Transform into a magical girl after getting off work

"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."

Emerald 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 Emerald Sparrow up the stairs.

Upon reaching the second floor, just by standing at the top of the stairs, they already smelled the faint aroma of coffee and, upon looking around, they could see an open door.

At this point, Emerald Sparrow felt a kind of homesickness 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 remembered?

She didn\'t even know it had changed address and moved once. From this perspective, the cafe of her memories didn\'t actually exist anymore.

"What\'s wrong?" On the other side, seeing Emerald Sparrow\'s somewhat stunned expression, Xia Liang asked in surprise.

"...No, nothing." Snapping out of her thoughts, Emerald Sparrow shook her head lightly. "Just feeling a bit sentimental."

Without thinking further, she led Xia Liang into the cafe.

What came into sight was a long bar with various equipment for making coffee behind it. Approaching the bar, Emerald 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 Emerald Sparrow\'s memory, many features were enough to prove one thing—he was the owner from twenty years ago.

She could still recall the times she and her old squad would go to the cafe, back when the owner, then in his forties and merely middle-aged, would stand behind that very spot at the bar, personally serving customers who came 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 home 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 customers within that space, they shared an unspoken understanding.

However, Emerald Sparrow later left the Magical Girls\' team and had never visited this place again with her squadmates. The image of the owner in her memory had been frozen in his forties.

Now, seeing the old man behind the bar, the once blurry face in her memory became clear once more, but things had changed.

Upon seeing someone 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 demeanor to greet them:n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Welcome, young ladies, what can I get for you?"

"Nothing much, just here looking around," Emerald 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 Emerald 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 customers he had dealt with in his own cafe with that hair color, there was only one person in his memory.

"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 became more certain. "Did your mother send you here?"

His question rendered Emerald Sparrow\'s already somewhat sorrowful eyes dead still.

"...Something 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 time once transformed—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 something, he abruptly patted the counter and pointed at Emerald Sparrow, "I remember now. About ten or so years ago, a group of girls often came to my shop. One of the short ones had blue hair just like you, and... well, I can\'t remember 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?"