“I’m back—”
“I’m back—!”
Words uttered upon returning home to a place where someone is waiting to welcome me back.
Walking through the long corridor of the room, I returned to the living room where Senior Jiun was crunching on some greens, stuffing them into her mouth like usual.
In contrast to our lively voices, there was a lack of energy in Jiun’s voice.
“Uh… you’re back?”
A plastic container filled with fresh-looking green vegetables.
In contrast, Jiun’s expression soured with every bite of the salad.
Even through a man’s perspective, she didn’t seem all that plump, and I couldn’t understand why she was so fixated on dieting lately.
After placing my school bag down with Shiyeon and washing my hands in the bathroom, I spent a day as usual, lying on the floor engrossed in a smartphone game.
Shiyeon naturally sat down in front of the computer.
If it were with other kids at this time, they would be busy with piano lessons, taekwondo classes, or English tutoring, all due to the intense educational ambitions of their parents.
But for Shiyeon and me, we didn’t have to attend such academies!
If you ask why, it’s simply because a path to employment opens up after adulthood.
In other words… no matter how terrible our school grades may be, as long as we have appropriate experience and a decent mindset, our school studies don’t matter!
Shiyeon is still at an age where she doesn’t quite understand this system, but maybe she will be happy to realize it around middle school or high school?
While I lay the smartphone flat and rested my thumbs on the attack and movement buttons,
the house filled with the bouncy, stimulating sound effects for a while, until finally, the crunching sounds stopped, and Jiun’s voice could be heard.
“Oh, I heard the meetup location this time is in Daejeon?”
“That’s quite far….”
Daejeon is a city quite distanced from Incheon.
Even a rough search on the map app shows that it takes at least two and a half to three hours using public transport.
Since this Magical Girl meetup is entirely voluntary, they don’t provide transportation to participate.
Thus, the usual rule is to gather near the youngest Magical Girl, considering the one who became a Magical Girl last.
Just like a few years ago, when Shiyeon and I had to change buses several times to reach the meetup location.
“Now that you have juniors, you can’t do that.”
Hearing my complaint about the distance, Jiun rebutted matter-of-factly while hanging laundry to dry.
“But I’m still in sixth grade.”
Even so, it felt somewhat contradictory, as she added a short statement.
Exactly.
The appropriate age for a Magical Girl typically mentions elementary school lower grades, and yet we are a peculiar case.
In reality, it starts becoming acceptable to lie to one’s family around fifth or sixth grade.
Even if a new younger Magical Girl appears, it’s quite unlikely she will be younger than us.
Even if she’s a junior, she might actually be older than us?
It becomes difficult to treat her as a junior, much like a thirty-year-old soldier treating her replacements casually!
Before long, formal speech comes out spontaneously, and it gets awkward to ask anything….
Right now, Shiyeon and I are like a twenty-year-old private with a twenty-five-year-old peer.
Yeah, just like that.
To gather around a junior older than us, we have to head to Daejeon.
For me, who wanted to enjoy being the youngest more, I bluntly expressed my dissatisfaction, bringing up Confucianism regarding the predetermined meetup location.
“Isn’t it supposed to be that the youngest is determined by age in the land of propriety?”
“Well, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to go, right?”
Jiun swiftly countered my muttering of complaints with a logical response.
If I really don’t like it, I shouldn’t go—that’s true.
However, there are seniors at the meetup who think I’m cute, so Shiyeon enjoys it.
“Still, how can a person be like this?”
Moreover, cutting off someone just because it’s not in the nearby area doesn’t seem courteous as a person.
Anyway, since monsters don’t appear in our area, there’s no need to be anxious.
Isn’t it possible to travel for about three hours?
“I don’t think I’ll be able to help that day, are you really okay?”
Jiun asked back with a worried expression.
It’s understandable if she’s not able to come along on the weekend….
But my first thought was, “Why would you bring that up now?”
How many years have I survived without adults? Even if you suddenly tell me to go to that villa in Sokcho, if I set my mind to it, I could manage to reach it using public transportation.
Everything is possible thanks to technological advancements and the help of map apps.
“I can just follow the map and go.”
While answering, I stretched and zoomed into the map, carefully examining the route.
Though quite far, it’s just one hour by subway and two hours by express train.
After that, just walking a bit will lead us to our destination, the café.
Is there a café for meetups in every region?
I thought curiously while glancing at the satellite view of the destination, and it turns out the café is called “Star Café”?
