I Run the Protagonist’s Favorite Café in a Hopelessly Depressing Game World - V1 Chapter 7

The Mother

Plip plip plip, the sound of coffee pouring.

The rich aroma of freshly ground beans tickled my nose.

I took a small sip, just enough to wet my tongue, and a faint acidity mixed with a refined bitterness filled my mouth.

…No, my sense of taste had been gone for a long time, so this was all just imagination.

No matter how expensive the beans or how much trouble I went through to brew it, none of it meant anything to me. I had lost my sense of taste as the price for magic. This whole action was pointless.

Still, if I only chased efficiency in my meals just because I couldn’t taste anything, I would eventually lose my humanity too and reach a point where there was no going back. I had that feeling. After all, that was the path so many witches had ended up walking.

I enjoyed only the smell and the warmth of the coffee.

Surprisingly, that alone had its own charm.

They say people who lose their sight develop sharper hearing, and it was exactly like that.

“Store owner. What are you spacing out for?”

“No customers again.”

“Isn’t that how it always is? The place is dead.”

“It becoming the usual thing would be bad, though.”

“You say it’s bad, but you don’t look like you’re panicking at all.”

Shikiko Komuta poked me with that spot-on logic.

She was a girl with hair the color of melted midnight darkness, wearing an apron. For this café where more dogs and cats visited than people, she was basically overkill as a part-timer. So far, she hadn’t actually done any real work.

A few days had passed since Tamaki Omuta’s visit to the dungeon.

Nothing had really changed. The same everyday life just kept going.

It was hard to believe this was a world facing destruction.

“By the way, store owner.”

“Hm?”

“You’re not going to stop her?”

Shikiko tilted her head.

I followed her gaze.

“The world’s strongest witch really is so cool~! I want to become the strongest too!”

There was the part-timer, sitting at a table, leaning her upper body on the desk and absorbed in a magazine.

That definitely didn’t look like an on-duty attitude.

Well, there wasn’t any work that needed doing anyway, so it wasn’t causing any problems.

“She’s been like that nonstop for the last few days. It’s getting really annoying. I don’t know what happened, but she keeps bragging about how she ‘met Aoi Komeiji.’ Once or twice would be fine, but it’s five, six, seven, eight times now. It’s so tiresome. It’s starting to show up in my dreams. That confident, annoying face of hers.”

Shikiko let out a truly fed-up sigh.

Her black hair even seemed a little wilted.

“I didn’t think it was something that needed a warning.”

“Is that okay? She’s on the clock.”

“If we’re going there, you’re playing with your phone and games too, Shikiko.”

“Guess I stepped on a landmine.”

Shikiko looked away and tried to cover it with a clumsy whistle.

The weak phew-phew sounds echoed through the shop.

“…Yeah, you’re right. It was bothering me too.”

Hearing things like “The world’s strongest witch is seriously so cool!” and “I want to meet her again…!” was nice, but having those bullet-like words fired at me nonstop was honestly embarrassing. It felt way too awkward. It was like I was deceiving her, and that made it uncomfortable.

I stepped out from behind the counter and walked over to Tamaki.

“Tamaki?”

“Ehehe… Hm? What is it?”

“Well, uh… how have you been lately?”

“You sound like a dad who doesn’t know how to talk to his daughter.”

Tamaki looked up from her magazine.

“I’m doing great. Like I said before, ever since I met Aoi Komeiji my motivation has been through the roof. My teacher even praised me. If things keep going well, I might even get a title.”

She smiled with pure, heartfelt happiness.

Her expression was so innocent that it took the wind out of my sails.

If it helped Tamaki grow, then going to the dungeon had been worth it.

…I never expected to run into a former party member, though.

“So? Why did you come talk to me?”

“Oh—it’s about that customer over there.”

“Shikiko?”

“Her constant bragging is getting annoying. She asked me to come warn you.”

“I see.”

Tamaki gave a little “got it” smile and relaxed the corners of her mouth.

She said “alright” and stood up, then headed over to Shikiko.

“What, if that’s all you should’ve said so earlier.”

“…You finally get it? Having to listen to all that bragging is pretty tiring—”

“You must be so jealous that I met Aoi Komeiji. Geez, you’re so bad at being honest. You act like you don’t care, but you’re actually dying to know all about it.”

“Are we even speaking the same language…?”

Shikiko tilted her head.

She looked fed up and shot me a pleading glance for help.

“……”

But I heartlessly ignored her rescue request.

Because it looked like a pain.

