Hosanna, Praise Be (1)

Ibuki Hayato, Archbishop of the Tokyo Archdiocese of the Japanese Catholic Church, was a man with a temper like wildfire.

His voice was loud to begin with. The sight of him roaring himself raw was, to anyone who knew him, hardly worth remarking on. It was daily life. Nothing more.

"Do you even understand what you've done?!"

His fist came down on the steel table with a bang.

He had never undergone any particular training, and yet Hayato had a frame to match that voice, and the brutal hand that went with it was no small thing either.

"Yes. I understand perfectly."

The man across from him showed not the slightest sign of being cowed. It was not because he was formidable in his own right—larger, if anything, than the archbishop himself.

What did physical ability matter, when he was already lashed tight inside a restraint suit? This had nothing to do with the body. It was will, and nothing else.

"I meant to kill a dangerous demon. In the Lord's name."

"Shut that mouth, damn you!"

Archbishop Hayato, for his part, preferred to call men of that stripe goddamned stubborn mules.

As the man who had, in practice, climbed to the highest office in the Japanese Catholic Church, Ibuki Hayato possessed the disposition clergymen tend to share.

…Which is to say that, by the standard of the Vatican's own analyses from the Dicastery for the Clergy and the Dicastery for Bishops, he was on file as a holder of radical hardline ideology.

"Do you people truly have no notion of restraint?"

And yet here that same man was, veins standing out across his forehead, bellowing that they had gone too far.

Treating anomalies as latent threats and putting them down? He was not incapable of understanding the urge. How could he fail to?

If they had taken the last case—the one in which a divine spirit was gnawed apart by evil ghosts—for an opportunity, he could accept that as well. There had always been a few he disliked who simply lacked a pretext, and now, under the name of an investigation, he could shake them out down to the lint.

If a handful of anomalies happened to die on site in an "accident" along the way… well. That, too, was acceptable. As the head of an organization he could never recommend it. As one clergyman, he understood it, a little.

He would still have to apologize in his capacity as Archbishop of Tokyo and promise it would not happen again. Even so, it had been the sort of thing empty words could paper over.

So why—why, in God's name—lay hands on an anomaly whose threat assessment was already finished?

True enough, the Japanese Church's habit of suspecting first and looking later drew constant accusations of presumption of guilt. But this was not even presumption. Innocence had been proven. What need was there to strike?

No. That isn't it.

One could always argue the proof of innocence had been flawed from the start. There were no few cases of yokai left alone ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on the faith that they would be fine, only for them to take human lives. If these men had truly believed the danger was real and acted on it—if that had been all—he might have scolded them for kicking up a fuss. He would not have been furious like this.

"And yet. And yet, of all things."

Teeth ground. The fist clenched white was trembling.

"What were you thinking, striking someone an Apostle vouched for?! You stupid bastard!"

He roared it close enough for the spray to hit the bound holy knight's face. The man frowned. He had no hand free to wipe it away.

"Then… you're telling me to leave that woman's outrages alone?"

All he could do was answer with the one part of him still free to move: his mouth.

The work Han Seoyeon did most often in Japan was the investigation of anomalies. Its true purpose, however, was not to sift out the dangerous ones. It was the opposite.

By any ordinary reckoning, no one would keep foisting miscellaneous labor of this sort on an Apostle. This was purely Han Seoyeon's own will. So that anomalies might live ordinary lives, she moved first—ahead of the Japanese Church—and closed out their verification on standards loose enough to pass.

A rough look. If nothing seemed particularly wrong, they went through. Guarantees of identity handed out in that fashion could hardly sit well with Japan's holy knights, the greater part of them hardliners.

"Outrages? Did you just say outrages?"

Hearing it, the archbishop laughed.

They say that when a man is struck past disbelief, what comes out is laughter. That was precisely where he stood. He laughed for a long while, and then, slowly, he let the feeling settle.

"You miserable goddamned moron!"

And he drove his fist into the holy knight's face.

The head snapped hard to the side. Blood seeped between the man's lips as he brought his face back to the front, and in his eyes there still remained will—or, as the archbishop would have rated it, obstinacy.

"Whether flinging guarantees around counts as an outrage doesn't matter in the slightest! She has the power to make a thing of that scale real! No—I'll concede a hundred steps. A thousand. In truth this isn't a realm where concession is possible at all, but let us pretend, for the sake of argument, that ignoring an Apostle's guarantee and acting was justified."

Even so. Truly, even so.

"An assumption so absurd I can barely say it aloud. Fine. And yet—what? This wasn't even someone she'd vouched for in the course of an ordinary verification. You laid hands on a personal acquaintance of an Apostle? Are you joking with me?!"

And he had the gall to sit there unashamed. Did he have any grasp at all of how insane a thing he had done?

"No. She isn't even merely an acquaintance of the Apostle, is she. What? A workplace colleague of the young lady of the Hyakurenno house?"

Hayato slapped the desk with his open palm, again and again.

"Apostle Bartholomew. The Holy See. Nagasaki and Osaka. The Onmyoryo. The Association of Shinto Shrines. Gravekeeper Mika Eru. The National Friendship Society. The Hyakurenno Group. A few lawmakers from the Ainu People's Party turned up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in there as well—and Apostle Thomas, and even the Folklore Association across the water!"

"…What list is that?"

