Chapter 9: Our Favorite Thing
Then, before I can ask anything else, Katie disappears again…silently and without a trace.
"What in the world is she talking about, Big?" I ask. "A game instead of money?"
"I've got no idea…but I definitely have a bad feeling about this. What kind of game?"
A game instead of money. Hmm…
Some kind of new business model? I wonder.
Big speaks up. "I'll tell you one thing. I bet it's some game we have no chance of winning."
"What kind of game has no chance of winning?" I ask her. "I've heard of cafes holding rock-scissors-paper tournaments with the customers facing off against the maids. Some kind of risqu? version of it I guess. But there's no way to rig that so you can never win…"
"Well," Big suggests, "they could trick us by making us play a maid who could read hand movements a fraction of a second early. It would seem like a fair fight, but they'd still be cheating."
"That'd be one nasty little maid."
A maid that reads hand movements? She'd have to have some kind of superhuman reaction time. Like a professional boxer or something.
"Forget the kind of game though," Big says. "What happens if we lose?"
"Well, losers probably have to pay their bill…I'm guessing that's how it works."
"It should be the other way around," she says. "Customers should pay normally, but if they happen to beat the maid at the game they get a free meal. That makes more sense, doesn't it? If I owned the place, that's how I'd do it."
Adding that she has no intention of ever owning a maid cafe, my little Big takes a sip of water.
"In any case," she goes on, "we know nothing about this game. Clearly they don't want us to know anything about it. It's pretty unsettling if you ask me."
"Well, if this is some kind of wonderland," I say, "it's no surprise that things don't make much sense. It's probably just the way it is here. But just to be safe, we'd better not go crazy ordering a bunch of things off the menu."
"Agreed. So if that's the plan…" My little Big turns back to her choices.
Running her tiny finger across the paper, she stops at something.
"Look, they have chiffon cake! How about chiffon cake?"
"Sounds great!" I reply.
"I'm going to get coffee too. You want some?"
"Katie?" I call out. "I'll have what she's having."
"Mew got it!" comes the reply.
Katie appears instantly the minute I say her name. It almost feels like I have the power to summon this kitten-eared girl at will.
"Coffee and chiffon cake for both of us," I say.
"My purr-easure," she coos back.
Promising to be back in a flash, the cat girl disappears once again.
I catch little Big smiling as she folds the menu and puts it back in its original place. She looks like she's remembering something fondly.
"Chiffon cake! I LOVE Chiffon cake. Do you know why?" she asks.
"Because it's the first thing we ate together?"
"Yes! I knew you'd remember."
I did remember.
Except I was sort of half-joking with her…
"Well," she says, "that saves me the trouble of having to get pissed off at you. I was expecting the usual thing where I have to shout 'How could you forget?!' and 'How can you not know?!' and on from there."
"Come on, Big. It's not like you to badger me."
Chiffon cake.
The first shared memory between me and my little Big.