#1: Shandy Gaff
Tucked into a back alley of Roppongi stands that authentic little bar.
The cramped interior holds five counter seats and a single table. Filling the dim room is the mingled scent of alcohol and cigar smoke, and the calm strains of classical music piped in over the wired radio.
Girls’ bar Antiqua.
A “girls’ bar” in name only — really, a hideaway for adults who come to enjoy drink, cigarettes, and the sparring games of romance.
“Oh my, a first-time customer?”
“Hardly. This is the second time I’ve gotten that greeting.”
“Ha. I know perfectly well who you are. Kurosu-sama.”
Kurosu Mikoto let the bartender’s little joke roll off her, garçon uniform and all, and settled into the counter seat against the wall.
The shop was full of quiet. If you looked closely you could make out other customers at the table seats and the far end of the counter, but you’d never really register them. The lighting, kept just barely above the legal minimum, turned everything but the space right in front of you into background.
Every customer who gathered here hated being interrupted, hated intrusion. Unlike the raucous girls’ bars the name suggested, this was a hideaway for adults where no one bothered anyone.
“Missed the last train again today?”
Shandy the bartender set down a coaster with the question tossed off carelessly, an air about her as if to say she couldn’t possibly be less interested.
Wanting to shake that cool detachment loose, Mikoto turned the coaster over between her fingers, searching for a clever comeback.
“I found myself wanting to see you, Shandy-san.”
“Is that your usual line?”
“A bit too much of a cliché, maybe.”
“Yes. And I already told you how to woo a bartender properly.”
In the half-light, it was impossible to make out her expression clearly. All Mikoto could faintly catch was the soft, breathy sound of her smile.
Shandy had countless faces.
Not, of course, in the sense of some master of disguise out of a spy film.
She was a grown woman running this shop entirely on her own; she was, at times, a girl who could be willful and endearing; and she was the ultimate expression of a beauty divorced from the mundane world — a bisque doll.
“Then could I have a Shandy Gaff?”
“You really do like Shandy, don’t you.”
Mikoto could guess the answer without even meeting her eyes.
She’d deliberately tied the drink to her own stage name.
She was testing Mikoto.
The eyes that mimicked a full moon were, right now, probably shaped more like a waxing crescent — utterly indifferent to anyone who wished to touch that beauty, drifting alone through the night sky, laughing it off.
It was that truth behind the beauty — Shandy’s real face, hidden somewhere beneath all those other faces — that Mikoto wanted to uncover, and that was why she’d pushed open Antiqua’s door again. The cover charge here, steeper than any izakaya nearby, was a small price to pay if this was where being moonstruck ended up.
“Still can’t say. I imagine it’s the kind of thing you come to like the more you try it.”
“Then allow me to make sure you become thoroughly obsessed.”
The moon smiled, alluring and faintly wicked.
A narrow-stemmed cocktail glass appeared before her. The Shandy Gaff Mikoto had ordered was a low-proof short drink, ale beer and ginger ale mixed one-to-one. Rather than the usual silver cocktail shaker, it was made with a light stir of the bar spoon — a method chosen so as not to kill the lively carbonation, so it could be savored to the fullest.
“You seem interested in what my hands are doing.”
“I did a little digging. Drinking something down without knowing anything about it felt disrespectful to the drink.”
“Alcohol is a living thing, after all. Each one has its own character.”
“That’s still a world I don’t really understand.”
“I’d be happy to tutor you, if you keep coming back.”
There was something buoyant in Shandy’s voice. Having drawn out a glimpse of the pride she took as a bartender, Mikoto felt her heart lift.
Of course, “digging” was generous — it amounted to nothing more than half-baked trivia scraped off the internet. She’d tried making one herself, following the recipe to the letter, and the result spoke for itself. Nowhere close to the one Shandy made.
“Then, could I ask you something? About Shandy.”
“Ha, that’s suggestive. If you mean the drink, I’ll answer what I can.”
She agreed with a light laugh, but drew a line all the same, warning against going too deep.
An amber moon shines brightest precisely because it never shows you its far side.
That was how Mikoto chose to read it.
“I tried making one before and it wasn’t very good. I was wondering how you make yours.”
“Asking a bartender for their recipe is a bit of a breach of etiquette, you know?”
“Ah — sorry…”
Shandy pursed her lips, driving the point home.
Put that way, she had a point. It was practically asking her to give up a trade secret.
While Mikoto was still hesitating over whether to offer some excuse, a soft, breathy sound reached her ears — Shandy’s smile.
“…I’m joking. It’s not that impressive a recipe anyway.”
“You really do love your jokes, Shandy-san.”
“It’s not that I love jokes, you know.”
Recognizing it as classic Shandy-style humor, Mikoto let out a breath of relief. But just as the tension in her chest unwound, Shandy leaned in over the counter as if seizing the opening.
The pale, porcelain-white skin Mikoto had only been able to make out vaguely now emerged into view across the counter. Amber eyes, lit by the soft pink spotlight, met hers directly.
“No one dislikes a moment spent with someone beautiful, Kurosu-sama.”
Barely a breath after being scolded, she was hit with a line like that.
Mikoto’s pulse spiked. She could feel, in that instant, all the blood in her body rushing to her face. She couldn’t let Shandy notice.
