White, Green, and Blue (3)
It had all started with something as thoughtless as fetching a glass of water from the kitchen. She came back into the living room sipping from the cup, and an unexpected guest was waiting.
"Ah, Lady Ninomae Hitomi!"
A top hat of uncanny length. The demon Philotanuss, not changed in the slightest from before.
"Why... are you like that...?"
Unchanged, that is, save for the grotesque state of him — waist caught in the television.
"You're not cosplaying Sadako, are you?"
"Of course not. The timing was merely a little unfortunate."
A little...?
So saying, Philotanuss crawled the rest of the way and emerged completely from the set. He promptly dusted off his knees, picked up the remote, and switched the screen off.
"──Now then. Let us dispense with the flourishes and proceed directly to the point."
"The point?"
"Indeed. Would I have gone to the trouble of calling like this merely to toss off a jest?"
Philotanuss removed that long, stretched hat, set it on the floor, and dropped onto it as if it were a chair.
"I have come to annul the contract."
"Pardon?"
At his words, Ninomae let out a thoroughly bewildered sound.
She had some idea which contract he meant. How many contracts had Ninomae ever made with Philotanuss to begin with? Only the one.
She swept a hand through empty air and drew out a black grimoire.
"You mean this, don't you?"
"That I do."
"Did I do something wrong, perhaps?"
It was the question that followed as a matter of course. When the other party to a contract appears out of nowhere and starts talking of breaking it, one is bound to assume some grave violation has been committed.
"Nothing of the sort. If I must say it, the cause is not entirely absent from your side, Lady Ninomae — yet it cannot be called a thing you have done wrong."
Philotanuss gave a short laugh and shook his head.
"The crux is the terms. Conditions have changed considerably since the day we made the contract, and so it cannot help but lapse."
"Mmm...? I'm sorry. I still don't quite..."
"To put only the heart of it: the one with whom I contracted was the human Ninomae Hitomi."
"Oh."
Only then did Ninomae understand, if only roughly.
Weren't there any number of games these days where changing into a swimsuit made the system treat you as an entirely different character? A demonic contract hardly seemed likely to obey a rule like that, but living god and True Ancestor vampire, at the very least, appeared to be out.
"Then what should I do? Recontract as I am now?"
"That would be one method. ...Were it that your divinity had not fully settled, Lady Ninomae."
She had asked whether they might void the original and simply sign again in her present state. What came back was a refusal.
"You mean once you're a god, you can't contract with a demon, or...?"
"That much is quite all right. There is the precedent of Job. Divinity, however, exerts all manner of influence merely by existing, so a contract left exactly as it stands would leak faith rather severely, shall we say..."
Philotanuss tipped his chin and went on.
"Well. Set the difficult talk aside, and it comes down to efficiency. A contract with a god ought to take a somewhat more direct form."
"When you say direct?"
"Originally, did I not broker intermediary contracts between you and the demons in my service? Several abilities set out beforehand as a catalogue, from which you select and use."
The tip of his finger angled toward the grimoire in Ninomae's hands.
"In other words, it becomes a form in which you bind those friends of yours there in a direct contract of master and servant, and draw their power through it."
"Is such a thing possible?"
"You are a god, are you not? A subordinate deity or two would hardly be strange. All the more for a True Ancestor vampire — a body eminently suited to letting abilities take root in it."
Ninomae drew her brows together, as though she needed a little more explanation.
"Mm, the divinity side I'll more or less take as it comes. Does being a True Ancestor actually mean something in the situation we're in?"
"You are the True Ancestor of the most recent generation, are you not? Then whether you fly through the sky or wield a Mystic Eye, would that not be perfectly natural?"
"No. Not when you say it as though I already know all of this."
"Hngh. From there, is it. Very well — I shall explain. Not that any oddity is free of this, mind you, but the vampire race has always had its lore shift a little with the age and with the region."
At length Philotanuss held up three fingers.
"There are, however, three great turning points in the existence of the vampiric kind — 1414, 1897, and 2000."
"The Hungarian Church's recognition of certain oddities, the year Bram Stoker published Dracula... and the last one? The turn of the century?"
Where the stuff of vampire-oddities was concerned, Ninomae had once investigated with a fineness approaching a field survey. Knowledge of this order was already in her head.
The final year, alone, she could not begin to guess...
"The official release year of Tsukihime."
"Ah."
And she was convinced at once — both that it was an event which had drawn a decisive line through what a vampire could be, and that this was precisely why she had not been able to guess it at all.
Certainly, an oddity born from the subculture that followed Tsukihime might possess any ability imaginable, and it would not be strange. The references were more than sufficient.
Ninomae thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Yes. All right. I'll make the contract."
"You need not hear the detailed terms?"
"No, well... where demonic contracts specifically are concerned, there's a limiter by the name of Lady Shion, so I suppose I don't have to worry..."
"...Fair enough."
