The room he brought me to looked really cozy overall, but as I sat down on one of the plush-looking seats, it turned out to be awfully cramped. It didn’t fit with the refined vibe the space had going for it, and I felt almost out of place. I looked around at the lanterns scattered throughout the room. They filled the space with soft light, like mood lighting. Each of them was finely decorated and seemingly antique. The light played off of the color of the furnishings, giving the whole space a glossy caramel sheen.
The guinea pig came back from the kitchen and placed a round tray on the wooden coffee table. On it sat a fine china teapot decorated with a complicated pattern, along with two matching cups and their saucers. The finely detailed tea set was a little at odds with the image I’d gotten of the guinea pig so far. As I reflected on this, he poured tea into the cups, sending steam blooming up into the air alongside a sweet fragrance.
Then he did something strange. He took a lighter from his pocket and began heating the tip of a teaspoon.
“This is a way of drinking tea that only people with money and boredom to spare partake in. Do you know it?” he asked.
Obviously, I shook my head. I had more time than I knew what to do with, so the boredom was one thing, but I had no money. Plus, I wasn’t exactly the most knowledgeable about tea.
The guinea pig rested the heated teaspoon across the top of one cup and then placed a sugar cube in its bowl. Then he picked up a small bottle from the tray, its label showing an image of feathers and a man wearing a tipped hat. The bottle itself was transparent, and its contents looked like liquid amber. The cork came out with a cheerful pop, and then he poured the liquid over the sugar cube. It overflowed from the small teaspoon, and the characteristic heady scent of alcohol prickled at my nose.
As the edges of the cube started to dissolve in the booze, the guinea pig once again brought the lighter flame toward it. The alcohol pooled in the teaspoon lit up with a blue flame. The flame was weak and looked like the slightest puff of wind would extinguish it, even as it engulfed the sugar cube. The cube got smaller and smaller, looking for all the world as if it were an ice cube melting into the alcohol it was floating in. Drops fell from the edge of the spoon, sending ripples through the tea beneath it.
The flame died out abruptly, the sugar cube having completely dissolved into the alcohol. The mixture in the spoon looked like sherbet. The guinea pig grabbed it by its handle, quietly submerged it in the tea, and stirred it delicately throughout. When he took the spoon out, the sugar and alcohol were both completely gone. He offered me the cup, and I took it, sniffing its rich fragrance. It wasn’t the thick scent of alcohol, but more the tangy sweetness that I associated with fermented fruits.
“This is an old way of drinking tea that they used to call ‘Noble’s Tea.’”
“Um, I’ve never drunk alcohol before,” I admitted.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell your mother.”
I laughed at that, relaxing a bit. I knew that when cooking with wine and such you burned off most of the alcohol in the process, so the fire would probably have done much the same thing. Besides, there hadn’t been much alcohol there to begin with. Chanting those almost-excuses in my mind, I took a sip of the hot tea.
“Huh... It’s delicious.”
“It would appear that you also have a noble bearing,” he said.
“There’s a bitterness to it, but the fragrance is amazingly sweet, or maybe ‘deep’? ...It’s a mature flavor.”
The guinea pig poured his own cup and put the spoon across it. He didn’t add the sugar this time, just the alcohol, before lighting it. He also tipped it in without waiting for the flame to extinguish. I guess that’s a less sweet, more alcoholic way to drink it, I reflected as I watched him and sipped from my own cup. The sugar dissolved in the tea, along with the dash of alcohol, was enough to ease the stiffness in my body. Relaxing my rigid posture and leaning back into the springy cushioning of my seat made me feel like I was finally part of the room.
“Um, can I ask your name?”
“It’s Monterachet.”
“I’m Keisuke. Sorry to disturb you so late at night.”
Despite his clipped way of speaking, I knew he was making me welcome. The cozy atmosphere of the room matched his own.
“Monterachet,” I began, but he interrupted.
“Monty is fine. Saves time, and it’s easier to say.”
I was slightly taken aback, but then I smiled. It was the first time someone had asked me to address them differently for a reason like that.
“Monty, then. Uh, what were you doing on the lake?” I asked.
He hadn’t had a fishing rod with him like the first time we’d met. All I’d seen was him writing something in his notebook. Monty placed his cup down on its saucer and stroked his long whiskers between his fingers, beady eyes considering me.
“I was spacing out.”
“Excuse me?” I blurted without meaning to.
I’d heard him properly, and I could understand what he meant. It was just such an unexpected answer.
“I get lost in thought, I ponder, I navel gaze—use whatever phrase for it you like. I find ‘spacing out’ to be appropriate.”
