◆ MegamiSenpai!: By offline meeting, you mean, meeting with everyone IRL? 😲😊✨
Contrary to popular belief, alleyways are not universally grimy, dirty, and the sort of places to which the phrase "wretched hive of scum and villainy" leaps immediately to the description thereof. They only look that way at night-time. In daytime, most of them are just very narrow streets. That, and this is in Sangen-Jaya, so it even has streetlights.
Now, if I simply turn right and then proceed onto the pavement, that should put me directly on the opposite side of the street to where I need to be. Simple. I start walking. I reach the corner, and round it. Only about fifteen metres remain until this side alley opens onto the pavement. Couldn't be simpler. Ten metres. Everything is fine. Five metres. Anyway, the cafe's got a weird name – German, I think it is – and it doesn't seem like the kind of place anyone who'd be able to recognise me would go, so it should be good. One metre.
I step into the cafe. A bell rings – yeah, the door actually has one of those systems set up, with an actual bell with a metal dingly thing inside it.
They're all looking at me, Satou Kazuma.
I wince, reflexively. No. Stop. This is a normal reaction. Someone new walks into the room, it's only instinct to look and see who it is. See, most of them are turning around again. Doesn't mean a thing. Looking around, the place is pretty empty. Probably only around ten to fifteen people in the whole cafe. The interior design of the place is European-inspired; lots of wooden support beams which the roof should by all rights be able to stay up without, permeated by the smells of coffee and antique furniture. The noises of the city outside are reduced to a low humming, replaced by the voices of the customers and various inexplicable sounds from the kitchen. I'm in the process of trying to determine whether this is the kind of cafe where you have to wait to be seated or you can just take one, when seemingly out of nowhere, a waitress appears. She looks a few years younger than me. Probably a high-schooler. For a moment I'm struck speechless by the simple novelty of her appearance. The waitress's uniform has ribbons on it. Ribbons.
"Good morning, sir. Will you be by yourself, or...?"
She trails off on a rising inflection. Ah, I'm supposed to answer, aren't I?
"Ah. Yes. A table for o...four, please."
"This way, please."
As I follow her to a booth near the corner of the room. A whole booth? Nice. Must be a slow day for customers. Were this place more populated, I'd be afraid that they'd ask me to share a table with one of the other patrons, but it looks like that won't be an issue. And the booth's near the corner, too. Couldn't have asked for a better position.
I take my seat in the booth, facing away from the corner to grant myself the widest possible field of vision over the rest of the cafe. The waitress hands me a menu, and places a small metal stand holding a piece of laminated card with the number '3' written on it in the centre of the table. She tells me that she'll be back to take my order in five minutes, and leaves. I give a vague nod.
The trouble is that I really have no idea what I want. I don't really feel anything in particular when I think about the taste of pancakes, cheesecake, or whatever the hell a croque-en-bouche is meant to be. Pick one, and get it over with. And since I'm equally indifferent towards all the options, pick one at random.
I close my eyes, and let my index finger move in a spiral pattern around the page.
It stops.
It's pancakes.
In retrospect, it's only logical that a European-styled place like this would offer something like that. In a nation where the primary staple grain of the local agricultural economy is rice, the wheat flour-requiring nature of pancakes necessitates its status as a specialised product – all of which is a fancy way of saying that it's the most expensive item on the breakfast menu. No problem. I have enough. Ignore the various variations on the theme of coffee and order an iced tea.
For the first time in what seems like hours – even though it's been less than ten minutes since I stepped out of the alleyway – I relax. Everything is under control.
"Are you ready to order, sir?"
"Yes. I'll have the, ah, pancakes, with maple syrup, and an iced tea. Thanks."
She writes it down on a small notepad. The waitress bows, turns around, and walks off in the direction of the doors which lead to the kitchen.
Now, to wait for the other three. I sit back, and listen, to the people inside the cafe, and to the vaguely muffled noises of the city outside. The city has a different ambience in daytime, when it's no longer a watercolour painted in the emission lines of halogens and noble gases.
"I swear, I will never understand how you could put up with that."
"Haah...well, that's just how she is, I think. I don't think anyone will ever be able to change that about her."
You know that thing, where someone's in the middle of drinking something, and then someone else tells them something surprising or shocking, and they spray their drink everywhere? Sounds crazy, no? You'd think it'd be one of those things that only happen on television but never in real life. Well, I can tell you with absolute certainty that, had I been drinking at that moment, that is exactly what I would have done. It's a feeling highly reminiscent of leaning back on a chair until you're just about to fall, then catching yourself at the last moment, but multiplied by roughly a thousand.
Did I simply not notice earlier? Or was I unconsciously trying to avoid noticing?
Out of nowhere...the voice of the absolute last person I was expecting to meet today.
"Erinys!"
Please tell me that I did not just say that out loud.
We may still have a chance. I may just be able to pass it off as a cough or other such involuntary expulsion of air from the lungs. I have no real basis for judging how loud that was, either, so it might be possible that she didn't hear me. And hey, she's sitting facing away from me. It's widely known that the human sense of hearing is weakest when the source is directly behind the receiver. And besides, there's something like six inches of wooden seat back between our heads. Six inches. There is no way, and I mean no way at all, that Chris Erinys could have possibly heard m-
"Ah...excuse me?" She heard me. "Have we...met?"
I stand up. It feels like it takes an hour, while barely a second of real, measurable time elapses. I turn to face the girl now leaning sideways on her seat, twisting her neck to look at the figure who was sitting behind her. I wonder if she'll recognise me? It's been four years, and I've changed a lot, but there's always a chance that...
She's changed.
She's taller, and she had grown out her hair, but to she's still the Chris Erinys I knew in middle school. The moment I open my mouth to reply, all my fears and anxieties evaporate, without leaving a single trace that they were ever there. You can never feel awkward or at a loss for words around her.
"...Hey. It's been a while."
A sheepish grin.
"Remember me, Chris?"
