The Dance of Mahanaim (1)
It began, truly, by accident.
Seoyeon had never needed much sleep to begin with. When work pressed her, she had more than once driven fatigue out by the force of prayer and stayed awake for days on end. Even with nothing in particular to do, sitting down to catch up on a backlog of clips made the hours vanish, and so Han Seoyeon's average night's rest lingered somewhere around two hours.
"…Isn't that basically the one ability you should never put in an otaku's hands?"
"But the free time I can spend on my hobbies has increased."
"I don't think sleep is spare change you can convert into leisure time……?"
Ninomae's earlier stunned dismay had been over precisely this irregular life of Seoyeon's. It did no harm to her health, so the matter tended to end at sheer disbelief.
In any case, that night she was in the middle of another such vigil. It happened to be Lent, before Pascha, and she had been praying and meditating alone deep into the night.
Without so much as checking how many hours had passed, Han Seoyeon rose from her seat. The lights were off and the room was dark, but she had kept her eyes closed so long that they were already accustomed to it, and taking in her surroundings posed no difficulty. Before long she stepped out of the bedroom. There was no particular reason. She had simply thought she might have a glass of water.
"…Hm?"
Passing down the hall, she caught some small sound and stopped.
An extremely keen sense of smell was Han Seoyeon's particular gift, but that hardly meant her other senses were dull. Her hearing had not reached the realm of the uncanny, yet set beside an ordinary person's it was still remarkably sharp.
It was the computer room where Ninomae usually streamed. Through the half-open door came the faint, low whir of a fan. There was no broadcast on the schedule today, but one hardly had to be streaming to turn a computer on. She must have been using it for some reason and simply forgotten to shut it down. The monitor was dark, so she had probably convinced herself the tower was off as well.
Thinking so, Han Seoyeon stepped inside.
Perhaps because it was a room in constant use, Ninomae's scent hung in the air—thick, overwhelmingly thick. A faint light glowed on the tower's power button. She was not about to commit the folly of killing the machine with a press of that. Meaning to shut it down properly, she turned the monitor on.
"…Hack?!"
And she promptly choked on the banquet of bare skin that seemed to fill the entire screen. Han Seoyeon caught lightly at her throat and coughed, again and again.
When she looked back at the monitor… the nude drawing had not gone anywhere. It still occupied the screen. The second time she looked, its contours came through all the more clearly. The style was quite familiar to her eye—the work of an artist famous enough that any otaku who browsed a few communities would have seen it more than once. It did not take her long to recall the name. Sakuragi Oka.
And then Han Seoyeon recognized the women tumbling together inside the comic. She could guess where it had come from, too.
It had been mentioned on stream. Sakuragi Oka—that is, Kitayama Maya, Mary's VTuber senior—had gifted the first half on her own birthday and the second half on Ninomae's. This was that manga. And the characters in the erotic comic were… Mary Tepes and Sister.
Platinum blonde and the silver hair set against it tangled together. Completely naked skin clung to naked skin, legs locked around each other. There was no need to dress it up. The women on the screen were in the middle of coupling.
Don't tell me…
Only then did Han Seoyeon understand the source of that powerful scent. It was a smell that had clung, sticky, to more than a few illegal establishments she had smashed over the years. Put delicately, it was the smell of love and arousal. Put plainly, it was the smell of bodily fluids. She so rarely had cause to encounter it that she had forgotten it entirely, and she had never taken in Ninomae's so nakedly before—which was why she had been slow to name it.
But that means Miss Ninomae, before she fell asleep last night, was in here looking at this manga and…….
Han Seoyeon swallowed.
A pink, ugly desire boiled up in the shape of curiosity. Before she knew it, the mouse was in her hand. Right. She would only look for a moment. She was only checking, roughly, what that thing they had mentioned on stream was actually about. Only confirming where Ninomae's interest had been pointed…
The cursor she dragged across the screen was already opening the file for page one of the first volume.
Ninomae Hitomi's hours of sleep were exceedingly ordinary. Streaming and her studies side by side made them uneven now and then, but next to Han Seoyeon she was a thoroughly normal case. So this was an hour when she would ordinarily have been asleep… and yet Ninomae lifted her heavy eyelids a fraction.
"Uuugh…"
A glance toward the window. The blinds were drawn, but even through them she could tell it was still the dead of night. Then, by the habit of modern people, she picked up her phone and checked the time. As expected, it was no hour to be awake.
