The Lord Who Made Heaven and Earth (2)
The second floor of Momohachisu Department Store. As the escalator carried her upward, Ninomae stole a glance past the railing.
"Yeah. Over there. See it?"
Tsunashi Tenka came up behind her, slipped her face out past Ninomae's shoulder, and pointed toward one of the shops.
A jewelry store. The destination they had settled on while hunting for a birthday gift for Han Seoyeon.
"Tsunashi, your face is—really close."
"Ah, sorry."
More pressing than the shop, just then, was the distance itself, close enough that their cheeks might brush. When Ninomae flushed and said so, Tsunashi offered an awkward smile and put the space back between them.
"Anyway, that's the jewelry shop I mentioned. If I remember right, they take custom orders too."
"Hmm. Asking them to make something in a few days, with no design at all, still feels like too much."
"Throw enough money at them and they'd work something out, wouldn't they?"
Nothing wrong with paying a premium. Slap a craftsman across the face with a wad of bills and they would stay up all night to finish it. The image drew a short laugh out of Ninomae, but she shook her head almost at once.
"Even so, I don't like it. It isn't that I begrudge spending money on Shion—not in the slightest—but we live together, so it isn't only my money."
Scrape together everything she had and fling a small fortune at the counter? Possible. For Han Seoyeon's sake, she was willing.
But if Ninomae ended up in straits because of it, the one who would have to support her in the end was Han Seoyeon. It was not a story that closed neatly with Ninomae bearing the cost alone.
"So the spending has to stay reasonable. Within a budget we've actually set."
"You sure? You two are already a couple pooling what you own. Ninomae, don't tell me you're keeping a joint household ledger."
"What? Well—of course we are. Shion's spending habits are warped in ways you wouldn't notice unless you were looking, so someone has to keep a proper record."
She had no intention of stopping Han Seoyeon from spending money where she wanted. They had enough that even spending freely would have been fine.
"But she needs at least a minimum of caution. If there's something she truly wants, the price doesn't matter. What can't be allowed is a habit of waste—buying on impulse when she doesn't even particularly want the thing."
"Shion… so her purse strings got taken."
Tenka smiled wryly. From what she had heard last time, even the food money had been seized.
"Anyway, whether we commission something or not, I think it's fine to decide after we've looked at what's on display."
"Yeah. Fair enough. Even if it isn't something we ordered ourselves, there could be plenty of good pieces."
So saying, the two of them stepped off the escalator, and soon they were peering this way and that into the glass cases they had come up to.
"Oh. How about this? The rose gold."
"Hmm… I still think silver would be better. It ought to work a little better as a ward."
"Silver, huh. That'd be nice. Not for me, though. Constitutionally impossible."
"I'm a werewolf, remember?" Tenka added, smiling as if it were a joke.
When people heard that silver was a weakness, the first thing they thought of was a vampire, but werewolves were no exception. Silver itself had the power to drive off the unclean, for one thing.
"Because vampires and werewolves come from the same source."
"Huh? They do?"
"The vrykolakas—the risen dead, or else the symptoms of a rabies patient. The monstrous lore of both the vampire and the werewolf was born out of that."
Ninomae glanced at their faces reflected in the glass and went on.
"If you go by the Church's announcements, some minimal distinction had clearly been drawn as of 1414. In practice, though, you have to say they only started being firmly separated after Carmilla and Dracula were published."
"…That's way more specialized than I expected."
Ninomae shrugged, as if to say her place in the folklore department was not a prize she had taken in a wager.
"It was our group project, the year before last, when I first met Shion. We looked into the origins of similar yokai in Japan and abroad, and compared them."
"So your first collaboration, then."
"Yes. Which is why I remember every last bit of it without missing a—no, what are you making me say?!"
A collaboration… Ninomae covered her reddening cheeks with her palms and grumbled. For all that, she looked quietly pleased.
"Anyway, if we're thinking of it as a charm, would a cross be the better shape?"
"Oh, that's a good idea. So… hmm. What about one of these two?"
