Episode 104: That's Better
Three grown men stepped into the house. Their faces might have passed for Korean, and yet the air around them was subtly, unmistakably something else.
"For preparing a place for us, we offer our deepest thanks."
When the one who spoke for them bowed, the other two followed.
"Please, sit. It seems we have a great deal to discuss."
Dan Miryu extended a hand, inviting them in.
"Yes. Thank you."
Sweat beaded thick across the man's brow, and he did not look well at all. The strain and the stress showed through, far too plainly.
"Hah. Said you were coming, but I didn't think you'd actually show."
Hwang Seokgu clicked his tongue loudly enough to be heard on purpose. He had been badly burned by the Shrine once already, and no good manners were going to come of that.
"Well then. You came in carrying the words apology and alliance. Let's hear them."
He laced his fingers and set them against his chin. Under my gaze the three men flinched and trembled, big as they were, in a way that did not suit their size at all.
I was the one who had called the Shrine here. The place was our house. Dan Miryu's had been smashed to pieces by these people, and it was no fit ground for a meeting.
As for how I had called them, I had used the shrine maiden we were holding hostage. A few words from me, and she had burst into tears in the conference room and put the call through to a Shrine branch herself.
We had taken the stance that if they wanted to talk, they could come to us, and a man calling himself Acting Branch Chief Yamadera had accepted. He could not have refused.
They had already done what they had done, and Dan Miryu was hunting them with fire in his eyes. The only difference was whether they walked out, or got beaten out.
Time passed, and the men arrived before us.
"Before we speak, allow us to convey that what happened before was not the will of the Shrine."
The representative opened. His Korean was fluent. They had found someone who had learned it somewhere and stood him up in front of us.
Hwang Seokgu growled.
"Coming into Korea wasn't your will? Who are you taking for an open fool? Even if you offered your necks this instant, it wouldn't be enough to cool me off."
At the old tiger's threat, the representative's eyes shook hard.
"We offer our sincere apologies for what befell Mr. Hwang Seokgu. But that truly was not the Shrine's true intent. It was, from beginning to end, nothing but the leadership of that time acting on its own."
"On its own? Thrashing around, trying to cut off the tail."
Claws skirred across the tabletop.
That table was expensive.
"And where did the man who held the post run off to, that you lot came instead? Bolted because he didn't want the responsibility?"
"N-no. Acting Branch Chief Yamadera has already received ample punishment."
The man beside him set the box he had been carrying up on the table. He undid the clasp and opened it, and a raw smell of blood brushed the nose.
"...They really will try anything!"
The moment he saw what the clasp had been hiding, Hwang Seokgu slammed the lid shut.
"We are sorry. If we were to apologize, this seemed the best we could offer..."
"Just pay in money. Put that thing away."
I felt like a daimyo out of the Sengoku period. Had they received gifts like this back then, too?
"Of course a modest indemnity has also been prepared. Please, accept it."
"We don't need it."
Dan Miryu cut him off, flat. The chill of it was sharp enough to part flesh.
"We don't need an alliance, and we don't need an apology. Get out of Korea. That is the condition we ask of the Shrine."
"B-but we wish to lend a hand in bringing down Heavenly Punishment, enemy of the world. It need not be announced officially."
"And you expect us to believe that?"
Making an alliance with a former enemy because your interests happen to align is hardly rare in the history of the world. But nothing is more dangerous than an ally you cannot trust.
How dangerous is it to fight an enemy with a knife already strapped to your own back, and they wanted us to trust them?
Their attitude was a problem, too.
They were groveling far too low.
With the Shrine's power, arrogance would not even have been strange, and yet they carried on as if failing to seal this alliance would bring the sky down. Something they had swallowed wrong.
In short, these men were nothing but messengers. Scarecrows, with the will cut out of them.
"Call your person in charge. From the start, you aren't of the rank for this."
The men muttered among themselves, then produced a laptop.
Of course. Was this some procedure peculiar to the Japanese?
The representative worked the keys, and a video call connected somewhere.
Against a dark background, a beauty with yellow-blonde hair appeared in a kimono.
"It is a pleasure. I am the Great Shrine Maiden who serves the great Amaterasu. I am called Onodera."
Unlike the men, she spoke Japanese.
Hwang Seokgu's brow crumpled hard.
The representative stumbled through a translation and passed the meaning along.
"We find the unfortunate events in Korea deeply regrettable. We never imagined that the personnel we dispatched for the sake of good relations with Korea would, out of excessive loyalty, cause such an incident. This was indeed a failing on our side, and we offer our sincere apologies."
Unbelievable. She had piled every fault onto the dead and written the Shrine off as having known nothing.
"Those responsible have been punished as severely as we are able. Do set your anger aside."
"Setting that aside, leave Korea."
Dan Miryu's voice was hard.
