For Now, You Need Not Know
A red dot on a field of white. Far off, a spot no larger than a ten-yen coin sat fixed in place.
"Hoo..."
Black hair bound up over her head, shoulders bared and white as snow, Kotori held the bowstring against her cheek and let the breath slip out low. She could feel four pairs of eyes on her back. One of them ran deep. An armored warrior, cold and solemn, watched the girl as if he meant to take her apart.
It was the sort of gaze that ought to have crushed her, and yet she split the world cleanly from herself. In her eyes there was nothing but the target.
Two kilometers lay between them. No distance a bow could ever reach.
She paid the hopeless gap no mind. She was already too noble to be filed among ordinary humans.
The wind that had stood in her way died down. Even the drifting clouds became spectators and stopped where they were.
Her eyes lit with the sun. Her fingers eased open, and the arrow flew.
It became a writhing dragon, struck the target, and pierced it—no, went past piercing, and shattered it to nothing.
Boom!
A muffled blast, like a bomb going off. The noise was hers.
"Well done."
The armored warrior smiled faintly as he praised her. Kotori flashed a V with her fingers.
"This much ought to be easy, don't you think?"
"Of course. Look who taught you."
The armored warrior, Susanoo, tossed her a towel. One shot, and Kotori was soaked through with sweat. She wiped her face.
"Good work. You really are my child."
Amaterasu came at a trot and began kneading Kotori's shoulders. The hands moved with a masseuse's flourish, and Kotori's skin crawled.
"Eek. That tickles, Lady Amaterasu."
"I told you to call me Mother."
"Yeah, that's not happening."
Time had passed, and with her wits restored to match her age, Kotori stuck out her tongue in pure mischief. Amaterasu caught the waggling thing.
"Mmmph—mmmphhh—"
"If you want me to let go, call me Mother."
"Mm-mother. Mm-mother."
"There. That's a good girl."
Kotori flailed for her life while Amaterasu brimmed with mischief, and Tsukuyomi stroked his neck.
"Brings back old times. Was I put through that when I was small?"
"Wasn't it something other than your tongue she grabbed? She had you by the collar back then, didn't she?"
"That was because you shoved our sister into the river. And for it, she worked you like a dog."
"Ah, memories..."
The gods of moon and storm sank into the past like old men. Neither looked the least inclined to save Kotori.
The only human present, Shrine Priest Tsukumi, opened his mouth with care.
"Lady Amaterasu, we ought to move on to the next item."
"Must we? A shame."
Amaterasu let the tongue go. Freed at last, Kotori scampered off and hid behind the priest.
"Lord Priest..."
"Kotori, go and change. Two more lessons, and the day is done."
"Ugh. Can't we put it off, just for today?"
"No. It would throw off the rhythm of your days."
Such was the seat of the priest's successor. Whoever bore that vast organization, and answered for it, could not afford to learn even the smallest thing halfway.
Kotori, besides, was a talent that would not come again among all the successors who had ever been. Shrine Priest Tsukumi looked down into the bell-bright eyes turned up at him in open wheedling, and ignored them with the heart of a samurai opening his own belly.
"Hnnng."
"What cannot be allowed cannot be allowed."
"Understood..."
Kotori let her shoulders droop and dragged her feet away.
Once the girl had left their sight, the faces of those who remained grew grave.
"...She leaves tomorrow."
Worry colored Amaterasu's voice.
"Yes. Faster than we expected. Glad news, is it not."
"Will you be all right? What the honored guest has set in motion will be a danger beyond anything we can imagine."
"I know. But is there a reason not to go?"
"There is not. Which is why I worry all the more."
Amaterasu sighed.
"Leave this land, and we cannot protect you."
"It is a risk worth taking. The head of the Dan Clan told me this matter is not unrelated to our Shrine."
"Our karma, then."
Amaterasu set a hand on Tsukumi's shoulder.
"I believe in you. Go, and show them your very best."
"The honor is mine."
"Remember that we stand always at your back. Even from here, we will be watching over you."
"Thank you."
The priest offered a brief bow, then glanced toward Kotori, peeking through the gap in the changing-room door.
Caught, her eyes spun in circles.
He shook his head.
"Denied."
"...You won't even hear me out?"
