What Exists for the Sake of People (5)
"Hold on—I'm a vampire, for one. And I've got physical enhancement magic running at all times..."
Ninomae's great escape had been put down with ridiculous ease. She looked up at Yuri and muttered, as if the fact itself were too absurd to believe.
She was only being handled like someone in need of protection because Han Seoyeon happened to be the one beside her. Taken on her own merits, Ninomae's physique was nothing to come up short.
"The fruit of steady training, every single day. Though I'll grant it probably also has something to do with my family feeding me all sorts of good things since I was little."
"Good things... you mean like some kind of elixir?"
"Something along those lines, I'd imagine."
Yuri answered with a shrug.
"Now then. Shall we get back to the shopping?"
"Uuuugh... do I really have to...?"
"But you do want to seduce Miss Shion, don't you?"
"...That part, yes, buuut..."
Flustered as she was, Ninomae nodded all the same. In the end, wasn't it always the one who had fallen in love who lost?
And though Yuri had gone on about winning lingerie and the like, a calmer look at the racks showed that nothing outrageously revealing was actually on display. This was a specialty shop, yes, but one respectable enough to set up inside a department store. The dangerous designs Ninomae had pictured the instant she heard the words winning lingerie were the sort of thing you'd have to visit an adult shop to find.
So if she thought of it as dressing up just a little more than usual... it might not be something she'd rather die than wear. Especially if it wasn't for her own satisfaction, but to show Seoyeon. Quietly, Ninomae steeled herself.
"I'll be waiting for good news from the date, you know?"
"I-I'll do my best."
Clack. Thump. Clack. Thump.
A woman on crutches made her way down the street. It looked as though it ought to be terribly cumbersome, and yet—thanks to arms corded with solid muscle—her movements were remarkably smooth.
Ryuumai Fuu. Former commander of the Triage Team, the armed medical support unit. Walking beside her, Han Seoyeon stole a glance.
After Ninomae and Yuri had left, Seoyeon had offered to see Ryuumai home. She wasn't so lacking in decency that she'd send someone with a severed leg off to make their own way back.
"This way. I've got a car parked nearby."
"Ha, I really do appreciate it. Never thought the day would come when I'd catch a ride in an Apostle's car."
At Seoyeon's words, Ryuumai met her eyes with a faint smile. Only one eyeball actually moved.
Scars lingered all over her body besides the eye and the leg, and they let one guess at the career behind them. As a rule, people assumed that the more scars someone carried, the longer and harsher a life they had lived... but that was a notion confined to the surface world.
"...You're someone I've wanted to speak with at least once, myself."
Medical care in the hidden world was, of course, vastly broader than anything the surface had to offer. Reach the realm of miracles, and the blind opened their eyes—the dead themselves stood up. And for personnel who mattered, that kind of care was provided first, and fast.
So the cases where scars remained were the rare few that even the hidden world's power could not mend. Among Gravekeepers, a body without a single scratch was hardly uncommon. Injuries of that severity were the sort that decided, in a heartbeat, whether someone retired or not, and so among those still active, major scars were difficult to find.
Even so, a body scarred to that degree usually meant one of two things. Either they had been somewhere timely treatment was impossible, or they had done, over and over without end, the sort of thing anyone would call throwing oneself into certain death.
Well. In her case, it's probably both.
The name Triage made that easy to accept. Weren't they one of the three groups that even the Apostles described as particularly far gone? However good the intentions, staking your life on the front lines was not something an ordinary mind could do. And if an organization had been built for that purpose from the start... well, there was no chance its work had ever been ordinary. Which was precisely why even Han Seoyeon, an Apostle, accorded them a measure of respect.
"That's an honor to hear, truly, but I'm really not the sort who deserves that kind of—hm?"
"Is something the matter?"
Being built up like that seemed to leave her a little awkward. Ryuumai smiled and shook her head—then, as if she had spotted something, fixed her gaze on a point farther down the street. Seoyeon looked as well, and found a building she recognized. Recognized, though not because she saw it often. Only because she had had cause to visit it relatively recently.
Han Seoyeon was struck speechless. She could hardly help it.
