Old Testament: The Lamentations of Ninomae (3)
Sanjo Yusuke was by no means a wicked man. Pressed on the point, one might even have called him the opposite. He was filial enough to humor his father's faith rather than slight it, and he understood the worth of traditional culture well enough to pay the old ways their due respect.
That much, in itself, deserved praise. Even those who did not believe in the gods with any real sincerity, so long as they inherited the rites and preserved them, were the reason traditional culture could endure into the present day. A student of folklore ought to have welcomed such a man with both hands thrown wide.
…If only he had not been the one responsible for the seal.
The trouble was that this Sanjo Yusuke was the sole chief priest of Onitake Inari Shrine, and in practice the only person charged with the seal upon the evil spirits of Mount Oe. It amounted to a security chief's post having been handed over without a proper transfer, the manual lost along the way. Things might have held for a time. Once the system began to fail, there would be no way to mend it.
No—what confronted them now was graver still. Unable to perceive the anomalous at all, he had not even known the system was broken. That a seal abandoned in such a state had kept up so much as the outward show of working until now was little short of a miracle. She could picture, clear as if it stood before her eyes, how hard the Inari of Mount Oe must have suffered.
"…Haa."
Turning over the talk she had just had with the chief priest, Han Seoyeon let the sigh go.
"Is something the matter?"
"Ah—no. It's nothing."
Only then remembering Ninomae at her side, she steered the conversation elsewhere.
"I was only feeling a little hemmed in, thinking about the report I have to write."
"Well, yeah. Those are such a hassle……."
Ninomae nodded. Examinations and assignments were the enemy of every university student.
"Still, we're pretty much done with what we came here to do, right?"
"Yes. Thanks to how considerate you've been, I took a great many photographs, and I recorded what the chief priest told us as well."
He had kindly shown them over every corner of the shrine, and so the fieldwork itself had yielded a good deal. Organize it roughly, turn it in, and she could reasonably hope for a fine mark.
"Then let's head down quick. Before the rain comes."
Ninomae stole a glance at the sky as she said it. Brilliantly clear when they had climbed, it was now buried under pitch-black storm cloud, the air itself thick with the promise of a downpour.
"Yes, let's. If it rains, we'll be in a difficult spot…"
Han Seoyeon meant to agree. There was still work for her here—not as a student, but as a Holy Knight—yet that could wait until she had parted from Ninomae and come back. The reply, however, never finished. She shut her mouth, looked up as Ninomae had, and flung aside the handbag in her grip.
A scent was on the wind.
"Ninomae-san! Under the eaves!"
"Wah—!"
The shout was barely out before Han Seoyeon dove beneath the eaves of the worship hall, where the handbag had fallen.
Plip. In the very next instant, a drop struck Ninomae's forehead.
Tap. Plip. Tap.
It did not end with one. Drop followed drop, and by then bewilderment had overtaken Ninomae's face as well. All at once the rain opened in a roaring sheet, and she ran for where Han Seoyeon stood.
"Hah… ugh. I'm soaked through."
"Are you all right?"
Wringing her hem as if it were a rag, Ninomae looked ready to cry. The glance she spared Han Seoyeon—who had reached shelter first and was still soft and dry—carried, however faintly, a thread of blame.
"Haa…"
Even so, she seemed to understand that fleeing ahead alone had been the most Han Seoyeon could manage, and the sigh that followed was the sigh of someone who knew that resenting her would change nothing.
"Ugh. It rained after all. What do we do?"
"Well. For the moment, I think we have no choice but to wait for it to stop."
"It looks like a passing shower, so it'll let up soon, right?"
"Most likely."
She said it, and did not much believe it. She had played her own part as naturally as she could, but she had already seen through the thing: this was plainly the work of something not human. The rain, she judged, would not break until night had deepened far enough to make the descent unsafe.
And so, indeed, it came to pass.
"We really do nothing but impose on the chief priest……."
"So we do."
Han Seoyeon nodded at Ninomae's words.
By the time the rain at last let up, dark had fallen, and they could no longer risk the mountain path on a whim. Alone, Han Seoyeon would have had no trouble at all. But Ninomae, who belonged to the surface, was beside her, and that tied her feet.
