Go to the Pool of Siloam (3)
The chocolate-making stream on the eve of Valentine's had its share of uproar along the way, but somehow, in the end, it came to a peaceable close.
Each of them poured melted chocolate into the mold she wanted, let it set, tucked the pieces into bags, and tied them off with ribbon. What came of it, once you set aside the portions the makers themselves had eaten on stream, was eight bags.
Senjoji Chiyo was quiet. Carefully, she drew one of them from her pocket. Inside lay five pieces of chocolate, each about the size of a baby's fist: two hearts made by Ninomae Hitomi, two rabbits made by Tsunashi Tenka, and one star Chiyo had made herself.
They had all been pressed in the very same molds, and yet—perhaps she had misjudged the pour—hers alone had come out oddly plump. Should she call it a fumble, even in a process this simple? Or should she be glad that a task of nothing but melting and setting was simple enough that a mistake would never reach the taste?
For no good reason she fidgeted, tightening her grip on the bag. And then Chiyo let herself remember yesterday.
"Eight bags?"
It had been around the time the stream ended and they were clearing up. Looking over the wrapped chocolates, Chiyo had felt a flicker of doubt. The concept of the broadcast was making chocolate to hand out to the other members, and the VTubers of Anathema Production who hadn't been in the room numbered six.
"While we're at it, we ought to give some to our dedicated manager as well."
"Then the other one."
"Sister, right?"
It was Tenka who answered, but Ninomae was the one who nodded, as if to say that was indeed correct.
"Ah, right. We'd have to make one for Shion-chan, too."
Chiyo nodded along. Less because there was any obligation that it must be so, and more because there was no world in which Ninomae would have done otherwise.
"Here you go."
"...And why are you giving this to me?"
"Isn't it obvious? Tsunashi-san and I will be running around tomorrow handing chocolate to the other members, so you're the right person for it, Chiyo-san. The two of you are meeting tomorrow anyway."
"Eh..."
The objection—that they lived together, so she could simply hand it over once she got home—was bowled flat by the insistence that it had to be Valentine's Day itself. The alternative, taking it now and delivering it the next day, was rejected as well, on the grounds that it might be discovered before then.
Honestly, it did feel a little forced. But Ninomae's heart was not hard to read, and so Chiyo accepted the bag, reluctant look and all.
Judged by the old measure of obligation chocolate against chocolate given from the heart, Ninomae's feelings were plainly the latter. Half of it was the shyness of a girl you might find anywhere, too embarrassed to place the chocolate in those hands herself. And the other half, surely, was fear—fear that her heart might be seen.
She was afraid of being scorned and turned away for loving another woman. More than that, she was afraid that Han Seoyeon, for Ninomae's sake, would force herself to accept a relationship she had never wanted. Someone hearing the story might scoff and call it the fretting of a full stomach. For Ninomae, though, that was the worst ending imaginable. Rather than let it come to that, she would sooner hide the feeling for the rest of her life.
To give up even one's own love, for the sake of the person one loves...
Chiyo slipped the chocolate back into her pocket and looked up at the sky, thinking that she herself could never have done such a thing. If the person she liked came to hold someone else in their heart, she would be jealous, and she would grieve—but in the end, she would be able to smile and let them go. The Ninomae Hitomi whom Chiyo had watched was that kind of gentle person.
And today's date felt, somehow, as if it had pressed a finger into a gap in that gentleness. A strange guilt came with it.
No. Right. It's not as if I made this date with selfish motives in the first place. And Hitomi-chan seems willing to allow things, at least up to the line of a close friend...!
In the end, the anguish finished where such things so often do: in self-justification.
"—Is something troubling you?"
"...Ah. Shion-chan?"
At the voice from behind, Senjoji Chiyo's head whipped around.
"Every time I see you, you look like some big shot out of the underworld."
"...Well. It isn't entirely wrong."
