The Public Morals Committee (4)
An East Asian face with a Western cast to it.
The bright blonde hair and the figure made the mixed blood obvious at a glance. In another world, looks like that would have been welcomed anywhere she went.
But in this one, the East held the reins of power.
Maybe that was why. Noah had never been to Korea here, so she couldn't speak for that country—but Japan, at least, had a serious race problem. And the ones on the receiving end were Westerners.
The prevailing assumption was that they were poor. Most people took one look at a Westerner and figured they were an illegal. Well—most of the crime in this Japan was committed by Westerners, so it wasn't as if she couldn't follow the logic.
"These insolent Gingers never do know their place. I'm truly sorry you had to see something so unpleasant. From now on, I'll forbid them from even setting foot in here."
Ordinarily, Ginger meant a redhead. Here, they used it for blondes. The Japanese of this world came in every hair color imaginable—there were even Japanese with red hair—but blonde didn't occur among them, and that seemed to be the difference. Either way, it was a slur. It had been one in her last life too, but here the word carried a nastier weight. The kind of word you spat at a whole people.
Noah didn't particularly care.
Get five people in a room and one of them was bound to be garbage. Condemning an entire group for that one was a fool's errand. Besides, her old line of work had sent her on more overseas deployments than she could count; she'd had racial garbage flung at her until she was sick of it. Of course, the ones who'd said it to her face hadn't been walking right the next day.
That was as far as it went for her. If someone aimed that kind of talk at her, she'd put a fist in their mouth without hesitation. Other people's misery, though, she'd never made her business. Same rule applied here. Hardship was miserable, but plenty of people used it as a foothold and came out bigger than before.
Except.
The girl who'd just walked out had been wearing a middle-school uniform.
Society-wide racism wasn't her problem to fix. But you didn't take that out on a kid. That wasn't how a man conducted himself.
"You. Part-timer."
"Are you speaking to m—"
"You're fired."
Noah said it quietly, then went back to eating what was left of her cake.
"You know, Noah might actually be kind."
"Not a tsundere at all—she might be a megadere!"
Noah shot Chise a look.
"Use that weird voice one more time and I'm going home."
"…It was the high-school-girl speak that's popular right now. Was it that bad?"
Chise's shoulders drooped. She'd studied that cadence so carefully online. Of course it wouldn't work on Noah. She let the act drop and smiled, bright again.
"You got angry for her, though. In her place."
Noah shook her head.
"That part-timer knew you were a Fujiwara."
"Well, yes?"
"And a Fujiwara told him to apologize properly. Said it looked ugly."
"Mm."
"And the second that girl ran out, he started sneering anyway."
"H-he did, didn't he?"
"A server who can't even read a customer's intent is incompetent. I don't like incompetent people."
Chise's expression turned awkward. It'd be nicer if she were just a little more honest. But that was part of Noah's charm, so she only smiled, soft and round.
A brief silence settled. Then Chise spoke, sounding faintly hollow.
"Hey, Noah."
"What."
"…Don't you think a clubroom with nothing but a sofa in it is a little lonely?"
The sofa Noah had bought had arrived almost immediately. Ten million yen's worth of couch, and it felt like it. The moment it appeared, Noah had parked herself on it and refused to get up. Chise was providing a lap pillow.
It had been nice at first…
Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.
Listening to the sparrows outside, she could feel herself wilting. This was nothing like what she'd pictured. Not even close. She stroked Noah's hair.
"How about we start taking members?"
"You do it."
Noah's answer was sullen. But Chise had spent ten years at her side. She was not the sort of talent that folded at a little pushback.
"You're the chair. You should be the one who picks them!"
"Hah. Since when have I ever cared about that kind of thing. It's a pain. You handle it."
"…Kako-sama might—"
Noah's body gave a tiny jolt. Chise beamed.
"Be disappointed, don't you think?"
Noah's pupils wavered. An exit? None. Offload it on Chise somehow… That wouldn't work either. Chise wouldn't go out of her way to tattle, but if it so much as brushed Kako's ears? She would die. She would actually, sincerely die. Noah felt the threat to her life as a physical thing.
