I Have Come to Call the Sinners (4)
"Uh… so……."
Ninomae Hitomi's eyes went perfectly round. She stared, blank as a post, at the woman standing in front of her.
"You're saying it wasn't exactly a fight to the death……?"
"Weeell. Right? If that girl had actually meant to kill Natacchi, she would've put up a lot more of a fight before her body got taken. Even then."
"You mean… she let her body be taken, at least partly, on purpose?"
"That'd be about how it is, yeah~?"
The woman — Mika Eru — said it through a loose, dopey grin. Her left arm was twisted at an angle no arm should hold, and she carried herself as if the pain were none of her concern.
"I-I'm so sorry. I was completely convinced they meant to harm Lady Shion……."
Ninomae, the very person who had left that arm in such a state, ducked her head. However she turned it over, Han Seoyeon had sent her away as if a brawl were seconds from breaking out, and when she came back just in case, the two of them really had been trading furious blows. She had taken it for a genuine crisis and put everything she had behind the strike…….
"But then why did you attack Lady Shion?"
"A kind of play. It seems the debt I owe the god Hachiman had piled up higher than I thought."
Theater began as ritual offered up to the gods. This, too, then, could serve as a means of generating faith.
"You know the origin of the god Hachiman, yes?"
"A local deity of Usa, fused with faith in the legendary Emperor Ojin… right?"
Rattling off the origin of a major god without a moment's lag — call it what you liked, that was a top student in folklore for you. Han Seoyeon nodded, a little impressed in spite of herself.
"Emperor Ojin is, whatever the truth of the record, a figure credited with conquering the Korean peninsula. I, on the other hand, am Korean."
As the villain of the piece, there was no better casting.
"In short, we generate the faith we have to pay, on the spot, through an impromptu rite, and draw it out right there."
"So that was it… I got in the way without even knowing? I never imagined the two of you had rehearsed it……."
"Hm? I've never synced anything up with Natacchi, though~?"
"……What?"
It slipped out of Ninomae in a daze, at the interruption that followed.
"I mean, neither of us actually meant to kill the other, but we really did fight all-out, each one trying to put the other down."
"W-why? If it was only a religious rite, wouldn't a play you'd agreed on beforehand have been enough…?"
If it hadn't been arranged, then what had just happened really had been as dangerous as Ninomae first thought. And not with some stranger — with Han Seoyeon.
"Why? Because doing it that way is way more fun—"
"Excuse me?"
"…is what Lord Hachiman said! Yeah. Lord Hachiman said so~!"
Mika Eru had been smiling with everything she had, ready to answer the question, when she caught the look on Ninomae's face — the grimoire had come to the girl's hand without her even thinking — and immediately changed course. Reflexes like that were one of the gifts that had hauled her all the way up into a seat as an Apostle Candidate.
Mika could feel Ninomae's ill will toward the god Hachiman sprouting and swelling in real time, but for the sake of her own hide she decided to sell him out for now. Frankly, the other party had joined in with great enthusiasm, so he probably wouldn't find the blame itself unfair. He might have a complaint or two about Mika selling him out to save her own skin.
"How do I put it. I ended up owing the god, so I had to settle last year's account with my body, sort of… yeah, that's why, you know~?"
"That's… no. What he says is likely the correct one."
It was a story that wouldn't have taken for a second with Han Seoyeon, who knew that character down to the bone. But there was old feeling between them, so for the moment she chose to let it pass.
"The remainder of the account shall be settled by the lending of a body to possess," said the god, through Mika's mouth. "What say you, Kirishitan?"
"Hmm… what were you planning to use it for~?"
"I shall cross blades with Bartholomew."
"Oh, that sounds actually fun! Let's do it right now!"
…The bit about deliberately aiming for a weak moment, just to nudge the odds up a little — right. Better keep that quiet.
Say that much and Ninomae might genuinely explode, so she obediently shut her mouth. Even she had at least that much sense.
"Have you finished your conversation?"
The woman who had been watching them in silence chose that moment to cut in. A red braid falling all the way to her waist. Apostle Matthew — Kiira Korhonen, the Crown of Thorns.
"Ah? Yes, yes."
At the sudden address, Ninomae nodded on reflex. Their talk had, in fact, ended.
"Kii-chan. I do think you need an introduction, when it's someone's first time meeting you~."
"Hm. You are correct. Then let us begin with introductions."
She heard Mika Eru out, nodded, and brought her gauntleted hand to her chest.
"Kiira Korhonen Barbara. I am also Apostle Matthew, but I have come here not of the Church, but as a member of M&Z."
"Barbara, as in…"
"The patron saint of fire and lightning, and of gunpowder arms."
