To God, Most Great and Most Good
From the corner of the counter, where she had been slowly turning a martini glass whose ice was nearly gone, Shinano let out a small laugh and cut in.
"Hmm. If it isn't that strict little nun I saw before, nya."
"What are you doing, coming all the way out to a corner of the mountains by yourself, nya?"
Clara did not let her posture slip, standing just inside the door. The precise diction, the neatly folded hands, the ramrod line of her back—she had not been in the room a full minute, and already I felt I could see exactly what sort of person she was.
"I was seeking a quiet place for prayer and meditation."
"I have confirmed that this is a sanctuary approved by the Association. However..."
Those golden eyes swept the café once more: liquor bottles glittering under the backlight, a shrine maiden's robes spilled across a table, and air in which espresso and alcohol had tangled together.
"Nnngh...?"
Katsune, draped over the bar, lifted her head in a boneless sway, as if Clara's voice had tugged her upright. Ruby eyes gone half-unfocused with drink traveled up and down the girl in the doorway. Then she rubbed her cheek against the tabletop and grinned.
"Whaaat. It's a teeny-tiny little angel lady..."
"I—I am not a teeny-tiny lady! I am a proper adult!"
Clara's solemn expression cracked all at once. Her golden eyes flew wide, and the hands she had folded so neatly clenched into fists. Words like cute and small were exactly the sort that could become a complex for someone Clara's size, but our shrine maiden, her brain thoroughly pickled in alcohol, was in no condition to consider that.
"This is where the grown-ups drink, you knooow... Little lady, just ask our bartender oppa for a glass of milk or something..."
It was the first time anyone had called me oppa, but this was not the moment to point it out. Clara's small, cute shoulders had begun to tremble.
"That dissolute posture, and the reek of alcohol...!"
"The Proverbs say it plain: wine makes one arrogant, and strong drink makes one clamorous! That spectacle is sloth and sin, grievously shameful in the sight of the Lord, Sister!"
Her youthful voice rang through the café like a chapel bell. Katsune only blinked her drunken eyes and stared blankly at the tip of the finger leveled at her. Just then, the sole thing drifting through her head was probably a question mark: Sister? What's that?
Left alone, a night that ought to have stayed quiet and peaceful would erupt into a muddled theological quarrel between a drunk shrine maiden and a devout nun. This was the moment to step in. I took one quiet step forward from behind the counter and spoke.
"Miss Clara. He said it Himself."
"This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which is poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me."
"That is what He said, isn't it?"
A strange stillness settled over the café.
"Then He too... broke the eighteenth verse of the fifth chapter?"
Clara's lips parted and closed again, her golden eyes trembling faintly. A bartender answering her out of Scripture was clearly something she had never considered. In the corner of the counter, Shinano's cat ears—until now idling over the martini—pricked straight up. Green eyes traveled between Clara and me with open interest, while at the table Katsune went on mumbling, boneless and entirely lost.
"...H-haaah?!"
Clara's golden eyes shook as if an earthquake had hit them. Every trace of the nun's solemn, majestic force vanished, and her lips trembled under a theological counterattack she had not seen coming. She worked her mouth, desperate to rebuke this impious bartender with doctrine, but the verses in her head seemed to have snarled together, and the words would not come.
"Th-that is...!"
Her small fists shivered.
"That is the wine of the holy Eucharist, given for salvation! How can you set the blood our L-Lord poured out of Himself on the same plane as the liquor of pleasure and license that sister over there has been dumping down her throat after losing all reason!"
Indignation brimmed in her golden eyes.
"This is sophistry! Cunning, vicious sophistry!"
Clara flailed through her protest and jabbed a finger at me, but the sight was less a nun rebuking a lost lamb than a child who had lost an argument and was throwing a tantrum. She stamped her little feet, and even the habit looked cute.
And our great senior, the cat, was never going to let that pass.
"Pfft..."
Glass in hand, ice long since melted, her shoulders began to jump.
"Keh—kahahaha!"
Shinano burst out laughing hard enough to collapse over the counter.
"A cat lives and lives, and still I never thought I'd see that girl struck dumb and flailing, nya!"
When the laughter eased a little, she wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Not a word of it was wrong, nya, little nun. Your own God gladly gave wine to disciples who were tired and worn. So why is one glass, for a poor magical girl hounded three days and nights by Aberrations and broadcast cameras, supposed to be dissipation, nya?"
"S-Sister Shinano...! How can you speak such impiety...!"
Clara flushed and tried to protest, but the timing could not have been worse. Katsune, melted completely across the bar, twitched again.
"Nnngh... riiight... wine... the red kiiind..."
A hand reached up from the table into empty air.
"Bartender oppa... give me one more of those cups of blood, or whatever they are... I wanna get saved toooo..."
A magical girl in shrine-maiden robes, draped over the bar, whining for a cup of blood. Scripture most certainly did not contain this passage.
Clara clenched both fists and shook. Her golden eyes traveled in order: the cat senior on one side, laughing herself breathless and swishing her tail; the shrine-maiden junior on the other, reaching into empty air for a cup of blood; and, dead ahead, the bartender who had countered her with Scripture. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, as if she had looked into a den of demons too horrible to behold.