Why had she woken now? It felt as if someone had roused her. She looked around, but there was no one. She seemed to have heard, as if in a dream, a voice calling her name. Was that why she had thought someone woke her? Perhaps it was only fatigue; a strange sound lingered in her ears. Ninomae worked her lips a few times, buried her face in the pillow, and sank back into sleep.
"Mmmn……."
Her consciousness rose to the surface again not long after. Less the feeling of having slept than of having dozed. Checking the time, she found that not even thirty minutes had passed. Waking twice at this hour—tonight of all nights she was sleeping poorly. Thinking so, she rolled over.
Then, feeling a faint urge, she pushed herself up. So that was it. She had woken because she needed to pee. Truth be told, the first time she had stirred she hadn't felt any need for the bathroom… well, she had been half-asleep, so her memory of it was probably fuzzy.
Ninomae threw back the covers and got out of bed. The warmth of the heated floor met the soles of her feet. Yawning once, she left the room. The house was large, but there was a bathroom on the second floor as well, so that at least was no inconvenience.
"……Huh?"
Walking down the hall, she noticed a room leaking bright light and tilted her head. It was the room she usually used for streaming. They had fitted it with all sorts of things so it would be properly soundproofed, but the door stood half open, and the presence of someone inside came through plainly.
"Shion?"
"Hhk?! Ah, ah… Miss Ninomae? Why are you up at this hour…?"
Her eyes met Han Seoyeon's. She had been wiping the floor with a towel.
Ninomae thought it had been a very long time since she had seen Han Seoyeon this flustered. The first time, in fact, since she had been told she was allowed to lick her feet… no. Thinking about it, that had only been a few days ago. Not so long ago after all.
"I was on my way to the bathroom……. But what about you, Shion?"
"Ah, well… I spilled a bit of a drink……."
A drink? Looking now, the towel in Seoyeon's hand was soaked through and discolored. Only then did Ninomae notice the smell hanging in the room. Magic kept the floor heating cranked high at all times, and the air curling at the tip of her nose was warm and strangely sticky.
"Sweet, with a faint tartness mixed in so delicately… is it that fig syrup you often make for me? No, the smell is a little different…?"
"Th-they sent a new batch this time. So the taste and the scent may have changed quite a bit……."
"Ah, is that it? …Mmm, it's a strangely addictive smell."
"Th-uh, ah… Yes. I suppose it is……."
Every time Ninomae sniffed, Han Seoyeon's reaction grew inexplicably strained. Ninomae tilted her head, but she didn't press. Why, of all places, had she been drinking in Ninomae's room—when Ninomae streamed, Seoyeon needed a setup of her own to watch, so each of them had a separate computer room; this house had empty rooms to spare—was a question, but she decided to let that pass for now as well.
Instead, she simply held out her hand.
"Give me that."
"M-Miss Ninomae?"
"I'll drop it in the laundry basket. I was heading to the bathroom anyway."
The baths, like the toilets, stood on both the first and second floors, and they happened to be near each other. She had to use the bathroom regardless, so she could just toss the towel in on the way.
"Ah, no! I'll take care of this myself."
But Han Seoyeon refused the kindness with considerable force. It was a reaction from which a sense of wrongness was hard to shake.
"It's fine. It's hardly any trouble."
"Th-that's… ugh."
Keep refusing without a reason and she would only invite suspicion. Sensing that color gradually gathering in Ninomae's eyes, Han Seoyeon surrendered at last. With a hand that twitched and hesitated, she passed over the damp towel.
"Mm. It really does smell nice."
The instant Ninomae brought the towel up under her nose, Han Seoyeon very nearly screamed. Whether Ninomae knew what was going through her mind or not, she only smiled, bright and innocent.
"I'll be off, then. You should get to sleep soon too, Shion."
"Y-yes… I will."
For a moment Han Seoyeon watched Ninomae's retreating back. Then she covered her face with her palms and sank to the floor.
Once Miss Ninomae was back in her bedroom, she would wash and change her underwear first thing. And then…
A prayer of repentance… I suppose I'll have to.
For an ordinary Catholic, a mortal sin requiring confession. Contrary to what she had told Ninomae, there was far too much left to do, deep into the night, for her to simply go to bed.