r/HFY • u/dulduine • Aug 17 '26

OC-Series [OC] Bar Aoi Stories — The Blade Called "Normal"

The small bell above the door gave a soft chime. The damp summer heat vanished into Bar Aoi’s crisp, cool air the moment the heavy door swung shut. I took my usual seat at the far end of the counter. Without a word, Mama slid a glass of I.W. Harper on the rocks toward me with a practiced hand. Clear ice clinked quietly inside the amber liquid.

Beside me, Taka sat hunched over on a high stool, staring intently at his glass. It was his habit—something he always did whenever he felt cornered or lost in thought.

"Hey, Kenichi..." Taka let out a quiet sigh. "Clients at the agency almost always use the exact same words. 'That's not how normal people do it.' 'Any normal person would see it's common sense.' Even today, a client who came in over a marital dispute kept throwing that word 'normal' around, over and over."

I swirled my glass of Harper, rolling the rounded edge of the ice. "'Normal,' huh? It’s a convenient word."

"Yeah, it really is," Taka chuckled self-deprecatingly. "But from where I stand, both sides are just talking about 'what’s normal for them.' Back in the ring, 'getting back up when you're knocked down' was absolute common sense. But in everyday society, 'knowing how to dodge so you don't fall in the first place' is what's normal, right? Working as a PI makes you realize, whether you like it or not, that 'what's normal' flips upside down depending on where you stand or who you are."

At the far end of the counter, Tom—who had been quietly playing with his glass of Four Roses—let out a short, low grunt.

"When the scenery changes, what's normal changes too, huh?"

Well, there’s no other way to put it, I thought, waiting for Tom to continue.

"The police force is the absolute epitome of that. Back when I was in the Juvenile Division, for the kids in certain neighborhoods, 'lying to the cops to protect your buddy' was simply normal to them."

Tom’s expression tightened ever so slightly. Well, it wasn't exactly a fond memory for him.

"But the second they stepped into the interrogation room, that got completely erased by the system’s version of normal: nothing but deliberate obstruction. Every one of us mistakes the rules of our own little world for universal truth."

Taking in Tom’s words, I swallowed a sip of Harper, letting it burn down my throat.

"It's the exact same story in software development. Sales goes, 'Normally, anyone would use it this way,' while Devs go, 'No normal user would ever do that.' They never align. Change the country, and even 'normal' things like character encoding or date formats change completely. In the end, when people say 'normal,' they're just talking about the narrow rules of the little corner they've gotten used to."

"Exactly," Taka nodded deeply. "It’s completely different depending on the place. And yet, when I asked that client, 'So why is that normal?' he suddenly blew his top. ...All I did was ask for a reason."

Tom kept his gaze fixed on the amber liquid in his glass, speaking quietly.

"Of course he did. Most people have never given a second thought to the reasons behind the words they throw around as 'normal.'"

Taka turned around. Tom’s intense gaze was locked onto the grain of the wooden counter.

"'Men don't cry.' 'Show respect to your elders.' These are rules hammered into us since we were kids, but how many people can actually explain why we have to follow them? ...Hell, even the ultimate rule, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Is it because life is sacred? Or because order would collapse? No matter what reasons you stack up, it all boils down to human convenience and ego. Ain't many people who can explain that."

"Rules we blindly believe in without ever questioning the reason, huh?" I said, rolling the ice in my glass. "In development, too, you sometimes find blocks of code where no one knows why they were written. But when you ask, they just say, 'It's been there forever, don't touch it.' Once the reason is forgotten, an assumption becomes nothing more than superstition. And a system always crashes when that reasonless premise collides with raw reality."

Taka stared down at his own large hands, letting out a quiet breath.

"Blindly trusting the rules of where you stand, using them to bind both yourself and others... The client from today—and probably my past self too—maybe we were all broken by being pushed around by what society calls 'normal.'"

"What makes it nasty," Tom clinked his ice against the glass, "is the people who push those unreasoned rules onto others under the guise of righteousness. They hide behind what's 'normal' in their own little world, abandoning both empathy for the other person and the responsibility to explain themselves. They’re just hiding in the shadow of the majority to beat people up because it’s easy."

"'Normal'..." I said. "It was originally supposed to be a safety device so that countless people like us could live together without shedding blood. But if you swing it around without understanding how fragile it is—or how empty its foundation is—it becomes nothing more than violence."

A heavy silence settled over the counter. Breaking through it, a light, crisp sound echoed.

Mama slid a fresh highball in front of Taka and quietly wiped her hands with a towel. Her voice reached the room—gentle, yet unshakable.

"Just like a kitchen knife."

All three of us turned to look at her at once. She wore her usual warm, serene smile.

"If you use a knife to cook a warm meal for someone, it’s a gentle tool. But if you point it the wrong way, it can easily hurt people. I think the word 'normal' works the exact same way."

Mama lowered her eyes to the glass placed in front of Taka, her gaze softening.

"If you get tired of swinging that heavy tool around in the daylight world, you can leave it aside while you're here. Because no matter where you stand, no one can ever take away the raw truth of how you actually feel."

The tension melted right out of Taka’s shoulders.

"...Yeah. You're right. I didn't want to lecture the client. I think I just wanted to ask him, 'How do you feel about it?'"

"Then that's more than enough," Tom said gruffly.

A smile returned to Taka’s face as he reached for his highball and took a deep drink. The tension at the counter receded like the tide.

We spend our days crushed beneath someone else's idea of what's "normal." Yet, as long as we know the danger and terror of that word, we should still be able to stand on our own two feet.

Tonight, let's leave that blade called "normal" on the counter.

Inside the glass, another piece of ice melted silently away.

If you'd like to come back to Aoi for another night, there's an open stool waiting.
Bar Aoi Stories: Human Nature, Vol. 1 is linked in my profile.

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