by Shouji Gatou
Amagi Brilliant Park was infamous around western Tokyo as a crummy amusement park, but... That just wasn’t true. This place was a wonderland!
“This plaza was in an awful state until last month, fumo,” Moffle-san whispered to me. “We all worked hard to fix it up, fumo. Even with no budget, we all chipped in... It was a lot of hard, late nights, but I’d say we got it looking presentable, fumo.”
After everything that had happened that morning, I had honestly grown disillusioned with this park. But now, I was starting to feel like I wanted to see a little more of this place—this place where I worked. That was the mysterious magic that this view had worked on me.
“Now, let’s start the fun, fumo.” Moffle-san headed for the center of the plaza. As he walked away from me, he put out an aura that was difficult to describe.
I felt like I had seen it somewhere before. It reminded me of... my father, I think. My father had been a firefighter. Sometimes, he had had to leave home on an urgent call, and when he walked out of the house, he looked a bit like that. Even though they were very different men, in very different professions... I wondered why I felt that way. It was hard to say.
“Oh, Yuna-chan! Look! It’s Moffle!” A family with a little girl walked right up to Moffle-san.
Moffle-san tilted his head cutely and waved. The girl hesitated a little at first, then ran right up to him and grabbed his sleeve. Moffle patted the girl’s head with his plush hand. The girl finally smiled; her parents were beaming.
The Moffle-san before me now wasn’t that nasty cast member who had berated the new employees. He was the sweet, kind Moffle that I hugged every night. It was like some kind of spell had been cast.
Of course, I couldn’t just stand here admiring him. I was failing in my job as an assistant!
The guest family wanted to take a picture with Moffle, but I was just standing there! The next thing I knew, they were asking another guest to take their picture! Moffle-san glared at me. So scary!
After interacting with the guests for a while, Moffle-san held out his hand to me. He was asking me for his juggling balls, but I didn’t realize that. I just stuck my own right hand out, like I was asking for a dog’s paw. Moffle-san glared at me. So scary!
An elderly guest asked me for directions. He seemed to be looking for an attraction called Aquario, but I had no idea where it was. While I panicked and stammered, he eventually took out his pamphlet map and wandered off on his own. Moffle-san’s eyes stared daggers into me. So scary!
The next thing I knew, we had spent an hour in that plaza. I felt like I was forgetting something important. That’s right! He was supposed to take a break every thirty minutes! I was supposed to beckon to Moffle-san and take him backstage... wasn’t I?
Perhaps tired of waiting, Moffle-san turned and ran off backstage, his feet squeaking as he went. What else could I do but follow after him?
“You... You incompetent!” Moffle-san screamed at me as we made it backstage again. “Your job is to assist me, fumo! You did nothing! What are we even paying you for?! Do you even want to be here?!”
“Um... Um, sorry...”
“Here we go again! Is “um” and “sorry” all you ever say, fumo? Do you speak Japanese, fumo? Were you born in the Ukraine, fumo? I’d be better off by myself at this rate, fumo!”
“I’m s-so—”
“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry, fumo!”
“Ah... wahhhh...” Lacking any idea of what to say, I burst out crying. I knew that crying at work was bad, but that’s just the way women are, you know? I couldn’t help it!
We were entering the usual pattern. My classmates were patient, doing everything they could to look after me, yet I always betrayed their expectations. Eventually they’d get annoyed, get disappointed, and then throw a few words of consolation at me before walking away.
Moffle-san was going to do the same thing. It was inevitable. After all, I was worthless.
“Ahh... sor—ahh... um...” While I choked and sniffled, Moffle-san let out a deep sigh.
An awkward silence reigned. Next, he was going to say, “Fine, you can go,” because those were the simplest words anyone could use to get my worthless self out of their sight. I wished he’d just say them already. Then I could just go home and bury myself in my bed. I could go back to being my usual pathetic self.