If she looked away now, broke eye contact, she’d lose this game of love outright.
“True. Neither do I.”
Forcing herself to look composed, Mikoto smiled — the way Shandy would. The two of them kept smiling at each other like that for a while, locked in a staring match neither would break first. It ended in a draw.
“Now then, about that Shandy Gaff recipe… since we’re here, let me share the trade secret, just this once.”
She said it lightly, and produced a can and a small bottle, holding them up before Mikoto. Illuminated by a handheld light “so the labels show properly,” they turned out to be printed with brand names — store-bought products, apparently.
“The beer is a white ale, Wednesday’s Cat. The ginger ale is Wilkinson. Both are things you can pick up at any well-stocked supermarket. Just stir them one-to-one. Simple, isn’t it?”
“I appreciate it, but are you sure it’s all right to give that away?”
“Then why not try making one yourself? Let’s make it a contest — win, and the drink’s on the house.”
This was a challenge. Of course it was — she was testing Mikoto again.
Mikoto hesitated. But the method and the recipe had both been laid bare now. To back down without even trying would mean never getting the better of Shandy.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Let me regret it, then.”
A chilled, empty glass was set down on the coaster.
The Shandy Gaff showdown had begun.
Following her half-baked knowledge, Mikoto carefully poured the beer first, tilting the glass and letting it run down the side so the foam wouldn’t rise too much. She poured the ginger ale the same way, mixing the two liquors together.
“Go ahead and stir.” Handed the narrow bar spoon, she slid it in and gave it a single stir, careful not to let the carbonation escape while still letting the two amber liquids blend into one.
“That should do it. Would you say this is finished, Kurosu-sama?”
The finished Shandy Gaff looked, as far as she could tell, no different from the one Shandy had made for her before. Just the amber she’d been aiming for — the same shade as Shandy’s eyes.
As if applauding the effort, the carbonation crackled and popped like polite applause.
“Here. Tell me if it suits your taste.”
“Ha, this is a first — having a customer make one for me. I’m still on duty, so — just a little, then.”
She pressed her lips to the cocktail glass. Taking in the faintest sip of the Shandy Gaff Mikoto had made, she set the glass back down on its coaster.
“…Well, Shandy-san? How was it?”
“Let’s see. Which do you think?”
“That my skills were so impressive it caught you off guard?”
Leaning in over the counter once more, she wore the kind of smile that called to mind a mischievous little girl.
A Shandy Gaff showdown with the bartender, Shandy.
So fixated was Mikoto on winning or losing that contest, she hadn’t noticed the real one Shandy had actually set in motion.
“No — I meant the cocktail glass.”
“The glass? What do you mean by that…?”
Mikoto glanced at the glass Shandy had just kissed.
A well-polished, well-cared-for glass held almost no water droplets. Even if you pressed your lips to the rim and drank from it, any trace would sink back into the amber liquid within a few seconds.
Which meant — what, exactly?
“Now then. The glass in your hand, Kurosu-sama, is the very one I just kissed. I wonder — will you manage an indirect kiss with me?”
“Wh— what?”
“I never said this was a contest over who could make the better Shandy Gaff, you understand.”
Caught in the gaze of that mischievous, waxing-crescent amber stare, Mikoto finally grasped the true shape of the game.
It wasn’t a matter of wanting an indirect kiss, or not wanting one. It was that she, moonstruck, hadn’t even noticed she’d been rolling around in the palm of Shandy’s hand the entire time.
“…I concede.”
“Oh? So you don’t want to kiss me, then?”
“No — I just mean there’s no beating you, Shandy-san.”
“Ha. Then allow me to make your Shandy Gaff for you.”
Tucking the glass away, coaster and all, Shandy set about making the cocktail.
She poured the canned beer and ginger ale just as Mikoto had, gave it a light stir. The technique itself was worlds apart in gracefulness, but the actual steps were identical.
Having watched Shandy’s movements closely the whole time, Mikoto found a coaster and cocktail glass presented before her. On the amber surface, carbonation bubbles rising and popping, the pink spotlight glowed like a reflected full moon.
“Here — a Shandy Gaff, made to my own special recipe.”
“Special recipe? But you just told me the—”
“The trade secret is that I made it. There’s no way you could ever copy that, Kurosu-sama.”
“…I see.”
Mikoto couldn’t help laughing. There was nothing to do but accept it.
No matter how faithfully she bought the same ingredients by that recipe, no matter how much she mastered the technique of stirring, she’d never be able to reproduce it.
The Shandy Gaff that bartender Shandy made, and the story bound up in it, could never be tasted anywhere outside Antiqua.
“The secret ingredient is this shop, and Shandy-san herself.”
“And this moment, spent enjoying it with you, Kurosu-sama.”
Mikoto lifted the Shandy Gaff Shandy had made; Shandy lifted the one Mikoto had made. Together they raised their glasses, poised to toast, smiling softly at one another.
Mikoto searched for something clever to say and came up with nothing but a cliché. But even so — or rather, precisely because the moment called for it — she let the words come anyway.
“To our meeting, then — cheers.”
“A cliché isn’t so bad, every once in a while.”
Lightly, just barely touching. Glass met glass in a kiss of its own.