"H-how do you even do that."
Got her.
Chise's eyes sharpened for a fraction of a second. Then she was grinning again, all sunshine.
"You just pick whoever you want! You set the criteria. Grades, family money, whatever you like…"
If we take members, we can furnish the rest of the room. We can be even happier. That was the real play. Student council rules forbade spending personal funds—but using an external member's money was tacitly winked at. The trail was hard to follow, and if anyone asked, you'd just say it was a gift. Chise launched into the explanation with real enthusiasm.
"Do you know about external members? Outstanding students from our sister schools can join our Public Morals Committee, and—"
The door slammed open before she could finish.
A girl in a middle-school uniform strode into the clubroom like she owned it.
"Quite the setup you've got. The Public Morals Committee should be swamped this early on, and here you are lazing about like royalty. Hah—and a sofa? You're students!"
"A middle schooler?"
Chise blinked, nonplussed. Who was this?
"Y-you've already forgotten?!"
"Um…"
She genuinely had no idea, so she glanced at Noah. The sight of her rolling a candy around in her mouth overlapped with a scene from yesterday.
"Ah. Yesterday's girl."
"At last you remember. That's right. My name is—"
"The one who hit the crosswalk button!"
"That's not it!"
Yuria all but convulsed.
"You. I can't imagine you honestly believe you belong in that seat without the qualifications for it."
"In the first place, why isn't the great Fujiwara the chair? Answer me!"
"Of course, I already know even if you don't. You were too cowardly to stand in front yourself, so you propped up that Minamoto doll and ducked out halfway."
"Hah! I'll grant you look the part. Were you hoping that cute face would buy you some sympathy? Unfortunately for you, that doesn't work on me!"
You should at least give someone time to answer…
Chise was at a loss. The girl had barged in and started picking fights, and she wasn't leaving any gaps to actually reply—just talking at them by herself.
"If the Fujiwara are true nobility, shouldn't you be stepping forward right now? Instead of hiding like a coward!"
Worse, Chise couldn't get a read on how she was supposed to react. Alone, she would have thrown the girl out without a second thought. Heir to the Fujiwara or not, she could be cold when she needed to be. But Noah was lying quietly across her lap, and that complicated everything. If she took a stance opposite Noah's… she might get hated for it.
In a situation like this, then.
She decided to take her cue from Noah's face, and looked down.
Noah was working on her candy, watching the show. She might as well have been an audience member with a bag of popcorn in her lap.
…She hasn't shifted her posture even a little. What does that mean?
Chise spun her excellent brain up to full speed. Which stance would score the most points?
Noah hates noisy people. But she's eating candy right now—chocolate, her favorite. That's a fairly generous window. Too early to tell whether she likes this girl or she's just in a good mood because of the candy. No—if she didn't like her, she would have bitten through it. She's done that before. Then again, the candy ban only lifted two days ago. I can't treat this like a normal day. I have no idea which it is!
Chise drew a breath.
Calm down. You're the Fujiwara heir. If you can't even read a Minamoto's intent, what good are you?
She started cataloguing every small thing about Noah, hunting for a clearer signal. The skirt, riding up a little from the way she was lying there. The pale skin showing beneath it. The small feet in white socks.
Ehehehe.
Dangerous…!
She bit the inside of her cheek and dragged her reason back into place. She'd come within a breath of making a spectacle of herself. And in that same instant, the realization landed.
Noah's face was blank. But her gaze had been locked on Yuria the entire time. More than that—she wasn't angry. At this junior's sheer nerve, Noah was not angry. On a normal day, a punch flying would not have been strange.
Which meant—
She's interested!
The whole calculation took Chise two seconds. She put on a benevolent smile and opened her mouth.
"What brings you here?"
"W-what do you think I've been talking about this whole time?!"
Chise had been born with the superior Fujiwara genes. Unfortunately, ninety percent of that magnificent brain was permanently allocated to Noah. She ran her life on the remaining ten. Combined with a baseline indifference to other people that was already extreme, she had only the vaguest idea what Yuria had been saying. More accurately, it had gone in one ear and out the other.
Yuria, however, was not a girl who stayed down.