But here’s what Moffle-san said instead: “You’ll do a better job next time, fumo. Is there anything you don’t get?”
Moffle-san had no intention of letting me run away. He dragged me out in front of the guests and forced me to interact with them again.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to get the hang of things any time soon. It was pathetic. The guests sighed at me, scoffed at me, yelled at me... and each time, I started to panic. I think Moffle-san and the rest of the cast must have covered for me then, but I was in such a panic that I don’t actually know what they did.
I was so afraid, so self-pitying, so embarrassed... I was on the verge of tears again and again! Each time I started to lose my composure, Moffle-san would take me backstage and ask, “Is there anything you don’t get?”
At first, I couldn’t say anything. But the third or fourth time, I timidly asked him: “U-Um... If I want to take someone’s picture... how do I ask them for it?”
Then, instead of yelling, Moffle-san just said calmly: “Moffu. When that happens, you can say ‘Sir (or Ma’am), would you like a photo with Moffle?’ Say it to me for practice, fumo.”
“...Yes. Um...”
“Go on.”
“...S-Sir... Would you like a photo with Moffle-san?”
“Not ‘Moffle-san.’ Say ‘Moffle,’ fumo. One more time.”
“S-Sir... Would you like a photo with Moffle?”
“Don’t stutter. One more time.”
“Sir, would you... like a photo with Moffle?”
Moffle-san looked at me carefully for a moment, then gave a small nod. “...Good enough. You see how it works now, fumo?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Then is there anything else you don’t get?”
My miserable day came to an end. Exhausted, I cleaned out the House of Sweets as Moffle-san ordered, and then changed back into street clothes in the cast bathroom. I was under a ton of stress, and I felt completely numb, but I still had to go put my uniform on Moffle-san’s work bench.
The uniform was covered in my gross sweat, and I didn’t really want to hand it over to someone else... but I couldn’t actually say that. I folded up the uniform and was heading to the work bench when I heard some people talking around the corner.
It sounded like Moffle-san and Kanie-senpai.
“...So, how’d it go?” Kanie-senpai asked.
“It was a disaster, fumo. She can’t even talk to the guests. She actually started crying at one point. If anyone was going to cry, it should have been me, fumo!”
They were talking about me. They were talking about my day at work. My arms and legs, limp from exhaustion, suddenly tensed up again.
“Any hope for her?” Kanie-senpai wanted to know. “If she’s not cut out for the service industry, we could move her to backstage work...”
“I’m not sure. It might not be about that, fumo.”
“Really?”
“Moffu. Seiya, you were a performer once, right?”
“...Yes, and?” There was a stiffness in Kanie-senpai’s voice.
“How’d you feel the first time you went on stage, fumo? You were nervous, weren’t you?”
“Hmm... I suppose I was.”
“You’ve got more guts than most people, fumo, but I bet even you got nervous out there. So you can probably imagine what it was like for a little introvert like her, fumo.”
“Hmm...”
“Whether it’s an audience of hundreds or just two or three, putting yourself out there is scary, fumo. It’s really, really scary. So, ah... you know. It’s hard to tell from just the first day, fumo.”
It was a surprisingly evasiv
e statement. Kanie-senpai seemed to pick up on that, too.
“What’s this, hmm? You’re covering for a part-timer?”
“I wouldn’t say...”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“Moffu. Anyway, I was especially hard on her today. If she runs away because of that, it’ll be a sign that she’s got nothing to offer us, fumo. She wouldn’t last long even if I was kind to her.”
“That’s fine, just drop the agoge, okay?”
“Roger that, fumo.”
I heard Kanie-senpai’s footsteps moving away, which suggested that their talk was over. Having listened in the whole time and not knowing what to do, I just stood there, frozen. I was surprised to hear them having such a laid-back conversation after they’d been at each other’s throats that morning. Maybe they were actually friends? And... Kanie-senpai used to be a performer? What did that mean? He seemed to have no friends other than Sento-senpai(?) at school, and I’d been convinced that he had no social skills at all.