The Great Shrine Maiden touched her fan to her lips and smiled with her eyes.
"Oh my. Your anger has not cooled, I see. Was the apology from our subordinate not to your liking? It is said that a true gentleman sets small things aside for the sake of the greater cause."
The fan snapped open. A softly stirring breeze moved through the Great Shrine Maiden's hair.
"Though, truly... if you were gentlemen, we would not be meeting now. Dear me. I misspoke."
The needling was first-rate. So that little speech meant we were small inside, refusing even an apology, and throwing a tantrum with no manners just to demand the person in charge?
She was not a politician. Was a maiden who served a god allowed to talk like that?
She was turning people into nuisances.
Hwang Seokgu's sleeve split with a sharp rip. Yellow fur bristled up out of his skin, and muscle swelled like a balloon.
"I'll step out to the restroom a moment."
Careful that the maiden would not see, Hwang Seokgu rose from his seat. The door opened, and the sound of him walking down the hall came through clear as life.
Dan Miryu, unlike Hwang Seokgu, kept a poker face. Only the terrible heat banked in his eyes looked ready to lance out as a beam.
"So. Will you be leaving Korea? Or will you not?"
"Compose yourself, O Guardian of Korea. Do not settle the matter so hastily. Might you not take the time, and let the relationship grow firm?"
The Great Shrine Maiden turned her body, just slightly. Beneath the kimono, the precarious line of her collarbone seemed to beckon.
"Korea and Japan have long been neighbors, and our diplomatic relations are sound. Would it not be proper for us to follow our nations in this?"
"I'm sorry, but that will be difficult."
"Oh my. Pardon me."
A soft laugh. The Great Shrine Maiden's ease carried through the laptop.
I caught Dan Miryu's eye. Time to switch.
He turned the laptop so that she was looking at me.
"And who might you be?"
"An ordinary phantom thief, cooperating with Mr. Dan Miryu. A pleasure, Ms. Onodera."
"Yes, well. Hello?"
The Great Shrine Maiden looked strangely at me in my mask, the look of someone who could not fathom why a person like this had popped out.
"Ms. Onodera, you said this incident was not the will of the Shrine?"
"Yes. I have said so several times already..."
"Strange. That's different from what we heard."
"What baseless talk is this..."
"There is a basis. A shrine maiden who served under you testified herself. Ms. Onodera Io."
"...What?"
I snapped my fingers.
"You called?!?!"
The door banged open, and our shrine maiden arrived in a sliding dogeza.
"K-Kana? How? You were supposed to be dea—!"
"I was listening from the very start! That wicked vixen is lying!"
"What nonsense is this!"
The Great Shrine Maiden was shaken, as if she had seen a person who ought not to exist.
"Why so startled? We made contact with the Shrine in Korea through the shrine maiden in the first place."
"...!"
The Great Shrine Maiden chewed her lip.
"Can't you even manage your own subordinates? We did everything we could on this side, and you couldn't even get the information straight?"
The Great Shrine Maiden opened her fan. Her expression was hidden, but the brow twitching above it was funny.
"Regrettably, I'm going to have to be rude. Call the one above you."
"...I am the Shrine's representative. There is no one but me."
"There you go, lying again. Why wouldn't there be?"
"That's right! That woman is lying!"
Maiden, you already know all of this. Please stop clinging to my leg. It's too much.
"How noisy. Throw that person out at once. She is nothing but a hindrance."
"Shut up! You privileged pig! A bitch who peddles gods for a living dares try to throw me out, me who believes in a real god!"
"...Maiden. Out."
The vitality drug had worn off. I had only meant to take a few pieces of testimony. Like this, she was useless.
"O god! I, I— I ammmm—!"
Dan Miryu and I threw her out together. Pele, drawn by the noise, dragged the maiden off.
"There was a commotion. Ignore it. Call the head, and be quick about it."
"Haa... There is no talking to you. Never in my life have I met with such rudeness."
"Shrine Priest Tsukumi."
"...!"
At the sudden blow, the maiden's face went rigid.
"I know you're watching every bit of this, Shrine Priest. Let's stop wasting time."
"The conversation ends here. We shall consider that this discussion never took place."
The laptop screen went dark.
At the same moment, the three men collapsed as if falling asleep.
"He's coming."
"Yes. He is coming."
The laptop shuddered. It shook as if an earthquake had struck, and then the screen lit bright and showed a man seated in lotus position.
When the man opened his mouth, a voice rang inside the head.
"I have been discourteous to you both. I am Tsukumi, Shrine Priest."
"That's better."
Not an insect. A person. A proper person, the sort who would draw the insects this way.
"Let's hear what the Apostle of the Three Precious Ones has in mind."
As if he had been waiting for those words, at the corner of the Shrine Priest's mouth a small, thin smile drew itself.