The Sawtooth Oak (4)
The world holds a truly astonishing variety of people. Even those who are not people at all are no exception.
And the moment their natures show themselves most honestly is, of course, when their lives hang by a thread.
Well. With Momomomo Chisa in front of them and Han Seoyeon behind, that condition was satisfied, and then some.
The swarm of monsters that came tumbling out—evil spirits, yokai, and everything in between—each took its own course.
"Hey, the shell cracked and we got out, but what the hell do we do now?"
"No... we're all gonna die. We're all dead...!"
Those who could not move, frozen where they stood.
"Bwahahaha! The hour has come at last! From this moment on, the world is mine!"
"Stupid cowards. Getting spooked over something like this!"
Those severely lacking in at least two of the following: sense, knowledge, and intelligence. Or those whose reason had been paralyzed by sheer bravado. These flung themselves at Han Seoyeon or Chisa in high spirits.
"Still better than fighting an Apostle...!"
"Ignore Bartholomew! We pool our strength and punch a way out the other side, no matter what!"
Those who could at least compare the gap between Han Seoyeon and Chisa. They threw themselves at Chisa, the side that offered even a slightly higher chance of living.
"But even if she's weaker than an Apostle, can we actually beat Shuten-doji?"
"...As a pack? Wonder where I'd have to get hit to die clean in one shot."
And then the ones who had already attained enlightenment.
Chisa might be weaker than Han Seoyeon, but that did not mean they were stronger than Chisa. The yokai who realized as much ran toward Han Seoyeon instead. The reason was simple. Death was already certain, and the stronger of the two was more likely to make it quick and painless.
"You cowardly, disgusting fiends! Kneel before the Grizzly Punch of Justice!"
"No, you piece of— you're an evil spirit too..."
"No questions! Take this!"
"Agh!"
And the sage. Or the treacherous schemer.
...In any case, the conclusion was this: each thinking their own thoughts, the beasts raised their claws and began to charge.
"Miss Ninomae. The hammer."
"Ah, yes. Here."
Han Seoyeon carefully set down the Ninomae she had been carrying and took the silver hammer back. She closed her fingers around the haft as if to bind it there, and looked out over the swarm of grotesques before her.
"Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war,"
A wolfish beast had already closed to within a step. She drove the hammer up from below and smashed it under the jaw.
Crack! Unable to kill its own momentum, the beast took the silver hammer full on. Its body lifted into the empty air, then flew on at the very speed it had been charging and slammed into the ground far away.
"...and my fingers for battle. This is the song of David."
Thud. The sound of the beast, after a brief residence in the sky, reuniting with the earth. At that, a fair number of the evil spirits in the lead visibly faltered.
Of course, that did not mean she meant to stop on their account.
She set her stance, planted her lead foot hard, and twisted at the waist to hurl the hammer with everything she had. It ripped the air with a vicious shriek and buried itself in a massive beast, and in the next instant it burst, spreading a golden haze and a shockwave that scattered the creatures around it into drifting dust.
"Agh! She's insane...! Run...!"
"Damn it. What the hell is that?!"
It was not, strictly speaking, a feat of raw muscle. A sacred relic and a pack of wicked lesser spirits simply made for a catastrophically bad matchup... but from where they stood, a trivial fact like that did not matter. When something can turn a person—no, a yokai—into dust in a single blow, what difference does it make whether that is personal skill or an item carry? It was enough that the opponent could throw an attack like that.
"You idiots, turning your backs here is even more dangerous..."
"Then you're telling us to fight that?!"
A few still had the bare minimum of judgment left in them, but they were far too few, and far too late.
Han Seoyeon poured silver rounds into the targets who had turned their backs. The submachine gun was something she had brought along in case the god they were meant to meet today proved to be a cunning evil deity with a trap already laid.
—Li trigram. In the name of Ninomae Hitomi, in the name of the True Ancestor Mary Tepes, I demand it! O herald who blossoms in blue, let us burn every unclean thing as a burnt offering, and raise it together unto heaven...!
