Catharsis of the Red Moon
At her polite, and more than generous, praise, I offered a light bow.
"Thank you. This morning was... well, there was quite a commotion. Were you able to rest, Momiji?"
At my question, Momiji used the hand that was not holding her glass to smooth, with elegant care, the red-blossomed sleeve of her kimono. Beneath the bar's quietly settled lights, a faint smile spread across her neat, composed features.
"Thanks to you, I was able to lay a warrior's stiff body in the hot spring and set down, if only for a little while, the tension I carried in from outside."
She tightened her fingers lightly around the glass and took another slow sip of the Bamboo. In the iceless glass, the cocktail shimmered with a soft gleam.
"Even so, keeping the peace in a sanctuary that ought to be quiet is no easy thing—not with a pirate raising a fuss from morning, and people who have nothing to them but their noses in the air. Still..."
Momiji's calm gaze turned slowly toward me.
"Sitting here after night has fallen, facing the quiet glass a fine bartender has poured, I feel well compensated for all that noise."
"I'm glad. I was hoping that while you were here, you could forget everything else and rest properly."
I tore open a packet of mixed nuts, portioned them onto a small plate, and set it before her so she would have something to nibble with her drink.
"Is the district you oversee as quiet as this place? I heard a city's character changes with the temperament of the magical girl in charge."
Momiji gazed down at the little plate on the counter. Her long, tidy fingers carefully picked up a single walnut.
"A city comes to resemble its magical girl. A rather sharp insight."
She gave a small nod.
"It takes after me—thoroughly rigid, and still. Tradition and order come first, and the observance of proper courtesy is treated as a virtue. It is a city that keeps a thorough distance from gaudy neon and the flash of cameras."
She bit slowly into the walnut. Only a small, crisp crack wandered the empty space between us across the counter.
"The citizens trust me deeply as a warrior, and they support me. I, for my part, do not hesitate for an instant to stake my life on protecting them. But..."
Momiji traced the thin stem of the cocktail glass with her fingertips. Beyond the clear, swaying Bamboo, a deep fatigue flickered past for the briefest moment.
"Beneath that ironclad order, there are damp shadows that cling to the old ways and rot from within. Antiquated houses soaked in habit, hungry only for power—and those who would reign from the dark through violence."
Momiji's voice sank, ever so slightly. But she soon lifted the glass and took a sip of the Bamboo, as if she meant to rinse that heavy thought away with the bitter citrus lingering on her tongue.
"Which is why, now and then, I find myself wanting to come to this northern hideaway, far from the secular world, and drink the cool liquor you pour. So that I might savor stillness in a place my sword cannot reach."
"Is that so? Then I ought to enjoy the quiet here too, even if my stay is short, before I have to go."
I was nodding along with her when a familiar in the shape of a girl with rabbit ears approached and gave Momiji's kimono a light tug at the hem. Dinner, it seemed, was ready.
Momiji looked down with gentle eyes at the small familiar clutching her black collar from beneath the counter.
"I understand. I'll be along shortly."
When Momiji spoke, quiet and admonishing, the familiar bobbed a bow and pattered away again.
She turned her gaze back to the counter and finished what little Bamboo remained in the glass. As if to savor to the last the clean, dry finish of the sherry, she closed her eyes briefly and opened them—and the warrior's keen tension she had worn when she first entered the bar was gone without a trace.
"Thanks to that refined aperitif, the clutter inside me has been neatly cleared away. I could hardly ask for a better way to meet a meal."
Momiji rose slowly from her seat. She set the empty glass neatly on the counter and offered me a light bow.
"I hear the food here is quite excellent. I'll fill my stomach properly, and when the night has deepened a little more, I'll come back to ask for another of your glasses."
Momiji paused, then glanced at the small plate from which she had taken the walnut.
"Something a little stronger, if you would. A warrior's night runs rather long."
She left a leisurely smile at the corner of her mouth and walked unhurriedly toward the corridor that led to the dining room. When her back, embroidered with red blossoms, disappeared around the corner, only the bar's faint music and its quiet remained.
I carried the empty glass to the sink and began preparing for the night's visitors.
As the night deepened, the lobby bar filled with a languid air quite unlike the day's. Familiars with fox ears and rabbit ears circled the counter, pointing at the bottles of liqueur in every color and teasing me for a drink, as if the sight were some marvel. When I dabbed a drop of sweet cherry syrup on the tip of each nose, they seemed satisfied at last, wagged their tails, and trotted off into a corner of the lobby.
