The Scoop and the Dead Battery
"Well... in a world where magic and magical girls exist, hunting for the occult isn't exactly a crime, is it..."
At my words, Evergreen paused mid-chew for the briefest instant and looked up at me.
Perhaps the difference between her and the magical girls came down to something as simple as whether you looked out at the lakeshore glowing so beautifully just beyond the glass, or you didn't. The magical girls at the very top could see the world's threats, and a far wider landscape, stretching off into the distance. But in the eyes of a woman scraping by at the very bottom, pawing through internet tabloids, there was nothing but the salami and scraps of bread set in front of her—and tomorrow's meal ticket.
"So... the fact-check is finished, then?"
I nudged the napkin beside her empty plate a little closer to her, easing the point home.
"That magical-girl party venue people keep circulating online... it was just a villa some nouveau riche built for himself. Truly... not even a funny story."
In that moment Evergreen's face went blank with despair, her mouth hanging open. She set the leftover crust in her hand down on the plate, all the strength gone out of her fingers.
"Eeeek...!"
Evergreen covered her face with both hands, curled in on herself, and collapsed forward onto the counter. She ground her forehead against the cold surface and let out a miserable groan.
"I'm ruined... I'm actually ruined. That editor of mine picked up another baseless rumor somewhere and dumped the scraps on meee...!"
The alcohol must have been climbing; her voice came out even damper and more waterlogged than before. She slapped her flushed cheek flat against the cold bar top and stared into empty air with unfocused eyes.
"A rich guy's villa... a café-bar he opened as a hobby... I could take all the pictures I want and nobody would look. I can't even bait a single click with a headline like that..."
Her fingers tapped, meaningless, at the smooth curve of the champagne glass on its coaster.
"How am I even supposed to show up to work tomorrow... I barely have cab fare to get out of here... Boss, if I wrote a piece on how to survive in bear country... do you think anyone would read it...?"
Looking up at me through half-glazed eyes, she looked less like an intruder and more like a lost soul who had wandered in off the mountain. Her already slumped shoulders sank even lower toward the floor.
The fingers she had been jabbing at the black, dead screen stopped dead in midair. As if it weren't pitiful enough already, our reporter's phone battery gave out completely, and her wretchedness seemed to double on the spot.
"Mm... there's a charger upstairs. Shall I bring it down?"
At the question Evergreen kept her head bowed and nodded over and over, eyes shining wet. I was still working out how best to talk our reporter around and send her back down the mountain when—
Creeeak...
The door opened, and a familiar figure staggered in.
"Ah... of all times. Welcome."
Her jacket had slipped halfway off her shoulders, and a fatigue her careful makeup couldn't quite conceal lay thick across her face. It was Rin.
"Oppaa... I'm dying... sugar... give me the strongest sugar bomb you've goooot..."
Rin dropped into the seat right beside Evergreen and collapsed across the bar as if her strings had been cut. She was so wrung out with exhaustion she didn't even have the attention to spare for whoever was sitting next to her.
"I swear, am I a streamer or a zookeeper? Raccoons, foxes..."
Cheek pressed to the cold tabletop, she muttered on, and words an ordinary person would have had no easy way of parsing spilled out of her with no filter at all.
In that instant Evergreen—still chewing her jam-smeared bread—suddenly stopped breathing. Her gaze drifted, slowly, very slowly, toward the seat beside her. A luxurious jacket. Glossy black hair falling straight. And features so striking, so familiar, that they registered in a single glance. Any internet news reporter—no, any ghost haunting the usual forums—would have known that face on sight.
"K-Katsune... ma'am...?"
A faintly trembling voice leaked out of Evergreen along with a few crumbs of bread.
The moment someone recognized her, Rin turned her head and looked at Evergreen.
"What."
She irritably swept her messy bangs up off her forehead.
"A stalker fan who followed me all the way out here? Point a camera at me and I will actually get mad, so use your head..."
Rin's eyes settled on the smartphone in Evergreen's hand—battery dead, the screen gone pitch black. Evergreen had frozen where she sat, barely even breathing.
It was the scoop of a lifetime. The kind of scoop that could reverse, in a single stroke, a reporter's career that might not even survive until tomorrow—and it was sitting right in front of her. But the phone in her hand was powered off, nothing more than a lump of plastic that couldn't record a word or take a single photo. With the chance of a lifetime under her nose and no way to seize it, Evergreen began to shake, her face blank with despair.
"Haha... not a stalker fan. She's a reporter who nearly became bear food."
At that, Rin tilted her head and looked Evergreen over.
"A reporter? Aha... figures. I thought I smelled it. People on that side of things have this... particular obsession soaked right into them."
Rin let out a short puff of laughter. She planted an elbow on the counter, propped her chin in her hand, and spoke lazily toward Evergreen, who was staring at her in a daze.
"I did wonder when this place would get found out. Looks like people more or less caught on after that explosion the other day. Then again, after a mess like that, it'd be stranger if nobody knew."
The explosion Rin meant had to be the incident from a few days ago, when Haru had blown this place apart.
"Ah... as expected. You've been through this kind of thing so many times you're... incredibly smooth about it, huh?"
Rin shrugged and answered lightly.
