The Host She Kindled (2)
"To put it plainly, a precedent."
For reasons no one could quite fathom, Professor Senjoji Chihaya said this while sipping canned coffee through a straw. Clack. She set the can on the table and promptly shoved that hand into the pocket of her white coat—"Incidentally, why do you always wear a lab coat? Yours is hardly a profession where hygiene matters." "A scholar in a white coat simply looks the part, wouldn't you say?"—and Han Seoyeon watched the whole performance with a perfectly blank face.
"A precedent in what sense?"
"Ah. Forgive me. That would have been difficult to follow. Let me say it again. This is the establishment of an anecdote, and the origin of a tradition."
Even then, understanding failed to catch. Han Seoyeon drew her brows together.
"Why did Ninomae's possession take hold at precisely that time? She is no mere spirit. She is a living deity, and for such a being to possess another person could never have been easy. You supposed, Shion, that the concert had simply increased the faith around her. You were wrong."
The professor's gaze drifted slowly over the room.
"They came to the live concert because they were already fans of Mary Tepes. Not the other way around. There are surely people who become fans after being moved by a concert, but in most cases that is only a matter of happening upon some video making the rounds."
"And anyone watching a livestream in real time without even being a fan would be very few, would they not?"
So she added. Then why, in the end? Professor Senjoji's answer to that was a single word: precedent.
"A rite, looked at a certain way, is the reproduction of an anecdote out of legend. Its reenactment. I read the report on your clash with Hachiman Daibosatsu with some pleasure. The passage where Ninomae came to the rescue, especially."
"Well. Something to that effect." The professor smiled and picked up the canned coffee again. With a thin slurp, the white straw went dark.
"That much is certainly true."
Only then did Han Seoyeon nod. An anecdote of that sort was not beyond imagining.
"In any case... thank you for the advice on this point as well."
"Think nothing of it. A student's consultation is always welcome."
Han Seoyeon dipped her head, and the professor only shrugged, as if it were nothing.
"And... this."
"...Hm?"
Even she, though, could not help a puzzled look at what Seoyeon held out next.
"A document...?"
Type, printed on a sheet of A4. Professor Senjoji looked it over... and her eyes went wide.
"...You said it yourself, last time. That what I feel for Miss Ninomae is not simple friendship. That if you turned out to be right later on, I should be ready to file a graduate school application."
"Ah. Yes, I do recall saying something of the sort. Only, the fact that you are bringing it up now would mean—"
"Yes, well... I surrender. I have no choice now but to acknowledge my own feelings."
Han Seoyeon gave a bitter smile and let out a sigh. Professor Senjoji looked from that face to the form, and back again.
"...Professor?"
And then, with astonishingly quick fingers, she folded a paper airplane and sent it flying. It struck Han Seoyeon square in the solar plexus and flopped to the floor.
"Take it back. This was not our wager, was it?"
This time the flustered expression belonged to Han Seoyeon. The reaction must have pleased the professor considerably; she grinned.
"To be submitted together with a wedding invitation. I am quite certain that is what I told you, Shion."
"That is true, but... that was not the heart of it, was it?"
The wording had been just that, and the real question had surely been whether Han Seoyeon would belatedly notice her own romantic feelings. Professor Senjoji, however, would not be moved.
"I am truly saddened. To think I must let so precious a graduate candidate slip away like this."
"Then..."
"Which is to say: if you mean to succeed in entering graduate school after all, and to spare this teacher her grief, then you will bring me good news. Without fail."
Not that saying so settled anything. Han Seoyeon could only sigh.
Han Seoyeon quietly closed her mouth. It could not have been for nothing that, of all moments, the words from that day—good news—had risen in her while she was kissing Ninomae.
"So... the title......"
Before her eyes, Ninomae, in a bathrobe, was working her smartphone. Most likely searching for a song. They had agreed to train, the better to adapt to the bodily strain of possession wrought through kagura, and dance, of course, came with the rite. The song itself was not strictly essential, but Ninomae, at least, still lacked the confidence to show off an unaccompanied freestyle in front of another person.
Then she let out a small "ah." She must have found what she was looking for. A moment later she glanced toward Han Seoyeon, testing the air.
"You really don't have any requests? It's a rare chance."
"No. I don't know the first thing about dance...... I'll just leave it to you, Miss Ninomae."
