desiderata877

Chapter 33: Sepia Colored Photograph

MC: *cough cough*

Tom Collins: Are you okay?

MC: I’m fine…. I just accidentally inhaled some dust.

Tom Collins: Thanks so much for your help cleaning. No one ever really cleans the study

MC: Really?

Tom Collins: Emerald Mist, Sidecar, and Gimlet usually take the initiative and do it. There are a lot of valuable books here, but sometimes Tequila Sunrise and Screwdriver damage them, and they seem to not like it. Long ends up reading books instead of cleaning. Well, I guess everyone else is like that too.

MC: Maybe they’re all day dreaming.

Tom Collins: Perhaps they are. You really do like wearing that don’t you?

MC: You mean my sweats? I mentioned it before, but this is the only thing I have that I can relax in

Tom Collins: Didn’t you go shopping with pink lady?

MC: About that… I’ve been avoiding him. It’s not that I don’t have time, but…

Tom Collins: I think it’s great you managed to avoid him for so long.

MC: Is my style strange? Does it not look good?

Tom Collins: It looks good…. Well for now, in this situation. When I first met you, you were wearing those sweats. And aside from what you wear to work, I’ve never seen you in anything else. But are you happy that I told you that you look good in that?

MC: Yeah, I’m very happy. I really like these clothes

Tom Collins: Then I suppose that’s fine..

MC: Ah! What was that? Something behind the books fell.. It’s a photograph?

Tom Collins: I wonder how long ago this was.. Ah, I remember this. It was when your grandfather first opened the bar. Look, there’s your grandfather and grandmother in the center.

MC: They look so young! Wait… You’re there behind them…

Tom Collins:….

MC: Tom Collins… You and everyone else… You look exactly the same…

Tom Collins: We haven’t changed at all, right? Because we’re cocktails.

MC: Cocktails… you mean everyone’s names right? (Wait… Throughout the entire time I’ve spent with everyone, was I just wrong?)

Grasshopper: His name is Seventh Heaven. He’s been filled with angst for all of eternity. There are several things in this world that displease him, although it does not necessarily make him a bad person. Oh, rather than saying ‘person,’ perhaps I should say, ‘he’s not a bad cocktail.’

MC: (We are…cocktails?)

Manhattan: That smile is just as beautiful as it was back then.

Blue Moon: She was good friends with your grandmother, Sumire. When the two of them talked, they were young girls again.

Shizue: Ah, well if it isn’t Blue Moon. It’s been so long since we’ve all been together like this. You all flatter me too much!

MC: (But weren’t her conversations with everyone a little strange? I suppose that’s just how she’s talked since she was young, but everyone wasn’t working back then. They weren’t even alive.) When you say “Because we are cocktails,” what do you mean?

Tom Collins: Exactly as it sounds. All of us, we came into existence as cocktails. That’s why even though master, his wife, and Madam Shizue grew old, we remained the same. We are separated from that ring of existence.

MC: ….huh? In other words… all of you… you’re not human? No, you’re joking.

Tom Collins: Unfortunately, it’s no joke.

MC: (Even though I thought I had finally started to calm down about everything that’s been going on…Something like this comes up?)

Tom Collins: Hey hey, are you okay?

MC: ah…

Tom Collins: Ah?

MC: That’s crazy! (My mysterious days here have only just begun)