Commandments, Statutes, and Laws (3)
"So, what happened with the stream?"
Akaba Akane popped a small piece of yokan into her mouth and rinsed her palate with green tea. She looked across at Ninomae.
"Well... we just said something urgent had come up, and carried on by ourselves."
"Maybe I should put up an apology tweet later..."
"It wasn't your fault, but it would still be better to, don't you think?"
Porcelain clicked. Han Seoyeon set down her own plate of yokan, drew out a chair, and sat between the two of them.
"Officially, the story will be that a drunk set fire to Koma Shrine, the firefighters were dispatched, and they only just managed to put it out in time."
"That's the surface. You think the other side is going to buy it? It may not look like much, but this is a real shrine, with an actual spirit enshrined in it."
"The hidden world... anyone who can reach the truth will reach it on their own anyway. It isn't anything special. Just the usual rampage from the Church's radicals. Hardly worth gritting our teeth to hide it from the people over there."
The usual, was it? Akane couldn't bring herself to deny it. Living in Japan as someone bound to a shrine, being hounded by the Church was hardly a matter of a day or two. Even so, something this extreme was a first.
"Anyway. It must have been sudden. Thank you—for coming to help, and for taking us in..."
The holy knights' rampage had not ended with the chase. Whether they had meant to smash the shrine's spiritual vein or were simply venting their anger, by the time Akane returned the dormitory and several of the other shrine buildings had been wrecked. The PCs and the rest of what mattered had fortunately survived, and the Church had agreed to take responsibility for the repairs, but a bed for the night was the immediate problem. She had been ready to impose on her childhood friend's house if it came to that, when Han Seoyeon happened to offer that they come stay at hers.
"Honestly, this happened because the Church failed to keep its own house in order. If anyone is going to take responsibility, it ought to be one of us. And we have a spare room."
"As for me... the house was in Shion's name to begin with. If Shion's all right with it, so am I."
They weren't strangers. That was enough. Ninomae smiled, soft and easy.
"Speaking of which, how did that business end? Once Shion showed up, they backed off quietly, right?"
"Mm... that's a little hard to say."
"Hard to say?"
Either they had or they hadn't. What was that supposed to mean? Ninomae tilted her head.
"Well, you see..."
"Have you calmed down a little?"
"......"
Now that she had settled, she seemed ashamed of having clung to her. Akane made a point of looking away. It was a side of her one rarely saw—not that they had known each other long enough for Seoyeon to say so with any confidence—and Han Seoyeon smiled before she could stop herself.
"In any case, well done. You must be exhausted, so please rest."
With that, she wiped the expression clean off her face, drew a silver knife from her waist, and walked toward the blood-soaked soldiers who had been facing the radical holy knights. At a single glance from her they parted left and right without a moment's hesitation, opening a path.
"Hey. What now? Never thought an Apostle would take the field in person."
"Didn't think it, so that's the end of it? We'll have to find a way. They say this generation's Bartholomew drops a move or two behind the others if she isn't prepared ahead of time. If the two of us rush her, there might be a thread of a chance."
"I don't know. From what I've heard, people would rather fight any other Apostle than meet that woman head-on. She fights dirty. Really dirty."
"Look at how she's armed. That doesn't look 'thoroughly prepared' to you, does it? She was probably thrown in so fast she couldn't grab her weapons properly."
"Then maybe it isn't completely hopeless. But they dropped out of a military helicopter, so there's a good chance they were resupplied on the way—"
Bang!
"...A bang?"
A gunshot cracked through the air. The woman spilled blood and brain from her skull and went tumbling across the ground. Han Seoyeon's hand still held nothing but the knife. The soldiers in front of her had not moved.
"...! Don't tell me—a sniper..."
Bang. And that was the end of it.
"Yes. So we bound the bodies tight, secured them, and then revived them."
"Hold on—the sound effects in that flashback were weird...?"
"An ordinary sniper, stationed on the helicopter."
Han Seoyeon answered with a smile so cheerfully unashamed it was almost refreshing. After a telling like that, there really had been no word for the other side's conduct but ambiguous. Fight, or surrender—she had ended it with a sniper round before they could choose.
"As I said last time, I'm not particularly strong on my own, so I prepare as thoroughly as I can before a fight."
"That was... about carrying all kinds of equipment, wasn't it?"
"It is about equipment. Only I'm not the one wearing it."
"Uh...? Am I the weird one here?"
Had she still not adjusted to the hidden world? Seoyeon said it so matter-of-factly that Ninomae was beginning to doubt her own common sense.
"No. This one's the weird one. Normally, in a rush like that, you couldn't tell someone to post a sniper just in case. And even if you had it ready, shooting before they got a chance to surrender would be a hard thing to do."
Akane said it while tapping Seoyeon's shin with her toes. The usual weakling cosplay, in other words. Under the same conditions, it was true she would have to yield a few moves to the other Apostles. But from a cat's point of view, an elephant and a hippopotamus were much the same.
"It's work that throws you into danger. There's nothing wrong with preparing carefully. I was taught that gunpowder is always honest."
"Taught by whom?"
"My master. I inherited his family name as well, so he's no different from a father."
"If you start dragging fathers into it, what am I supposed to pick at?"
Thump. Akane's foot struck Seoyeon's leg again.
"Hm? You're hurt."