She was also the saint who had lent her name to a mobile game Ninomae loved, so there was no chance she wouldn't know her.
"In any case, yes. I have come to collect taxes."
The gauntlets gave a metallic clink.
"Taxes…?"
"Did you not receive an explanation from Bartholomew?"
"No. She did explain, roughly…"
She simply hadn't thought she would be meeting them today. Still less that she would meet them in the situation from a moment ago.
Ninomae recalled what had just happened. The mushroom cloud she herself had raised… and the sight of every last consequence of it returning to where it had been, as if time were running backward.
"First, Miss Mika Eru. Your tax notice is this one."
"Kii-chan delivering it in person, I'm so lucky~ A feast for the eyes. All of it in yen. Just take it out of the usual account~"
Kiira rummaged in the bag at her waist, drew out the papers, and handed them to Mika Eru. Then she turned and looked toward Han Seoyeon.
"Miss Han Seoyeon's is here as well… though the notice will need a small correction. These figures do not account for the rite from a moment ago."
So saying, she took out a second sheet and scratched across it with a pen.
"Um… but that rite just now didn't fully finish, because of me, did it?"
Ninomae, watching, asked it with a puzzled look. Whatever the process or the reason, she had in fact stopped the fight between Han Seoyeon and Mika Eru. In that case, it would be hard to call the account fully settled. To that doubt, Kiira shook her head.
"Ordinarily, a little more would remain to be paid. In this case, however, the situation has changed somewhat."
Kiira's fingertip indicated Ninomae Hitomi with a neat little flick, then traveled slowly across to Han Seoyeon.
"A moment ago, Miss Ninomae declared her protection over her own shrine maiden. At that point this ceased to be a transaction subject to collection, and its classification was changed to a territorial dispute between the war god Hachiman Daibosatsu and the fortune god Mary Tepes."
In other words, a private dispute with no bearing on M&Z's duties. Kiira added as much.
"Does that constitute a sufficient explanation?"
"Eh? A territorial dispute? No, before that — the fortune god Mary…? Eh?"
"In any event, this is the revised notice, Miss Han Seoyeon."
"Hmm… as expected, the usage fee on the 'ranch' side comes to quite a lot……. I'll empty the ducats in the vault and pay with those first, and settle the remainder half in Vatican lire and half in yen. I'll transfer it promptly."
"Lady Shion is a shrine maiden? I'm a god…? Eh? Eeehh…?"
While Ninomae floundered, Kiira finished her business with Han Seoyeon. Then she drew a third notice from the bag.
"And this is the notice for Miss Ninomae Hitomi."
"M-me too?"
"As of last year, Miss Ninomae also became a resident of the hidden world."
Ninomae took it from Kiira and, still bewildered, read it anyway. That her first instinct was that anything to do with taxes had to be checked carefully — was that proof she had become a proper working adult?
"……?"
And then she doubted her own eyes.
"Um… I'm sorry, but may I ask just one question……?"
"Yes. Speak."
"The amount is a little strange…"
"Ah. This is the tax assessed upon the whole of Miss Ninomae's life. While you resided on the surface, the Secrecy Protocol prevented us from calling on you, so we are processing the whole of it at once this time."
Kiira said it flatly.
"Oh. Miss Ninomae. Did it come to too much? If so, I can add some of mine…"
"No, it isn't that… the amount due is a negative……?"
Yes. That was precisely the problem. For some reason, the figure printed on Ninomae's notice was a negative number.
"It is correct. In Miss Ninomae's case, what others owe you exceeds the sum of what you yourself have accumulated in obligations to pay."
"Can that happen…?"
"Yes. Once one becomes an object of faith in connection with money, it is not an uncommon occurrence."
"Money…?"
Still puzzled, Ninomae read further into the particulars written on the notice.
"……."
And soon she grasped the truth of it.
"……Mmm. So that actually worked, huh."
A portion of the gains gamers had taken through the so-called Gallery-Lord Gacha Method had come in under Ninomae's name as a fee. Faced with a notice she truly had not seen coming, she turned a vacant stare back on Kiira.
"Er… why are you looking at me like that? Ah. Would you prefer to receive it not in yen, but in gacha currency — that is, rubies? As the gains obtained by the faithful were limited to in-game assets, receiving it that way is also possible. In consideration of the difficulty of converting this into cash, an additional 48.7 percent is paid relative to the yen standard."
"…Are those paid rubies, or free rubies?"
"Paid rubies."
"……C-could I receive just thirty percent of it that way?"
…But confusion was one thing, and several dozen trucks of paid rubies were another. Those, Ninomae could not endure.