The Red Glass and Ice Water
"I-is that so? Telling a guest where a cocktail comes from is part of a bartender's courtesy, after all."
It was an excuse I'd patched together in the name of professional pride, but it didn't seem to reach Grace's ears at all. Her shoulders sagged in a way you couldn't miss, and she looked at me with hollow eyes, as if she no longer even had a sigh left to give.
"Keeping a bartender's courtesy is going to put a hole in my stomach. Royal etiquette or the manners of the night streets—in this place, preventing a commotion comes first. I earnestly ask that you dissolve that remarkable knowledge into the mixing alone."
Thick fatigue dripped from Grace's polite voice. The one who brushed her desperation aside as if it were nothing, however, was none other than Haeshin.
"Attendant. Even that paltry excuse of yours reaches Our ears as a rather convincing show of loyalty. How could a tribute offered unto Us be without meaning?"
She smiled at her leisure. The sight of her in the casino only moments ago—clutching a slot machine and shaking it until it spat coins—seemed to have been wiped clean from her mind. Her bearing was boundlessly arrogant, and utterly assured.
"This sweetness, and the marital vow bound up in the glass, are both most excellent. Henceforth you shall fulfill that courtesy as Our consort and Our attendant. We shall specially permit you to remain at Our side."
Haeshin's shameless voice, having reached a conclusion entirely of her own making, rang through the lobby bar—and landed another fatal blow on the captain, who had only just begun to calm down beside her.
"C-consort...?! We haven't even held hands! No—we haven't even been on a date or anything... why are we suddenly husband and wiiife...!"
Crystal clutched her already-empty Cinderella glass in both hands and trembled. Head bowed over a face burning as if it were on fire, nonsense no louder than a mosquito kept leaking from between her lips without pause. The great captain who had laughed heartily and commanded the seas was nowhere to be found. All that remained was an innocent girl whose reason had evaporated at a handful of embarrassing words, melting across the table.
Watching the scene, Grace finally squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could endure no more.
"Pardon? Consort? The Golden Cadillac is something a bartender serves to congratulate newlyweds..."
Before I could finish, Haeshin took the fact I'd offered and reassembled it to suit her own taste.
"Hoh. Newlyweds... A most blatant and impudent oath of loyalty. We shall not evade it."
At that brazen declaration, the captain in the next seat finally snapped the last thread of her reason.
"N-n-newlyweeeds?!"
Crystal clapped both hands over her flushed cheeks and slammed her head down onto the counter. From her face to the nape of her neck she was so red she looked ready to burst, as if she might stop breathing at any moment.
Just as another disaster was about to break loose, our boss finally strolled out at her leisure to direct the traffic.
"The casino machines have been screaming since morning, and now it's the lobby bar."
Junko, in a black kimono, approached with elegant steps. Her expression was as languid and indifferent as ever, yet today even Grace exhaled in relief, as if she had met a savior. A troublemaking superior, it seemed, could still look like a dependable commander in the face of this pandemonium.
Junko looked from Crystal, face-down on the counter, to Haeshin, who was gazing at me with haughty pride.
"Lady Haeshin. That man is a temporary bartender this girl employed. Future king or not, it would be troublesome to carry off precious staff from someone else's establishment on the pretext that he is your consort."
"Hmph. We merely kept Our personal attendant at Our side for a moment. This is no affair for the steward of the North to step into."
Haeshin snorted and answered with prim disdain, but Junko only smiled at her leisure and shifted her gaze toward Crystal.
"And Lady Crystal. If your temperature rises any further, the probability that you will simply faint is exceedingly high. A pirate captain is showing far too plainly that she has absolutely no immunity to matters of romance."
"W-who says I have no immunity?! This Lady Crystal, as ruler of the seas...!"
"Yes, yes. Truly magnificent."
Junko let Crystal's frantic excuse slide past half-heard and settled into an empty chair before the counter. There wasn't a trace of hurry in the endlessly languid motion—and yet, caught in that unhurried pace, the air of the lobby bar, which had seemed ready to explode at any moment, subsided in an instant. Haeshin primly fussed with her glass, and only then did Crystal sneakily lift the face she had buried in the counter.
"Well then. Let us leave the traffic control at that."
Junko rested her chin lightly on the counter and looked at me. Within her half-lidded eyes, the hazy pupils caught a glint of light.
"Bartender. This girl has been cleaning up the commotion until just now, and her blood sugar has dropped severely. Might I ask you to wake this girl's exhausted brain cells?"
"If I serve you something with alcohol in it, I don't think Grace will let it slide... Shall I make it non-alcoholic, or something with very little proof?"
At my words, Grace—standing in a corner by the counter—let out a deep breath of relief. She drew a white handkerchief from her breast, wiped the sweat beading on her brow, and bowed her head politely toward me.
"I express my deep gratitude for the temporary bartender's excellent judgment of the situation."
In place of the fatigue that had filled it moments ago, relief lay thick in Grace's voice.
"If Lady Junko were to take alcohol now, a dreadful situation would unfold in which her dignity as steward crashed straight to the floor."
