A Fantasy Shattered to Pieces
She eased forward from where she had been resting against the back of the chair. Leather-gloved fingers closed with elegant precision around the smooth glass. There was not a single piece of ice in it, and yet a cold frost had bloomed across the surface. Before she brought the glass to her lips, she drew a long, deep breath, as if savoring the bright lemon and the absinthe that lingered at the tip of her nose. Then her red lips touched the rim, and she let the Sazerac slip slowly down her throat.
"Magnificent..."
She set the glass on the counter and murmured, low and quiet.
"The classical method, and absinthe that might so easily have turned to poison, bound with elegant restraint by the lemon, so that the cognac's flavor is drawn out to perfection."
Satisfied, she looked at me with a smile that reached her eyes.
"You have not betrayed Our expectations. It is astonishing that Shinano Catus, of all people, should have admitted someone who meets Our standard."
She brushed the lapel of her jacket and fixed me with a level stare.
"You have proven yourself worthy to wet a king's lips. We are called Haeshin. A body destined to be king of this world."
There was not a shred of hesitation in her voice. Merely speaking the name seemed to weigh the air around the counter a little heavier. The magical girl of the Capital whom Momiji called her rival, the one who named herself king, was sitting right in front of me.
"We were told this place was the finest retreat for magical girls, and yet the state of the room was nothing short of lamentable."
Haeshin spoke as if the whole arrangement offended her.
"Not only did they fail to station even a single attendant to wait upon Us, but when We tried to eat so much as one of the sweets they had set out, that vinyl—or whatever one calls the wrapping—simply would not tear. And the machine for boiling hot water was not the least bit intuitive."
For all the arrogance and perfect composure of her face, the complaints leaving her mouth were strangely trivial. She could not open a snack wrapper. She did not know how to work an electric kettle. And she delivered these grievances in a tone as grave and solemn as if she were deliberating the fate of the nation.
"We were on the verge of passing judgment upon this irreverent facility for forcing the royal body to move of its own accord. Having seen your skill, however, that displeasure has eased somewhat."
Haeshin gave the Sazerac in the glass a light swirl. The fragrance of lemon and the bite of strong liquor drifted over the counter once more. Her pitch-black eyes looked straight through the glass and into me.
"For as long as We remain here, you shall serve as Our exclusive attendant. From slaking Our thirst to the petty labor of unwrapping sweets, We shall permit all of it to you."
She lifted her chin with magnificent arrogance.
"An honor of this magnitude is not often granted. Attend Us with a glad heart."
"Uh... wouldn't it be better if everyone simply did their best in their own place?"
Between the romance-manga line Crystal had once delivered and Haeshin's talk of vinyl bags and boiling water, my fantasy of magical girls felt ready to collapse, so I chose my words as politely as I could and tried to deflect.
At my answer, Haeshin went still. She set the Sazerac glass she had been raising to her lips gently back on the counter. Those pitch-black eyes narrowed, and she stared at me without blinking.
"One's own place. A truly petty and narrow view."
With a leather-gloved finger she traced the counter in a slow, unhurried line.
"You are not wrong that everyone ought to do their utmost in their own place. But Our place is to rule and govern all people, and your place, from this moment, is to attend Us."
She dressed it up as if it were perfectly logical, but in the end it was nothing more than a child's stubborn demand that I play the part of her servant.
"Do you believe there exists in this world a station more glorious and radiant than becoming Our hands and feet at a king's side?"
From her jacket pocket she produced something and set it on the bar with a sharp tap. It was a piece of wagashi, a delicate flower confection, wrapped in fine silver foil. Looking closer, I saw that one corner of the wrapper had been crumpled beyond saving, and there were even faint marks where teeth had worried at it.
"Behold. We deigned to move Our own body in order to partake of a sweet, and yet this hideous vinyl husk seemed determined to scar Our noble nails, and would not open at all."
She slid the wagashi toward me. Her manner was so utterly assured that I nearly let myself be taken in, but stripped of the rhetoric, all she was saying was that she had not known how to open the wrapper. The opponent that had defeated the nails of a king who meant to rule the world was, of all things, a bag of sweets. Behind the title of the Capital's strongest magical girl lay a complete absence of any ability to live an ordinary life, and I swallowed a deep sigh.
"For Us to waste the strength of the realm wrestling with a trifling vinyl bag is a great loss for all under heaven. Therefore, with those excellent hands of yours, peel this and set it upon Our plate."
Haeshin lifted her chin again, imperious.
"No more chatter. Quickly."
"Uh... yes..."
I carefully tore the wrapper open, arranged the sweet on a plate, and offered it to her.