It took me a moment to gather my thoughts together into an actual question.
“You’re doing that in the middle of the night? At this hour?”
“Exactly.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I took a sip of the—actually quite rich—tea.
“Have you never done it?” he asked.
What? Spaced out in a boat late at night?
“I...haven’t had the pleasure, no.”
“You should try it, then. Time spent thinking about nothing of consequence is vital.”
“Thinking about nothing of consequence?” I parroted.
“You can’t space out if you’re looking for something specific from your thoughts.”
Well, that is indeed true, I suppose.
“And you go out on the lake at night to do that?”
“It holds a charm you’ll understand if you try it.”
That laconic explanation was far more intriguing than a long diatribe on its benefits would’ve been. I suppose you could say it was a matter of piquing my interest.
“Also,” Monty added, “if you’re going to worry anyway, the solitude is nice.”
I could tell the comment was something akin to curt encouragement from him. He’d already figured out that I was worrying.
“Am I that transparent?” I asked.
“Smiths know their metal, chefs their food, and shepherds their flock. Anyone would notice things others wouldn’t within their own specialty.”
“And what’s your specialty?” I asked.
He picked up the teapot and topped up his drink, giving a single word in reply.
“People.”
I thought his answer over carefully, scratching my temple. It was like a quiz.
“So are you a politician or something?”
“A fine idea. I’m nothing so grandiose, though.”
“A con man, then?”
“Wonderfully done,” he said, raising his cup to me.
“Uh... I was joking.”
“Of course, I’m not actually a con man. It isn’t a matter of social acceptability, but more a matter of capability. You have an incisive mind, though—neither profession can be done well without knowing people.” Monty blew the steam from his tea and took a sip, talking again once he was done. “A second-rate deceiver becomes a con man. A first-rate deceiver becomes a politician. I am nothing more than a third-rate deceiver. In other words, an author.”
Once again, I didn’t know how to reply. Had that been self-deprecation, a joke, how he really felt? I didn’t have the slightest clue. This was a familiar feeling, one I sometimes got from adults—like they were carrying their words around and bringing them out to play with. Replying to the literal meaning in comments like these always ended in the conversation shuddering to a stop. It was like the strange slang used by high school girls; adults also had their own unique dialect.
Still, even if I didn’t know the right answer, I couldn’t just remain silent.
“Perhaps being an author is third-rate in terms of actually being able to deceive a person, but isn’t it a far better profession than being a politician or a con man because the deceit isn’t malicious?”
It was the first time that I’d ever met an author. Obviously, he didn’t have the word tattooed across his forehead or anything, but it felt almost like meeting some mystical creature in a daydream.
“Politicians live for glory, con men live for profit. Authors simply live for their curiosity. For instance, I am interested in what an otherworlder like you has concerns over. Would you be willing to sate that curiosity?”
“You’d ask someone what they were worried about out of pure curiosity?” I asked, after a shocked pause.
“Would you trust someone that said they could save you from your worries, that they could give you the answer?”
I bit my lip. He was right, even if I didn’t want to admit it to him. You worried about something because you didn’t know the solution to your concerns. Some random person wouldn’t be able to solve them out of nowhere. Asking out of pure curiosity was perhaps more honest, and more pleasant as well.
“Still, I don’t quite know what to say,” I answered, fumbling for words. “It’s hard to explain. It’s like my emotions are all jumbled up.”
“Such a thing would indeed cause concern. Not understanding your worry is definitely a problem. The first step to solving it would be to make the issue clear to yourself.”
“Do all authors think that convolutedly?”
“Most of our work is sitting in gloomy contemplation. Actually writing the words down is nothing more than a means to an end.”
That felt like a bit of an overstatement, but it wasn’t as if I knew any other authors to ask, so I couldn’t really comment on it. I considered my feelings for a while, but I couldn’t find a specific problem that I could sum up in a phrase, so I just spoke plainly, as words came to me.
“Why did this world fall?”
“Specifically?”
I paused for a beat, then simply parroted back the exact same word.
“‘Specifically’?”
“Do you want to know the material cause, or are you being more abstract? Some people believe the forces that rule over the world are beyond human ken. Some of the most religious even called this a sign of the world’s salvation.”
“I’d like to know any of those reasons, to be honest.”
Most of its people had already vanished by the time I came to this world. I’d come to understand it was due to something called the mana collapse, but what process or phenomenon had led to that was still beyond me.
Monty leaned back into his seat, folding his hands in front of his stomach.