina nor anyone else can just charge into, nyang."
Shinano's fingers slid across the screen of her terminal, leaving a few taps behind.
"W-wait! You're really just going to leave me like this?! Oppa!?"
Rin stamped her feet and screamed, but Shinano did not spare her so much as a glance.
"Wasting time on the trip itself would be a shame too, nyang. I'll lock the coordinates and send you straight there, nyang."
Shinano clamped a hand tight around my wrist.
Flash!
A blinding flare surged up and wiped my vision white. The wreckage of the shattered sanctuary, the noisy beat of the chicks' wings, and Rin's sobbing wail were all swept into the wash of light and fell away into the distance.
The moment the flare died and my sight returned, a razor-edged cold stabbed into bare skin.
"Hhk..."
A biting wind slammed my cheek hard enough to stand every fine hair on end. Thick white snow lay piled under my feet, and frost caught along bare branches threw back the cold sunlight. The gentle warmth that had wrapped the sanctuary was gone without a trace, and only the sharp smell of the hot spring at my nose and a cold that cut to the bone covered me from head to toe.
Barely forcing my chattering jaw still, I asked in a bewildered voice.
"Hold on, Shinano. It's clearly spring right now—why is this place the dead of winter?"
At my question Shinano was struggling to hold her back straight, but the cat ears atop her head and the tail behind her trembled, unable to beat the cold.
"Deep in the mountains of the northern region, the snow doesn't melt through April—sometimes not until early May, nyang. And since this is a vacation spot for magical girls, there's even a barrier set on purpose to drop the temperature, to shut out outside eyes and preserve magical energy, nyang."
No sooner had she finished speaking than she wrapped both arms tight around her shoulders and curled herself into a ball.
"Uuugh... it's cold, nyang! Cats absolutely cannot stand the cold, nyang! Hurry into the main building up ahead and find whoever runs this place, nyang!"
Shinano, who had tossed me into the middle of a snowfield with such confidence, was herself shaking, unable to endure the bitter cold. The cat ears that had stood so stiff wilted and drooped, and her tail went rigid, losing the fight against the chill. She hurriedly wrapped both arms around her shoulders again and took one step back along the snow.
"This cat has a mountain of paperwork to handle right now, nyang. I'm heading back before I turn into an ice cat, nyang!"
She threw the words out in place of anything like a goodbye and hurriedly worked the terminal at her wrist.
Flash!
A blinding flare that wiped vision white swept the snowfield once more. Where the light died, there was not so much as a trace of the Shinano who had brought me here—only the sound of a sharp wind cutting the empty air.