Sweetness from the Strong (2)
At the summit of Mount Komayama—Goryeosan—in Oiso, Naka District, Kanagawa Prefecture, stood the main hall of Takaku Shrine. There the shrine maiden Akaba Akane munched on a senbei and let her eyes wander. A low table sat in the tatami room, and across it she faced another woman: Han Seoyeon, otherwise known as Saint Bartholomew, seated in a black habit that chilled the air around her.
Taken at a glance, it was an ordinary scene of a host setting tea and sweets before a guest. The trouble was that only moments ago the two of them had been beating each other bloody—and that, entirely because of a misunderstanding that had been Akaba's alone.
Even this very brief exchange was enough to make plain that Han Seoyeon had never borne her any hostility. From the standpoint of someone who managed incidents involving anomalies, she had merely come to confirm what sort of person had written a talisman for the werewolf Tsunashi Tenka.
Even so, the one who showed up armed and invited the misunderstanding shares some of the blame...
Akaba tried to excuse herself however she could, but she soon recognized the thought for the shabby defense mechanism it was and let out a sigh. Protecting one's own body was every living creature's right and its duty; what was there to reproach? Just as Akaba had been wary of the visit, Seoyeon, meeting an Akaba she knew far too little about, had been obliged to prepare for the worst. Of course she would have brought a blade or two. Which meant the incident could be called almost entirely Akaba's fault.
"A hostage? You bastards who call yourselves servants of God sure know how to have fun."
You absolute idiot...
Akaba Akane wanted to dropkick her past self with everything she had. She had thought her childhood friend's life hung in the balance, and she had judged far too hastily. Of course, none of that justified the attack Seoyeon had taken.
"...I'm sorry."
The sense that she had no shame left with which to brush this off as a mere apology tangled with the sense that, if she failed to apologize at all in a situation like this, she would hardly qualify as human. Akaba looked away and muttered in a voice that shrank in on itself.
"I wasn't actually trying to kill you... no. Just—I'm sorry."
She hadn't meant to kill her. She had been prepared to take an arm, which didn't even rise to the level of an excuse. Akaba gave up on excuses altogether and simply bowed her head.
Seeing that, Han Seoyeon smiled faintly.
"You're an interesting person, Miss Akaba."
"Nnngh... I just haven't had much practice apologizing."
"Usually, meeting my eyes is enough to scare people off. They run before they ever take the apology."
She added it while recalling the years she had been treated as a delinquent.
Seoyeon waved that reaction aside.
"No. It isn't that there was anything wrong with the way you apologized."
"People who can apologize for their own mistakes on the spot are rare. Rarer still, right after they've had weapons trained on each other."
"...People who compliment the woman who just attacked them strike me as pretty rare, too."
"Well, this much is an ordinary day for me."
"Receiving an apology immediately already puts this well above average."
It was a rather grim thing to append with a smile.
"You sure... have it rough."
"It's all the Japanese diocese's karma coming due. In that sense, perhaps the apology ought to come from my side."
"Hah... you're a better person than even that Mary kid made you out to be."
The thought that she had thrown the first punch at someone like this only deepened Akaba's self-disgust, and she sighed.
"Sorry again. That punk Tenka was tangled up in it, so I guess I got pretty desperate."
"As I said before, everyone does it, so you needn't concern yourself."
"No. That doesn't sit right with me."
She would repay this debt, no matter what. Even as she resolved it, though, Akaba's expression turned complicated—because she had no idea how she was actually supposed to take responsibility.
Money? Force? Connections? No matter how she turned it over, the woman in front of her was superior on every count. The one thing Han Seoyeon lacked, if she had to name it, was a VTuber's name recognition... but even there, a substitute already existed in Mary Tepes. Put bluntly, a shrine maiden slash VTuber like Akaba Akane was of no use whatsoever to this woman.
"Then how about this?"
Just as Akaba's fretting had reached the point of wondering whether she ought to go to the woman's house and do her housework, Han Seoyeon took a sip of tea and spoke.
"You write me talismans on a regular basis. My usual work runs a bit rough, so I need a great many of them."
At those words Akane's eyes widened slightly. She looked thoroughly thrown.
"Ah—it wouldn't be free, of course. I'll pay you for the labor, so you needn't worry that much. We'll have to settle later on the rate per sheet, but..."
"No, that isn't why I was surprised. It's, uh..."
Akaba rolled her eyes this way and that, then went on.
"You're a Christian, aren't you?"
"Well, of course. I'm a Holy Knight."
"And you use talismans?"
"I'm a person with a great many shortcomings. If I don't use things like this, my combat ability falls short."
Her combat ability falls short? Akane reviewed, once more, the meaning of "shortcomings" as she had previously understood it.
"It's true. In my apprentice days I was called a halfwit, and if the other candidate hadn't been a minor, I never would have received an Apostolic Seat."
"Uh... right. Let's just say that's how it is."
And then she decided to give up. The woman before her was clearly someone who defied common sense even within a world that already defied it.
