Champagne in the Name of Hospitality
Beneath the soft pin lights, the whiskey bottles stood in a neat, gleaming row. Evergreen had been staring at them in a daze, and little by little the rough edge of her breathing began to smooth out.
I watched her quietly from the far side of the counter, then spoke.
"Would you like a drink? We got off on the wrong foot, I'll admit... but you're still a guest I haven't seen in a long while, so this one's on me. In exchange... tell me who you are."
At the sudden offer, her shoulders jerked hard. Caught off guard by a kindness she hadn't expected, she stared at me with the words stuck in her throat. Then she carefully dropped her gaze, fumbled up the smartphone she'd knocked onto the table in her fright, and wiped the dust from the screen with the edge of her sleeve. A couple of dry coughs, and she straightened in her seat.
"Wh-what are you trying to pull? Do I look like the kind of person who'd roll over for one free drink and slap together some half-baked article?"
She was straining to put force behind the words, but the sharp momentum of a moment ago had already lost its edge. Uneasy, she flicked another glance at the dark window, then answered with the phone clenched tight in both hands.
"Evergreen. Internet news. I dig up the truths and the conspiracies the world would rather keep buried. You say you've got nothing to hide, so I'll drink whatever you're pouring and judge for myself. And don't get the wrong idea—I'm not mooching because I'm broke."
Even thoroughly cowed, she seemed determined to hang on to a reporter's pride, and the bluster showed. I knew it was bluster because her eyes were already roaming the glittering bottles on the shelf behind me, curiosity she couldn't quite hide.
Now that I finally knew who she really was, I could set my suspicions aside and go back to being a bartender.
"Of course. A glass of welcome, for the reporter..."
I answered lightly and turned. Anyone could see she wasn't used to a bar this refined, and for a moment I considered matching her with something more familiar and easygoing—then thought better of it. That kind of shallow courtesy would only nick what little pride she had left. So I decided to put something thoroughly orthodox into the glass: hospitality, in its classic sense.
First I set out a wide glass and dropped in one of the sugar cubes we used during café hours, then let two drops of Angostura bitters fall onto it. Once the concentrated scent of herbs and spice had soaked into the sugar, I poured cognac—the very name of a fine spirit—in a smooth, unhurried stream, and finished by filling the glass slowly with cold champagne. A soft hiss rose as the bubbles worried the cube apart and drove an endless climb of golden foam toward the rim. Last, I expressed a twist of orange peel over the surface, laying down a bright citrus perfume, added a cherry for garnish, and set the glass on the coaster in front of her.
"A champagne cocktail. Classic... a cocktail of welcome."
Evergreen looked quietly down at the glass. From the sugar settled at the bottom, bubbles kept rising, catching the light until they glittered, clear as glass.
"Y-you think I'm really going to fall head over heels for one expensive drink and... quietly bury the story?"
Her mouth was still throwing sharp words, but her hand was already reaching, as if spellbound, for the thin glass. She felt the chill of it, lifted it with care, shot me one suspicious sidelong look, and took the first sip as if she were only wetting her lips.
In that instant, Evergreen's rigidly set shoulders gave a visible twitch.
"..."
As if she had forgotten entirely how rude she'd been until a moment ago, she smacked her lips softly and immediately swallowed a second mouthful. Her wariness had long since gone up with the champagne bubbles. She traced the rim of the glass and quietly savored the sweet, refined aftertaste lingering on her tongue. Drunk on champagne and cognac, the stiffness in her shoulders had loosened by a noticeable degree.
I watched her let her guard down and taste the cocktail, then carefully asked something more practical.
"By the way... have you thought about how you're getting home from here?"
The moment I finished, the fingers wrapped around the thin glass went stiff. The woman who had been staring blankly into empty air stopped breathing. Had the alcohol actually brought back the sense it had blurred? Her gaze went to the window, where an abyssal dark had settled, then dropped straight down to her own thin flats, caked in dirt.
"Huh...?"
A deflated sound slipped out between her lips.
"Ah... ahhh..."
Evergreen seized her hair in both hands and started yanking at it.
"Wh-what do I do... what am I actually supposed to do...? I thought it'd be over quick...!"
Voice cracking toward tears, she thunked her forehead against the counter. Whatever afterglow the fine champagne had left was long gone from her head.
