That Which Exists for the Sake of People (3)
"By the way."
The woman paused with the straw still at her lips, the one good eye she had left rolling loose in its socket, and spoke.
"So the young lady of the Hyakurenno house eats fast food, too."
"Yer talkin' like our young laaady ain't even a person~?"
Chisa leveled the hip flask in her hand at Ryuumai Fuu, a pointing finger by other means. One look at that face, flushed deep with drink, and the flask's contents were obvious enough.
"I wasn't asking you."
Ryuumai said it with a sidelong glare, but Chisa paid her no mind and crossed her legs. The hem of the long maid's skirt fluttered lightly.
"Oh? Do the two of you know each other?"
Ninomae, who had been watching, tilted her head. There was an ease between them that felt less like strangers and more like people who had known each other for some time.
Thinking back, Chisa had been rude from the very first meeting, tossing out remarks about a leg being idiotically smashed to pieces and the like. At the time Ninomae had let it pass without a second thought. Chisa was drunk around the clock to begin with.
In any case, the party that had joined up at the racecourse took Hyakurenno's suggestion that they eat first, given the hour, and headed for a nearby fast-food place. They traded a stretch of idle chatter, and the remark Ryuumai had just made was only another scrap of it.
Honestly, Ninomae thought it a fair enough question. Now that her acquaintance with Hyakurenno Yuri was closing in on a year, she could take such things as they came — but the Ninomae of before would have been certain a young lady like this ate nothing but fine handmade burgers. The kind you run a long skewer through, to hold them together.
"We know each other, yes. A little bad blood. Nothing serious. I used to be an onmyoji, for one."
By onmyoji, Ninomae judged, she meant a civil official of the Onmyoryo. The maid Chisa's origins were the same, after all.
From the seat beside her, Han Seoyeon leaned in and murmured.
"You'd do better not to ask about that story. Neither of them retired over anything good."
"Ah. I see..."
If that was truly the case, Ninomae agreed with a small nod, then it was wiser not to prod. The moment she decided as much, she turned the subject. It wasn't entirely natural, though she doubted it had come off as too strange.
"Ah, right. Come to think of it, Yuri-san — how did you end up arranging to meet someone like her?"
"Ah, if it's about that..."
At Ninomae's question, Yuri let her gaze drift as she went on. It came to rest on the leg of Ryuumai's trousers, gathered and tied about halfway down.
"The Hyakurenno Group agreed to sponsor Ryuumai Fuu-san's prosthetic leg."
"Well, I'm nothing but grateful, every time. Even back when I was active, the young lady of the Hyakurenno house sponsored the team a great deal."
Ryuumai scratched her head as she said it, but Yuri shook hers.
"It's an awkward thing to say in front of you, but it was only ever part of shaping the family's image. I stepped down from the line of succession — no. Precisely because I did, the outside work of pulling our reputation back up falls to me."
"I prefer a hypocrisy that acts to a virtue that doesn't. Everyone who works the field would think the same, I imagine."
Perhaps because it came from someone who had worked that field — the battlefield, to give it its proper name — the words carried a weight Ninomae couldn't quite place. She caught herself nodding.
"Anyway, that's how we came to meet like this today. I heard the person I'd been sponsoring had retired, so I thought I'd take the chance, for once, to actually talk."
"Mm... was it really all right for us to join you? I'm worried our Shion-san forced her way into an important meeting for no good reason."
"Not at all. It wasn't the sort of meeting where anything important was being discussed, so it's fine. If anyone's feelings needed minding, it would be Ryuumai-san's, but from what I hear she rather likes meeting people."
"Just as the young lady of the Hyakurenno house says. If anything, it's an honor to have someone of Apostle rank say they want to meet me."
Yuri answered Ninomae's worry, and Ryuumai nodded along in agreement.
"...Hm? Our Shion-san?"
A moment later Yuri's brow twitched, as if something had struck her as off.
It wasn't an incorrect turn of phrase. The word served perfectly well even without any particularly close bond — and between Ninomae and Han Seoyeon, who had gone right on keeping that peculiar distance without ever quite dating, there was nothing strange about it.
"Anyway, so, um... ah, I'm sorry. I'm sure I heard it, but the name won't come to me. The Apostle's lover doesn't need to worry too much, either."
If only Ryuumai Fuu had not said so while laying her scar-laced arm upon the table.