The trembling prayer rang briefly through the café. What came back in place of an answer was only Shinano's snickering, and Katsune's boneless mumbling.
In the end, Clara seemed to abandon both the scolding and the Lord's judgment. She walked in small steps to the corner seat farthest from the counter, drew out the chair, and dropped into it. Forehead resting on her neatly folded hands, eyes closed, she might have been praying or fleeing reality. It was impossible to tell.
Probably both.
Looking at her back where she sat in the corner, I felt a little mischief stir. Offering a drink to a nun was surely impious, but a bartender has a faith of his own: to set before each guest the one glass that suits them. I took two bottles from the display. One was Bénédictine, an elixir of herbs and spices said to have been made by the Benedictine monks of France. The other was brandy. I cut them half and half, and amber slid slowly down over the ice.
I straightened my shirt cuffs, stepped out from behind the counter, and walked to Clara, forehead buried on the table in her corner seat. Then I set the glass quietly down.
Clara's forehead lifted a little from the table, and golden eyes looked up at me.
"A cocktail of a healing elixir said to have been made by Benedictine monks, and fine brandy. The proof is high, so please take it slowly."
I left it at that and went back behind the counter. Her gaze fixed on the luminous amber sitting alone on the table, as if nailed there. The backlight did not reach that corner, but the light in the glass glowed warmly enough on the room's lamps alone.
"D.O.M..."
Her youthful lips murmured the Latin as if it were a verse of Scripture, entranced.
"To God, most great and most good..."
Her eyes would not leave the glass. I could see it plainly: the doctrine that said to keep far from liquor that chases pleasure, and the explanation that this was an elixir holding the labor and the prayers of devout Benedictine monks, colliding violently in her head.
Gulp.
The small sound of a swallow rang through the quiet corner.
"Th-this is... not liquor for pleasure and license..."
"It is a sacred liquid... holding the sweat of faithful monks... and spiritual healing..."
She was making excuses to herself, desperately. A devout nun, caught between abstinence and desire, holding doctrine up like a shield while she rationalized—honestly, it was rather cute.
Clara's two small hands reached carefully for the glass. The moment her trembling fingertips touched the cold surface, she squeezed her eyes shut, as if she were performing a grave sacrament.
And there was someone who had not missed a single instant of that fascinating spectacle.
"Heh heh heh."
Shinano's tail drew an easy curve as she spoke.
"A very fine speech, nya. An inflexible little nun, falling for an elixir handed over by a heretical bartender. What a moment."
She tipped her martini and grinned.
"One of the most thrilling comedies this sanctuary has to offer, nya."
"I-it is not!"
Clara's veil fluttered, and her face went bright red.
"I-I am only wetting my lips the tiniest bit... for sacred medicinal purposes!"
But both her hands were already bringing the glass to her mouth. The rim touched her lips. Whether it was the harsh brandy or the fragrance of the Bénédictine that brushed her nose, the cheeks of a nun armored in abstinence flushed pink in an instant. And in the moment that devout, precarious first sip slipped carefully down her throat—
"Hnnnngh..."
Katsune's voice, face-down on the bar, seeped out like a zombie.
"Little lady... you drank thaaat...?"
A hand reached out through the white sleeves of her shrine-maiden robes, into empty air.
"Me too... give me one more of that elixir the monks made... pleaaase..."
The hand on Clara's glass stopped. Golden eyes turned toward Katsune: the shrine maiden who, only moments ago, had been teasing her as a little lady, now draped over the bar and reaching for the elixir. Clara's expression twisted into something complicated. Contempt, pity, and bewilderment mingled in those golden eyes.
Behind the counter, I quietly picked up a towel and thought. Sacred elixir or liquor of pleasure—in this café, both left the well in the same glass. And the circumstances of the people drinking them were, in the end, much the same. Everyone was exhausted.
All right. Enough sentiment. Time to deliver the delightful heretical truth.
"Actually, I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Benedictines."
I draped the towel over my shoulder and said it lightly.
"There was a monastery, yes. But by the time the liquor was made, the French Revolution had already destroyed it, so..."
I saw the hand on Clara's glass go faintly rigid.
"Well... they say the people who made it put their efforts into building orphanages and charities, so the outcome isn't so bad, is it?"
I smiled and fled toward the barstool. I didn't need to look back. I could imagine perfectly well what was happening behind me.
"The F-French Revolution...?"
Clara's voice, thick with horror, trembled and cut the air of the sanctuary.
"Destroyed...?"
Those golden eyes would be looking down at the amber in her hand.
"Th-then this elixir... doesn't hold the monks' prayers at all..."
Her voice was collapsing, note by note.
"It's just... a sales gimmick... invented by merchants...?"
Clara, on the verge of wetting her lips, froze like a statue. The rationalization with which she had meant to put the liquor of pleasure to her mouth under the banner of sacred medicine seemed to shatter, struck by a hammer named historical fact.