“Hey, rookie. Did you catch all that, fumo?”
“Eeek?!” I let out a screech. It seemed Moffle-san knew that I was listening in! Before I could come up with a good excuse though, he was in front of me.
“Um, um, sorry, sorry. I... I...”
“Ahh, it’s fine, fumo.” Moffle-san waved it away dismissively with his paw. “I was going to explain all of that to you, anyway. This just saves me time, fumo.”
Moffle-san snatched the uniform from my hands, then squeaked back to his work space. Unsure of what to do, I followed after him.
“...I know you had a hard time today, fumo. Seiya told me you’re a first year in high school, right? ‘I don’t fit in at my new school, so I’ll get a job and have fun there.’ Is that what you’ve deluded yourself into believing, fumo?”
“Ah...” He was right on the money. Could everyone here read minds? “H-How... did you know?”
“It was obvious from watching you today, fumo. That’s what it means to be an adult, fumo.” Moffle-san’s words were really insightful, but I felt a little uncomfortable having a plush rodent dissecting my psyche... “...Anyway, what I told Seiya earlier was the truth. I was especially hard on you today, fumo.”
“Um, but then...”
“Now, I’ll also be hard on you tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. I’m going to keep grinding away at you forever, fumo. Don’t underestimate the service industry.”
“Nngh...”
“Better quit now if you don’t like it, fumo. I won’t have you wasting both of our time.”
“......”
“Got it? Then we’re done here. Dismissed, fumo.”
The next day was Sunday morning, and I didn’t want to go to work at all. I didn’t have an appetite, and my stomach hurt, but I thought I should at least drink some milk. When I peeked into the fridge, I also saw some apple pie left over from last night; Mom had made it to celebrate my first day at work.
She’d cut back on the sugar so it wasn’t incredibly delicious, but it was still a really good pie. She had left a piece in front of Dad on the family altar, and prayed fervently.
It was morning now. Mom was off at her job at a family restaurant, so I was alone in the house. I could have just pulled the covers over my head and pretended like none of it had ever happened.
But. But... I had eaten that apple pie for breakfast, and the sweet-sourness had brought tears to my eyes.
Just one more day. I would work one more day at that awful place. If I could manage that, then surely the apple pie would forgive me.
“You’re late! Get us ready to open right away, fumo!” Moffle-san yelled. Such an awful way to treat someone! Even though I’d made it to work, fighting the urge to throw up the whole way!
I ran to my locker. He’d finished the final sewing on my uniform, and put it up neatly on a hanger. I tried it on, and it fit perfectly. He’d done an amazing job.
The minute I finished changing, Moffle-san took me all around, telling me “do this, do that.” I was rushing around everywhere and so busy that I barely had time to think, let alone worry.
There were a few other part-time workers in Moffle’s House of Sweets, and compared to the industrious Moffle-san, they were all pretty laid-back. They didn’t get yelled at, though. They seemed to know what they were doing, so they just kept working at their own leisurely pace without needing Moffle-san to tell them anything.
“He’s really biting your head off, huh?” one of my senpai workers said to me in the brief time before the park opened and the guests arrived. “The old man’s really thrown himself back into things since they dodged the bullet of the park closing last month. He’d been really slacking before.” This senpai part-timer had been working at the House of Sweets for about a year. He was in college, he said, so he was going to be quitting soon to look for a real job.
But, despite screaming at me as much as he did, Moffle-san wasn’t as hard on my senpais. Why was that? I asked.
“Oh, well... Probably just because you screw up all the time.”
It was such a reasonable answer that I couldn’t even object. So depressing!
While we finished up the last of our odd jobs, opening time arrived and the guests started trickling in. Moffle-san and I were waiting at the end of the attraction route to take photos with the guests when they finished the course. It wasn’t all that different from the work I’d done at Entrance Square yesterday, so I managed to get through it this time without getting too many glares thrown my way.