"A lover?"
There was something blank in Hyakurenno Yuri's voice as she asked. To put it a little unkindly, she sounded faintly dazed.
"Ah. Yes. Did I get that wrong? Only, as I remember it, she said so herself."
Yuri was silent. Her gaze rolled, slow, until it settled on Ninomae and Han Seoyeon.
"Ah, yes... well. We decided to start dating yesterday."
"Why are you only telling me this nooow?!"
"Hyaah!"
Yuri slammed both hands down on the table and shot to her feet. The crash startled Ninomae into that short cry.
"Ah — I'm sorry for making a scene! Ninomae-san, I'm sorry, too."
"No, I'm all right..."
A beat late, Yuri registered the stares of the other customers and bowed her head again and again. Not only to them, of course, but to Ninomae, whom she had frightened as well.
"Thinking about it, the confession came after yesterday's stream, once we'd already parted. There wouldn't have been any time to tell me."
Calling it her own mistake, Yuri apologized once more. Even as she did, Ninomae didn't miss the strange glitter in her eyes.
"So, um... would it be all right if I asked how it happened?"
"...I felt it yesterday, too. You really do like this sort of topic, Yuri-san. More than I would have expected."
"If you're going to say that, then my answer is the same as yesterday's. There aren't many women who dislike this kind of talk, are there?"
Yuri shrugged as she said it... then shot a glance at the maid seated beside her.
"Which is to say, please be a little careful when you eat. Show some awareness, as a retainer of the Hyakurenno."
"Uehh, thank yooou, young laaady~"
"I'm asking for learning, not for thanks."
She sighed and wiped the corner of the maid's mouth with a napkin. She had done it herself, rather than pointing it out and making Chisa wipe her own face, because both of Chisa's hands were full — a hamburger half out of its wrapper in the left, and in the other a hip flask that, whatever the precise variety, most certainly held liquor.
"Honestly. At this rate I can't tell which of you is the retainer. The young lady of the Hyakurenno house certainly knows how to keep a piece of work like this in her service."
"Miss Yuri's just a liiittle too kiiind, thooough!"
"I told you. I wasn't talking to you."
Ryuumai clicked her tongue, quietly enough that the people around them wouldn't quite hear. She was holding herself in check before the young lady of the Hyakurenno house, but the look she turned on Chisa was threaded with a strange contempt. Seeing it, Ninomae recalled once more what Seoyeon had said — that they had not retired over anything good.
That not-so-good matter, she suspected, might well have been something the two of them were tangled in directly. At the very least, they did not look to be on good terms just now.
"Young lady. If it's a retainer you need, how about using me instead of a fool like that?"
Ryuumai offered it playfully. At a glance, she didn't seem to want the post in earnest. It was the sort of remark one could pass off as a joke, and nothing more.
...Or so Ninomae thought.
Crunch.
"...Huh?"
At the strange sound from close by, she turned her head without meaning to.
There sat Momomomo Chisa, grinning as vacantly as ever, not changed in the slightest from a moment before. A hamburger still in one hand, and in the other the hip flask—
The hip flask that had been there was gone.
No. Not gone. Ninomae stared at the ball of silver clutched in her hand. Not a perfect sphere. Lumpy — quite lumpy.
She swallowed before she knew it. Chisa was still smiling as she looked at Ryuumai.
"S-so, as I was saying! On the way home yesterday I remembered the advice you gave me, Yuri-san, and in the end I confessed first!"
Ninomae's decision was swift. She steered the talk straight back to where it had been, praying, please, that a fight would not break out.
"Really?"
"It's as Ninomae-san says. I had it in mind to confess as well... but in the end, I couldn't find the courage."
"I see. And then?"
"Then... what do you mean, then?"
"What do you mean, then, Yuri-san?"
Just when it seemed the friction was settling, they appeared to have run aground on something else entirely. Han Seoyeon and Ninomae both looked baffled.
"What? No — nothing happened after that?"
"Even if you say nothing... we were on our way home, so we went back, washed up, and went straight to sleep. Given the hour."
"No, no. What? You live together, don't you? And nothing happened... eh?"
Yuri looked flustered herself. But she soon grasped the situation, and her expression set.
"...Let's talk later, Ninomae-san."
"Y-yes...?"
For some reason, Ninomae thought, a fierce resolve had taken hold in her eyes.