"It really is still here..."
Erald Sparrow, carrying emotions she couldn't quite discern herself, spoke hesitantly as she stopped in front of the sign.
"This is the place?"
Xia Liang, who was standing next to her, looked up toward the second floor of the small building but couldn't see anything and once again lowered her head. "Why would a cafe be on the second floor?"
"Maybe it's a matter of rent."
Erald Sparrow briefly shared her guess and walked a short distance inside the first floor with Xia Liang before stepping onto the staircase. "Anyway, let's go up and take a look."
Xia Liang didn't say anything else and just looked around curiously as she followed Erald Sparrow up the stairs.
Upon reaching the second floor, just by standing at the top of the stairs, they already slled the faint aroma of coffee and, upon looking around, they could see an open door.
At this point, Erald Sparrow felt a kind of hosickness stir within her heart.
If information was correct, then the cafe in front of her should be the one the old squad in Fangting City often visited, but could it still resemble what she rembered?
She didn't even know it had changed address and moved once. From this perspective, the cafe of her mories didn't actually exist anymore.
"What's wrong?" On the other side, seeing Erald Sparrow's sowhat stunned expression, Xia Liang asked in surprise.
"...No, nothing." Snapping out of her thoughts, Erald Sparrow shook her head lightly. "Just feeling a bit sentintal."
Without thinking further, she led Xia Liang into the cafe.
What ca into sight was a long bar with various equipnt for making coffee behind it. Approaching the bar, Erald Sparrow saw an elderly man busily at work.
The old man looked to be in his sixties, his hair partially graying, but overall he appeared spry and not too aged.
And most crucially, although his appearance had changed significantly from Erald Sparrow's mory, many features were enough to prove one thing—he was the owner from twenty years ago.
She could still recall the tis she and her old squad would go to the cafe, back when the owner, then in his forties and rely middle-aged, would stand behind that very spot at the bar, personally serving custors who ca and went.
When the incognito Magical Girls burst through the door, chatting and laughing, he would smile and scold them to quiet down before asking, "The usual?"
Although he would daily mutter such downspirited things as "Schoolgirls should hurry ho and study," he would still reserve their usual table, setting aside a special seat for these "little regulars."
He and the Magical Girls were never particularly close, nor did they seek to understand each other, but as the cafe's owner and custors within that space, they shared an unspoken understanding.
However, Erald Sparrow later left the Magical Girls' team and had never visited this place again with her squadmates. The image of the owner in her mory had been frozen in his forties.
Now, seeing the old man behind the bar, the once blurry face in her mory beca clear once more, but things had changed.
Upon seeing soone approaching, the old man looked up from his work, and noticing the two very young girls, he was initially surprised, raising his eyebrows, then quickly smoothed them out, adopting his professional business deanor to greet them:
"Welco, young ladies, what can I get for you?"
"Nothing much, just here looking around," Erald Sparrow replied honestly.
"Looking around? Heh, young lady, we don't really have any interesting toys here."
The old man laughed helplessly, thinking it was just a joke or a prank, but as his gaze settled on Erald Sparrow's blue hair, he suddenly paused.
Blue hair wasn't a common color.
It was rumored that people from foreign lands had blue hair, but Fangting City, being a relatively secluded city in the Donghua Region, wasn't a place where many foreigners lingered for long.
In fact, with the old man's years of experience, he had only seen a few people with blue hair.
And among the custors he had dealt with in his own cafe with that hair color, there was only one person in his mory.
"You... could it be..."
First, he adjusted his glasses and squinted, beginning to speak in a tone not even he was sure of, but then slowly beca more certain. "Did your mother send you here?"
His question rendered Erald Sparrow's already sowhat sorrowful eyes dead still.
"...Sothing like that."
But she knew that such a misunderstanding wouldn't be harmful to her—she couldn't explain to a normal person that she was a Magical Girl, whose appearance didn't change with ti once transford—going along with what he said was the more rational choice.
Her affirmation made the old man's face light up with sudden recognition.
"I knew it!"
As though reminiscing sothing, he abruptly patted the counter and pointed at Erald Sparrow, "I rember now. About ten or so years ago, a group of girls often ca to my shop. One of the short ones had blue hair just like you, and... well, I can't rember what she looked like, but was it similar?"
After saying this, he couldn't help but turn to look at Xia Liang, examining her face carefully: "And you... are you also one of the daughters of that group of girls? But you don't seem to resemble them that much?"
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