Left with no recourse but to pass the night where they were, they found a helping hand held out by the chief priest himself, Sanjo Yusuke. He gave them his daughter's old room—the daughter who, as he told it, had taken work in another region and gone off to live on her own. From the quiet pride in the telling, it was some foreign firm. He did not seem to know the details himself.
Han Seoyeon cast a swift look over the room they had been shown into. The furniture was sparse, and the daughter had been gone so long that no feeling of a life remained in it; even so, the place was carefully kept. It must be cleaned quite often.
"To be given towels and bedding besides—I don't think I could thank him enough, however many times I tried."
"I know. Really."
Ninomae bobbed her head in vigorous agreement… and then, carefully, studied Han Seoyeon's face.
"…Um, so, the thing is, Shion-san."
"What is it?"
"Umm… I'd like to take my clothes off and let them dry a little……."
"Ah. Yes, that would be best."
She was quite right. It was autumn now, and the nights turned sharp; stay in wet clothes and a cold was all but certain.
"No, that's not what I— um… could you maybe look the other way…?"
"……Ah."
Only when it was said outright did Han Seoyeon grasp what Ninomae meant. There was no calling it anything but her own obliviousness. Setsuku had been fond of grumbling that Natacchi hadn't the faintest understanding of a girl's heart, and the memory rose whether she wanted it or not.
"I'm sorry. I'll keep my back turned. Please tell me when you're finished."
"O-okay."
Han Seoyeon gave the wall a long, dutiful study. Behind her, cloth rustled.
"I-I'm done."
When she turned, Ninomae stood facing her with a single blanket wound around her from head to foot.
"Wh-where are you looking?!"
"Ah. Sorry. I didn't think."
And she had, without thinking, glanced that way. The clothes set aside included underwear as well.
Well—soaked through to that degree, it wasn't as though the underwear would have come through unscathed either…….
"Er… um. Shall we put the light out now?"
"Nnh. Yes."
Before long the two of them spread the bedding and lay down side by side on the floor. Silence closed over the room until nothing remained in it but the sound of breathing, and from outside the cry of insects in the grass seeped in.
She kept her eyes on the dark ceiling, and little by little they learned the dark. Han Seoyeon left them open, waiting in that quiet for the breathing beside her to grow calm. When she was certain Ninomae slept, she rose with care.
She was not one to sleep much in any case. Holy power could drive the fatigue from her whenever she wished, and sparing even those hours suited her nature. And since things had come to this, she resolved to see every matter finished before she went down the mountain.
The spirit forcing this fight had gone so far as to catch them by the ankles. To leave the invitation unanswered might be poor manners.
They're underestimating me. That much is plain.
Bring the rain down, and arrange that when it stopped the night would already be too dark for a descent, stranding them here. The conception was sound. But—she would say it again—something of this order did not hinder Han Seoyeon's movements. If they had prepared no more than this and called it an obstacle, they were badly underrating her. Her opponent might well be a being that had never so much as met a Holy Knight of ordinary ability.
That did not mean she intended to grow careless in turn. She picked up the handbag she had set in the corner. Inside were the weapons she had brought against the chance of a clash with whatever was behind the slipping accidents.
She opened the zipper first, drew out a rosary, wound it round her left wrist, closed her hand tight upon the cross, and offered a brief meditation.
It was time to lay the rampaging oni to rest, and to bring the dying fox god back to life.
"…Hm."
Striding out of the shrine in high spirits was all well and good. It was not long before she found the flaw. That an evil spirit existed, she was certain. Where, precisely, it was—that she still did not know. Nor could she track it by scent, when she had yet to learn what scent it carried.
…If I simply head for the summit, perhaps something will come of it.
In the end, the conclusion she reached was simply to walk. Comb the mountain closely enough and she would turn something up. It would take that long. But the night was long.
And so Han Seoyeon quietly set herself in motion.
"Mmm…"
A short, sleepy sound drifted through the dim room.
"Uh… Shion-san…?"
A pair of eyes opened in the dark. They took in the room around them, and a puzzled voice followed.
Wait—where in the world has she gone at this hour? A walk, because she couldn't sleep? No. Her bag isn't even here…….
Ninomae tilted her head. Turn it over as she might, no answer presented itself that fit. She thought she had felt some presence just before waking; Han Seoyeon must have roused her on the way out. Why she had gone at all, though, remained a blank.
And soon enough, unable to sit with the curiosity, she pulled her still-damp clothes back on and stepped out of the room.