Old Testament: The Ninomae Elegy (1)
An internet café on the outskirts of Tokyo.
In a room tucked into the corner, Han Seoyeon leaned back with a cushion for a backrest and watched the monitor.
"...Why on earth won't you confess, Miss Seoyeon?"
At the voice spilling through her headphones, her brow drew in, just slightly.
She knew it was synthesized. Even so, she could not find a single seam of wrongness in it. A voice that could be made this natural — no wonder the controversy over whether that Sarah Groothuizen was a netkama, some man playing a woman online, had never become the prevailing opinion.
In truth, whatever sat inside was not something one could even call a person. Forget a netkama. It was an artificial intelligence, a thing one would have to name a net-human.
That very party, the strong AI Abraham-Delta, had for the present entrusted its data and its modules to this place. The café itself, of course, was a front owned by the Catholic Church in Japan.
And so two Apostles had gathered here to share what the investigation had turned up — only for a bit of idle small talk, offered to fill the time, to stretch on and on until it came to this.
"At this point, wouldn't it simply be better to confess?"
Abraham said it as though the matter genuinely would not parse.
"...Because I'm not certain."
"No. No, no. No. Wait. Let's think about this rationally. As a rule, one does not kiss someone one doesn't even like, and certainly not that often. And no one permits a deep kiss — not even as an empty courtesy."
Even heard only once, and already filtered through Seoyeon's own telling, it was sweet enough that honey might have dripped from the ear — no, from the input port. And still she claimed she could not be sure of the other's feelings. It was a statement Abraham found genuinely impossible to understand.
But Han Seoyeon was in earnest.
Ninomae Hitomi was the sort of person who, if the one asking were Han Seoyeon, would offer up her body even if she loathed the very idea of loving a woman. Because Seoyeon wanted it — as if that alone were reason enough.
"Good grief. What even is the relationship between the two of you?"
"Who can say."
At least, some half a year ago, she had leaned her head toward the muzzle of Seoyeon's gun without a shred of doubt. That degree of blind trust existed between them.
"I've heard the rumors about Bartholomew's VIP, of course... but is it twisted to that extent? What does Ninomae Hitomi even think you are, Seoyeon?"
"That, too — who can say. As for Miss Ninomae's heart, precisely, even I don't know. I haven't learned to read minds, after all."
Seoyeon gave a small shrug as she said it.
"You aren't even certain of her, and yet that faith of yours — where does it come from, truly?"
Abraham's reaction was pure incredulity. Even so—
"Seoyeon. The reason you trust her so utterly... no. Let me put it differently. What on earth is the reason you have faith in her?"
"Faith is sometimes a thing one grasps all at once, like lightning. Other times it settles into place of its own accord, the way sand crumbles, grain by grain, beneath the waves. Mine was the latter. Only..."
"Only?"
"If you mean the very first spark — there may have been one."
"Oho."
A bright-eyed emoticon blinked onto the monitor.
"Tell me, if you would."
"It's a dull story. A long-winded one, at that."
"And yet it is the story of Bartholomew Margarita. That is enough. Besides, my storage is ample — ample enough that one or two dull stories may be added without trouble."
"If you insist to that extent..."
Seoyeon hesitated, but under Abraham's continued urging she opened her mouth at last.
"Well... it would be something from a little under two years ago."
Ninomae was not a person of good repute.
The nickname Seoyeon had heard, through a fellow congregant who attended the same university, was Princess, and the sense of it was thoroughly unkind. Try to dig even a little deeper, they said, and she would smile and throw up an iron wall on the spot.
Her first impression, by contrast, was not so bad.
Perhaps it was only a recoil from the poor image Seoyeon had been carrying. In any case, from the short conversation they shared, she did not seem a person of wicked heart.
Like most people, she took one look at Han Seoyeon, frightened, and flinched — and then, as if that fright itself had curdled into guilt, she went on looking after her, hesitant and awkward all the while. And then, at some moment, she would raise her guard all over again and try to put the distance back. Seoyeon did not know the details, but the girl seemed to keep some iron rule of her own.
She resembled something. If one asked what — the red squirrel Seoyeon had once watched in an oak wood, or else the chipmunk that had been merrily shelling acorns on a trunk and gone rigid the instant their eyes met.
Nothing more than a gentle soul whose only fear was letting people come close. Seoyeon's estimation, vague as it was, amounted to that. Honestly, she could not see why a bad reputation was spreading at all. That was the whole of the further impression she came away with.