"No. I just never expected to see this here. I couldn't remember the address, but this is where it was?"
An answer to the question Seoyeon had asked a moment ago. Still braced on her crutches, Ryuumai gave a shrug.
The reason Seoyeon remembered that building—the one with people lined up outside—was simple. It was the café that had contracted a collaboration for the first anniversary of Anathema Production's second generation, and she had visited it with Ninomae not long ago.
Back then, mindful of the very real chance that Ninomae could be identified by chest size alone, they had slipped in through the back, left a signature, and slipped out again... but that was hardly what mattered now.
"Pardon me, but when you say 'this is here'..."
"Ah. That café, actually. They're running a collab with a streamer I usually watch. See the character standee over there?"
"...You watch VTuber streams?"
"Ah, well, one of the kids on my team happened to tell me about them. ...Oh my. So you know what a VTuber is too, Apostle. That's a little unexpected."
Whether or not she had noticed Han Seoyeon's dumbfounded reaction, Ryuumai went on in perfect calm.
"Truth is, I'm not supposed to say this so freely—no, poke around online for a minute and it's treated like an open secret anyway... It should be fine. The young lady Hyakurenno you saw a moment ago is the one performing that character. Did you already know?"
"Ah, yes, well, I do know, but..."
"That makes this easier, then. At first I got talked into watching because she's our team's biggest patron, and shouldn't we be watching her streams—and it turned out to be a better way to kill time than I expected... Well, whatever the reason, I can proudly call myself a fan now."
Han Seoyeon kept her mouth shut and quietly looked up at the sky.
The whole world was Anathema.
"Ah, would you mind if we stopped in for a moment? If you'd rather not, you're welcome to head back first."
"No... I said I'd accompany you, so I'll come along. I was planning to visit sometime anyway."
"Whoa. Really?"
After that exchange, the two of them joined the line for the collab café.
For the record, it wasn't a lie. She had already been once, yes, but she had resolved to go again as an ordinary customer before the collaboration ended. Even so, there was no helping the way her head spun now that she was actually standing here.
President Nakabashi. Just how far are you planning to go...?
Something was wrong. Something was deeply wrong.
Anathema Production was, granted, a VTuber company ranked high enough that it was faster to count down from the top. But that was only if one were merely lining them up by rank. It was nowhere near the giants occupying the very summit. So why did it have a fandom she couldn't even picture losing, if it ever came to a physical fight? Han Seoyeon had no choice but to be bewildered.
...Well. She, the very spearhead of that one-against-a-hundred fandom, was perhaps the last person who ought to be asking.
More to the point, she definitely said a teammate recommended the stream.
Which meant there was at least one more person in the Triage Team living a life consumed by VTubers. Someone fervent enough to proselytize all the way up to the commander—there was no ignoring the chance it had spread even further inside.
Did they actually smear something on the company? At this rate the company itself is starting to look like an anomaly. Should I report it to the Church?
Of course, even if she did report it, they could not exterminate Anathema Production the way they did other anomalies—not unless the company caused an incident first. Not for lack of ability. Because the moment they tried, the worthies who would rise up were far too glittering a roster.
Han Seoyeon let out a long, deflating sigh and looked through the glass. One wall of the café was a single pane from floor to ceiling, so the interior was perfectly visible.
"Huh?"
And at that precise moment, her eyes met those of a deep-sea fish—no. A pure-blooded human who resembled a deep-sea fish to an uncanny degree, just as he turned his head toward the street. It was, needless to say, Nakabashi, president of Anathema Production.
"What are you doing there...?"
"Hm? What did you just say?"
"Nothing. No, I just saw wrong. For a second I thought I recognized someone in the shop."
"Ah, I see—no. He's waving, though? That's him, right?"
"U-uhm."
She had tried, on reflex, to pretend she didn't know him, but the man on the other side went and acknowledged her, and the attempt collapsed.
"Huh, wait a second. Now that you mention it, I feel like I've seen that person somewhere... Ah! Isn't that Anathema's president?"
"......"
Heehee... the Shutang merch is so cute...
In the end, Han Seoyeon decided to simply give up on thinking.