I Have Come to Call Sinners (1)
"So. You're telling me you and Shion had yourselves a lovely time."
The woman murmured it, sunk back into the passenger seat. When she lifted her head, the short chestnut hair that had spilled forward brushed lightly across the leather.
Hers was a face that called to mind a young puppy, or perhaps a squirrel. A faint coldness, however, lay in her eyes. Phone held to her ear, Ninomae Hitomi wore a thoroughly sulky expression.
"No, I'm sorry… I said I was sorry……."
From the other end of the line, Senjoji Chiyo's voice shrank in on itself, as if she had caught a mood that was nothing like the usual.
"Yes. That's right. I know. I said it was fine if you went and had fun together. Yes. A date."
"U-uhhh……."
"Right. Mm. I'm not saying I have a problem with that part itself, you know?"
The corner of her mouth had crept up, but it would have been difficult to take the expression for a smile. Either that, or one simply had to grant the old slander its due — that a smile is, at root, an aggressive gesture.
What Ninomae was bringing up was yesterday. Valentine's Day itself, when Han Seoyeon had gone out with Chiyo.
"Arms linked at the aquarium, a romance in the couple seats, and then dinner at a place that wasn't expensive, exactly, but had a perfectly decent atmosphere……."
"Mm. Must have been lovely."
Ninomae Hitomi murmured it, and something in the voice dragged a choked little sound out of Chiyo.
"No. That part's fine, I told you. Shion looked as if she'd enjoyed herself well enough, and I do like you in my own way, Chiyo… ah. Not in that sense, of course."
Ninomae was the one who had sent the two of them off in the first place, telling them to go and enjoy themselves. To complain about it now would have been a grievance aimed at entirely the wrong door.
"But listen, Chiyo."
Ninomae glanced at her own reflection beyond the window glass, and went on.
"When Shion came back, she kissed my cheek three times and said that was today's share. You know the promise Shion and I made, don't you?"
Physical affection with other people was permitted. Growing close to someone was Shion's own affair. The promise the two of them had struck was simply this: whatever was given to anyone else would be given to her as well. It carried no binding force whatsoever, and yet it was a promise that had never once been broken.
…Not that they watched over the contract with any particular fervor. A person like Han Seoyeon simply almost never had occasion to be affectionate with anyone other than Ninomae.
In any case, once that subject surfaced, Chiyo's voice grew smaller still.
"──Mind you, I'm not going to scold you for this either."
"Mm…… huh? What?"
The words that followed seemed to have caught her off guard. Chiyo asked it back, sounding surprised.
"This, too, is something I've accepted, at least for now. Making a contract like that already carries a certain implication in itself… yes. It does leave me feeling rather soft and clouded, but for the moment, it's fine."
"Then… why…?"
Why on earth was she angry? That, most likely, was the shape of Chiyo's question.
"Do you know what Shion said after she kissed me?"
"Uh… beats me?"
Ninomae smiled again, bright and neat.
Had Chiyo been standing right in front of her — no, even on a video call — it would have been a smile to inspire considerable terror.
What returned to her was yesterday evening. It was still winter, and by that hour night already had one foot through the door.
"Ninomae. You will have to give me one as well."
"Huh? Yes. I mean, I don't particularly mind, but…"
A kiss on the cheek for coming home. Something they did often enough.
And yet there had been something oddly declarative in Shion's tone, so that Ninomae could only answer as if something were slightly off.
Shion replied with a faint smile.
"That was our promise, was it not?"
The meaning arrived only after several seconds of silence had passed.
"That's what she said. Shion did. Yes."
On the other end of the line, Chiyo fell silent, just as Ninomae had then.
Having nothing to say — this was precisely the situation that phrase existed for. The memory must have come back to her, the walk home after dinner, the moment the night street's glamour had swallowed her whole, because Chiyo shut her mouth.
"No, I mean… if you're girlfriends, I feel like that's totally something you can do…"
"Haha. Isn't it?"
"It's just… what even is this. Hitomi-chan, your voice is kind of terrifying… so, like……."
"Ahahaha."
"Hahahaha……."
The conversation snapped off again, and silence stretched out in its place.
"But, ummm……."
"What now?"
"I think the problem is that Shion-chan is sexy…! It's bad, making people's hearts race for no reason! Don't you think zero self-awareness is way too dangerous for a genuine lesbian?!"
"……."
Chiyo's voice burst through the speaker, and Ninomae's expression went blank along with it.
"Yes, I empathize. I do empathize, but……."
"Right?"
"Talking like that — I take it you're prepared?"
"……Huh?"
Ninomae drew the corner of her mouth up once more.
Silence answered.
Figuring that competitive fire would carry even through the phone, Ninomae looked out the window. Far off, she could see Han Seoyeon approaching.
"……Hehhh."
"…And why the sudden change?"
"Nothing. It's just that hearing Hitomi-chan go that far kind of sets me on fire instead."
