Hosanna, Praise Be (3)
"You really are an idiot, aren't you?"
"Nnngh..."
Akaba Akane let the words out on a sigh. They were sharp enough to sting, and Ninomae ducked her head as if she had nothing at all to say for herself.
"Why in the world were you riding a horse through the middle of the city..."
"But legally there wasn't a problem... auu."
"Is that the mouth you use for talking nonsense? What does any of it mean once somebody actually gets hit?"
"Mmph—fuh..."
Akane caught Ninomae's face in her grip and, with the one hand, pressed both cheeks at once, squishing them in firm little pulses.
"I'm sorry..."
"And Shion."
"I already called. I barely managed to talk her out of rushing straight back."
Had it been Han Seoyeon, there would have been nothing strange in her taking off the instant the news reached her. The answer seemed to satisfy Akane; she nodded.
"Honestly, I was so worked up that my thinking got narrow, I suppose..."
She fidgeted with her fingers as she said it. She knew perfectly well that she was in the wrong.
"And the apology isn't owed to me. It's owed over there. If she hadn't been from the other side, this could have been a real disaster."
Akane said it with a glance at the half-open door of the hospital room.
Inside lay the woman whose legs had been shattered under the horse. Had she not been of the hidden world—had they been unable to treat her with anomalous power—she would have been stuck in that room for a very long time.
Ninomae nodded quietly. She had already apologized several times over, and the number didn't trouble her in the least. She knew perfectly well that apologizing any number of times still wouldn't be enough.
"Anyway. Shall we go in?"
"Yes. Let's."
She had been in the middle of talking with the woman when Akane, already contacted, arrived, and she had only stepped out for a moment to be collected.
"Excuse us."
The door stood open, but she knocked before setting foot inside, and the first thing she looked to was, of course, the bed where the patient lay.
The woman was unmistakably foreign to the eye. Muddy dirty-blonde was a shade you could find without much trouble in Japan, if someone had dyed for it, but eyes of a clear, lake-bright blue were another matter. Even granting that colored contacts could manage that much, the bones of the face itself read as Western.
...Skin pale enough to startle, or a figure rarely seen on a Japanese woman—she set those aside from the judgment for the moment. The former was outdone by Natsugahara Hina, further along in her vampirization and whiter still, and the latter had an overwhelming exception by the name of Ninomae standing right beside her.
That woman sat propped against the bed with casts on both legs. A phone rested in one hand, as if she had been passing the time alone.
A glance. Akane ran her eyes quickly over the nameplate fixed to the bed.
Sumomo Océane? Or should it be read Lee Océane? Naturalized seemed less likely than mixed blood. And there was a fair chance that surname ran Korean—or Chinese...
"Akaba Akane, of Anathema Production. Something along the lines of this one's guardian."
Well. That wasn't what mattered just now. Thinking so, Akane dug through her bag and produced a business card.
"Huh? Akaba-san, you're a manager?"
Ninomae, having checked the title on the card over her shoulder, whispered it in a start. Akane turned her head a fraction and answered, just as quietly.
"The head manager for your gen is a complete surface-world person. Other-side matters were assigned to me, in part. ...Well. In practice I'm stuck exclusively with that Tenka kid."
Unlike the first generation, all four of whom had been anomalies from the start, the second generation had only two. Even then, Bansei Marin was a resident of the surface world who merely had an anomaly somewhere among her ancestors, so the manager in charge of them hadn't strictly needed to be someone from the hidden world.
The sole exception was Tsunashi Tenka. If a problem touching the other side arose, the arrangement was that the first generation's head manager—or Akaba, her childhood friend—would handle it.
"A-ka... ba... Akane... So you are Akaba-san, Yo! I am called Lee O-shi-an Lee, DA! Please take care of me, Yo!"
The woman who had taken the card read it in a halting voice, then introduced herself with a brilliant smile. The delivery was brighter than Akane had expected, and the accent heavier—the sort of pronunciation everyone knew from anime, where foreign characters speaking Japanese seemed to roll their tongues on purpose.
"About that 'Lee.'"
"Yes! My father is a Korean person, DA!"
"If you'd be more comfortable, shall we speak in Korean?"
"I am okay, Yo. The pronunciation is a little bit like that, but my Japanese is pretty good, DA!"
Akane had been about to suggest switching if Japanese was a strain, but Océane shook her head. If the woman herself was fine with it, there was no need to meddle.
"How do I put it. If anything, the Korean is the weak one, DA."
Fair enough. A parent's country of origin was no guarantee you had mastered the language. Grow up hearing it at home and you would likely be more at ease with it than with any other, but still.
Just from the pronunciation, she doesn't sound fluent in Korean either.
The same clumsy Japanese was not the same thing in a Korean mouth and in an American one. Traces of the language you had started with remained. Judged that way, it did not sound like a pronunciation at home in Korean.
At any rate, they came before long to the accident itself—the course of treatment, compensation for the damages, and the rest.
"It is all right, DA. I was very surprised, but it was not on purpose, and you are giving me treatment too, yes, Yo?"
"Are you really all right?"
"A sturdy body is my only good point, DA."
The one mercy was how mild the other party was being. It had been an accident with a fault split of a hundred to zero and not a scrap of room for excuses, and Akane had expected her to show at least some displeasure.
She seemed to be the good-natured sort. Even before Akane arrived, she had apparently been chatting happily about this and that with Ninomae, the very person who had hit her. To Ninomae's worried words, she only smiled, bright as anything.
"I hear that even if we call in a healer, you won't be able to leave the same day. Your work, or..."