She was a named figure of the hidden world, so it couldn't be dismissed as pure nonsense. Even so, wondering whether she truly looked that threatening, Han Seoyeon looked herself over. A dark coat against the cold, worn over her shirt; and, because her head had felt a little bare, the brimmed hat she always wore, pressed down into place. That hat, accented with a band of cyan, was the mark of a Gravekeeper, and for Han Seoyeon it carried a pride of her own.
Viewed objectively, the trouble was what those clothes became in combination with that face. Let her so much as roll a cigar between her teeth and she would look, on the spot, like the boss of some syndicate of the dark. The crowd inching apart to left and right to clear her a path, cowed by the pressure coming off her, was enough to raise a question—whether the miracle by which Han Seoyeon was said to have claimed an Apostle's seat had been the very one Moses worked, the parting of a sea.
"So. Why were you like that just now? There was a strangely melancholy look in your eyes."
"Ehh. I went to the trouble of steering us off the subject, and you won't even take the hint."
Chiyo grumbled it, deliberately theatrical.
"I was worrying about how inconvenient it'd be if I ever got myself a harem and a catfight broke out."
"Another of your someday delusions, then."
"I've heard you're supposed to aim your dreams high."
It was far too steeped in appetite to deserve the innocent word dream, but Han Seoyeon decided not to pick at it that far.
...She doesn't seem so different from usual.
Instead she studied Chiyo. A second look gave exactly the same impression as always. She had arranged this meeting in order to quietly take the measure of what lay in Chiyo's heart, and yet at this rate the whole affair felt like nothing but a misunderstanding—Han Seoyeon's, and at the root of it, Rachel Evans's.
Not that Chiyo herself was empty of thoughts. For Hitomi-chan's sake, I ought to make this chance count... Now that things had fallen out this way, she meant to attempt what she had intended from the start, and sound out Han Seoyeon's inclinations.
It won't be easy.
Once before, for the sake of Ninomae's chances in love, she had asked whether Han Seoyeon liked women, and all that came back from the woman herself was an answer without any certainty in it. Never having come to like anyone, she was only supposing—as other people did—that she would like the opposite sex. Which was to say that even she did not know her own orientation, and how easy could a thing like that be to uncover? Chiyo had no sense at all of how she ought to go about it.
Contrary to Han Seoyeon's guess, Chiyo's head was every bit as tangled.
"Mm. Well then, shall we set off?"
"Yeah. Let's. So where are we going, anyway? You never said."
"As it happens, I came into some aquarium tickets."
So saying, Han Seoyeon drew the tickets out and fluttered them.
"If it were anyone else, I'd assume it was a pretext to sweet-talk me into a date. But it's you, Shion-chan, so that wasn't the idea."
Had it been, she would have opened with it back when they made the plans.
"So you really did get them by chance? How on earth?"
"Someone I know owns the place. They let it drop, rather pointedly, that it was just about to open."
"Ah. That one? I saw them building it a while back. It's finished already?"
Chiyo recalled the construction she had passed once before, and it settled into place.
"An aquarium owner, though. Your connections are something else."
"Anyone with the capital for a venture like this is certainly impressive."
"No, not that. I meant that person's connections are impressive—being on familiar terms with an Apostle."
"Ah."
Only then realizing she had taken it to mean the exact opposite, Han Seoyeon let out a vacant little sound.
"Hm? But by that logic, aren't you acquainted with me as well, Chiyo-san?"
"I've never denied that my connections are incredible. Objectively speaking, I am kind of a big deal."
"Being able to say a thing like that so unabashedly is, I think, one of your virtues."
"Hehe. Feel free to praise me more."
But it wasn't entirely untrue. And well it might not be—she was, after all, the woman who had that Professor Senjoji for an older sister.
"So. Shall we go?"
"Ah. Hang on, before that. I almost forgot."
Just as Han Seoyeon was about to step off, Chiyo stopped her, as if the thought had only then returned.
