An Unyielding Heart (4)
"Mama... I-I need allowance."
Noah clutched the hem of Kako's clothes and mumbled it out.
Kako smiled gently and stroked her cheek.
"No."
There was not a shred of give in it.
Noah felt deeply wronged.
"Why not...?"
Kako faltered.
That dejected little face looking up at her was far cuter than she had braced herself for. She bit her tongue and rode the crisis out.
"I've got a use for it."
"Mama always told you, didn't she?"
Some things you did even when they hurt. That was how this house raised its children.
"When you're short on money, you go to the Fujiwara."
"Our family's loaded too."
"There is such a thing as each side's domain, dear. The moment you step over that line, you break trust. The Minamoto have Minamoto business."
The words were soft. Noah knew better, though. Kako was not the sort who listened to arguments.
"I'm not talking to Mama anymore."
"......!"
Noah took her timid little revenge and went back to her room.
The room was spotless.
The parts that had been scattered everywhere now sat assembled into complete firearms, and the whole place had been put in order. Noah still could not smile.
"Chise..."
She had failed to bring Yuria's people in on her own. In the end, she had no choice but to catch hold of Chise's sleeve.
"Lend me money."
"Heh."
Chise beamed.
"You know what it means to borrow money from the Fujiwara, don't you, Noah-chan?"
Damn it.
To swallow this kind of humiliation over a measly hundred thousand yen. Noah despaired of her own lot in life.
"C-can't you just give me this much? It's nothing."
Chise's expression hardened for a heartbeat.
"...Sorry."
She said it with a bitter little smile.
"I'm desperate, you see."
"?"
Noah was still puzzling over that when Yuria came back from the bathroom.
"Ah, senpai."
Yuria puffed up with pride.
"So? How's my work?"
"...Nice vacuum."
"I'm a person!"
Ahem. Yuria cleared her throat and glanced around for a cue. Noah flicked her eyes at Chise.
From a blind angle, the familiar weight of a cash envelope brushed her fingers. Noah's pupils blew wide.
A setup...?
They had even prepared the envelope. There was no other way to read it. Either way, Noah handed the money over.
"Thank you, senpai."
Yuria grinned and took it.
...Yeah. This is enough.
She had kept her word. That was all Noah needed. Even if it meant spending another day pinned under Chise.
"Keep coming regularly to clean."
Chise slid her arms around Noah's waist. She did not say it out loud, but the meaning was roughly, You'll pay with your body.
For a junior who actually put in the work, though, Noah could live with that much.
"And quit that damn bar."
"Huh...?"
Noah knew perfectly well how hard it was to be broke. Rather than play the old grouch and tell her to quit on empty words, she had put a real alternative on the table. A middle schooler only worked a bar for the money, after all.
"Th-that's a problem."
"What?"
Noah's face twisted. She had handed her a way out and the girl still would not take it?
"You an idiot? Cleaning my guns pays a hell of a lot better than that bar."
"I'm not doing it for the money."
Yuria worked the bar purely to help. It was the least she could do for the person who had given her a place to stand in a country far from home. There was no reason Noah would have known that.
"He's like... a father to me. I'm not working there to make money."
When the explanation was finished, Noah just stared.
"...You weren't being threatened over a debt?"
"Senpai, what on earth have you been imagining?!"
Noah had been sure her junior was being forced into work she did not want because of her family's situation. That was the whole reason she had gone this far to help.
"Eep."
Yuria clutched the envelope to her chest and edged backward. Noah came after her like a zombie.
"Hand it over."
"Uh—uh, look at the time...! This part-time warrior is reporting for duty!"
Yuria bolted. Noah ground her teeth and started after her—
"Noah."
Chise caught her arm. Noah trembled.
Then her eyes went wide.
Chise was crying.
Fujiwara.
A great house where history and tradition still breathed. In the modern age, though, it was a family drowning in money and ambition.
And here, inside that house, a meeting was in session.
"The fact that you have all gathered here, I take it, means you share the cause: that Fujiwara Chise is unfit to be heir."
Grand-uncle Sejo Ian spoke with grave weight.
"The justification is far too thin. She has no particular talent, and she was not born with sakura. Leading a house of this scale on half-measures is impossible."
The Fujiwara heir married a Minamoto. Once that happened, they were no longer Fujiwara at all—an outsider wearing the Minamoto name. So the Fujiwara who became heir put their own people forward to run the family, not unlike a conglomerate installing a professional chairman. Day-to-day affairs sat with the proxy. The great decisions of the house still belonged to the Fujiwara who had become a Minamoto.
