Tea with the Swordswoman
I hurried on, desperate to get out of the cold. The enormous sliding door loomed in front of me; I shoved it with all my strength and half-fell through.
With a heavy rumble, the door shut. The blizzard howling at my back vanished, and so did the cold that had been clawing at my cheeks. Warmth closed softly around my frozen face.
A faint tang of sulfur tickled my nose, threaded through with the rich scent of fine wood. Spread before me was precisely the luxury traditional hot-spring resort Hina had talked herself dry insisting she wanted to visit: a dark wooden corridor, polished smooth, running on without end, subdued light lying gently over the tatami underfoot. Cozy steam drifted through the whole of the place, so thoroughly that the bitter cold outside felt like a lie. My frozen breath seemed to melt, white, into the warm air.
Then, from the far end of the corridor, came footsteps—light, and yet perfectly measured. Tap. Tap.
Someone who looked to be on the staff was approaching. A woman, her long lavender hair bound neatly down her back. Her dress was immaculate, a purple kimono chosen to match her hair, but the air she carried was different. She, too, must have been a magical girl. Simply by walking toward me she seemed to settle the air around her into something cool and clear, trailing that particular aura of grace and unbending poise.
"Senior Shinano told me to work here for the time being, so... I came."
At the sound of my voice, her steps stopped dead. Those lavender eyes began at my face, moved to the thin shirt, and traveled down over the dusty apron to the tips of my shoes.
"I did receive an urgent message from Senior Shinano. However..."
Her cool, exacting gaze left the hem of my apron and drove downward, toward the sawdust that had settled on the tatami.
"You are in no fit state to be seen. Dust is falling onto the floor."
It was a merciless observation. She clicked her tongue—tsk—then brought both hands together before her and bowed with perfect courtesy.
"I am Violet Grace. I oversee the practical affairs of this establishment."
Grace raised her head and extended a hand, as if to take the apron from me.
"First, kindly remove that dust-caked apron. Should the dust work its way into fine tatami, it becomes exceedingly difficult to clean. I shall prepare you a cup of tea, so please sit in a lobby chair and wait."
She crossed the tatami with light, precise steps and vanished down the inner corridor. Where she had been, only a faint fragrance and the warm air remained.
Still in nothing but a thin spring shirt, I sat obediently on the plush sofa tucked into a corner of the lobby. The body that had frozen solid out in the cold began, little by little, to thaw, and a languid fatigue crept over me.
A soft rustle. In the quiet lobby, cloth brushed against cloth.
I looked up. A woman who seemed to be a guest was watching me in silence.
She wore a graceful kimono, red cloth embroidered with flowers. Red hair fell all the way to the small of her back, and her eyes were deep and still. She merely stood in the middle of the tatami corridor, gazing at me. But the air she gave off was something else entirely. She was nothing like Hina or Rin, those lively, bouncing magical girls I saw so often at the sanctuary. Like Shinano, she carried a cold pressure that weighed on the skin simply by standing still—less an idol or a magical girl than one lofty, solitary warrior.
She gathered both hands neatly beneath the sleeves of her kimono and quietly addressed me.
"I am Sato Momiji."
The voice was calm, and full of dignity.
"This is a place where the entry of outsiders is strictly controlled. A man sitting alone in the tatami lobby in a thin spring outfit... Are you a civilian who lost his way in the blizzard? Or an employee Grace has newly taken on for the facility?"
"Ah... well... haha..."
Just as I had explained things to Shinano and Rin that morning, I began to lay out for her, piece by piece, everything that had happened the day before.
"For starters... unlike this place, I run a café that doubles as a sanctuary. Somewhere anyone can walk in..."
Once the words broke loose, everything that had piled up in a corner of my chest came pouring out like a burst dam. Brief anecdotes of the many magical girls who had passed through the sanctuary spilled from my mouth without pause, and last of all I told her everything about Haru—the one who had blown the entire ceiling off the place.
The longer my half-grumbling tale went on, the more a faint crack began to run across the composed face Momiji kept above the hands she held so elegantly gathered beneath her sleeves. The brow of the woman who had been watching me in silence twitched, ever so slightly.
When my wretched and utterly absurd story finally ended, silence settled over the lobby once more. Momiji closed her eyes, as if sorting through her mind all the information I had spilled.
"In short..."
After a little time had passed, Momiji slowly raised her head. Her deep, sunken voice flowed out, perfectly calm.
