A Doctrine Named Temperance
Betrayal and shame churned through Clara's golden eyes. The amber B&B clutched in both her hands trembled, and from inside it came the small, nervous click of ice.
"Y-you devil of a bartender!"
Clara shrieked it at me, where I had retreated a safe distance behind the counter.
"To deceive a servant of the Lord so cunningly...!"
The strict, sacred bearing of the magical girl was gone without a trace. All that remained was the tantrum of a thoroughly provoked little girl.
"Nyahahaha! Ahahahaha!"
Shinano clutched her stomach outright, pounding the bar as she laughed herself breathless.
"That prim little nun, played for a fool...! Kahaha...!"
Her tail lashed the empty air.
"D-do not mock me!"
Clara shot back, her face scarlet.
"I have most certainly not surrendered to this cup of pleasure!"
She put force into the hand that meant to set the glass down, yet her fingertips stayed wrapped around it and would not let go.
"Uuung... Sisteeer..."
A familiar, dragging voice crept all the way into the corner. Katsune, who ought to have been sprawled across her table, had somehow made it right beside Clara's.
"That's just a sales pitch, riiight... If it isn't an elixir, give it to meee... If I don't drink something stronger this second, I think I'm gonna diiie..."
Pickled in alcohol, the star magical girl seemed to have no thought at all for nuns as she reached for the amber cocktail.
"Eek?!"
Clara's golden eyes flew wide.
"W-where do you think you are putting those hands, fallen sister!"
Her small hands hugged the glass for dear life.
"This... this may be steeped in the devil's salesmanship, yet it is the fruit of good works! I will not suffer it to be used as an instrument of indulgence!"
Whether from the panic of nearly losing it to Katsune or from sheer pique, Clara brought the glass to her lips and tipped it straight back.
Gulp.
Down the throat of a nun who had lived on nothing but abstinence her whole life went a spirit well past eighty proof, in a single shot. The result was inevitable.
"Cough—cough!"
Clara's small frame shook violently.
"Kkheup...!"
The hand that slammed the glass onto the table flailed at the air and began to fan.
"I-it burns...! No—it's hot...!"
Her snow-white skin flushed beet-red from the nape upward in an instant, and tears spun into her golden eyes.
"It is as if the fire of Jehovah has come down inside my mouth...!"
Fanning the air with her small hands and stamping where she stood, Clara looked like an entirely different person from the strict nun of a moment before. A shrine-maiden magical girl, drunk and crawling the floor, mumbling for an elixir. A little nun weeping at her first hard liquor, meeting the fire of Jehovah. And a cat-eared senior, clutching her belly and roaring with laughter, taking the whole spectacle for bar snacks. Around that peculiar combination, the night at the sanctuary was slowly ripening.
For Clara, crying over what might have been life's first bitterness or the world's first spice, I prepared another glass. This time I laid grape juice down as the base instead of wine, added slices of strawberry and orange, filled it with ice, and finished by pouring in sparkling water. I carried the completed drink to the corner and set it quietly before Clara, who was still coughing and dabbing at her eyes.
"Something sweet and fizzy to rinse your mouth. Non-alcoholic."
Her bloodshot golden eyes moved to the glass. Between the clear ice, red strawberries and slices of orange floated prettily.
"It's called sangria. A traditional Portuguese drink. They say the red is why people called it holy blood—or just blood."
The tease, of course, was intentional.
"Ahem...! Haahk!"
Still coughing from the alcohol's bite, Clara shot me a glare with tears clinging to the corners of her eyes.
"I-if an inquisitor heard that, he would brand it heresy on the spot and send you to the stake for such a blasphemous jest...!"
Her mouth was scolding my sacrilege, but her body—mercilessly shelled by a B&B past eighty proof—already seemed to be losing the will to resist before the sangria's beautiful temptation. Her burning cheeks twitched. Her golden eyes traveled between the strawberries and the orange. Faith and temptation were at war again, but a wall that has fallen once comes down easily the second time.
In the end Clara squeezed her eyes shut and, as if raising a holy chalice, carefully took the glass in both hands.
Gulp. Gulp.
"...Ah."
The moment the sangria passed her lips, the grimace on her face came undone as if by magic. The sparkling water must have rinsed that burning throat cool, and the deep sweetness of the grape juice, together with the fresh brightness of the fruit, must have wrapped softly around her tongue. To a young nun who lived in strict abstinence to prove her faith—who would not even let sweets touch her lips—this sweet, clean drink was surely no different from a flavor handed down by the devil himself.
"Th-this is... the sweetness of the world..."
Clara's voice shook.
"No—it is merely the juice of fruit. How can it beguile the tongue so...!"
She set the glass down in a hurry, yet as the tip of her tongue licked the red grape juice from the corner of her mouth, her face was steeped in a relief and happiness she could not hide. For a moment, over the strict face framed by the habit, the youthful expression of a girl—one that finally suited that face—overlapped. Everything that had stood so rigidly upright before she entered this café was crumbling, little by little, before a single drink. Just as it had for Katsune.
Then our great star, face-down and adrift on a sea of alcohol, swayed upright again.
"Uuung...? Holy blood...? Blooood...?"
Unfocused ruby eyes turned toward the top of Clara's table.
"Miss, you doing a vampire cosplay or what...?"
What she actually had on was a nun's habit, but a drunk mind had already lost that distinction.
"Bartender Oppa... I want blood too... no, something sweet and fizzy, just one glaaass..."
Watching her wave a hand at empty air, I let out a quiet sigh. This side of the room isn't finished either.
From her seat at the counter, Shinano was savoring the whole situation at perfect leisure.