The real trouble came about an hour later. After seeing off a group from a senior organization, Moffle-san spoke to me. “Okay, we’ve done enough here, fumo. I have a meeting I need to attend, so I’ll need you to sub for me, fumo.”
“Er?” I asked nervously.
“This way, this way. C’mon, fumo.”
Moffle-san led me to the backstage storeroom and offered me a Moffle-san suit, complete with patissier’s costume and cook’s hat, plush fur, and cute round fluffy head.
“Um, um... what is this?” I asked.
“It’s my double, fumo. I need you to put this on and take commemorative photos at the House of Sweets while I do some work backstage.”
“Ah, right... But, um...”
What did he mean, “my double”? I mean, I knew that amusement parks usually had spare suits for their costume characters. But while the spare was well-made, it was clearly a costume, and looked all the shabbier compared to Moffle-san’s. It had none of that realism and life-like aura.
I was a little hesitant to wear the costume of someone whose real face I’d never even seen, but if I had to wear one, I’d prefer it to be the better quality one. So I worked hard to assert myself.
“Um, i-if I could... I’d like to wear that one instead...”
Moffle-san knitted his brow dubiously (it really was a well-made costume) and turned to look behind him. There was just an old wall there.
“Fumo?” Moffle-san pointed at himself with his paw, as if to say “What, you mean me?”
“Yes... Could I have your costume?”
“Ahh. Moffu.” Moffle-san nodded in understanding. “I can’t take it off, fumo.”
“...?” I was confused.
“I said, I can’t take it off, fumo. There’s no one inside.”
I didn’t understand what he was saying. I’d heard that theme parks put up a front about their mascot characters, claiming “there’s no one inside,” but...
“You don’t get it, fumo? Ah, what a pain in the...” Moffle-san muttered to himself, then opened his mouth wide and chomped down on my hand. Rather than feeling cloth, as I was expecting, my fingers were greeted by the wetness of a living thing. There was... a tongue?! And teeth?!
“Eek?!”
It wasn’t especially slimy or unpleasant. Having my hand in Moffle-san’s moffly mouth felt more like it did when I was little and let my pet hamster nom on my finger.
“Wha? Huh? Wa...?!” I withdrew my hand and backed int
o a corner at full speed.
Moffle-san didn’t pursue me. He just snorted and folded his arms, smacking his ω lips as if he’d just tasted something unpleasant.
“You get it, fumo? I’m just me.”
“S-Sexual harassment...”
“Oh, pipe down. I just wanted to get my point across in the quickest way possible, fumo. ...The point is, I come from the magical realm, Maple Land. I’m the real deal. It’s not a top secret thing, so it’ll save us time if I just tell you now, fumo. Get it? Now put that costume on and double for me, fumo.” Moffle-san shoved the costume head into my hands.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of confusion. Moffle-san had said there was nobody ‘inside the suit’; that he was a real fairy from a magical land. Which meant that Moffle-san was “the real Moffle.”
It was awful. It was cruel. It was too much.
The kind, sweet Moffle; the Fairy of Sweets, Moffle... he just couldn’t be that rotten, nasty, high-and-mighty bully, Moffle-san!
Making matters worse was a conversation we had that evening. He was eating some donuts brought in as refreshments, and let out a sigh: “Donuts again? I’m not fond of sweet things, fumo...”
“B-But aren’t you the Fairy of Sweets?” I objected. “You’re supposed to love donuts...”
“Ah, that’s all ad copy,” he scoffed. “We did this collaboration with Señor Donut... you know, that famous chain.”
“Yes, I love them!”
“For the campaign, they decided—without my input—to say that I like donuts, so now I have to eat donuts every day during my breaks. What am I, some American cop? It’s just annoying, fumo.”
“Um, then... what sweets do you like?”
“Well... if pressed, I’d say salami, I reckon.”
Isn’t that a drinking snack, not a sweet? I thought.