"You are a civilian caretaker employed by Senior Shinano. A magical girl who had lost all discipline went into a magical rampage, you lost your dwelling because of it, and so you have come all this way seeking refuge. That is what you mean."
A precise summary, without a wasted word. A sharp spirit still lingered in her eyes, but the look she had first turned on me had softened, if only a little.
"Truly..."
Momiji let out a small sigh and shook her head.
"It is one shameful affair after another, for a warrior. To fail to govern one's own emotions, to let one's power run wild, and to destroy the dwelling of a civilian one ought to protect. It shows all too clearly how far the discipline of magical girls has slackened these days."
A face flickered through my mind. Our great senior—the one who ordered cold martinis at the sanctuary and lived forever buried under stacks of paperwork.
"I called Senior Shinano the great senior of all the magical girls... But whenever I said it, she always got angry."
Maybe great senior sounded to her like being called old. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen a cat-eared senior bare her teeth and hiss. Remembering that chilly glare and the sharp edge of her reaction, I let out a hollow laugh before I knew it.
Momiji's reaction to the words that left my mouth was not so different. The eyes that had been settled in such dignity widened in an instant, and I saw the hands she had gathered so neatly give a tiny flinch. She covered her mouth lightly with a kimono sleeve and offered the faintest of coughs.
"Ahem... Senior Shinano is... not quite to that extent."
Momiji's voice was trembling.
"Only the Association President, and a very few heroes besides. To have called her that to the face of Senior Shinano, exacting as she is..."
She gave her head a light shake.
"That you fled all the way to this land of bitter cold and arrived unharmed feels nothing short of a miracle."
Just as Momiji was about to allow herself a small smile, the sliding door at the end of the corridor opened with a soft hiss.
"I have prepared green tea."
Grace, a white apron tied over her neat kimono, approached bearing a wooden tray. She set a teacup streaming with vapor down on the low table before me.
"The cold outside will have stiffened your muscles. Drink slowly, and raise your body temperature."
She added the words while turning even the handle of the cup precisely toward me. There was nothing to fault in the tidiness of her hands. I carefully wrapped my own around the warm cup, trying to thaw my frozen fingertips, and the faint scent of tea leaves mingled with the smell peculiar to a tatami room and stole in at the tip of my nose.
"Ah. Thank you, Grace. I saw the Association President on TV when I was little. She's what everyone pictures, when they think of a magical girl. Wouldn't you say?"
I said it with both hands still carefully cupped around the tea.
If I had to name the magical girl closest to the Association President... would it be Yui?
Yui, who went around with an honest-to-goodness magical-girl wand and poured out nothing but bright, positive energy—of everyone I had met, she looked the most like the Association President from the television.
Having heard my offhand impression, Momiji looked down for a moment at the surface of the tea.
"The face the Association President shows the public is certainly that. Textbook. Symbolic. A rose-colored hope that anyone might long for."
Her voice was as calm and still as the temperature of the green tea. She neatly adjusted the sleeves of her kimono and lifted her gaze to me.
"But that face is also a shackle she has placed upon herself. For the Association President is the oldest warrior among us, and the one who bears the deepest wounds."
She finished speaking and gently closed her eyes. Beside her, Grace—standing perfectly straight with the empty tray tucked at her side—gave a light cough.
"Guest. If you mean to finish restoring the warmth you lost outside, it would be best to put your lips to the tea before it cools."
Grace's eyes went to the cup in my hands.
"The tea of this house is served at a temperature calibrated to ease both mind and body. To miss the optimal temperature is also to discard the labor of the one who prepared it."
"Ah... I'm sorry."
I brought my lips to it carefully, and perhaps because this was a first-class resort, even the taste of the tea was in a class of its own.
But... was it really all right to just drink something like this, in a place meant to help magical girls recover? The thought flickered past, and suddenly I was afraid. Was an ordinary man like me even permitted to drink something so precious? What if a normal person drank it and something went wrong? Needless worries chased one another, tail to tail.
I set the cup down and carefully looked up at Grace, standing before me.
"But... is it all right for me to drink this? I'm just an ordinary person."
At the question, Grace's eyebrow twitched, and her eyes grew a shade sharper.
"Haa... I cannot begin to imagine what you are picturing."
She sighed as if she could scarcely believe it, and shifted her grip on the tray at her side.
"That is ordinary green tea. Steeped tea leaves, and nothing more. Our budget is not so idle that we serve mana-recovery tea to civilians."