Before long Ninomae found two cross necklaces that looked nearly identical, and sank into deliberation. The designs differed in small ways, but at a glance they were remarkably alike: crosses of equal height and width, thickening slightly toward the ends. A Celtic cross, if she was not mistaken.
"…Pretty similar to the necklace you're wearing, Ninomae."
"N-no. I was only thinking of its value as a ward, all right? I wasn't thinking, even a little, that a couples' necklace would be nice—"
"I wasn't even pointing that out, though. Haha…"
"……"
Ninomae's face went redder still. She looked ready to burst on the spot, and Tenka hurried to put the fire out.
"Ah, that—um. When you think about it, they're common, right? Nothing to be embarrassed about. Take me, for instance… here, look. This is a friendship bracelet I made with Akane."
Matching a set of accessories between friends was hardly rare. Among men, perhaps not, but between women it happened often enough.
"Akaba-senpai?"
"Yeah. We got them matched right before we started high school…"
Akaba Akane. As a VTuber she was Yugure Tama of the first generation, and she was Tenka's childhood friend as well. If they had been friends since they were small, matching a set like this was only natural…
"…She doesn't wear it these days."
"Ah. Um."
This time it was the other way around. Ninomae realized she had stepped on a land mine on Tenka's side, and a small sound escaped her.
She had never imagined that the advice offered so offhandedly at the café—that once someone stopped wearing an accessory you had given them, the mood turned strange—might have been about Tenka herself.
"R-right! You should buy one too, Tsunashi! Let's match one, you and me!"
"Huh? No. I'm fine. The necklace is something you're matching with Shion, just the two of you."
"No, no. If it's something other than a necklace, that's fine, isn't it? Right?"
Surely this much was all right. Ninomae caught Tenka by the wrist and drew her along, then pointed with great earnestness at a case full of bracelets.
When it came out that Tenka already had a bracelet she wore, Ninomae insisted that two was perfectly fine, and pushed until, in the end, they decided to buy.
"Would you like any inscription engraved?"
"Um… would it take long?"
"It would be a day or two, I'm afraid."
"Then just the necklace, please."
Ninomae considered the clerk's words for a moment, then decided. There was still time before Han Seoyeon's birthday, so the necklace was no trouble. The bracelet, though, she wanted to put on and wear out of the store if she could, and so she chose not to have it engraved.
"Could you do the wording like this?"
"Yes. So—'from'… Te, Tepes?"
"It's read Tepesh. Tepesh."
They bought the bracelets as a set, put in the order for the engraving on the necklace, and left the shop.
Walking side by side, Ninomae glanced over and saw Tenka lift her arm, turning the bracelet under the department-store lights. Across the white-gold bracelet they had just matched, the rose-gold chain she had always worn slid down.
"Mm. I could have paid, though."
"No. You went out of your way to think of it, so the bracelet's on me. Call it a slightly early birthday present."
Ninomae had paid only for the necklace, and she had said as much. Tenka merely smiled, as if the consideration alone were thanks enough.
"Thank you, Ninomae."
"But you're the one who paid, Tsunashi."
"If you hadn't said something like that, it never would have occurred to me to buy one. And more than anything, this sort of thing only means something if there's someone there to match it with you."
With that, Tenka drew her into a light embrace. Ninomae startled for an instant, but Tenka looked so genuinely happy that she didn't push her away, and quietly let herself be held.
Warmth came through the shirt, and with it her scent.
…What a disgrace I am.
She was the one who had said she loved Shion, and yet here she was with her heart racing. It was honestly absurd. But what was she supposed to do when her body insisted on reacting first? There was a faint self-loathing in it—in being the sort of person who was secretly pleased just to be held by a beauty like this—and still Ninomae let herself savor Tenka's arms for a little while.
"…?"
What made her lift her face from that embrace was the sense that something was there. Not sight, not hearing, not smell. Some unknown sense, more spirit than matter, caught her gaze and pulled.
"…Shion?"