There is scarcely a fool of a demon who would swindle someone under Han Seoyeon's protection. Demons of that sort are already dead.
One who had survived by luck might yet remain, but in this respect, at least, Philotanuss could be trusted. Whether he was good was another matter. He was wise.
"Then, taking the contract as settled, I shall take my leave."
"Ah, yes. Take care. ...Though if it comes to this, I suppose I won't be seeing you very often anymore, Lord Philotanuss?"
"Well, that would be so. You will go on contracting with the demons under me, but it will not be a contract with me directly."
Philotanuss shrugged and set his hat back on his head.
"Even so, should a bond exist, shall we not meet again somewhere? For a while, at any rate, I shall be too busy."
"Busy? Has something come up?"
At that, he grinned.
"The hacking equipment for playing gay pornography across the Times Square billboards is very nearly finished. ──Fare you well, then, Lady Ninomae!"
"............What?"
With a pop, the demon vanished, leaving smoke behind. Only long after he had gone did Ninomae grasp the meaning of his words, and a vacant voice slipped out of her.
"What? No, wait..."
Whether this was a matter she ought to report to the Church — Ninomae could do nothing but agonize over it for a long while.
"...Doesn't that last part strike you as strange?"
"Well, he's that sort of person — no, that sort of demon — so it's just how he is..."
Under Akane's scowling gaze, Ninomae awkwardly looked away. She hadn't done anything wrong herself, and yet somehow this was how she ended up reacting.
"So. The report?"
"I passed it along through Lady Shion, at least. Whether she reported it to the Church or to an American government agency, I don't know. ...Ah."
As she answered, something dropped onto Ninomae's palm with a soft tap. A case of black colored contact lenses.
She looked up, and something pitch-black was flitting about near the ceiling — the familiar she had sent to fetch the lenses. A bat swooping down to land in front of her would have been far too conspicuous, so it had dropped the case from up there, the better not to be noticed.
"...By the way, do you know how to put these in?"
No one answered.
And before long, Ninomae ran into an obstacle she had not foreseen. In all her life, she had never once put in a contact lens.
"Haa... Hand them to Tenka. First time, and trying to do it alone — it'll take you thirty minutes."
With that, Akane sighed and jerked her chin toward Tenka.
"Huh? Me? You're not going to do it yourself, Akane-chan?"
"Obviously it's better if someone with experience does it. You did it plenty back in school, didn't you?"
"Well, yeah, I guess. How do you even know that, Akane-chan?"
"Does it matter?"
Tenka asked as if genuinely puzzled, but Akane only snorted and gave her no answer.
"Miss Tsunashi, did you wear lenses when you were a student?"
"Not me. There was a junior on the basketball team. She said playing basketball in glasses was a pain, so she used lenses... and she was so timid that no matter how much time passed, she always begged me to put them in for her."
"Ah... mm."
That... how do I put it. Isn't that her coming on to you?
The thought flashed through Ninomae's mind for an instant. Tenka herself, thanks to that characteristic denseness of hers, seemed not to have caught on — but no matter how one turned it over, the behavior carried a certain intent.
Just in case, she glanced toward Akane, who caught Ninomae's gaze and heaved a deep sigh. From the reaction, Akane had known that junior's intentions as well. Ninomae felt she understood, somehow, why bringing the subject up had left her oddly displeased.
"Anyway, I'll block the view well enough. You handle the lenses."
"Okay. It's been a while for me too, so I'm not sure I'll do it right."
"Even so, it'll be better than me doing it myself."
The colored lenses were meant to hide her eyes; if someone else caught the very scene of her putting them in, the whole thing would defeat its purpose. So Akane rose from her seat and, feigning idle disinterest, made a passable wall of herself.
Seeing this, Tenka balanced a lens on her fingertip and stepped in close to Ninomae.
"Nngh..."
"Ah, Ninomae-chan. Hold still. You can't close your eyes, remember?"
"But — nnh — it just happens on reflex..."
"Bear with it a little. If you don't bolt, it'll really be over in a second."
Listening to those voices from behind her, Akane turned her gaze toward the stage.
"Hm?"
Then, glancing aside without any particular thought, her eyes met Bansei Marin's, who had been looking this way.
A staff member was sticking a slightly wobbling tracker back into place; from the look of it, she was preparing for the next stage. Even tracing back through the order Akane remembered, the next turn belonged to Bansei.
Well, it shouldn't matter if she's watching. At that angle I'll be in the way, so she won't be able to see what the two of them are doing.
She frowned without meaning to at the gaze turned her way, then realized almost at once that it was no real problem. All anyone would see was that the two were pressed close together; the space around Ninomae and Tenka's faces was, without question, something Akane's body would hide.
Wh-wh-what in the world are those two doing...?! No — more than that, Ninomae-chan already has a Sister...?!
...Akane had not considered, even for a moment, how the pair of them — faces drawn close, doing something whose exact nature was hidden behind an obstacle — would look to a third party.