And Han Seoyeon was not even the only one pouring on the attack.
Somewhere along the way Ninomae had called up a demon's power, a grimoire held in one hand. Something like a magic circle took shape in the empty air as translucent wings unfurled, and blue flame surged from the hand she thrust forward. The fire fluttered this way and that like butterflies, slipping between the monsters and tapping them as it passed.
And that was the end of it. Beasts the flames so much as brushed caught at once. Their whole bodies were swallowed in fire, and they vanished without leaving even ash, screaming spiritual screams as they went.
Watching this, the evil spirits who had been running toward Momomomo Chisa from the start pressed hands to their chests in relief. Thank goodness. Their choice had not been wrong.
...They thought so for about ten seconds.
More precisely, until several at the very front were run through like skewers on bamboo that shot up out of the ground.
"...Um, would it be all right if we just went back?"
"Hic..."
"Right. Yeah. Of course not......"
The answer was not words. It was talismans. Sheet after sheet scattered into the sky, then broke apart again in midair and became red petals. There was no need to think very hard about what a touch would do. You either knew the danger the instant you saw them, or the body a petal settled on began to crumble, or both.
Charging Chisa was no answer either. It was a perfect deadlock, neither advance nor retreat.
"...Aha!"
"The hell. Why are you bastards looking this way?"
And so it was only natural that some of the yokai turned their eyes toward Akane.
"What are you looking at. Do I look easy to you?"
Akaba Akane watched the beasts creeping over and drew a bundle of talismans from her pocket. For all the threats she laid on, she did not actually have much confidence. Once she left her own domain, a shrine maiden had a miserable time bringing her power to bear, and still she came on strong on purpose. Better that than look weak and get torn apart for it.
"...Oh, damn it."
It was not a very effective strategy. Absolute strength was not what mattered to them. She was weaker than Han Seoyeon or Chisa. That was enough.
As their eyes flashed and they began to charge, Akane hunched in and raised her guard. This was completely shot. Seoyeon would patch the wounds anyway, so just keep the vitals clear and try not to die. That was the whole of it. No—come to think of it, would even dying matter? Han Seoyeon's miracles being what they were.
"...Nnh."
But even with that resolve, her body drew in on its own before the wicked presence closing on her. She might have been called a delinquent all through her school years, and she might be a shrine maiden of the hidden world besides... in the end she was still closer to an ordinary person. A civilian. Faced with monsters that rushed her while pouring out genuine killing intent, she could not help but be afraid.
A host of beasts kicked off the ground and came. Akane covered her face with her arms, and when even that was not enough, she squeezed her eyes shut.
"...Even so, that would be a problem."
The beasts' claws never reached her. What came instead was a lurch through her whole body—a weightless, crawling chill, as if she were falling. Someone had seized her by the scruff and yanked her back. But Akane did not go tumbling across the ground. What met her was not hard earth and musty dust. It was warm body heat.
"Are you all right?"
"Ah... yeah. Thanks. I mean it."
Gunshots rang out nearby in a rapid string, run through a suppressor and still not something one could honestly call quiet. Only then did Akaba Akane grasp, roughly, how things stood. The one who had hauled her back an instant before she collided with the beasts, and the one who had caught her in an embrace when she lost her balance and started to fall, were both Han Seoyeon.
One arm looped around Akane's shoulders, holding her to her chest, Han Seoyeon was breaking the surging wave of yokai with the gun in her other hand.
"I am sorry. I should have paid closer attention to the delicate Miss Akaba."
Away from her own shrine, Akane's fighting strength had no choice but to plummet. Han Seoyeon blamed herself for having forgotten that, and for how close it had come to disaster.
"Until this is settled, I will protect you from right here at your side."
"...Shouldn't you be worrying about that Ninomae kid, or the young lady of the Hyakurenno house, instead of me?"
"As you can see, Miss Ninomae is no longer at a level where opponents like these would trouble her, so long as it is not an ambush. And in Miss Yuri's case, she has her maid."