"While you were stepped out, I called the boss of the shop where I work, DA. They said do not worry, rest and rest and come back whenever, Yo."
"They sound like a good person."
"Yes, DA! They even said they would come visit me, DA!"
She really did seem to have a good boss. You could guess as much without any trouble just from the look on Océane's face as she talked.
"Anyway... the costs during treatment... and if anything further comes up related to this, please don't hesitate to contact us over here..."
Even as she thought it a relief that the talk was going well, Akane went through each point with care. Leaping aboard someone's goodwill and treating them like a sucker was simply not a thing a person did. If anything, the kinder the other party, the more certainly the compensation had to be seen through. That was how Akane saw it.
"Understood, DA. If something happens, I will contact the both of you, DA!"
"Both of us...? Ninomae, don't tell me—"
"Yes. We exchanged contacts while we were talking, before you got here, Akaba-san."
"Well... I suppose that's how it ought to be."
Thinking about it, telling her to speak only through this channel and handing over nothing but a manager's number felt a little cold. If it had been a business entanglement, maybe—but this was plainly a matter between Ninomae herself and the woman.
They wrapped the conversation up in that fashion, and were just on the point of leaving the room.
"—Henri-chan. I heard your legs went reverse-jointed."
The door banged open with no knock at all. The woman who came through looked to be in her mid-twenties, a get-well fruit basket in one hand.
"...Guroyuki?"
"Huh? Guroyuki-san?"
"Oh. Akaba, and Ninomae too. What exactly is this."
"No, that's my line—wait. Don't tell me this 'shop owner' is—"
Tachibana Rin of Anathema Production's first generation, real name Guroyuki Sui, ran one small café. She talked about it on stream now and then, so anyone who watched Rin's broadcasts and was the sort to know, knew; and the other members, who saw her in person besides, could hardly have failed to.
"Ô, bonjour, Boss!"
"You're serious..."
"The world really is small, isn't it...?"
"No. I am asking why you are here. Why."
"Um... the story is kind of really long..."
"I really ought to turn back even now and check on Ninomae-san..."
"...Are you all right?"
The woman murmured it low, plainly ill at ease. Watching her, the woman in the nun's veil managed an awkward smile.
Honestly, Han Seoyeon gave off killing intent as a standing condition. Add the state she was in now, and she was the very picture of a witch in the middle of laying a curse.
"Ah, forgive me. I've grown a little anxious."
"No. You said someone precious to you was in a traffic accident, didn't you? Of course you'd be anxious."
"Strictly speaking, it seems less that it happened to her and more that she was the cause..."
"That doesn't make it any less reason to worry."
It was exactly so, and Han Seoyeon nodded. The nun couldn't help thinking it was too much of a fuss—and yet, considering that the woman over there was an Apostle, it wasn't an entirely strange reaction either.
An Apostolic Seat, people said, was something you simply could not hold unless some corner of you was bent to begin with. The feelings such a person bore toward someone truly precious tended, as a rule, to pass beyond any ordinary measure.
During the vampire incident on Christmas Eve, the moment Ninomae had died, her eyes had rolled clean back. Remembering that she had summoned Belial without a moment's hesitation and slaughtered every living thing in the city, the nun shuddered where she stood.
"So then, your name... Sanjou Miyuki-san?"
"Yes."
"I don't know if I'm remembering correctly... but we have met before, haven't we?"
"That's right. It was only a moment, if you can even call it a meeting, and we barely spoke."
A face that had stayed clear in memory, though the circumstances of the meeting were hazy. When Han Seoyeon asked, the nun—Miyuki—nodded.
"When a vampire went berserk and we were attacked, Bartholomew-san came to save us."
"...Ah. The one whose leg was severed, back then."
Only after hearing it did the memory surface. It had been when she visited Ninomae's family home. She had stepped out for a short walk at night and happened upon Holy Knights under attack. This was the person whose leg had been cut off then. At last she remembered.
Whether the treatment had been proper or not, Miyuki was standing just fine now. At least to the eye, there didn't seem to be any lingering aftereffect. Depending on the manner of the healing and the skill of the one who worked it, a scar might well remain, but for the moment it was hidden under the fall of her clothes, and there was no way to tell.
Come to think of it, this is near Ninomae-san's family home. Since I'm here anyway, should I stop by?
Even as she thought it, Han Seoyeon turned her attention forward and looked straight ahead.
What stood there was a shrine priest in traditional robes, and a wolf so vast its body looked a good five meters long.
"In any case... I don't know whether you've heard the rumors, of late, of evil spirits parasitizing divine spirits. Given the situation, I must ask for your brief cooperation with an investigation."
"You would dare lay impious hands upon our god?!"
"Prattling what does not even amount to speech, with that base mouth!"
"Mm. So you won't be cooperating?"
At the answer that came back, Han Seoyeon brushed her bangs up, looking mildly troubled—and from the guitar case in her other hand, she drew a double-barreled shotgun. For something meant to be turned on a person, it was far too large.
"Huh?"
"W-wait. You're supposed to be with the moderates, even within the Church."
"This is a separate matter from that. And a divine spirit won't die of something like this. Above all, I'm afraid I'm rather out of sorts at the moment."
Han Seoyeon smiled, small and pleasant.
Priest and spirit looked alarmed at the same instant, but it did not last them long.
—Bang!
"Thank you for your cooperation, honored spirit."
"...It fainted, though?"
"We can conduct the investigation without any resistance now. That would be cooperation, would it not? Isn't that so, honored priest?"
"Ah... a-aba..."