"If it wouldn't be an imposition, might I be permitted to attain Buddhahood?"
"Shion?!"
"Charmé à tété……"
What instinct drew into Ninomae's sight was Han Seoyeon. In a coat of gray so dark it was nearly black, her usual hat pulled low, she was looking at Ninomae and Tenka.
Meeting her here was a little unexpected, but the reaction itself was closer to her regularly scheduled programming. If anything, it was almost a relief.
"Huh. Akane, too?"
What was truly unexpected was the person beside her.
Long hair worn loose down her back. Hands jammed into the pockets of a baseball jacket, sharp eyes turned their way. If Han Seoyeon looked like someone who might hold a seat in an underworld organization, her companion looked like the sort you would get grabbed off the street and shaken down.
"Seriously, what's going on? You two on a date?"
"Like hell we are, idiot."
"I mean, you never know…"
"What are you even saying."
"Ghk."
And in the end Tenka took a kick to the shin from Akane.
It had not been that hard a kick, and even if it had, a werewolf's body would have taken it without trouble.
"What brings you here, Shion?"
"I might ask you the same, Ninomae. What are you doing here?"
"No, no, Shion, you—"
"From where I stand, this side is the more curious of the two…"
Even as that went on, a rather different kind of standoff was unfolding between Han Seoyeon and Ninomae.
In truth, neither of them was especially curious about why the other had gone out. No—they were curious about that too, but something else weighed more.
U-um. If I can help it, I want to keep this hidden until her birthday…!
What do I do. A surprise would be better, if I can manage it.
They spun through excuses at desperate speed. Of course, something wrung out in haste under those conditions was never going to sound plausible.
"Ah—ah! Right. I'm matching a friendship bracelet with Tsunashi!"
"I-is that so?"
"And you, Shion?"
"Uh… that's……"
Han Seoyeon rolled her eyes toward Akane, who had come with her.
"…To buy a friendship baseball jacket?"
"…Is that a thing?"
"……It isn't, is it."
And so the excuse failed in spectacular fashion. Han Seoyeon pressed a hand to her brow, lamenting her own gift for improvisation.
"The truth is…"
"I called her. There was something I needed a Holy Knight's eye for."
It was Akane who cut in. Whether it was a consideration of sorts, or pity for a fool who could not manage a better excuse than that, there was no way to know.
"We're buying a few things to offer at the shrine."
"Ah. So that was it."
Ninomae nodded.
"Uh, but it's not like we have to hide—"
"One of the things we have to buy is adult goods."
"……What?!"
A moment later she seemed to catch that something did not add up, but Akaba Akane demolished even that on the spot. Ninomae's eyes went wide.
"In folk-religious terms, phallic worship and the like are difficult to leave out."
"Ah, th-that is true, but, um, that's… augh……"
"Well then, we still have a shop to stop by, so we'll just—"
"W-wait! We'll come with you…!"
"…What?"
This time the one thrown off was Akane. She had said this much, and they still meant to tag along?
"I-I'm confident when it comes to folklore! I think I can help! Of course I'm not thinking, even a little, that this is a chance to learn a bit more about Shion's tastes!"
Ah. So that was it. That was what Akane thought.
But that was that, and this was this. Watching Han Seoyeon's reaction from the corner of her eye, she dropped her voice.
"If she comes at us like that, our side gets awkward too. What are you going to do? Shabby excuse, but turn her down somehow?"
"Hmm… The birthday present is already bought, so from here on it would be all right to go together, but……"
"Yes. That's fine. Let's go together."
Better, surely, than forcing them apart and letting their real purpose slip. On that judgment, Han Seoyeon nodded.
"You sure that's actually all right?"
"As I said just now, everything to do with the birthday present is already finished. Simply think of it as wandering about for a little while."
"No—I'm saying, the way this is going, you're going to have to walk into an adult store with her at least once."
"……Ah?"
Of course she came to understand, belatedly, that it had been the wrong choice. And the timing was, quite literally, too late.