"You already asked this morning. And you went so far as to blow an entire shoji screen away..."
"I wouldn't interfere... I'd only look at his face and come right back..."
"There is a season for everything. Force that season forward, and disaster is certain to follow. Endure, and train."
"Hnnng."
Kotori's eyes brimmed. The changing-room door slid softly shut.
The priest smiled, bitter. Is this what it feels like to be an older brother with a little sister? For a priest with no family of his own, there was only the guilt of not giving her what she wanted.
Another One drummed his fingers on the table.
Tok. To-to-to-tok. Tok. Tok-tok.
They played to a strange, taunting rhythm. Without meaning to, Anastasia found herself studying him in profile.
"Is it truly all right to take no measures at all?"
"Against what."
His index finger stopped.
"Scientist. Should we not warn him of the danger?"
"Why."
"Scientist holds a great stake in our grand design. His character may be deeply flawed, but in ability and efficiency the other executives cannot even follow him. If he is lost, gaps will open across much of the organization."
"Why."
"......"
Anastasia lost the rest of her words. Only then did she understand that Another One felt no regret where Scientist was concerned. Did this man possess emotions at all?
"Do you mean to discard Scientist?"
"He isn't my property. He's a human being, with a personality of his own."
"That isn't what I meant..."
Anastasia closed her mouth.
At some point he had risen from the chair and perched himself on the table. Knees drawn up, arms laid across them, chin propped on his hands—the pose was vulgar. Delinquent.
Her head began to throb.
"What, exactly, are you thinking?"
A direct question, courtesy set aside. As if the force of it pleased him, Another One's darkness rippled.
"Nothing much. I just want to watch the sins he's committed come back around to him."
"You would expend Scientist for a reason as small as that?"
"You think Scientist is going to lose?"
"...From the moment you said it, had you not already decided that he would?"
Anastasia snapped the words at him.
"Who knows. He might win without any trouble at all."
He would lose. He would lose, no matter what. Anastasia was certain of it.
"There will be unrest. Someone may begin to doubt your true intent."
"If they want to, let them. I don't care."
Anastasia bit down on her lip. She had watched him for years, and still it was impossible to guess how his mind worked. Look at him even now: a ruthless sovereign before the executives, and before Anastasia nothing but a childish, mannerless thug. Sometimes a lazy idler, sometimes a dreamer swollen with ambition, sometimes a cold man of business. As if his personality were swapped out with every turn of the day, the man had no fixed measure. She could not tell which of them was real. The executives, she imagined, could not tell either.
"Anastasia."
"Yes."
"Scientist has no value now."
Another One straightened. The vulgarity of a moment before became the weight of an Absolute.
"His usefulness ended the instant the Demon Tree went on strike."
"Then why did you order him to research death?"
"Because it was necessary then. At present, it has become worthless."
"And he crossed the line."
"The line...?"
Another One smiled, and the smile meant more than it said.
"Yes. Whether he'd acquired a taste for death and replication, he committed something enormous."
"Does he mean to make himself a god?"
"Scientist is not a man who would set his sights on anything so small as a god. He is research given flesh, and he is aiming higher than that."
"Well. You'll see when you see it."
"His last remaining use is the opening ceremony."
"He'll help me raise a splendid festival. His, and mine."
"The torch."
"............"
"Understood..."
Anastasia felt stifled. Doubt and suspicion welled up in her like hot-spring water.
"I've tormented you too much. Anastasia, it's been a while. Shall we eat together?"
"I must respectfully decli—"
Smack!
A murmur of voices.
"—ne."
"The streets of Seoul. There's a place here I've had my eye on."
"......"
"Relax your face. It really is delicious."
Anastasia swallowed the anger rising in her throat and followed him.
But of all places, where he took her was a snack shop.
A modest one.
A bell chimed.
"Welcome."
The proprietress, who seemed to run the place alone, greeted them.
"The gimbap here is unbelievable. Seaweed rice rolls, and lately they came up with a pork-belly one. It's become a hotspot on X-Star."
"Yes..."
Anastasia made a vow. Someday, without fail, she was going to hit this man.
But the gimbap was delicious.
She ate ten rolls.
She ate so well that the proprietress wrapped an extra one for her, on the house.
Anastasia wanted to crawl into a mousehole and never come out...