Just One Glass of Wine
I had common sense. I really did.
Whatever this place was going for, it was not the atmosphere of a barbecue restaurant. The lights in a meat house were not supposed to be pink, and there was no version of reality in which the second floor came with exactly one table.
"Please, have a seat, Mother."
"Ah— yes. Yes."
Park Seona snickered at my hesitant, dazed little shuffle. Come to think of it, why hadn't this woman transformed?
"Um, Branch Leader?"
"Please, call me Seona."
"W-well, Miss Seona—"
"Seona."
"That's a little much, even for this."
"Hmm..."
Frilly stroked her chin, thought for a moment, then broke into a bright smile.
"All right. Then — Frilly."
"That's actually better."
"Yes, Mother. Anyway, what is it?"
"Well—"
What had I been about to say? It had slipped my mind entirely. In that pause, Frilly's hand brushed the thermos I was carrying.
"And this is...?"
"Ah. That's a thermos."
Frilly looked at me with a peculiar expression. Uh. Had I said something wrong?
"I can see that it's a thermos. I just wonder if it quite... suits the venue."
You're the one who turned a barbecue restaurant into this, I thought, but I gently pushed her reaching hand away and slung the thermos over my shoulder.
"My adjutant packed it for me with a lot of care. I'll hold onto it. It's not heavy."
"Is that so? Are you on some kind of medication?"
"No, it's just water."
"Water?"
A look of sheer incredulity crossed Frilly's face. Well, fair enough. Carrying water around in a thermos like this was a little unusual.
"Anyway, can I sit down now?"
I was starving.
Hanwoo. Beef. A cow born, raised, and slaughtered on this soil — pure Korean cattle. The name itself had always felt like a synonym for food that tasted good.
But I could say this without hesitation: of every piece of meat I had eaten in my life, the meat in front of me right now was the best. I had never tasted beef that, given the lightest sear, dipped in seasoned sesame oil, and set on the tongue, simply melted — gone the instant it touched my mouth.
"How is it?"
"It's good. I'm not just saying that — I mean it. You should have some too, Branch Leader."
"No, no, no."
Her index finger wagged back and forth in front of my face.
"I'm not 'Branch Leader,' remember?"
"F-Frilly, you should have some too."
"No, no, no."
The finger wagged again.
"Fri...lly. Eat something."
"That's all right. Just watching you eat fills me up."
What was she, my mom? In practice, every time I ate a piece, Frilly placed another grilled slice on my plate, then lifted a fresh cut from the platter onto the grill. She timed the cooking to my eating speed with supernatural precision, even accounting for the exact moment the meat cooled to the perfect temperature. It was grilling elevated to a divine art. Calling her a master would not have been an overstatement. The only problem was that the burden of being on the receiving end of all this kept climbing.
"Do you drink?"
"I don't... dislike alcohol, exactly."
I didn't dislike it. I just worried about what might happen if I drank.
Unni, Frilly is a lunatic beyond anything you can imagine, so if she offers you a drink, do not take it!
Dusick's words flickered through my mind.
"I'll have water."
"Then give me your glass."
"No, I have water right here..."
I unscrewed the thermos and poured water into my cup. The glug-glug-glug sounded enough like someone pouring soju that I felt a vicarious satisfaction.
"How old are you, Mother?"
I'd gotten four years younger, hadn't I.
"I'm... twenty-three."
"Oh my. That's the perfect age gap. Four years."
There was no way she looked nineteen. She must have noticed me studying her face, because Frilly covered her mouth and gave an awkward little laugh.
"I'm twenty-seven."
"Huh? Then you're nu— wait, no, you're unni. I thought we were around the same age, so I just went ahead and talked casually..."
"Oh, no, no. I was the one who told you to drop the formalities. You don't have to call me unni, either."
She was older than me, and she was saying I didn't have to call her unni. That made no sense. I hadn't even had a drink and I already felt drunk. I lifted my cup and took a sip of water.
"Anyone prettier than me is unni, you see."
I nearly sprayed the water I'd just drunk.
Even the generous spread of meat was starting to run low. We'd worked our way through brisket, sirloin, offal, the specialty cuts — every part of the cow in turn. My stomach was getting full, so I rinsed my mouth with water and set the cup down.
"How about we each have just one glass of wine? I picked up a really nice bottle to drink with you tonight."
Not soju. Wine. I'd never actually had wine before... I hadn't even answered, but Frilly must have taken my brief hesitation as consent, because she was already pulling the cork.
"Uh, I didn't say I would..."
"Come on. Just one glass."
She'd already opened it. Refusing now, after she'd gone this far, would have been rude, wouldn't it? I couldn't bring myself to turn her down. I held out my glass.
A pale yellow wine filled the glass. Fine bubbles fizzed and lingered lightly at the surface.
"Shall we do a little cheers?"
I tapped my glass lightly against the one Frilly offered. Clink.
A mild carbonation, a sweetness sliding down my throat. A faint alcoholic note lingering on the tip of my tongue. I couldn't say it was particularly delicious. It was sweet, though. And there was a strangely sharp, tingling aftertaste.
"How is it?"
"It's sweet."
"Right? It's a wine with a pretty strong sweetness. Strong on the sweet side, and, well — I added something extra that's good for the body."
