Episode 1 — What Is Hidden Shall Be Revealed (1)
“Oh.”
It was a lucky day. The instant the doors slid open, Han Seoyeon found an empty seat on the train and let the corner of her mouth tug upward, just barely.
She sat, took out her smartphone, and with a familiar flick of the fingers plugged in a pair of black earphones.
What her fingertips tapped open was the Etube app—and, naturally, a VTuber clip channel.
She was skimming for anything newly uploaded when her eyes caught on a title. A gameplay video of Mary Tepes—better known as Shutang.
Han Seoyeon hit play as if there had never been another choice. She had already watched it live the day before, of course, but an edited cut had a flavor all its own.
Had she actually understood the story? The vampire on the screen tilted her head as she muttered it. Even so, the character who had charged into the palace ran straight into the game’s final boss, and Mary’s eyes blew wide in alarm—the look of someone faced with something entirely outside her expectations.
Her dismay at the unexpected boss design lasted only a moment. The monster lunged without warning, and Mary startled hard.
Perhaps it was the habits worn into her hands by so much play. She managed, somehow, to block the first blow—only for the witch’s relentless follow-ups to turn the player character into a hedgehog before she could blink.
Mary sighed. They had faced one another for only a moment, but she could feel, plainly, that the clear would be a steep one. Even so, a smile soon spread across her face.
And then, attempt after attempt. She met the game-over screen without end, and yet the runs crept forward by inches, and a faint smile touched Han Seoyeon’s lips. She had already seen the video once. Even so, somewhere inside, she found herself cheering the woman on without quite meaning to.
A sturdy mentality, and a fine gift for learning patterns. One of Mary Tepes’s charms as a gamer. Her skill sat in an awkward middle—neither the crisp, open play of outstanding mechanics, nor so catastrophic that it became a joke. And yet, for reasons she could not quite name, Han Seoyeon liked the way that play grew, little by little.
By now the phase-one pattern was familiar enough that she could spare the breath for chatter like this. The Crimson Song. Even Han Seoyeon, who hardly ever went to the movies, had happened to see it recently—that was how thoroughly the film was sweeping the moment.
She said it, and still her voice curled inward, short on confidence. Even then, the player character hurled herself aside and slipped past a tentacle.
And yet, being unable to produce a single real-life friend besides Sister was very much in character for Shutang. Han Seoyeon let out a quiet little laugh.
For the record, the Sister in question did not mean an older sister. It was the “Sister” people habitually used at church—more precisely, a way of referring to a nun.
A classmate, according to the lore, at the university Mary Tepes attended while hiding who she was. In reality, the university where the woman inside Mary was actually enrolled. By Shutang’s own testimony, a beauty with a slightly frightening look about her. She turned up so reliably whenever Shutang launched into a story that the viewers had gone and minted nicknames of their own: Sister, and the Nun. The names had stuck because, from the sound of it, she helped out with the odd jobs at a church.
Must be nice. I could handle church work perfectly well myself. I even hold a formal ordination.
A real-life acquaintance of Shutang’s. Even as a small jealousy stirred toward a woman whose face she had never seen, she raised her head and looked out the window.
They were already near the university. It was about time to get off.
With some reluctance, Han Seoyeon closed the video, which still had a few minutes left to run.
With a dull clack, the classroom’s old door swung open, and the eyes of the students inside flicked toward it all at once.
The woman who walked in was a celebrity—that was putting it a little strongly—but even so, at this university, anyone in a position to know her knew her.
Han Seoyeon. Or Shion. A second-year in the Department of Folklore, and an exchange student from Korea.
That much was perfectly ordinary. In an age of globalization, it wasn’t as if exchange students were some scarce commodity.
What seized the eye was the rest of her. A sharp gaze under heavy dark circles, and sanpaku eyes besides—open them wide, and now and then they tipped into yonpaku. Skin she scarcely showed even in summer, pale past the point of pallor.
She was tall for a woman, with a quiet set of muscle that suggested she trained, and down her left arm an intricately designed inverted-cross tattoo. Rumor had it that more than a few people had also glimpsed ink at the nape of her neck.
Women wore tattoos often enough these days, and yet those who saw hers tended to say the same thing: there was something uncanny in the air around them. Not the cheap sense of a girl who ran wild, or of some petty delinquent. The kind of chill that, if you looked too long, set the hair rising all over your body for no reason you could name.
Taken all together, the human being called Han Seoyeon was a woman from whom a vaguely criminal smell seemed to rise.
“Ah, Shion.”
Even so, there was one person she could, in her own fashion, call a friend. A bob-haired woman seated in the corner of the classroom smiled brightly and lifted a small hand in a wave.
“Good morning, Ninomae.”
Ninomae. Ninomae Hitomi. A second-year in folklore, the same as Han Seoyeon. At the time of their entrance, she had been famous in precisely the opposite sense—which is to say, word had gone around that there was an extraordinarily beautiful new student.
A cute face that called a puppy to mind, and a body that was, by contrast, nothing short of violent. Bright, besides, and kind. A woman who could not have been unpopular even if she had tried.
…By their second year, granted, the stronger image was of an eccentric who willingly kept company with Han Seoyeon. Even so, she was popular enough that if Han Seoyeon simply wasn’t nearby, she got hit on just walking the campus grounds. Out in the city, where no one knew she was close with Han Seoyeon, it went without saying.
“Thank you for making time this weekend.”
“I didn’t have anything else to do. The movie was enjoyable, too.”
“I’m glad.”
Ninomae laughed, a soft hehe, and from her bag hung a chibi keychain—the heroine of the movie they had watched together over the weekend. The Crimson Song. An animated film by the famous Director Kuroyuki. The reason she had gone to see it with Han Seoyeon this time was that very freebie.
There were two kinds of gifts one could receive for watching the film. She didn’t feel like sitting through the same movie twice, and buying a ticket to a screening she would never attend left her with the peculiar sense of having lost out. If she had to buy two tickets anyway for the sake of the gifts, then wasn’t it most efficient for two people to watch together? That was Ninomae’s logic.
Han Seoyeon honestly couldn’t say she followed it, but Ninomae seemed satisfied, so she decided to count the matter as a success.
“How about lunch together after class? I’ll buy, as a thank-you.”
“Didn’t you pay for the movie tickets last time, too, Ninomae?”
“That’s a separate matter. I was the one who walked away with all the freebies.”
Han Seoyeon declined once. Ninomae’s will did not budge. Refusing too stubbornly over a single meal would hardly be polite, either. Thinking so, Seoyeon let a faint smile show.
“Thank you. Then I won’t refuse.”
Han Seoyeon nodded as she answered, and Ninomae, facing her, broke into a loose, sunny grin.
It was an ordinary day—plain, and peaceful.
Until then.