"They said if I don't come back with even one scoop, I'm fired this month, effective immediately...! Get a photo of those magical girls' secret hideout no matter what it takes, they said... or they'd pull my desk right then and there... so I didn't even have the money to rent a car. I just crawled up the mountain path...!"
She pounded the counter with her fist, thunk after thunk. As if my earlier warning—that there might be bears—had only now arrived as something her skin could believe, Evergreen's shoulders began to tremble like an aspen in the wind.
"Well... I'll contact the manager, then..."
I took out my phone and texted Shinano the situation. A refreshingly blunt reply came back at once.
A reporter had barged into the hidden sanctuary where magical girls rested without a thought for the world's eyes. She clearly meant to dump this entire headache on me. I swallowed a short sigh and slipped the phone into my apron pocket.
"Hnnngh... hic..."
In front of the counter, Evergreen had buried her face in both arms and was sobbing as if her heart might break. The reporter who had swaggered in hunting a scoop was nowhere to be found. All that remained was a pitiful office worker shoved to the edge of a cliff, about to be fired tomorrow. She lifted her head a little and peeked out a face where tears and eye makeup had smeared into a ruin.
"Wh-what am I supposed to do... forget a scoop. I show up tomorrow and somebody else is sitting in my seat... and I've still got back rent to pay..."
She gave a great wet sniffle and carefully drew the champagne cocktail toward herself. Whether it was the stress, or she simply wanted to escape the facts in front of her, she gulped down what was left. There was a fair measure of cognac in it, proof enough to matter, but to a woman driven to the brink it seemed no different from a sweet potion of comfort.
The empty glass met the counter with a soft clink. Both her cheeks had flushed red with the alcohol. Evergreen threw little punches at the empty air, as if the world had personally wronged her, then flinched at the cool mountain quiet closing in again and drew her legs up, curling small.
"I really thought there'd be something... magical girls running an illegal gambling den out back, or some horrible lab extracting mana out of living people... everybody on the anonymous boards said so..."
With the alcohol in her, even things no one had asked began to spill out freely. She sniffled and looked up at me with wet eyes.
"Wh-what did the boss say...? Are they handing me to the police right now...? Or just tossing me out here as feed for the wildlife and shutting me up without a trace...? I-I'm really a nobody internet reporter... not even worth killing to keep quiet..."
"The manager said to handle it myself... She isn't fond of getting tangled up in troublesome things...."
The instant the words left my mouth, Evergreen's shoulders shot up as if lightning had found her. That lazy handle it yourself had reached her ears as something else entirely—something horrific. Her terrified gaze circled the empty air and found nowhere to land. Her lips trembled, an excuse already forming—
For her, sunk that deep in panic, I cut the crusts from a slice of bread, laid salami over it, spread jam, and held the plate out.
"Let this... be my answer."
From long ago, setting food before a stranger at the door had meant you were willing to receive them. And it made a fitting accompaniment to a cocktail that went by the name of hospitality.
The white plate glided across the counter and stopped just beneath her eyes. In that airless tension Evergreen caught an unexpected smell, savory and sweet, and froze as if startled. Then, from her stomach, a thoroughly honest sound rolled out—a long, helpless growl. Her face flushed red enough to burst. She had probably wandered that rough mountain path chasing a scoop without a proper meal. A sound like that was only natural.
"R-really...? You're not kicking me out, right? You're not going to wait till I'm done and then tie me up as bear bait, are you...?"
Evergreen gave one enormous sniff and, unable to hold back any longer, picked up the bread with a trembling hand. She opened her mouth wide and bit into jam and salami all at once. And at last a thick tear dropped. The grand title of internet news reporter, that meager pride about uncovering conspiracies—before hunger and relief, it all seemed to come down in a heap.
"Hnnn... seriously... crustless white bread is way too soft..."
Evergreen scrubbed at the blackened mess of her eye makeup with her sleeve and shoveled the food into her mouth in a rush. Even while she chewed until her cheeks bulged, the sobs breaking out of her refused to stop.
"I-I really haven't eaten anything since yesterday except one convenience-store rice triangle... The editor-in-chief nags me every single day that the views aren't coming in... said if I don't land one scoop, my desk is gone starting tomorrow... hic, I was seriously scared..."
Jam smeared thick around her mouth, mumbling through the mouthful, she was a long way from the sharp uninvited guest of a moment ago. She thumped her chest as if something had caught there, popped the last piece of bread past her lips, and looked up at me. On that tear-wet face, not a trace of suspicion or wariness remained.