Something good for the body?
"Something good for the body?"
Heat bloomed low in my belly.
I knew this feeling. I had felt it before — that first day at the base, when I stepped into the production unit and breathed in the pink gas.
But this was different.
The heat that had started in my lower abdomen began to crawl outward, spreading through my body. I looked down at my hands and arms; they had flushed a deep red without my noticing. The heat climbed to my face. My cheeks burned.
My body itched. More precisely, my lower belly itched.
A tremor ran through me. My limbs gave a small, helpless twitch.
"Did you... put something in the wine...?"
In my blurring vision, Frilly slowly rose from her seat. A look of triumphant satisfaction filled her face as she stood and came toward me.
Her face filled my entire field of view. Flushed red. And in those eyes, something like a burning hunger seemed to flicker.
"You hit my type dead-on. Love at first sight — I never used to believe in that sort of thing."
"What did you... do to me... nh—"
Frilly's fingers brushed my arm. The sensation where she touched me bloomed impossibly large, impossibly vivid. Her fingertips, which had been lightly teasing my palm, traced past my wrist and began to stroke the inside of my elbow.
"Hnh—"
A sweet little sound slipped from my mouth. Even though I was the one who'd made it, I startled and clapped a hand over my lips.
"Cute..."
A smile spread across Frilly's entire face.
"Mother. Why don't you and unni... do something nice together...?"
"Ah, fuck."
Eve spat the curse as she stared up at the second-floor window of the barbecue restaurant. The staircase leading upstairs, visible from the first-floor entrance, had already been layered with a perception-dampening spell and a cognitive-impairment charm designed to crush any desire to go up.
Those wards — clearly Frilly's work, given that mental manipulation was her specialty — would be a pain even for Eve, President of the Magical Girl Association, to punch through in a short time. By the time she forced her way through all of it, the situation upstairs would already be over.
"I didn't want to have to do it this way."
No choice. Shit.
Cursing under her breath, Eve pulled the whip she'd knotted at her hip. She could have used flight magic all she wanted, but then Frilly, upstairs, would sense it. She had to finish this before anyone noticed.
She hit the switch and whirled the whip above her head. The cord unspooled in a long ribbon and became a proper lash, spinning like something out of a Western.
"Hah!"
A snap of the wrist sent it singing through the air. The whip caught on the iron railing of the third-floor rooftop. Eve tugged a few times to make sure the hold was solid, then shortened the length and kicked off the ground.
Her body launched into open air. She planted a foot on the third-floor rail, adjusted the whip, and kicked off again — driving her heel straight through the second-floor window.
Glass exploded. Eve crashed through into the restaurant's second floor.
"E-Eve!"
There was even a Magical Mattress laid out. A tall, beautiful woman lay on it, clothes in disarray, face flushed, eyes half-lidded, breathing hard. That was probably — no, that was definitely Mother. The new boss of Mogumogu-dan. Mother.
And Frilly, who had just been in the process of undressing her, was already half out of her own clothes. Fortunately, Eve had crashed the party before anything truly catastrophic could happen. It didn't look like things had started yet.
"You crazy bitch!"
For the first time in a long while, Eve bellowed a curse that came from the absolute bottom of her heart.
"Shut up, you!"
"So now you're going after the boss of a rival organization? You deranged lesbian psycho!"
"Hey! This is a sacred act of love! 'Going after'? How can you use such vulgar language...!"
"I don't want to hear it. Stop. Right now. There are lines you don't cross, and you became a branch leader without even knowing that!"
Eve was close to losing her reason entirely to rage. Look. She had no intention of policing anyone else's sexual preferences. But the moment she had seen a dildo harness flipped inside-out and left to sun-dry in front of Association headquarters, her patience had already hit rock bottom.
"Is it that hard to show a little consideration for the queer folks who actually like men?! And that dildo belt hanging out to dry — that was you, Frilly!"
"It's not a 'dildo belt.' It's called a strap-on, thank you."
As if she had anything to be proud of. Watching Frilly shrug with her upper body down to her underwear, Eve finally pulled out her smartphone.
Click. Click. Click.
With each shutter sound, the color drained from Frilly's face, replaced by mounting horror.
"Hey. Hey, hey. Eve. You wouldn't."
Eve snarled at Frilly in a low voice, her face twisted with spite.
"Yeah. That 'wouldn't' is exactly what I'm doing. If you don't get out of here right now, I'm sending every last one of these photos to Evangeline. Evangeline — that's your girlfriend, right? The one currently on assignment at the Busan branch. You think she's going to sit still when she finds out this is what her girlfriend was doing the second she left town?"
At that, Frilly's expression began to twist. She looked down at Mother, still breathing hard on the Magical Mattress.
"I'm going to remember this. You piece of shit."
"Get the hell out."
The standoff between the two magical girls ended there. Frilly put her clothes back on properly, descended the second-floor stairs, and released her magic. The noise from the first floor began to filter back up.
"Good grief... Magical girls. Every last one of them is completely unhinged..."
Eve let out a long sigh and looked down at Mother, who still lay on the Magical Mattress, face flushed, having slipped into unconsciousness at some point.
"Honestly. Drugged to the gills at your very first meeting. This is awkward..."
Eve's face crumpled into a deep grimace.