"Anyway, fine. At this point it feels less like repayment and more like a mutual transaction. If that's what you need."
"I'm glad things worked out."
In this person's head, nearly having an arm torn off by a tiger counted as things working out? Akaba entertained the thought for a moment, then smiled bitterly.
To her, Lord Sanmeedora wasn't even a threat.
The resistance must have been no different, for Seoyeon, from a child's game.
To Akaba, busy mocking herself, Han Seoyeon drew something from her robes and tossed it. The object spun through the air and slipped neatly between Akane's fingers.
"A business card...?"
"My card as Saint Bartholomew. I'm still a student, so I haven't had one made in the name of Han Seoyeon."
With her other hand, Han Seoyeon calmly bit into a senbei.
"It will serve not only as my contact, but as a guarantee of identity should the need arise. At the very least, she won't be attacked by the Japanese diocese merely for being a werewolf."
She had meant to hand it directly to Miss Tsunashi Tenka, the one concerned. A slightly awkward smile touched her face.
"I simply forgot. So if you would pass it along in my stead, I'd be grate—"
But she closed her mouth again almost at once.
"No. There won't be any need for that."
"Speak of the tiger and it comes, they say. ...A wolf, though. Not a tiger."
A beat later Akaba, too, grasped the cause and sighed. Beyond the torii outside the window, someone's figure had come bounding in—a figure with triangular ears pricked atop its head.
"Akane-chan, I brought a present!"
Probably the castella she had made on the livestream. She had come to share it. Picturing her running over with all her might, Akaba let out a small, involuntary laugh.
"...What? Is it weird that I'm smiling with a face like this?"
Then she felt Han Seoyeon's gaze fixed on her and hardened her expression again.
"No. It isn't that..."
"Then why are you looking at me like that?"
"Well, um... if it wouldn't be rude..."
Seoyeon hesitated, then answered.
"...Would you mind sharing just a little? The castella. Forget the debt from earlier—this will do in place of the talismans."
"Huh? What are you even saying all of a sudden?"
"I did tell Miss Ninomae as much, but honestly I was a little disappointed—or rather, I very much wanted to taste what Charmea made together..."
Akaba's face settled into a truly peculiar expression.
"You really are a strange person."
"I hear that often. Regrettably."
A single truck ran down a pitch-dark road. Through the half-open window came a woman's husky singing.
The driver behind that husky, lovely voice—Han Seoyeon—was in quite a good mood. No, more than good. Today could fairly be called the greatest Halloween of her life. She had enjoyed a meal with Ninomae that afternoon, the long-awaited Charmea offline collab had come to pass, and the werewolf matter that had been nagging at her of late had wrapped up cleanly. On top of that, she had gotten a bite of the castella the Charmea pair had made. There was nothing more she could ask for.
Driving a truck borrowed from the church, the song spilled out of her on its own. It was late, and no one was around, so she hummed with gusto.
The singing stopped short.
Someone was sprawled on the roadside. There were no visible injuries, and they seemed to be breathing. Even so, one could hardly declare a person face-down on the pavement in the middle of the night to be fine. Han Seoyeon stopped the truck at once.
A woman. Her height didn't stray far from average. Her hair was tied off to one side—what people commonly called a sidetail. Two things, however, stood out to an unusual degree. The first was her chest: a size that, push it a little, might have rivaled even that Ninomae. The second was her outfit. It was a maid uniform, clothing Seoyeon had never once imagined she would behold in real life.
Because of that, the woman's presence tugged hard at her attention. Enough that, even if she hadn't been collapsed, Seoyeon might well have pulled over for a moment just to stare.
"Are you all right?"
Honestly, she didn't look all right in the least, but Seoyeon approached with the courtesy of the question anyway.
...What. A drunk?
The moment the smell of alcohol reached her on the wind, Han Seoyeon relaxed. Fortunately, this didn't seem to be an emergency.
"Sleep here and you'll wake up with your mouth twisted."
Even so, she had no intention of leaving the woman where she lay. However safe a country this was said to be, lying this defenseless was a perfect invitation to become a criminal's target.
"Uuuh... where'm I?"
"A road near Yamato City Hall."
"Ehh, so that's, like, Saitama?"
"Kanagawa."
The woman was well and truly drunk. Han Seoyeon sighed.
"Thaaat's weird... I started out in Saitama..."
"Where were you headed?"
"Tokyo! Chiyoda!"
"You've already passed it."
The shortest route from Saitama Prefecture to this part of Kanagawa cut straight across Tokyo. In other words, this unfortunate drunk had either blown past her destination without realizing she had arrived, or come the long way around entirely.
"I'll give you a ride. If it's Chiyoda, it isn't far from where I was going."
"Waaah! Thank yooou!"
"...You smell of alcohol, so please don't hug me."
And so Han Seoyeon brought a thoroughly pleasant day to a close by loading an utterly inexplicable piece of cargo and heading home.