"My. Grace treats this girl as utterly beyond saving, doesn't she?"
Even Grace's sharp rebuke seemed to leave no mark on Junko. If anything, she laughed softly, as though amused. Tapping the countertop with her fingers, she tilted her head slightly, as if carefully weighing my proposal.
"But taking the alcohol right in front of me, only to listen to Grace's nagging for two hours straight, is a business that doesn't balance. Very well. As the temporary bartender suggests, this girl will ask for something non-alcoholic."
Having accepted the compromise without resistance, Junko added with a pleased smile.
"Ah—something sweet enough to wake the brain cells would be fine. But it would be even better if a sweetness hid between bursts of spice intense enough to sting the tip of the tongue."
Listening to the exchange, Haeshin lightly swirled the glass in her hand and rolled the ice.
"Tsk. One who governs a host ought to know how to govern herself. To be unable to choose even a single drink as she pleases, merely minding a subordinate's mood—truly a feeble reign."
At the arrogant attitude of the sovereign offering unsolicited counsel, Grace's glare turned sharp once more.
"B-bartender! M-me too, non-alcoholic! No—just ice water! Put in tons of really cold ice!"
Beside her, Crystal—still unable to cool the face that had ripened red—fanned herself with both hands and shouted in a rush. The air of the lobby bar was still noisy, but the crisis that had teetered on the edge of explosion seemed to have passed. The counter that had nearly become a battlefield was settling into a strange peace, tastes and excuses all tangled together.
"Spicy, but sweet... Yes. Understood, Lady Junko."
I asked the Familiar once more for hot sauce, Worcestershire, and pepper. It tilted its head as if it didn't quite understand, then dashed off toward the kitchen and soon handed me the three seasonings. I filled a glass with ice, added tomato juice and lemon juice, then dropped in a few more dashes of hot sauce and Worcestershire than usual, matched to her taste, and finished with a dusting of ground pepper. For our captain I prepared a glass packed with cool ice and water, and slid it across the counter alongside the Virgin Bloody Mary.
"A Virgin Bloody Mary. Some people say it's just playing a joke with something meant to be drunk... Add vodka, and it becomes a Bloody Mary."
Junko regarded the tall glass with interest. She wrapped her fingers around it and carefully wet her lips.
"Oh my."
The fierce heat of the hot sauce rose through the tomato's acidity, joined by the sharp bite of Worcestershire and pepper that stung the tip of the tongue. As that provocative drink slid down her throat, life returned to Junko's eyes, which had been sunk in languor.
"Splendid. The impact exceeds expectations. Probability that the capsaicin stimulates the taste cells and secretes endorphins: one hundred percent. A flavor that wakes dead brain cells all at once."
She smacked her lips as if genuinely satisfied. I had put in enough that an ordinary person would have burst into a cough at a single sip, yet to her it seemed nothing more than the finest potion for waking up. Watching from the side, Grace loaded a scolding, visibly uneasy.
"Lady Junko. Please sit quietly and drink. Should that red tomato broth splash onto your kimono, the laundry will be three times harder than during the ramen-broth incident."
"You worry too much, Grace. This girl is no child. There is no reason she couldn't properly get a single drink down."
"It is precisely because your ability to look after yourself is worse than a child's that I go around with a broom every day, cleaning up after you."
While the two of them bickered, Crystal—having taken from me a glass brimming with ice water—gulped it straight down.
"Pwah! I-I'm alive..."
She emptied the ice-packed water in a single breath, set the glass on the table, and let out a great sigh. Thanks to the cold water that had gone down her throat, the bronze of her original complexion was at last returning to the face that had burned red enough to burst. Wiping the sweat on her brow with the back of her hand, she still stole glances my way.
"Y-you, seriously... don't just charge in out of nowhere. Lady Crystal's heart nearly dropped out..."
She pouted and grumbled.
"Tsk. A truly ridiculous sight."
Haeshin snorted as she licked the sweet cream of the Golden Cadillac, looking back and forth between the red, cloudy drink in Junko's hand and Crystal, gasping in relief over nothing more than ice water.
"She who claims to govern a host gulps a vulgar drink red as blood and sharp on the tongue, and she who styles herself ruler of the seas pants over a single glass of ice water. The station of Us, who have been granted this beautiful, elegant golden glass, rises all the higher."
Haeshin gazed arrogantly at her own glass, as if she had become the victor.
"I'm sure it does. Including that majestic sight of nearly drawing a weapon because you couldn't handle a single machine as you pleased."
Junko answered in a soft, drawling voice, the Virgin Bloody Mary still held in her mouth.
"Wh-what...! The machine merely committed lèse-majesté by failing to obey Our will!"
Haeshin's voice rose, her sore spot struck dead center, but Junko paid her no mind and leisurely drank the spicy beverage once more. Crystal, come back to her senses on ice water, didn't miss the opening either.
"That's right! Haeshin! You were shaking that machine like crazy in front of the slot machine earlier, yelling that it ate your money! Kyahaha! Guess the royal court doesn't teach you how to handle arcade machines?"
"S-silence! You, of all people—who until a moment ago had your head buried in the counter from shame!"