Wait, is this a franchise?
Looking closer, the sign and the shape of the building looked just like the café I’d seen nearby.
After passing through the curious week of classes, the day of the meetup finally arrived.
I don’t know what happened, but for some reason, it was just the two of us and the mascot at home due to Jiun’s personal circumstances.
After putting our respective mascots in the pockets of our thick clothes, we embarked on our great journey to Daejeon.
“I’ve got everything! Let’s go!”
“Let’s go!”
Since it’s rare to go far even when leaving the house, I had hardly ever used the subway or express train.
Even if heading to another region, there are intercity buses available.
So, the subway and express train were unfamiliar to me and Shiyeon in this lifetime.
The last subway station I remember had a turnstile with a metal pole like a camera tripod blocking the way.
Now it’s changed to a sponge barrier system, opening automatically when you place your card.
Back then, I had to push right through.
So, around nine in the morning on Saturday, we boarded the subway.
I came out early, worried I might be late.
The meeting time is at one in the afternoon, and I wondered if I came out too early.
But arriving early is better than being late.
Especially since the route is unfamiliar, considering the possibility of getting lost, this was the right call.
Thanks to the route map and announcer, I didn’t end up riding the subway in the opposite direction.
Of course, the fantastic assistance of the map app played a big role.
Receiving discounts for being under 14 on the express train, we carefully made our way to Daejeon.
After passing an incredibly long line at a bakery, we arrived at the promised place.
Even though I had come out early, anticipating possible delays, we ended up arriving more than an hour earlier in front of the Star Café.
“Did I come too early?”
The interior of Star Café felt lifeless, with no signs of life.
Should I go into another café to wait until the promised time? While I pondered this,
“Hey, are you two already here?”
A familiar voice called from behind.
Turning quickly, I saw the owner of the Star Café, whom I had surely seen a little far from home, for some reason here too.
She was holding several bags of bread in both hands….
“…???”
What’s this, twins?
No, she recognized me and Shiyeon by the way she spoke.
Did she come here just to open the café for a meetup? Really?
My mind was a whirlwind of countless thoughts and became confused.
Leaving my bewilderment behind, the café door opened, revealing just the owner and us in the empty café.
The owner presented us with warm bread she had just bought, since we had shown up early and skipped lunch.
I’d heard that bakeries in Daejeon are very famous, to the point where people travel from afar just to buy their bread, so we had to try it.
“Mary! This is super delicious!”
“It’s tasty….”
I responded while trying the bread that Shiyeon was eating.
It was a type of bread similar to a croquette that I had never seen before, perhaps because I was so hungry or because the combination was something I had never encountered.
Looking broadly, it was a croquette type, but instead of meat or seasoned glass noodles inside, it had red bean paste.
The fried bread filled with sweet red bean paste provided a fresh experience that felt both familiar and unlike anything I could find in other regions.
As I cooled the crispy surface in my mouth, the dense red bean paste mixed with milk, and the crunchy texture quickly vanished, leaving an extremely strong sweetness lingering in my mouth.
The sweet red bean paste inside the fried bread felt somewhat awkward, but it wasn’t bad either.
It was almost lunchtime.
Having eaten nothing during the subway and train ride, I guess my mouth couldn’t resist such high-calorie stimuli.
“Wow, you eat well.”
Seeing Shiyeon shoving bread into her mouth with milk, the owner playfully pinched her cheek, saying she was cute.
However, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity.
Why is the owner, whom I clearly saw at the café near my house during the meetup, here at the Daejeon Star Café for this meetup?
After swallowing the sweet remnants left in my mouth and wiping my lips with a napkin, I asked the owner.
“Why are you here?”
“Hmm?”
The owner looked surprised at the question itself, resting her chin as she gazed fondly at Shiyeon before turning to me with wide eyes.
She finally understood the intent of my question, opening her mouth to exclaim in realization.
“Oh, Sun wouldn’t know?”
It turned out that the owner of this Star Café was quite the property owner.
In every region, it seemed she owned land and buildings in the bustling center of the city.
She had established cafés that she had always wanted to run on those lands, and even after retiring from being a Magical Girl, she continued to support the meetups for Magical Girls by providing her cafés, securing a solid position for herself.
Having a place where Magical Girls could comfortably hang out while maintaining confidentiality, she was the only one capable of providing a venue that met all these conditions, being a former Magical Girl with the right-sized café for gatherings.
Indeed, if you want to run a business, having capital and smarts is crucial.