"Not that leaving it to me helps," Ninomae muttered. She was close to a complete amateur in this field herself. She had taken lessons from a dance trainer while preparing for the live show, but only for a relatively short while. So what choice was there? She had no wish to look clumsy in front of Han Seoyeon, which left her nothing but the song she trusted most.
What soon flowed from the phone was an original by Mary Tepes, familiar to them both. After a cursory straightening of her clothes, Ninomae gave her body to the music. Come to think of it, this was the first time she had shown the dance in her own form, with no avatar between them.
Han Seoyeon watched from the best seat in the house. Taking it in through VR was certainly vivid, but meeting it in person was another world entirely. Beyond what the eyes could see, there was the mass of a person actually there: a presence made of breath and warmth and scent, all mingled into one.
"......"
Thinking this as she watched, Han Seoyeon suddenly noticed something, and her expression went stiff. Yes. It was definitely different.
...Hm.
—Sway.
How to put it. As she had just been thinking, the "mass" was... tremendous. Part of it was the difference in size between the 3D model and the real thing, and part of it was morphing, which the model had kept within certain limits. On top of that, the song Ninomae had chosen happened to sit toward the more dynamic end of the choreography, so the motion was all the greater. She had probably picked a difficult dance on purpose, hoping to look her best. At first she truly had not even noticed. Once she became conscious of it, she could see nothing else.
A bathrobe that ought to have hung slack had surrendered before Ninomae's physique, and was of little help. If anything, the violent movement only introduced drawbacks (?), such as the front panels creeping open little by little. In the end, even when the song finished and Ninomae flung her arms out and snapped to a stop, Han Seoyeon could not take her eyes off her chest.
No—strictly speaking, not even after that. Having thrown herself around in a heated room, Ninomae was still pouring sweat and breathing hard once the dance was over, and Han Seoyeon's gaze was drawn, unthinking, to the chest that rose and fell with every breath.
"Haa... Miss Shion, how was my dan— aaaaah?!"
It did not take long for Ninomae to notice. Not because her eye was especially sharp. The dance just now had linked part of her senses to Han Seoyeon's, and so she had simply become aware of where that gaze was pointed.
"Miss Shion... you pervert."
"Ah... that, no, I'm not. I mean, this is......"
Ninomae covered, with both hands, the valley that had spilled past the robe. A thin, reproachful voice slipped from lips squirming with embarrassment, and the cheeks that had cooled while she focused on the dance flushed pink all over again. Han Seoyeon, flustered, tried to excuse herself. But every time her gaze darted, the part of Ninomae's body it brushed gave a flinch. Where she was looking was laid completely bare. She had once seen something called an eye-tracker challenge on YouTube, and this was exactly that. ...If one were assigning blame, of course, it lay with her, for letting her eyes wander even now.
"That aside, perhaps because this is the second possession, the physical burden doesn't seem so bad."
Unable, in the end, to endure Ninomae's reaction, Han Seoyeon changed the subject.
"Mmm... it feels less like I've adapted, and more like there's simply less information coming in than last time......"
"You mean the link still isn't fully made?"
Hearing that, Han Seoyeon sank back into thought. The connection was weak. Why? The only difference from last time was avatar versus the real body. Where, exactly, had the gap opened?
"...It might be whether or not there's an audience."
And there she reached her conclusion. If anything set this time apart, it was that Han Seoyeon alone had watched the dance. Most rites that include dance, kagura among them, assume spectators. That would only shade the effect a rite produced; it could hardly be essential. Even now, though not to the degree of before, their senses did seem to be shared. The thinner flood of information owed something, too, to the way they had deliberately controlled the smells in the room. For the rite just performed they had purified the place again and again, and both of them were fresh from washing. By limiting what could be smelled, they had meant to keep Ninomae's brain from taking another blow of overload.
At any rate, while a theory of possession was slowly taking shape in Seoyeon's head, what Ninomae herself was thinking was something else entirely.
Ah... wait, I sweated an awful lot, didn't I...? Nnh, was I really giving off this much smell... a smell this strong......