They did not, however, actually hand the family to some hired executive. Leaving the head seat of a house as old as the Fujiwara to an outsider with no blood in it was unthinkable. In other words, the true number one—the actual head of the Fujiwara—would be chosen from among the people sitting in this room.
"The current heir lacks resolve, and she is indecisive besides. She has none of the charisma of the present family head, Lady Kako. She will be led around by the Minamoto. That much is obvious."
They dressed it in reasons. The real engine under the table was simpler than any of them. It was a fight for power.
A member of the Fujiwara picked one child among several and backed them. If that child became heir, the backer's contribution was recognized, and the road opened to the important posts. The problem was this: among the factions currently running the Fujiwara, not a single one had chosen Chise.
"She is already sixteen. An age at which a child of her own would not be strange. And yet she has not even married, let alone produced an heir. Fujiwara Chise has no right to the succession."
The moment Ian finished, the room fell in behind him.
"Running the Fujiwara Group is not children's make-believe."
"Times have changed. Times. If we keep groveling before the Minamoto, the Fujiwara cannot move forward. No—we will lose even what we already have."
"I am in complete agreement with Lord Ian. There is no need even to put it to a vote."
"Hah. Lady Kako has been far too cruel. How can she be so harsh to those of us who have given body and soul to the Fujiwara?"
Ian's gaze went sharp as a blade.
Ten years ago, everything had gone wrong because of a single choice by the Minamoto's only heir, Minamoto Noah.
One pointed finger from a five-year-old had been enough to shove them from the golden heart of Fujiwara holdings worth untold billions out toward the margins. Ian simply could not accept it. After climbing this far—he was supposed to lay it all down over children's playacting?
For him, this was something that had to be stopped even if it meant rebellion.
"Propose alternatives freely."
"Fujiwara Chise's defects are far too great. Never once has a marriage between Minamoto and Fujiwara been delayed this long. That alone is sufficient grounds to strip the heirship. We notify the Minamoto that our heir is badly flawed, that we will break the engagement, and that we will select another heir and send her instead."
It was not a bad plan.
But—
"And if the Minamoto answer that it does not matter? We would only lose our justification."
Ian was careful. Raising an opposing voice inside the Fujiwara already carried more risk than most of them liked to admit.
"...How about this."
He folded his hands on the table, stroked his thumb once, and spoke.
"......!"
"Th-the Minamoto are guarding her. Would that even be possible?"
"This generation's Minamoto is a little girl."
Ian gave a short laugh.
"Even if a girl is strong, how strong could she possibly be?"
"B-but the records say that even as a woman, a Minamoto possesses inhuman strength..."
Ian slammed his fist into the table. The man who had objected flinched at the shoulder.
"Exaggerated records, obviously. Has anyone here even seen that famous Minamoto power with their own eyes?"
"Even so..."
They were Fujiwara. There was not an idiot among them who thought the Minamoto's strength was only a myth. Some things in this world you knew without ever watching them happen.
Ian was not ignorant of that either. He knew it better than anyone. He had seen Minamoto Genji's power with his own eyes. That had been a monster that had left humanity behind.
And that was precisely why he could make the argument.
Even a monster that transcended humanity was, at its base, still human.
"Do you think a Minamoto could cut down a fighter jet? Then could one survive a tactical nuke? What about artillery? I know the Minamoto sit above ordinary people. They are still human. And if it is a woman, that ceiling is clearly lower."
He drove the point home.
"You are not actually sitting there believing that a girl who is not even family head yet could cut a sniper's bullet, are you? Do you people truly put your faith in a myth that wild?"
Someone swallowed. The sound was very clear.
"We snipe Fujiwara Chise. Even if it fails, we find a clean operator—someone who will never be traced back to us."
Ian's voice rose, and his certainty rose with it.
"If we simply eliminate that bitch, the Minamoto will have no choice but to marry the heir we put forward. Responsibility for failing to protect the Fujiwara successor will force their hand. Go further, and we might even be able to handle that Minamoto ourselves. If we succeed—even if she is the weakest Minamoto in history—our Fujiwara..."
Ian chuckled, thinking of someone.
Fujiwara Sakura.
Chise's younger sister—and, originally, the strongest heir the Fujiwara had.