To Momomomo Chisa, Hyakurenno Yuri was probably something like what Ninomae was to Han Seoyeon. Which was to say that even if Chisa had to die, the chance of Yuri being seriously hurt converged on zero. For the moment, protecting someone of Akane's caliber was all that needed doing. The action had been taken on that judgment.
Each time Han Seoyeon moved, the Akane held against her was drawn along, and a cheek brushed the collar of those clothes.
Akane was taller than the average Japanese woman... and even so, this close, she had to look slightly up at Han Seoyeon. She stole a glance at that face, then dropped her eyes again. What came through that chest was not merely a lukewarm warmth. Relief spread through her whole body, and the strength went out of her with a soft give. Someone she could rely on. Someone it was all right to rely on. While Akane was revising her estimation of Han Seoyeon along those lines, the situation ended in an instant.
It took less than two minutes for the overflowing host of spirits and specters to be sent back to the Yellow Springs—every last one of them but one.
"Haha! Die, you wicked evil spirits!"
"...You can let go of me now, can't you?"
"Ah. Pardon me."
Only after the surroundings had gone quiet again did Akane come back to herself and nudge Han Seoyeon's side with an elbow. Han Seoyeon, who had kept her tucked under one arm for a little while even after it was over, finally let her go. Perhaps because the hold had been a bit tight, the cheeks that had been trapped in that heat were flushed red.
"Miss Ninomae? Is something the matter?"
"It's nothing. Not like I was thinking how oddly romantic that looked, or how jealous it made me."
"...You were, then. I will make it up to you at once..."
Catching the faintly sulky look on Ninomae's face, Han Seoyeon smiled wryly. It had been necessary, but it seemed to have made her jealous all the same. Ninomae, however, shook her head at the offer at once and pointed behind her.
"Make it up to me later! Help the injured person first."
She turned. A man had collapsed, clutching the arm that had been cut away, and beside him his daughter watched him with worry. To be jealous and still never mistake a priority like this—that was Ninomae through and through. The wounded came before her own wants. At that, Han Seoyeon smiled before she knew it, thinking that it was because Ninomae was this kind of person that she had come to love her without even noticing when.
"Truly... you've brought remarkable people, Rikka..."
"No. Even I never meant to bring people quite like this..."
Presently the man, his arm restored by Han Seoyeon, muttered in a daze. He might not know the hidden world well, but he was one who served a god. He knew how dangerous evil gods could be, and he could roughly feel how strong the things he had just witnessed were. Mighty evil spirits, the sort that would have overwhelmed anyone short of the exceptional, made in a single breath into the dead who do not return. He could not help but marvel.
"At the very least, the god you chose to bring was exactly the right one, Rikka."
"...You're right. That's a relief."
Well, good was good. He had only to be glad that the god he served had found a favorable place. The man smiled.
"Um... that aside, what should we do about that bear yokai?"
The one who raised the question in the midst of all this was Hyakurenno Yuri, and at the sound of her voice every gaze turned to the bear with two heads. He held one head in each hand—the severed heads of yokai he had torn off himself.
"Amaziiing... hic. That one's stiiill alive."
"To be honest, I did not think he would survive to the end either. It would be a waste to simply throw strength like that away."
His eye for the moment had been quick, and he had possessed the resolve to attach himself to the stronger side. But though he had taken their side, they had not helped him in return. Looked at that way, it was little different from charging a multitude of yokai alone. If he lived through to the end, Han Seoyeon's party would probably spare his life, yet there had been a considerable chance the other yokai would smash him before he ever got that far. Even so he had won, and he had stood his ground here until the last. It was not only his mind that was exceptional.
Han Seoyeon considered for a moment, then, as if some alternative had come to her, looked toward the father and daughter of this shrine.
"By any chance, does the shrine need another pair of hands?"
"What? No—but how is an evil spirit that powerful supposed to play the servant under a person—"
"Cleaning and cooking, I am entirely confident! You have only to command me!"
"...He means to, doesn't he?"
At that refreshingly immediate answer, it was bewilderment that colored Kure Rikka's face.
...Well. The sage among yokai had remained a sage to the very end.