Behold, All Things Are Made New
The twenty-first century. The world was changing at such a ferocious pace that even the phrase information age had already gone stale—an era of technological progress that outran the very names meant to contain it.
"I will pursue my enemies and overtake them; I will not turn back until they are destroyed."
And yet, regrettably, even in an age like this, monsters still existed.
The man gurgled, foam clotting in his maw, and eyes that held nothing but a sickly white fixed themselves upon their prey. Before him stood a woman whose face was drawn with fatigue. She did not move. At a glance, one might have thought fear had frozen her where she stood.
"I will strike them down, so that they cannot rise; they shall fall beneath my feet."
But the voice that recited the verse was calm. So was the hand—the right hand that swung the iron hammer with all its strength and broke the enemy's skull. Simply calm.
Viscous blood soaked the collar of her clothes. A gobbet of flesh struck the floor with a wet slap. She watched, unruffled, as the corpse tipped sideways and fell.
"A song of David. ......Rest in peace."
Still perfectly composed, she traced the sign of the cross over her breast. For an instant the tattoo showed itself, ink running from her forearm down to the back of her hand.
—Because monsters still existed, an age like this had to have its holy knights as well.
She—Han Seoyeon—let out a long breath, then concealed the iron hammer inside her coat. Her other hand drew a phone from her pocket. It was a habit worn into the body of anyone living in the modern world.
"Ah."
She had nearly been late. Confirming the hour on the smartphone screen, Han Seoyeon murmured it inwardly. It was the time of worship.
Unlike the First Service, whose hour she could shift to suit her circumstances, the Second Service could not be changed by any will of hers. She worked the phone quickly and made ready for it.
The browser window changed amid a slightly sluggish load, and her hand, with the ease of long habit, turned the screen on its side. Golden hair appeared. Between its owner's lips, sharp fangs showed—just like the vampire Han Seoyeon had crushed only moments before.
And yet the look on her face was nothing like the one she had worn while facing that monster. Han Seoyeon drew up the corner of her mouth and prepared to receive the gospel.
"Conmea, Shutang."
This was amusement. This was the life of faith.
It began with a trivial misunderstanding.
There came a day after Han Seoyeon had officially become a holy knight in her own right—and then, after she was posted without warning to the country next door, another day among the rest.
She had no complaints. If it was the Lord's will, she would go anywhere, even to the ends of the earth. Looking back, though, a little unease had been there after all. At any rate, it was on one such day.
"Take care, Shion-san."
"Yes. You as well, Ninomae-san. I'll see you next week."
Han Seoyeon was on her way back from the university. There happened to be no afternoon classes, and the sun stood at its height. A mid-May noon was faintly muggy. Even so, up to that point, her greatest concern had been whether or not to eat lunch out before going in. The day was peaceful to that degree.
Seeing it was nothing but chance.
An advertisement pasted to a pillar in the train station—a picture that might well have been there since morning, when she had left for campus.
"......"
That was all of it. Strictly speaking, five silhouettes were drawn beneath the lettering, but one might as well have treated them as not being there.
What sort of advertisement was it? She entertained the question for a moment, only for it to be written over at once.
Right. Let's get something spicy.
Whatever it had been, they must have had something they wanted to promote.
The advertisement appeared again two evenings later.
She had opened a browser to send an email when the banner caught her eye at once. For some reason, unlike the time before, it was difficult to look past. Perhaps because this was their second meeting—or because the word unholy had lodged in the sight of a woman who was, in her own fashion, clergy.
Click. Without quite meaning to, Han Seoyeon had pressed the banner.
The screen presently brought up a site stamped with the name Anathema Production. It felt like the advertisement she had just seen, enlarged. The difference was that two of the five had shed their silhouettes and revealed what they were.
Cartoon characters?
A woman with deep indigo hair and beast ears. A red-haired girl with horns curled tight as a sheep's. She was about to settle on the thought that it was promotion for some new anime when she found the words ON AIR beneath a silhouette.
A live broadcast. Somehow, the phrase caught at her.
Han Seoyeon had little commerce with subculture, but if something happened to be on the air at that very moment, there was no reason she could not watch it once.
Click. With the sound of the click the window changed again, and a well-known video site unfolded. A chat occupied part of the screen—the ordinary scenery of an internet broadcast. She had hardly ever watched one, but she supposed the others were much the same.
What filled the rest of the screen, however, was not a human being.
The art called an anime character to mind, and that face went on changing, bright and lively. It was like a person. No—was it truly recognizing a human face and moving to match? Han Seoyeon stared, blankly.
Platinum blonde, pale in its tone. Eyes the color of blood. Sharp fangs that glanced in and out between the lips. When she discovered the inverted-cross necklace resting between an ample bosom, she frowned before she could stop herself.
She took the voice in through her ears and, with one finger, sent the mouse wheel rattling down.
A vampire. The conquest of the world.
The light drained, little by little, from Han Seoyeon's eyes. Her hand went unthinking to the knife set at one side of the desk. Then she understood. The hand stopped dead in the empty air.
There is no information at all......
Her opponent had never shown a real face. She was only hiding behind a cartoon character. She had announced herself a vampire and proclaimed a wicked design for all to hear, and still Han Seoyeon had no means—none at all—of stopping her.
Han Seoyeon ground her teeth at such cunning.
Contact that company—Anathema Production, or whatever it called itself... No. They might be in league with her. Better to go through the Church and request an identity inquiry from the Japanese government......
...Is the evidence too thin?
Even she could not simply seize anyone she pleased and strip them of their private life. Regrettably. She needed information more certain than this, and more damning. She turned her gaze back to the screen.
It seemed, somehow, that she had acquired something she would have to observe for quite some time.
"A membership? So there are member-only streams as well. I'll need even a little more information, so......"
"VTuber? Virtuber? Ah. So these are people who hold internet broadcasts with moving images like that."
"They sort the generations by date of debut... Hmm. The rest of the second generation are a werewolf, a ghost, a demon, and a holy knight...... What? A holy knight?"
"Ah. From the way they talk, it's an impersonation. For a moment I thought I might have a real colleague. I'll just keep watching Mary's stream."
"Ah, so this is the game from yesterday."
"Ah—behind you! Behind you! Look behind you, you idiot...!"
"Ah... no stream today, I see."
"Come to think of it, Shutang—this was your first collab with a first-generation senior, wasn't it?"
"Meisharu... Tee-tee......"
"......Ah. So she wasn't a real vampire after all?"
For the record, it was two months after Mary Tepes's debut stream that Han Seoyeon learned what this thing called roleplay was.
"Wait. Then all that time I spent investigating Shutang's streams was meaningless...... Oh, right. I need to top up my Super Chats. I nearly forgot."
Of course, by then it was already far too late to turn back.