"You punch the soul out of her with hard liquor, then topple her asceticism with sweet fruit juice seasoned in blasphemy."
She turned the martini glass slowly on her fingertips.
"Even a devil would fold and step back in front of you, nyang."
She lifted the glass lightly in my direction.
"The truly frightening thing about this sanctuary might not be an Aberration coming through the door, but the temptation of the one glass the bartender pours, nyang."
I smiled quietly, wiping the shaker with a towel behind the counter. Temptation. I'm only setting out a glass that suits someone who's tired. If that looks like temptation, then they must all have been that thirsty.
"A devil?"
I draped the towel over my shoulder and smiled, unhurried.
"I'll have you know my ethics teacher was a priest, so I did study the Bible. That priest drank, too. Exactly three glasses. He said what mattered was showing that even if you drink or smoke, you know how to practice temperance."
At my easy excuse, Clara's thoroughly flushed face went blank.
"A p-priest... put strong drink and tobacco to his lips...?"
To a little nun who had lived her whole life inside strict rule, it must have sounded like rather shocking word of heresy. But her golden eyes wavered down toward the sangria, clear ice floating in the glass.
"...Temperance."
The word I had offered slipped carefully from between her lips. Given a character that prized principle and ran stubbornly straight, the frame of patience—controlling one's own pleasure, rather than an unconditional ban—seemed to reach her as a far more convincing religious trial.
"It is not a matter of collapsing before pleasure... It is keeping it at one's side, refusing to yield to indulgence, and proving that one can overcome it oneself..."
Her golden eyes shone in earnest.
"I-indeed. It may be a trial of faith on a far higher order than blind avoidance..."
Clara nodded with a grave face, as if she had received some great revelation. The fact that only a moment ago she had been blushing and happy over sweet grape juice and sparkling water was perhaps already being wrapped, inside her head, as a holy course of endurance.
Watching that ridiculous and adorable scene of cognitive dissonance, Shinano finally couldn't hold it and let out another snort of laughter.
"Where else would you find a doctrine that fits a bartender this perfectly, nyang?"
The small wordplay unfolding in this quiet sanctuary out in the wilds seemed to be clearing her fatigue rather well. But there was one person on whom the noble word temperance refused to land at all.
"Uuung... three glaaasses...?"
Katsune, stretched across the table like a squid with her bangs a thorough mess, tapped the wood and whined.
"What's anybody supposed to do with three glasses..."
Already half-unmoored by a single Faust, she slurred as if a nun's anguish were none of her concern.
"Me... I'd have to drink thirty before those shikigami stop floating up in front of my face..."
A finger wavered at the air.
"Bartender Oppa... I'm not doing any temperance or anythiiing... Just give me one more of that devil thing. Faust. Whatever it waaas..."
A nun staring down non-alcoholic sangria through perfectly controlled faith, and a shrine maiden who had already thrown control on the floor and was demanding stronger alcohol. Set in extreme contrast, the two magical girls were stirring the night of this mountain sanctuary into something strange.
A little more time passed, until both Shinano and Clara had emptied their glasses. The shoulder of Katsune—swimming face-down through a sea of hundred-proof rum—gave a great twitch. Just as Shinano had foretold, a magical girl's astonishing metabolism had at last broken down every drop of the alcohol in her body.
Katsune bolted upright. Her ruby eyes shook wildly, as if the ground itself were quaking. She had come to this sanctuary with her persona fully switched off, and made what kind of scene. Whether she had taken a hundred-proof spirit in one shot and crawled the table wailing for the devil to take her soul. Whether she had crawled the floor trying to steal the nun's drink. And whether she had whined for a glass of blood while calling him Bartender Oppa. Every one of those memories seemed to be surfacing whole.
Still in her white shrine-maiden robes, Katsune's face went pale in an instant. Then it flushed red again, fit to burst.
"N-n-no!"
The chair scraped back with a sharp sound.
"That just now wasn't meee! The shikigami were piloting my brain... no, that's not it either!"
She clutched both cheeks and shook her head from side to side.
"Haaaah?! What on earth did I do...!"
Her ruby eyes raked the café like mad, then met mine as I wiped a towel behind the counter. Katsune's finger stabbed out at me, rigid.
"Th-this was an accident! You wrung every tear and sniffle out of me—take responsibility! Bartender Oppa, you take responsibility, no matter what!"
Leaving nothing but that groundless shout hanging in the air, she did not look back.
Crash. Clatter.
The hem of her robes fluttered; the sanctuary door flew open and slammed shut. There was no sign of the proud magical girl who guarded the world. Only the wretched exit of a black-history generator who would be kicking her blankets to shreds tomorrow morning.
"Khahaha!"
Shinano started laughing, pounding the bar outright.
"Nobody flees as quick as a first-class magical girl, nyang! Just as this kitty predicted—blanket-kick, reserved and confirmed for tomorrow morning, nyang!"
I leaned on the counter and looked toward the door Katsune had gone through. Take responsibility. All I did was pour a cocktail. She's the one who took the hundred-proof in a single shot.
Meanwhile, in the corner, Clara carefully set down her empty sangria and breathed a sigh so deep it seemed to carry every affliction in the world. The flush on her cheeks had settled, but her golden eyes alone were full of a cleric's weariness—the weariness of one who must look after a lost sheep just gone out the door.
"O Lord... I must lead that fallen sister, lest she tumble on the mountain path."
Her small steps turned toward the door. She laid a hand on it, opened it halfway, and paused to look back.
"Sister Katsune! Wait! Fleeing does not wash away black history—no. It does not wash away sin!"
The hem of Clara's habit fluttered, and she vanished into the dark.