"What?"
A moment later a voice thick with laughter came through.
"Whoever takes the first bite keeps it, don't you think?"
"H-hey, wait. I will not let that go?! If you actually try something like that, I really will not let it go, do you hear me?!"
"Hehe. I'm joking. Hitomi-chan really is cutest when she's flustered."
Only then did the tension slide out of Ninomae in a sag. Directing anger at another person was, by her nature, no easy thing to begin with.
"It was… a joke?"
Nothing answered her.
"…It is a joke, right?! Wait — did she hang up on me?!"
The moment she confirmed the call had ended, Ninomae cried out. Anxiety came hurrying along behind.
No… surely not. If she actually meant it, that would be bad…….
She was certain the whole thing had started with nothing more than an offer to sit and hear someone out — and yet, without even noticing, had she gone and made herself a rival? That was the worry.
And right in the middle of it, a goat's head ripped through the empty air and thrust itself out.
"Shall I take care of her, Master?"
"No! I didn't call you, so get back in there!"
Ninomae startled, seized the thing by its horns, and crammed the skull back down into the abyss.
Then she let out a long sigh. She would really have preferred it not come bursting out on its own when she hadn't even summoned it. Should she demand a refund from the manufacturer?
"──Is something troubling you?"
"Ah. Shion."
The driver's-side door opened in that very instant. Han Seoyeon climbed into the truck with a light step, and smoothly held out the bag in her hand.
"My apologies for the delay. I bought a few snacks for the drive to Fukuoka."
"Thank you. I'll enjoy them."
So saying, Ninomae kissed Seoyeon on the cheek. It must have pleased her considerably, because Seoyeon smiled.
"It's nothing. The company just called, that's all."
"I am glad, then. …Well. We ought to be setting off."
Seoyeon started the engine and took hold of the wheel.
"So — you said you were going to perform some kind of rite."
"Yes. It is that time of year, after all. I am going to settle a debt."
"A debt……."
Ninomae murmured the word under her breath. It was not a particularly cheerful one.
"More than that, what do you mean, that time of year? What are you talking about?"
"Why, from the middle of February, it is simply that, is it not."
Seoyeon tilted her head, as if to ask why she was being questioned about something she ought already to know.
"Honestly, I'm still not completely used to the common sense of the hidden world……. I really don't know."
"No. Strictly speaking, this is a matter of the surface. Of Japan."
She pressed the accelerator, and the truck began to roll forward, gathering speed as it went.
"The income tax filing period begins tomorrow, does it not."
"Oh."
February 16 through March 15. There was no chance Ninomae didn't know. An ordinary university student might have, but she was a VTuber, and a corporate one at that; through her manager, talk of taxes and the rest had been drilled into her until her ears were callused over.
"Then this debt you're talking about…"
"Taxes, in concrete terms. A debt of the hidden side, which the surface cannot collect."
If one prays to a god and has a wish granted, from where does the price come? Faith, of course, is paid to the deity as well, and in most cases that settles the account. Just as the devils of old once carried off a soul in exchange for some trifling wish, divine beings take in something great, portion out something small, and thereby go on existing.
But when the other party is a person adept at this sort of exchange, the matter changes. The faith offered to the god and the return received from them converge upon something very nearly one to one. No — considering the amount lost along the way and the labor the transaction requires, there are deals on which the other side even comes out at a loss.
"Such a thing is hardly proper. The 'debt' exists for that."
"Mmm… that's still a little different from taxes, isn't it?"
"In a matter of this sort, the nation's guardian deity can scarcely be left out. At which point it is, in effect, no different from a tax… and for the sake of convenience, the levies upon the other anomalies are carried out in the same season."
In other words, most of what was owed to the spirits of Japan was collected around this time. Ninomae nodded, as if she understood at least a little.
"So that's why you're going to perform the rite. As recompense for the divine power you used this year, Shion."
For a pure religious ceremony, one that made no demand and offered up no petition. That was why the two of them were bound for Fukuoka.
"Still, though…"
Then, as if some thought had just occurred to her, she broke into a soft laugh.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. I just thought it was funny that even someone on the level of an Apostle worries about taxes."
"Well……. Death and taxes cannot be escaped, after all. No — death I managed to evade, one way or another. Taxes, however hard I tried, proved quite beyond me."
Seoyeon added it as if in jest. …Examined closely, she had spoken nothing but the truth from beginning to end, so it was not a joke in the slightest.
"Mmm. Even so, if you really committed and went all out, couldn't you manage it somehow? Once you're an Apostle, the very pinnacle of the Holy Knights."
"Even an Apostle would find that impossible. Of that much, I can assure you."
Seoyeon's gaze flicked briefly to the side mirror, then returned to the road ahead.
"The pinnacle of the tax farmers is Apostle Matthew. Should fortune favor you, you may even meet him before the month is out, Ninomae."