"Since it's wagashi, I thought it would pair with the cocktail. And... sweets like this break easily, so the wrapping is a little thick and doesn't tear well."
I added a small fork to the courteous explanation, and she looked down for a moment at the cherry-blossom wagashi resting on the plate.
"Indeed. You mean they made it deliberately tough, so as to preserve the shape."
Haeshin picked up the fork.
"We had thought it a crude wrapping unfit for the royal hand, yet it had a use of its own. Protecting the fragile with a stubborn shell is the foundation of rule. There is no reason Our fingertips should wrestle with such petty husks."
She elevated her failure to open a wrapper into a philosophy of governance, and she did it with such brazen dignity that I could not even find the will to argue.
"Your discernment is rather serviceable."
She cut the wagashi into a small piece and brought it elegantly to her lips. The moment the deep sweetness of the red bean paste spread through her mouth, Haeshin lifted the Sazerac from the counter and let the bitter, potent cognac follow. The sweet confection and the cocktail met at the tip of her tongue in exquisite balance, and she seemed thoroughly pleased.
"The furnishings here are truly shoddy and unworthy of Our station, yet your skill and your tact alone stir Our heart."
The arrogant light in her eyes turned on me.
"For the next three days, you shall be Our eyes, hands, and feet. Bear the pride of standing at a king's side, and present yourself the instant We call."
"Uh... uh... what?"
I was so flustered the words came out wrong. This was not a posting. It was the looming crisis of spending all three days waiting on a monarch, and the chill of it climbed my spine.
That was when it happened.
"Haaahm..."
Slow footsteps sounded, and from the corridor at the back of the lobby a woman appeared in a kimono of black silk lavishly worked with gold. The neatly gathered ponytail and the black floral ornament pinned at one side looked exceedingly refined, but her eyes were half-lidded and hazily unfocused.
"The lobby has been terribly noisy since morning... It seems a rare guest arrived while this girl was resting her eyes."
She came over at a languid pace, rubbing at the corners of her eyes. As if the suffocating pressure Haeshin had been radiating until a moment ago did not exist at all, her steps were endlessly light and perfectly unconcerned.
Haeshin's face crumpled with displeasure.
"Ishimura Junko, keeper of this place. We Ourselves have graced you with Our presence, and yet you did not even come out to receive Us, only now revealing that lazy figure... Truly negligent, and irreverent."
Haeshin's rebuke, cold as frost, rang through the lobby. Killing intent of that degree would have made an ordinary magical girl hunch her shoulders, but Junko merely tilted her head in languid indifference.
"Oh my, the princess of the Capital? This girl has only just risen from her bed. Please accept an apology for the late welcome. That said..."
Junko let Haeshin's sharp gaze slide off her with perfect ease, then leaned in toward me where I stood behind the bar.
"By any chance, is there leftover cup ramen in the kitchen? Yesterday, while this girl was eating ramen as a late snack, she splashed broth on her kimono, and Violet Grace confiscated several days' worth of snacks. This girl's stomach is so empty her head simply will not turn."
Before the strongest magical girl charged with protecting the Capital, she was demanding cup ramen in a tone of perfect seriousness and solemnity. So this was the superior who had given Violet Grace such endless headaches. The realization arrived a little late.
"This is a bar, so there isn't really anywhere that makes snacks... Is there no one in the kitchen?"
At my bewildered question, Junko gave a small shrug.
"The familiars this girl keeps will whip up the finest sushi with astonishing skill. But pouring water into cup ramen, or cleaning a messy room—the small tasks—they won't so much as pretend to hear."
They would make sushi, but they would not boil water for cup ramen. While I was left speechless by the peculiar ecology of those familiars, the expression of the sovereign seated at the counter crumpled once more into something fearsome.
"Truly, there is nothing more pathetic."
Haeshin clicked her tongue and cast a frigid look.
"The one who manages this facility, in name at least, cannot even boil a single cup of ramen with her own hands, has her snacks confiscated by a subordinate, and comes all the way here to beg. Where is your authority? Where is your dignity?"
Her voice, lecturing Junko on dignity while scolding her indolence, was full of unshakable arrogance. And yet, only a few minutes earlier, she herself had pushed a piece of wagashi at me because she could not tear a vinyl wrapper, and that fact appeared to have been erased entirely from her mind.
The strongest magical girl who guarded the Capital, and the keeper responsible for this place. Both of them possessed an overwhelming power I could scarcely imagine, and both of them were helpless before a scrap of vinyl and a pot of hot water. I hesitated, with no idea what I was supposed to say.