"Fine. I'll say it as many times as I have to. Minamoto! You are not qualified to be chair, so step down quietly!"
"Heh."
Noah smirked, plucked the candy from her mouth, and pushed it straight into Chise's.
"!!"
Chise froze as if she'd been struck by lightning. She blinked, slow, tasting the sweetness spreading over her tongue, and thought, Eh. Just now I… the candy Noah was just eating… so that means… this is an indirect… kiss?
Her heart hammered. She rolled Noah's candy over her tongue, and sound, touch, and sight all dropped away as she sank into that single sensation.
While Chise sat there knocked out, Noah scratched at her sleep-mussed hair and walked over to Yuria.
"You know Sally's Law?"
"Hah, do you take me for an idiot? I'll have you know I was first in my year at Asano Middle School. It's what people say when the thing you wish for keeps happening by coincidence, isn't it?"
"The Minamoto use it a little differently."
In her last life, Noah had been dirt-poor. Home had been a mess, and her childhood a fairly bleak one, so the second she was old enough she'd enlisted. She'd wanted out of that house, and the military, if nothing else, fed you on a schedule.
She'd gone in so she wouldn't have to go hungry. What she found instead was an unexpected talent: she could shoot. She didn't quit. And she had a body that simply outperformed other people's. On her training instructor's recommendation she went into special forces, and even there she stood out. She was selected for the 707th Special Mission Group—the best South Korea had. After that it was counterterrorism. Hostage situations involving nationals abroad, mostly, though she was loaned out often enough to other countries, other units. Iraq, Ukraine, every hot stretch of the Middle East you could name. Terrorists, pirates, gangs. The kind of run that got you recognized, and a service record that ran for pages.
Then discharge. A private military company—a PMC. Mercenary work. Twenty-first-century war paid well if you were the one being hired, and if you came with medals attached, a single contract could run into the hundreds of millions of won. She'd lived a life no one needed to envy. Fellow soldiers looked at her with something like awe. Money, reputation—she didn't come up short against most people in high office.
Every bit of it, she had stepped on, one rung at a time, from the very bottom. No one had handed her a thing.
Which was why she liked people of her own kind. A bad hand. Treat it as a penalty, work anyway, and take what you want—those people shone.
In Yuria, Noah saw the possibility of that.
Yesterday her pride had taken a real hit, and less than a day later she'd walked in here with her chin up to pick a fight. A dirt-poor kid who couldn't even afford a slice of cake, snapping back like she had nothing to be ashamed of. She had to have eaten more racial abuse than she could count, and her self-respect still sat that high. Fun, no matter how you looked at it.
So Noah was curious. When this girl came up against overwhelming talent—would she break? From the look of her, pride was about all she had. If you crushed that pride thoroughly, would she still refuse to bend?
Noah wanted to find out.
"If you want it, take it by force."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"That's what the Minamoto mean by Sally's Law. The winner takes everything. If you want something from me, come take it with your fists."
"Force…?"
Yuria clicked her tongue, incredulous.
"A noble young lady? You shouldn't throw words like that around so casually."
"Heh. Pretty confident, for someone younger than me."
In a single breath, Yuria's presence changed.
"…Don't put us in the same category."
"Hm?"
"You and I have not lived lives of the same weight."
The corner of Noah's mouth lifted. Yeah. This kid's interesting.
"The rules are simple. First one to say they give up, wins."
Yuria still had no idea what they were even doing—until she saw Noah start to loosen up, and understood. She laughed, disbelieving.
"Hah. Are you sure about this? I hold a black belt. Against an amateur like you…"
"Relax. I've got a rank too."
Yuria sighed and rolled her wrists, light and easy.
"…The weight class alone doesn't make sense. I'm warning you now. 'Holding back' is not in my dictionary."
"What a coincidence."
Noah smiled, and there was something unhinged in her eyes.
"Same here."
Chise came back to herself when Noah's candy was gone and there was nothing left but the stick.
"Hnnnngh… hic, hhhk."
Yuria was sitting on the floor, sobbing as if her heart would break.
"Waaaaah! Hhkgh, hhk."
What… was this?