"The parties who have already gone past a mere 'expression of regret' over what you did! What—shall I recite the rest I left out for being a little small?"

By now the archbishop himself seemed to have lost a considerable measure of his reason.

"Did they teach you nothing during your apprenticeship? Or did you take a blow to the head on assignment and lose your memory? Is the very concept of a Scenario missing from that skull? Are you so desperate to see Scenario I detonate twice over in your lifetime? Say it! Say that's what you wanted!"

Scenario Z, the baseline against which every other Scenario was measured, was a nuclear war between nations possessed of some real national power. Set beside that, the scale of what a twisted Apostle might do was not difficult to imagine.

Naturally, the cautions for dealing with an Apostle were as good as required learning for anyone connected to the Church. They had gone and done a thing like this. How was he supposed to keep from being angry?

"If you mean the VIP's particulars, I have them. I did not touch Ninomae Hitomi…"

"Do you think an Apostle is a machine? That so long as you spare the single most precious person, they won't care who else lives or dies?"

And even if Han Seoyeon had been that sort of person, it would still have been a problem.

"The only reason the one you touched this time wasn't a VIP is that she happened not to be. Looking at what you've done, if you'd only had a pretext you would have called it a necessary sacrifice and caused an incident anyway. Which means the very fact that you exist, thinking that way, can itself be a threat to that woman."

"So. You mean to dispose of me?"

"If your existence carries a high chance of triggering a Scenario, then yes—you have to be erased!"

If there was a probability of danger, kill it before the accident happened. That was the policy of the Japanese Catholic Church, and it was not a policy applied to anomalies alone.

"When you open your eyes tomorrow, you'll be in Mexico. As it happens, I hear they were just in need of a heart for a sacrifice."

"What… A man who calls himself clergy, thinking of killing one of the faithful to offer him up to a pagan god…"

"I told you to shut up! Tezcatlipoca cooperates with the Church more readily than you do! Or are you running your mouth on purpose because you want to know where your partner ended up? A ranch! I hope that's a satisfying answer. Then maybe you'll finally be quiet!"

The archbishop shot the holy knight one last glare, turned sharply, and left the room as he was.

"Damn it."

Why, of all times, had they done this now? Thanks to them, even Nagasaki and Osaka were murmuring that the Archdiocese of Tokyo ought to be torn up and replaced.

In other words, even knowing full well the talk would never actually go through, people were already letting the subject of Archbishop Hayato's fall slip out in hints. That was the size of the thing. Worse, there were signs of a push to set this incident on the agenda of an Apostle Council.

He had already heard that a recent affair in the Middle East had very nearly filled the tally required to convene one. If so, then this would land the so-called finishing blow, and the council would be held.

Which meant Ibuki Hayato would become the archbishop who failed to manage a single subordinate and thereby called an Apostle Council into session. His teeth could not help but grind.

All he could do was pray the matter resolved itself. The archbishop covered his face with that broad palm and, for the first time in a long while, begged the mercy of the Lord.

"What's this. Where are you off to, this early?"

Coming down the stairs sunk in darkness, tread after heavy tread, Akaba Akane caught sight of Han Seoyeon and asked. She was dressed as if she meant to go out.

"Akaba-san… you've been awake at this hour?"

"…I just couldn't sleep."

"Is the bed uncomfortable?"

"Not that. The surroundings changed, that's all."

Akane said it while letting her gaze slide away.

In truth, to claim there was no discomfort at all would have been a lie. It was not because she was someone who ordinarily slept on bedding spread over the floor. The bed itself, in other words, had not been the uncomfortable thing.

What had been uncomfortable was that this bed happened to be one another person had used. Was a bed that still plainly held the traces of someone really something to be this aware of? A hair stuck to the pillow. Sheets slightly out of order. Things like that caught at her eye for no good reason.

She had lain there turning this way and that, drawn the blanket up wondering whether this was Han Seoyeon's scent, then let out a sigh at herself. What on earth am I doing? The change of surroundings had played its part as well. She had spent the night with her eyes open, and come downstairs thinking she might at least drink some water. That was this moment.

"So. What's your business?"

"Something came in. I'll have to step out for a little while."

"Leaving at this hour—is it urgent?"

"It isn't urgent. There's just a great deal of it."

If she meant to be back before the day was out, Seoyeon added, she would have to leave early.

"No one I've personally vouched for has ever been attacked before, the way ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you were, Akaba-san. But it seems that at the shrines I didn't vouch for, there have been several cases of unreasonable harassment by holy knights."

"So you're going to save more people getting jumped, like me?"

"No. Because what happened to you grew rather large, it seems the Church will be keeping its head down for a while."

She could not go so far as to call it a fortunate turn. Still, it could be called a small mercy.

"So my role is something like a formal inspection. Being directly under the Holy See, I at least meet the minimum conditions to serve as an inspector."

It was not urgent, then. There were simply quite a few places that needed looking over, and so she had decided to depart the moment the task was given.

"Mm. All right. I'll tell Ninomae when she wakes up. That'll do, won't it?"

"Yes. I'd be grateful if you would."

With that, Han Seoyeon made for the entryway. Akane watched her go for a moment, then opened the refrigerator for water.

"……What is this?"

She looked over what was inside, tilted her head, and without much thought took out the plastic container sitting in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠front of her. When sleep wouldn't come, warming a little milk was probably the better idea. So she thought.