"Dealing with people like this every single day is just my life. These days I can tell from a look whether someone's sneaking glances at me, or we really just happened to run into each other."
She flicked her fingers right in front of the nose of Evergreen, who was watching her from the next seat with an expression like her soul had checked out entirely.
"But, Reporter. You look pretty devastated right now."
Evergreen jolted as if coming back to herself, flinched, and hurriedly ducked her head.
"I-I'm so sorry! I've been terribly rude...! I never in my wildest dreams thought it was Miss Katsune... I mean, I did suspect this might be some suspicious base, but I never imagined I'd actually meet you in person...!"
"Enough, enough. If you're apologizing, apologize to him. I'm too tired to even have the energy to get mad."
Rin turned back to me and held up three fingers.
"Oppa, that sugar bomb from earlier... and charge this reporter's phone while you're at it. If she writes some article later about me getting stranded in the mountains, that'll be a problem, so I'd better feed her a bribe in advance."
"Sure. In exchange, Reporter—you won't just start snapping pictures, all right? The second floor is my private home, too."
I understood the public's curiosity, forever chasing after magical girls. Having a camera shoved into my personal room in the name of digging up a scoop, though, was another matter entirely.
I had barely finished speaking before Evergreen gulped down the mouthful of salami and bread and nodded in a panic.
"O-of course! A private space—I will absolutely, I swear, never photograph it! I-I promise on an internet news reporter's conscience!"
The swagger she had worn only moments ago, all fired up to expose a magical girl's secret base, had already vanished without a trace.
"What conscience..."
Rin muttered the rebuke into the counter, still face-down.
"Still. Keep the promise. Don't touch his room. I nearly had a heart attack the other day, hearing some girl in a cheerleader outfit went berserk here and blew the place up."
At that, Evergreen's shoulders twitched.
Cheerleader outfit. Rampage. Destruction.
A reporter's instincts seemed to answer those juicy keywords all on their own, but she caught my eyes from across the counter, clamped her mouth shut, and dropped her gaze. Rin didn't appear to have the energy to care even about that. She mashed her cheek against the cold countertop and let out a thin, suffering sound.
"Aaah... something sweet, hurry... I feel like my blood sugar is crawling along the floor..."
She reached out weakly and waved a hand at empty air.
"Oppaaa... I really want a waffle or a brownie just drowned in chocolate syrup... pile the whipped cream up like a mountain, toooo..."
"You know I don't sell café food while the bar's open. Mm... I'll make you a sweet cocktail instead. How strong do you want it?"
Rin, cheek still smashed flat against the counter, grumbled in clear displeasure.
"You really have zero flexibility..."
She let out another thin groan and tapped the smooth countertop with her fingertips.
"Then make it really rich and really sweet. The proof... high enough that I don't have to look at that nine-tailed fox bitch's face until tomorrow morning. Mix it hard enough that one glass knocks me straight out. Got it?"
From the next seat, Evergreen was eavesdropping on every word without even daring to breathe properly.
"Got it. One all-in-one, for our exhausted working woman. And... one for our frightened reporter, too."
For Rin, worn thin with fatigue, I reached for a new liqueur: white crème de cacao, cocoa and sweet sugar concentrated into a single bottle. I chilled the martini glasses with ice first, then filled the shaker. Cognac went in, then the white crème de cacao, and last a generous pour of the soft fresh cream I used when I made snacks. So the cream would bind properly with the liquor, I shook harder and faster than usual. I emptied the ice from the glasses, strained the drink slowly between the two, then took out some nuts and grated a thin dusting over the surface.
"An Alexander. Sweet, and high-proof—you could call it the all-in-one you wanted."
I slid the glasses in front of Rin and Evergreen, one after the other.
Rin, sprawled as if dead, rose at the sweet scent and seized her glass in one motion. There was no elegant wetting of the lips, no delicate tasting. Without even steadying her breath, she tipped the smooth cocktail down her throat.
"Pwah...!"
Having drained half the glass in a single go, Rin let out a long breath. A peach-colored flush spread across her pale cheeks in an instant.
"This is insane... it's actually so good..."
She licked the cream from the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue and let a pleased sound slip out.
"If that gluttonous raccoon girl caught a whiff of this, she'd be whining for just one bite. And the nine-tailed fox bitch would've snatched it, saying a high-class drink like this suited her station."
She gave the cocktail glass a light swirl and smiled, lazy. The hard liquor must have been racing through her veins fast and hard enough to overwhelm even a magical girl's stamina.
"But joke's on them. Tonight I'm drinking the whole thing myself... and then I'm passing out just like this. They could step right on my head on the way by and I still wouldn't wake up..."
Beside her, Evergreen carefully lifted her own martini glass. She wet her lips with the cocktail and let out a small sound of surprise at the unexpected sweetness.
"Mmm... it's sweet... I feel like my whole body's just coming undone..."
Evergreen cradled the glass in both hands as if it were something precious, and sniffled like a child.
A magical girl who lived beneath the public's gaze, and a third-rate reporter who scraped out internet tabloids while worrying over her next meal—two women who should never have shared a table—sat side by side, tipping back the same sweet cocktail.