Tamaki tended to get really stuck in her assumptions. Once she decided something was true, changing her mind was extremely hard. Almost impossible. If I really wanted to fix it, I’d have to drop a bombshell like the fact that I lost my sense of taste as the price for magic.

Since leaving her alone wouldn’t cause any real harm, it was sad but I’d have to let Shikiko be the sacrifice. A human offering. Greatest happiness for the greatest number. Namu Amida Butsu. Let’s press our hands together.

“You heartless jerk—!”

“Listen, first of all, what makes Aoi so amazing is…”

I smoothly ignored Shikiko’s resentful voice.

I opened a book like nothing was happening.

It looked like Tamaki Omuta was starting her “World’s Strongest Witch Lecture.” Since it would be weird for the person herself to listen, I did my best to tune out my hearing.

The price actually came in handy in unexpected places.

And so, peaceful daily life kept flowing by.

No one lost their life. No blood was shed.

It wasn’t very exciting, but I could definitely call it a happy routine.

I knew the truth.

There was no way such peaceful days could really last.

That calm time was just a thin lie.

If you peeled back one layer of skin, the world underneath was a festering, pus-filled wound.

Cling clang.

The bell on the door rang. A customer.

Shikiko and Tamaki stopped their conversation, which had started to sound like an argument, and both widened their eyes in surprise at the rare visitor.

They must have remembered their roles. They pinched the sleeves of their aprons, put on friendly smiles, and faced the customer who had come after so long.

“Welcome—”

Before they could even finish saying it.

There was a sharp “kh!” as they sucked in a breath.

Both of them stared with wide eyes. Their shoulders trembled.

Their faces had gone pale. Had they suddenly felt sick?

No. The cause was the outsider who had appeared in the café.

“This shop is in quite a remote location, isn’t it?”

The woman looked around the store as if appraising it.

After looking, she let out a breath like she was bored.

Her eyes met mine for a moment, but I didn’t feel any human emotion there.

It was like a robot that looked almost exactly like a human was standing there.

An unreal, unpleasant sight.

I knew who this woman was.

We had never actually met.

But I knew her from knowledge.

As a character from the game.

“M-Mom…”

“You two said you started working part-time at the same shop, so I thought it must be a wonderful place with good influence. But this is just a waste of time.”

Sophia.

That was her name.

A researcher, a former witch, and the mother of Shikiko and Tamaki.

If you could call the developer of artificial humans a mother, that is.

“Part-time job… part-time job, huh. Sigh. What was the role I gave you two again? You are guardians of humanity. You kill monsters in place of humans and bear the price in place of witches. Anything else is meaningless. A waste. Inefficient. What I expected from you two wasn’t to pretend to be human and enjoy a fake life. You are not human. You are gears meant to maintain the world.”

Her face had no color.

Her tone was cold.

She didn’t seem to have any human emotions at all.

Because those things had been ‘taken’ from her as the price for magic.

“……”

“……”

Shikiko and Tamaki stayed silent.

It was like they had been found out about something they never wanted known.

They probably hadn’t wanted their birth to come out.

That they weren’t human, just vessels of flesh made to look the part.

The truth was, me knowing their circumstances was almost cheating. It came from my memories of my previous life. If I didn’t have that and had learned their secret here for the first time, I might—no, I definitely would have rejected them. That couldn’t be helped. It was human instinct. The instinct carved into genes so that Homo sapiens wouldn’t produce offspring with similar but not quite human species.

Rejecting something that looked human was humanity’s instinct.

That was certainly a fact.

But it was a heavy fact to accept.

For the people themselves—the two of them—it was probably something they didn’t want to acknowledge.

That was why Shikiko and Tamaki were looking down.

The fact they wanted to keep hidden had been suddenly exposed.

They might not have caught up yet.

After checking on the two of them, Sophia tilted her head.

“Sorry to be so sudden, shop owner. That’s how it is, so I’m taking them with me.”

“It really is sudden. And rude.”

“I’m sorry. But please understand.”

Let’s go.

At her call, the two responded.

They probably didn’t even have the idea of refusing.

After all, Shikiko Komuta and Tamaki Omuta had been created that way.

“Haa…”

In the now-quiet shop.

I looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

In that moment, there was nothing I could have done to stop them.

Sophia’s actions were forceful, but legally there was no problem.

Aoi Komeiji could not interfere in situations without any illegality.

That was how it worked.

“That kind of development was in the game too.”

What happened after that again?

…Whatever. I didn’t feel like thinking about it.

Right now I didn’t want to think about anything. I was tired.

So I closed the shop and went to sleep in the back room.