"...You saw that? Already?"
This time her ankle was caught clean. It wasn't payback for the kick. It was the scrapes still raw across that foot.
"I just ran a mountain trail in sandals. They're barely even cuts."
"But you're a woman. You ought to take care of your skin, shouldn't you?"
"Hearing that from the one person here who looks least likely to take care of herself... forget it."
So saying, Seoyeon cupped Akane's foot in both hands and offered a short prayer.
"The other one as well."
"I told you, it's nothing—"
"The other one."
"Fine. I get it. I said I get it."
Only after she had treated the other leg too did Han Seoyeon let her go, wearing a satisfied smile.
"Be more careful next time... hmm."
"Hey—what are you sniffing and keeling over for this time?!"
"Ah. Sorry. I wasn't thinking."
She sniffed at her fingers, and the kick that followed this time was closer to sincere. Even that was no great blow. It ended with nothing more than a short, soft ah.
Ninomae watched the two of them in silence.
That distance... isn't it a little close?
Watching Akane's foot fidget beneath the table, that was the thought that bloomed. She was still grumbling and snapping, but the air between them had grown unmistakably warmer than before. They had always been on friendly terms; they simply hadn't met often. Even allowing for that, the change was plain to see. No—she understood. Seoyeon had appeared at the perfect dramatic moment and saved her from a crisis like that. A fairy-tale prince on a white horse. If it became a reason to see her in a new light, there was nothing to be done about it. It was only that, of all people, the prince in question happened to be Ninomae's.
Of course it probably wasn't that Akane had fallen for her in any romantic sense. She had, however, opened her heart a great deal, and once that happened there was no telling what later incident might plant some other feeling. I'm glad the read lines up, but still...!
A rough mouth, but gentle at the core, and—though she denied it every time—a quietly girlish streak. That was the prevailing fan read on Yugure Tama. Ninomae herself had more or less entered the VTuber world through those Gen 1 seniors, and she was a believer in that reading. Which was precisely why her guard had gone up.
Seoyeon was simply too attractive. So long as a woman didn't let appearances prejudice her, most of them would fall head over heels. That was the logic. A perfectly ordinary case of love goggles.
And even if Akane's feelings never changed, that was not the end of it. Ninomae was certain Seoyeon's desires ran toward women, which meant Seoyeon's heart turning toward an Akane who had drawn closer was a problem in its own right. Just look at that impish little footwork. She almost certainly didn't mean anything by it, and she didn't even know Seoyeon's tastes, but it was nothing short of a serious threat. Set beside those tastes, it amounted to nearly the same thing as idly pressing one's chest against her. Seoyeon was doing her best, just now, to talk like a normal person—and yet, consciously or not, her eyes kept sliding under the table.
"Um, Ninomae...?"
And so Ninomae let her lips push into a pout for a moment—then dropped both legs across Seoyeon's thighs with a soft thump.
"Hmph... aah. My legs hurt. I'll just rest them here a second."
"Yes? Yes, of course...?"
It was, needless to say, a line that would convince no one. The delivery was straight out of a language textbook, and these days she kept physical enhancement active around the clock—how long had she even been sitting for her legs to start aching? Seoyeon knew perfectly well the complaint was an excuse. There was still no world in which she refused Ninomae.
The shorts she wore to sleep in. The pale skin showing beneath them. Only once she confirmed that Seoyeon's gaze had locked there did Ninomae finally smile, satisfied.
"Hyah—?!"
That lasted right up until Han Seoyeon started working the pressure points of her foot.
"Hiek—w-wait, Shion...!"
It was not that she had failed to hold the impulse and surrendered her body to desire. Not exactly. There was some selfish indulgence in it, yes, but the real point was a light punishment.
"Ow?! Hek... Shi-on, this feels weird... nnh!"
Seoyeon carried a sadistic streak, whether or not she owned it. It wasn't so much that she enjoyed cruelty for its own sake as that tormenting Ninomae gave her a faint, private thrill—though from the side receiving it, the distinction hardly mattered. Ticklishness and pain rushed in together, and Ninomae scrambled to escape. Her opponent, however, was no ordinary person. As an Apostle, Seoyeon might have been lacking in places, and yet, just as Akane had said, she was still a hippopotamus at the least. A civilian who had merely inflated her physique with magic was never going to answer her.
She got her right foot free, more or less. The left was caught fast. One hand cupped the heel as if to support it; the other threaded between her toes and locked them tight.
"Hik—kuh, hnnn?!"
Pinned so she could not so much as twitch, both thumbs pressing firmly here and there across the sole, she had no choice but to twist and thrash until she came apart.
Ninomae was released from that ordeal only after Han Seoyeon had savored her foot at length.
"Heek... hnn... haah..."
Utterly spent, she had slumped so far she was nearly sprawled across the chair. Her head had fallen back, and a thread of drool ran down her cheek along the tilt of it. Han Seoyeon smiled, sat her upright again, and kissed the nape of her neck.
Akane watched the whole sequence in silence and took another sip of green tea. It's someone else's house. I knew I was imposing. Her hand trembled faintly, though, and the surface of the tea shivered in the cup. Not just a house. A newlyweds' home? The weight of it grew heavier in an instant. She had meant to leave soon anyway. Now she promised herself she really would get out as fast as she possibly could.