"Here. A Valentine's gift."
Chiyo drew from her pocket the chocolate she had already rustled at more than once and held it out.
"Chocolate? Ah. What you made on the stream yesterday. So there was a share for me."
At the unexpected gift, Han Seoyeon's eyes widened a little. Not a word had been said on the broadcast about giving any to Sister, and she had assumed the bags were only for the members of Anathema. It would hardly have been polite to leave that arm hanging in the air, so she accepted it, for the time being.
"As if that Hitomi-chan would ever leave a present for Shion-chan off the list."
"That may be. Even so... Ninomae-san wasn't the only one who made these, was she?"
"You're acquainted with me, and with Tenka-chan too. It'd be strange to put in only the ones Hitomi-chan made, right?"
"That is also true. ...Thank you."
Han Seoyeon offered it with the same faint smile as always.
"Thank Hitomi-chan. She's the one who brought it up, back when we were planning the stream—asked if we could make one more, for you."
"If there hadn't been a stream yesterday, you wouldn't have given me chocolate, Chiyo-san?"
"Mmm... well, we're close enough that I'd have at least gotten you convenience-store chocolate..."
"Then I shall be grateful all the same."
Even if Ninomae had been the occasion, this was no forced gesture. There was sincerity in it, and feeling. How could she not be thankful?
Still with the corners of her mouth softly lifted, Han Seoyeon undid the ribbon on the bag. Then she took up the star-shaped chocolate and bit it, lightly. Seoyeon would have watched yesterday's stream as well, and so she would have known which shape belonged to whom.
"It's good."
"Well, it's the product straight off the shelf. Hyakuren Confectionery's pretty great, huh?"
It was hardly a compliment at all, and yet something in her chest tickled strangely, so Chiyo said it while puffing herself up for no reason. Toward her, Han Seoyeon tilted the bag in her hand.
"Would you like one as well, Chiyo-san?"
"You're fine giving one up? The rest were made by Hitomi-chan and Tenka-chan."
"There were five of them. I won't mind if you have one or two."
"No, that's not what I meant. I figured if it was you, Shion-chan, you'd treat a CharMary collaboration—those two, together—with absolute piety."
"...What, exactly, has my image become inside your head?"
Honestly, she considered it karma. But Chiyo was wise enough not to say so aloud.
"Come on! Let's just go!"
"Aren't you changing the subject a little too openly? ...Well. It's fine."
Han Seoyeon tossed the remaining half-bitten chocolate into her mouth and quietly licked her fingertips.
"Oh. Shion-chan, that just now was insanely erotic—mmph."
"Don't say strange things."
And into the mouth of Chiyo, who had been grinning and winding up to let something outrageous loose, she flicked a heart-shaped chocolate and stopped the words dead.
"Mmm. How did you just do that?"
"Precisely as you saw."
"No, I'm saying I watched it and I still don't get it."
"I shook the bag and sent the chocolate inside flying. ...Like this."
Han Seoyeon snapped her wrist and shook the bag again, then caught the chocolate that sprang free, biting it out of the air.
"Simple, isn't it?"
And there she was, shrugging, a chocolate rabbit's ear clenched between her teeth.
"...Simple?"
"It only takes a little dexterity, and a little calculation."
"No. I think you need to go look up the definition of a little in the dictionary again."
"Mmm..."
So saying, Han Seoyeon pinched the chocolate in her mouth between her fingers and snapped it cleanly in two.
"Would you like more chocolate?"
"Wh-what?"
"...No. I meant what remains in the bag. Not the one I was eating."
"Ah. Ah, right... and here I thought..."
Chiyo murmured it as if the matter were settled, reached into the bag, and ate a piece.
"......Hmm."
"What?"
"No. It's nothing. Now let's actually be on our way."
Somehow, even in that expression, a strange expectation seemed tangled together with disappointment. So, at least, it seemed to Han Seoyeon.