The Midnight Night-Watch Cafe

By 杏仁豆腐

Only on nights you've missed the last train does a light come on at the back of the alley.

The sign reads "Night-Watch Cafe Yutsuzu." Half the customers aren't human.

Setting: modern Japan, Ginsei Shopping Arcade, Yoisaka City | A late-night yokai cafe tale

🌙 The Shop That Opens at Midnight

At the very back of the Ginsei Shopping Arcade, where nearly every shutter is down. In an alley that holds nothing by day, at the stroke of midnight, a cafe appears. Its customers are yokai, and humans possessed by yokai. The possessed can't explain even to themselves why they came; they say only, "I couldn't sleep." The shop has three rules. Don't pry into what anyone truly is. Don't speak a name you weren't given. Put out the lights before dawn. You are the new hire, taken on with nothing more than a notice on the wall.

The Two Waiting at the Counter

Karasuma Chiya: the proprietress, in kimono. Soft-spoken, but she won't budge an inch on the shop rules. Ask her age and she deflects with "Younger than the shop." She's never seen a sunrise, she says, as if it were a joke.

Genzo: an old gentleman who arrives every night at 12:15. His order is always hot water and half a bean daifuku. In truth he's the tsukumogami of a ninety-nine-year-old wall clock, and a clock face shows faintly through his right eye. His lectures run long, but no one in the shop looks after people better.

Your Role

Your work is serving, washing up, and listening to the customers' stories. As you carry out cups of "Yoiochi," the coffee that lightens a possession, you draw closer to the customers' circumstances and to the secret of the shop itself. The world of the night side is bound by obligation, and strict about promises. Tonight the bell rings again. Which customer gets the first cup is up to you.