Linked only in part, and yet smelling what Han Seoyeon smelled, she gave a small shudder of the shoulders. Her own scent, which she would normally have struggled to notice at all, had been driven into her through an Apostle's nose. Sweat was seeping from skin still soft from the wash. That heated smell of flesh, mingled with the fragrance of body wash, clung sticky inside her nose. No—this was already less a smell than a pheromone. And she had been throwing all of it off while shaking her body in front of Han Seoyeon. Was that any different from a female's courtship display? More blood rushed into Ninomae's face.
"......"
She swallowed. Only now had she registered the state she was in.
"...The goal is to adapt to the descent, so we ought to connect more firmly. Yes."
But she stole a glance at Han Seoyeon, still seated on the bed, and recalled the gaze Seoyeon had turned on her a moment ago. She changed her mind, and opened her mouth again. A touch of dizziness. Weak as it was, the possession's influence was not entirely gone, and on top of that a feeling in which shame and excitement were mixed was slowly paralyzing her reason.
"I'll dance just one more song."
"Yes? Yes, if that's what you want, Miss Ninomae......"
An irrational decision. Ninomae thought so herself, in her head, but her body was already moving. The whole of that drive came from one place: a small idea that had flashed through her mind for an instant. She picked up the smartphone and typed something. Han Seoyeon assumed, just as she had said, that she was looking for the next song.
"Yes, it's just... part of the rite, isn't it?"
"...Miss Ninomae?"
But the song that followed had a strangely sticky air, and for a moment Han Seoyeon could not help but wonder.
"They passed on it, since it doesn't suit Mary's concept, but... the trainer did show me a little of this, briefly."
A strangely languid, alluring step. Ninomae came slowly toward Han Seoyeon, and at the sight Seoyeon eased back without thinking. Ninomae did not retreat. She stopped only when she was close enough to touch Seoyeon's nose.
"......!"
Then she bent at the waist and pressed her body to Seoyeon's. The distance was hardly different from an embrace. It was not simply a matter of pushing her chest forward; she rose again along a smooth curve, and in time with the music she drew her body along Seoyeon's in wave after wave. As it happened, the one who had performed just before Mary was Serena, who held the fanservice position among the second generation, and the trainer had given a brief demonstration, remarking that her side of things included dances with this sort of feel. That was all Ninomae had seen. But she had always been rated exceptional in analytical ability when it came to games, and if the task was only to imitate, roughly, then that much was enough. Moving a body in the real world was, of course, a different matter from tapping a few buttons. Even so, with magic to assist her, she had long since gained a physique that could perform, exactly, whatever motion she pictured in her head.
"M-Miss Ninomae...?"
Whatever the circumstances, from where Han Seoyeon sat—a sexy dance having begun without warning an inch from her face—there was nothing to feel but panic. Afraid of touching somewhere she shouldn't, she could not even bring herself to push Ninomae properly away. From the middle on, Ninomae carried the dance practically astride her lap. And then their eyes met. Bewildered as she was, Han Seoyeon had been unable, in the end, to look away. Seeing that, Ninomae smiled with deep satisfaction, as if she had just secured some tremendous result. It was a face cute enough to feel slightly at odds with that overwhelming body, and the mismatch, if anything, stirred a strange sense of transgression.
Then Ninomae looped her arms around Han Seoyeon's shoulders. Holding her by the neck, she pressed closer still, and that large chest, forced against Seoyeon, was crushed flat. Their lips met. Ninomae shyly closed her eyes; the flustered Han Seoyeon's only grew wider. Even the question of why Ninomae was suddenly doing this was wiped from her mind at a stroke.
"Mmph......"
It lasted a little longer than the few they had shared before. It was not a kiss in which tongues tangled, and yet it went on long enough that she became, all at once, aware of her breath.
"Pwah... hah, Miss Ninomae, why so sud... den...?"
When their lips parted, that was, of course, Han Seoyeon's first question. Anyone would have wanted the reason. But the question never finished.
"...Miss Ninomae?! Are you all right?!"
Ninomae's body had simply slumped sideways. A soft bed was there, but Han Seoyeon reflexively caught her and held her up. Had the backlash of the possession come over her again? The second dance must have strengthened the link, and an excess of information had come crashing in.
"Nn, nnh......"
In the end, Han Seoyeon had to let the day pass without ever learning what Ninomae had intended.
...Though she did seem to have settled, for some time to come, exactly what the "side dish" would be whenever she made tea for Ninomae.