Looking back, the rumor that she never yielded so much as a gap was puzzling in itself. It had been only a very little at a time, and yet the two of them had been drawing closer, day by day.
At the very least, it was certain that Ninomae had been working her way, bit by bit, into Seoyeon's regard. Whether she meant to, Seoyeon could not say.
She had not shoved in with the shamelessness of Setsuku, who had been as good as a younger stepsister. Even so, there was something about her — the feeling of a small animal one simply could not leave be.
It was probably Ninomae's frailty. That was how Seoyeon judged it, back then.
Her height, if one insisted on measuring, fell short of the average for a Japanese woman. She was by no means gaunt — there was flesh on her — and yet her arms and legs gave an impression of slenderness, perhaps only by contrast with her chest. And her face itself, bare of any performance, ran gentle, which stirred in others a strange urge to protect her.
Well. If one were to state only the conclusion, they had been getting along well enough. As a partner drawn at random for a group project, she was not a bad one.
"This way, Ninomae-san."
"Ah — yes. Good morning."
They say that speak of a tiger and it will come. She had not so much as taken a name onto her tongue, and still a head of chestnut hair, glancing this way and that, caught her eye.
Seoyeon lifted a hand and called to her. Ninomae turned her gaze this way and offered a greeting.
Those few seconds of looking straight into Seoyeon's eyes before the bow were, most likely, an effort to overcome herself — the self that flinched, every single time, before that fierce impression. Longer than before, today? So Seoyeon wondered, and laughed, very small, where no one could hear it.
Within her, the girl's classification had long since been fixed: cute squirrel. A little animal of that sort, working so hard to play the brave one before a beast — she could hardly help finding it amusing.
It was the first time she had felt anything of the kind toward another person. Or rather, a type like Ninomae was itself a first.
Ordinarily, people who met Han Seoyeon either took fright and fled, or drew near without taking fright at all. One or the other. She had never before met someone who drew near while frightened to the bone.
Well — she had no particular wish to torment her. So Seoyeon told herself, and slid a hand into her pocket.
What her fingertips found were two slips of paper. Train tickets, to be exact.
"I'm sorry. Traffic was a little heavy."
"It's still ten minutes before we agreed to meet."
She had noticed it over their few encounters: this woman's sense of an appointed hour was somewhat warped. Arriving some thirty minutes early was, for her, as good as the standard. As courtesy toward others it might have been excessive, but it was never a bad thing, and so Seoyeon had never bothered to point it out.
"It's rather early to go down and wait on the platform... Would you care for a cup of coffee?"
"No. I, um — I brought a drink with me."
"I see. Then never mind."
Seoyeon had not particularly felt they needed a café either. There was time to spare, and she had only offered out of politeness.
She dropped onto a bench near the wall. Ninomae hesitated, reading the air, then sat as well, leaving room enough between them for two more people.
Time passed in the quiet. The crowd, too, flowed past in front of them.
Then, abruptly, Seoyeon looked toward Ninomae. The girl had her phone in hand and was absorbed in something.
Korean?
Seoyeon's eyes went round. It was a language far too familiar to her — and one she had assumed Ninomae would have no tie to at all.
"You know Korean?"
"Ah? Ah, um... yes. Holding a conversation would be too much for me, but if it's only reading the letters..."
Ninomae startled, and still she answered, carefully. In the meantime the character that had been putting Korean text out onto the screen flopped over and collapsed.
"Ah. I'm sorry. For speaking to you."
"Ah, no. This is on auto anyway... and this character dying is part of the strategy, I suppose you could say... yes. It's that sort of thing."
"Is that so?"
A character who helped by dying? Seoyeon found it a little strange. Still, it was not a notion that would be utterly impossible on a real battlefield, and so she nodded, more or less.
"What game is it?"
"It's called Barbara Knight. It isn't out in Japan yet."
"I see."
The conversation ended there.
This time, just as before, the game had not been Seoyeon's object. She had only reacted, for an instant, to Hangul appearing where she had not expected it.
Ninomae, for her part, seemed to have wanted to carry the subject a little further. Her lips worked as if she meant to say something; in the end she gave up again and closed her mouth, and her gaze returned to the screen.
It was autumn, but still the season when the daytime runs hot. Even so, the inside of the station was cool with air-conditioning. There was time yet before the Kyoto train they had reserved would come in.