The item Kazuhiko held in his hand brought back fond memories. It was a Beretta 92, a beautifully crafted gun highly acclaimed by a whole generation of shooters. Besides being adopted by the American army, its elegant design made it a popular weapon to feature in movies and video games.
In the hand of a Japanese person, though, it looked clunky and heavy. A Japanese person couldn’t use it with the same ease as an American or a European person.
Sitting at the counter at Café LycoReco, Kazuhiko held the gun hidden under the table lightly but with his fingers tightly closed around the grip. His index finger was stretched toward the trigger, not placed on it. He wasn’t going to touch the trigger until it was time to shoot, time to kill. Only amateurs put their fingers on the trigger before it was necessary, or people driven into a corner who’d completely lost their cool. Kazuhiko wasn’t a second-rate shooter like that.
He furtively glanced around. There were a few people seated here and there, posing as customers. They looked fake and relaxed, but he could sense they were coiled like a spring.
Kazuhiko was tense too. How could he not be? The job he had to do that day wasn’t what he’d typically do in a café. He’d never dreamed of sitting at Café LycoReco with a gun in his hand.
Frankly, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to handle the gun as well as when he was younger, but at least he’d do better than any of those amateurs.
Kazuhiko’s eyes met Yoshiharu Doi’s. The older man was sitting at the far end of the counter. He smirked at Kazuhiko as if picking up on his tension.
Yoshiharu used to own several restaurants in Kinshicho, which was probably why he was so calm. He’d been through some rough times himself and was no stranger to trouble.
Kazuhiko told himself to get a grip, not wanting to appear any less professional.
Ding-a-ling, rang the bell at the door. A customer. A blonde woman with a paper shopping bag. She was the target.
Kazuhiko’s hand on the gun began to sweat.
“Have you…been waiting long?” the woman asked, stopping at the center of the café floor.
A black-haired woman stood up from a table on the second floor.
“You sure took your time… Got the goods?”
The black-haired woman walked down the stairs to the first floor. The woman with the bag smiled smugly.
“Of course… Look!”
She pulled out a gun from the bag. A small caliber revolver. She raised her arm to aim at the black-haired woman… On cue, Kazuhiko and the others jumped into action.
“Freeze!” they all shouted at once.
Everyone—Kazuhiko and Yoshiharu at the counter, a girl who looked to be a student and a lady with a baby sitting at the low tables in the tatami area, a uniformed schoolgirl on the second floor, and the dark-skinned barista who emerged from the kitchen carrying a shotgun—pointed their weapons at the blond woman. She stopped still, a look of surprise on her face, her gun not entirely aligned with her target.
The black-haired woman casually walked over to the blond woman and whispered, “I don’t think you can take on six opponents with that five-round revolver.”
“…Grr!”
They stood in silence, neither side backing down, the atmosphere so thick you could slice it with a knife…
“Okay, that’s good! Thanks, everyone!” called Itou, a manga artist filming the whole thing with a camera recorder.
The tension burst like a bubble, and everyone started talking, one over the other.
“I hadn’t been in a performance like this in forever.”
“It was fun, but I’ve been thinking, isn’t this sort of thing just done using 3D CG nowadays?”
“I wouldn’t have the budget for that or the programming know-how.”
“Wasn’t it so cool? Wasn’t it? I was super excited the whole time!”
“The only acting I’d done before this was in junior high. Maybe I should look for opportunities to do it more often!”
The customers were chatting and laughing together.
They’d agreed to participate in the recording to help out the manga artist, who needed it for reference for a scene that she was finding very difficult to draw. The blonde and the black-haired woman were played by Chisato and Takina, respectively. The first character was the protagonist of the manga series Itou was working on, and the latter was her rival. The protagonist was modeled after Chisato, so nobody was better than her for the role.
Itou had taken not only a video but also many photos of the scene. Everyone sat down together in the tatami area to take a look, suddenly feeling self-conscious and even a little embarrassed.
“I’ll base my drawings on the material collected today… And by ‘base on,’ I mean I’m going to trace the shots, so it will be very realistic… Does anyone want any changes or improvements to how their character will look?”
Yoshiharu asked her to make him look more like a dandy. The university student wanted Itou to dial up the coolness factor for her, and so on… But one actor’s request wasn’t like the others.
“Um… Can you draw Mr. Kazuhiko’s hand differently?” asked Chisato.
Kazuhiko was taken by surprise.
“Huh?”
Takina looked at the screen of Itou’s laptop and made a little noise of understanding.
“See, the way he’s holding the gun, that’s called ‘cup and saucer.’ He’s supposed to be a pro, but this makes him look amateurish.”
Kazuhiko had been holding the gun’s grip with his right hand, using his left palm to support it from the bottom. This “cup and saucer” hold wasn’t uncommon when revolvers were coming into their own. Still, since the introduction of semiautomatic ones like the Beretta, this way of holding the gun had become a giveaway that you were an amateur.
Supporting the grip from below was pointless. Kazuhiko should’ve held the gun’s grip with both hands for better stability, or he could have held it with one hand, and the arm extended, as Mr. Doi did, Chisato explained.
“When you shoot, your right hand absorbs the recoil, but if you put your left hand over it like this, you can absorb it with both hands, and you’re ready to fire again right away.”
Chisato demonstrated it to Itou, who took notes with interest.