Aside from that small commotion, the place was peaceful beyond reproach. Crystal, who had caused a spectacular mess since morning, still hadn't shown herself—perhaps she was still laid out with a hangover—and the arrogant little sovereign who had tried to make me her personal attendant had, for once, not emerged from her room. Thinking the hard day would end once I set a last glass before bed for Momiji, who had said she would return at night, I switched on the thin television mounted on the wall.
The screen was, as always, packed with flashy, provocative editing. Magic effects bursting with light, magical girls winking at the camera, and news of them noisily disposing of Aberrations streamed without pause. It looked less like a battlefield spattered with blood than one tightly produced variety show.
Soft. Soft.
The sound of a kimono hem brushing the floor came from behind me.
"A truly splendid clown show."
A voice cool, and yet full of dignity. I turned my head. Momiji stood there in her black kimono embroidered with red blossoms, looking up at the television.
Perhaps because she had finished her meal and her bath, the sharp spirit that had hung about her in the daytime had been washed away, and she looked a good deal more at ease. But a faint weariness lingered in her eyes as she watched the magical girls on the screen.
"That a battlefield where a warrior stakes her life should be consumed so lightly, as mere entertainment—it tastes bitter, sometimes. And yet... I also understand that this is the greatest sense of security we can offer the citizens."
She let out a small sigh, drew her gaze from the screen, and took the seat at the very center of the counter where I stood.
"I've returned, as promised. A remarkably quiet night—no deadweight pirate, and no arrogant self-proclaimed king."
Momiji gathered both hands neatly atop the counter. The soft pin light fell gently over her red hair.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. As I said this afternoon, might I ask for something a little stronger—something to soothe a warrior's long night?"
"Yes... something deep and intense, to ease a warrior's night."
Faced with the bitter emptiness she had felt watching that clown show on the screen, I paused a moment over which glass ought to answer her. The sense of purification that empties you clean with a single drink. That was the flavor she needed now.
From the display case I took down the Rondiaz 151, a bottle I did not personally reach for often. The reason was simple. Its proof was high enough to catch fire, so it saw frequent use in all sorts of performances—and I had memories of tossing back just as much of it myself. A vicious 75.5 percent alcohol: pour it into a glass and you had already committed the alcohol of an ordinary bottle. To that I added the sweetness of amaretto and the brightness of lime juice, cleverly hiding that merciless blow. I filled it with ice, stirred it cold, and slid the glass toward her.
"Catharsis. It carries the meaning of purification. I think it suits you best, as you are now."
Momiji looked quietly down at the glass that had slid across the counter. Through the clear ice, the liquid looked, on the surface, like nothing more than an ordinary, refreshing cocktail. But inside it, an overwhelming heat that could scorch a throat lay coiled, holding its breath.
"Catharsis... purification."
The name I had offered rolled quietly from between her red lips. Momiji lifted the glass with slender, tidy fingers. The sweet almond scent peculiar to amaretto, blooming from the rim, and the freshness of lime brushed her nose first. She lowered her eyes lightly and tipped the glass without hesitation.
The moment the sweetness that touched her tongue went down her throat, Momiji's shoulders flinched, ever so slightly. For an instant a hot heat surged up over her composed breath. The flame the Rondiaz had wrought must have torn through the amaretto's sweetness and struck, without mercy, at her throat and her stomach.
Momiji set the glass on the counter, parted her lips slightly, and let out a thin breath gone hot. A faint flush spread in an instant across her white cheeks.
"Truly... a deceptive, and overwhelming, glass."
Her voice had dropped a tone lower than usual. Momiji lightly wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, as if savoring the aftertaste of the potent alcohol left at her mouth.
"Right up until it touched my lips, it lulled me with a shallow sweetness—and the moment I swallowed, it revealed a heat that seemed ready to burn everything away. It feels as though I leapt into the middle of the enemy line without a shield."
Her gaze turned once more toward the television on the wall, then came back to me.
"But just as you said, this hot flame feels as if it is burning clean the unpleasant dregs that remained inside me. It tastes like cutting down, in a single stroke, the pretense of those on the screen—who must smile gorgeously on the outside while bleeding within."
Momiji traced the rim of the glass softly with her finger. The wrist revealed beneath her kimono sleeve had flushed faintly—whether from the cocktail's venom or from satisfaction, I could not tell. She offered me a leisurely smile.
"Your blade is no less sharp than mine. I will gladly entrust myself to this purifying flame."