“H-Have... Have they sprinted across the first line...?!” Sanae muttered somewhat brokenly to herself. She staggered into the telephone pole, as if her own fantasy had physically struck her.
“...No, no, Sanae,” she told herself, “you swore to believe in them... But... But it bothers me... it does... I need to calm down... but...”
After a while spent worrying, Sanae spoke up again: “Calm down... I know, I can use the portable one I bought earlier...”
Sanae pulled some poles and planks from her bag, which, while small, would have given a normal person pause for thought as to how she got them in. She then began putting them together, before eventually pulling out a string and lighting a fire in the hearth at its center. She then began muttering, or rather praying, for things like “Sisters are forbidden,” “Getting ahead is forbidden,” and other such pleas as she tossed small wood chips into the fire.
...On the street. Next to a telephone pole.
And then...
“Oh, dear, take a look at that,” murmured half of a passing couple.
“Oh my,” the woman answered in kind, “a bonfire when it’s this warm?”
“No, dear, it’s a fire altar.”
“That’s impressive for her age...”
“I wonder if she’s from the Tendai sect, or maybe the Shingon?”
“I hear Zoroastrianism is popular nowadays?”
“There’s a lot of depth to religions with fire worship, huh?”
...
Surprisingly, and unfortunately for Kyouhei, normal people might just be an abstract existence in the world today.
● ● ●
They met a familiar face in a corner of the shopping district.
“Oh my... my my my?”
They were five buildings down from the greengrocers they had visited yesterday, at a shop specializing in black tea. Kyouhei had recognized the car at the storefront, so he had looked inside to find Kaoruko Houwa.
The woman was the young owner of the Corvette café. If you were to sum her up in a single phrase, it would be “a peaceful beauty.” Simply being around her put anyone at peace—she was a soothing person.
She had long brownish hair that was tied up in a ribbon, and was wearing a knitted shirt and denim skirt. It was her usual outfit, but being out of the café, she wasn’t wearing her apron, of course.
“Kyouhei-kun, Pamil-chan, what a surprise...” Kaoruko said before correcting herself, “...Well, not quite, but hiii.”
They did live in the same town, so it wasn’t particularly odd to run into each other on the streets.
The tea shop they were in looked old, as in old-fashioned. The furniture all looked like antiques, and the lighting along with its color gave a dim orange glow to the interior.
They were trading, but it seemed more focused on people in the trade business rather than the general public, so the furnishings were probably just the owner’s tastes.
Back to the point, though.
“Oh, a state visit. Are you shopping with your brother?” asked the old storekeeper from past the counter behind Kaoruko. He smiled gently, like he was greeting his granddaughter.
Pamil’s answer was rather inarticulate, though. “Y-Yes... well.” She then looked back uneasily at Kyouhei and received a nod. “Ah, well,” she continued, “I’m... not a princess. I’m Harumi Nanbu, or well, that’s...”
“‘My name,’” Kyouhei prompted.
“...My name...” Pamil added at his guidance.
The storekeeper and Kaoruko exchanged glances at the strange atmosphere between the two teens.
“Pamil-chan, what’s wrong?” Kaoruko asked.
“You seem a little odd today, Princess,” the storekeeper added.
“Well... some stuff happened...” Kyouhei mumbled vaguely, with a strained smile.
Kaoruko looked oddly at them for a few moments, but then spoke: “Ah, right. You’ve got perfect timing,” she exclaimed, pointing to the small tin on the counter. It was an aluminum box, with “Earl Grey Original Blend” printed on it. “I thought I might change the leaves we use at the café, so I came shopping. People won’t get tired of our tea if we change it up with the seasons.”
Kyouhei let out a sound of admiration.
She then continued: “The smell’s a big part of enjoying tea, right? So I was going to use the tester to see what it was like... but the last customer put the lid on really tight, so I can’t open it...”
Kyouhei then took the offered tin with a sigh.
The lid was a disc atop the angular body of the tin, not sticking out at all. It was more like a design on top of the tin than a lid. Looking closely, he could see that it protruded ever so slightly.
He slid a nail under the rim and tried lifting it... but it was as if it’d been pinned down into place.
“Yeah... this isn’t moving at all,” Kyouhei admitted.
“So you can’t get it off either,” Kaoruko said, hanging her head. It probably would have been difficult for her and the storekeeper, a woman and an old man respectively, to get it open. “What about you, Pamil-chan?” she asked.
“Indeed, the high output actuators in my arm will easil—”
“That’s mean, Kaoruko-san, there’s no way she could do that,” Kyouhei denied with a forced laugh, elbowing Pamil in the side as he did. “Kaoruko-san’s been dealing with this kind of tin since forever... and I’m a guy; if we couldn’t do it, then you couldn’t either, right, Harumi?”
“B-But, Kyouhei,” she protested.
“No,” he rejected her flatly, “this kind of thing has always been a man’s job.”
He winced slightly at her downtrodden look, but told himself that he needed to harden his heart.
Though, that said...
He’d already seen that it was too hard to open just using his fingers. He considered using a coin, but the gap was too narrow.
There must be something else, Kyouhei looked around for something else to use.
“Oh?” Kaoruko spoke, striding over to the door, having apparently spotted something.