That Which Shall Not Be Moved (4)
Ninomae woke to the sound of someone rustling beside her.
"Ah, I'm sorry. Did I wake you?"
The lights were off. Beyond the curtains, the sky was still dark. Lying in the bedding, she turned her head and found Hyakurenno Yuri pushing herself upright.
Ninomae reached for the smartphone she had left by her pillow, checking the time out of habit. The darkness outside the window had already told her as much, but it was still a very early hour of the dawn.
"Are you heading out to exercise?"
"Yes. I am."
She didn't find it particularly strange. She already knew that Yuri rose at dawn to go jogging.
"Have a good run."
With that, Ninomae lay back down beneath the covers. Even so, she had no desire to keep pace with someone who measured her runs in kilometers.
A short while later she heard the door open and shut. She confirmed that Yuri had gone and closed her eyes, but sleep refused to come. It wasn't that the conditions were poor for it. Considering the sort of person who had been lying beside her until a moment ago, there was no chance Yuri had prepared an uncomfortable bed. Her mind was simply wide awake and bright, as if she had already slept her fill. Ever since her body had been remade into a vampire's, Ninomae needed considerably less sleep.
In the end she opened her eyes again and picked up her phone. Scrolling Etube for a while seemed the better option.
"…Mm."
Perhaps because of the glow from the screen, Bansei Marin—lying on the opposite side from Yuri—shifted where she slept. Ninomae hurriedly dropped the brightness nearly to its lowest and stole a glance that way.
If Yuri and Bansei lay to Ninomae's left and right, then to Bansei's left and right were Ninomae and Tenka. More precisely, Bansei had burrowed in between Ninomae and Tenka, who had originally been lying side by side. Ninomae had no idea why, but the attitude had been something very like that, I will not allow. Judging by Tenka's reaction, she felt she could almost guess the reason… and yet, to Ninomae, the whole thing was nothing but questions. There had been no particular need to sleep beside Tenka in the first place. She had only lain there without much thought, and in the end she had simply let Bansei do as she pleased.
…Now that I think about it, Tenka-san did have a sleeping habit like this.
And that same Bansei was now clutched tight in Tenka's arms.
Remembering the time they had shared a room at a hot-spring inn, Ninomae smiled wryly. Back then they had woken to find themselves holding each other, and it had flustered her a little. She had heard that at home Tenka slept hugging a large stuffed animal. Maybe this was the influence of that, she thought.
She gazed at the sight for a moment, then quietly opened the camera app. It felt somehow heartwarming, and she wanted to keep it. If the viewers saw it they would absolutely lose their minds, but even so, she couldn't upload a photo with their faces onto social media. Passing it around among the members was as far as it could go.
Stifling a little giggle, Ninomae posted the picture to the group chat of Anathema's VTubers—a room that already held several pajama-party photos sent by Yuri and Tenka.
A string of soft shutter-clicks followed. She shifted the angle and sent about ten shots, and Rokumondera—Natsugahara Hina—went wild. Giggling at the reaction, Ninomae clattered out a reply as fast as her thumbs would go.
It really did. Ninomae nodded, agreeing from the bottom of her heart.
"I thought I was done for. Thank you."
Well—the part about having dodged was a lie.
She offered her thanks to the bat-shaped familiar fluttering at the edge of her vision. If this little one hadn't appeared in time to catch the falling phone, Ninomae would be rolling across the floor and screaming right about now. She smiled in relief and sent the bat back.
"Ah."
—And her eyes met Bansei Marin's, who had been looking this way.
An awkward silence fell between them.
"Um, did you… see that?"
"A-ahaha. Whatever do you mean…?"
"…You saw. Didn't you."
"E-eh… well, you see. Mm. Hear me out?"
Bansei had seen it. Ninomae was certain. She had a reputation for being hopeless at mind games, but she wasn't so far gone that she could miss a reaction like that. And Bansei Marin was, so far as Ninomae knew, unmistakably a person of the surface world. Which meant a violation of the Secrecy Protocol.
Cold sweat traced the nape of her neck. The fine was a problem, but more than that, Ninomae understood the danger of the act itself—of initiating someone else into the hidden world. Simply never having set foot there guaranteed a considerable degree of spiritual protection. Just as the old stories said a ghost could harm only those who feared it, the masters of the surface world possessed a high resistance by that fact alone.
Wh-what am I supposed to do…
Han Seoyeon, for her part, had money to burn anyway, and she fully intended to watch over Ninomae for the rest of her life, so revealing herself had been possible. Ninomae, at present, was in no such position.
"……."
As she fretted, a single plan flashed through her mind. The vampiric power she had won through her contracts with demons. If she used that, she might be able to break through this somehow.
Ninomae hardened her gaze and met Bansei's eyes. Slowly her own flushed red, until a magenta radiance began to spill from them.
What a demon's evil eye held was the power of fascination. Demonic energy leaked free as if boiling over, and along the line of sight it passed from eye to eye, infecting as it went.
Only then did Ninomae press a hand to her chest and let herself breathe in relief…
…H-huh? Wait. Why are Bansei-san's eyes glowing?!
An instant later, she realized something had gone badly wrong.
"Um, Ninomae-chan? What in the world was that just now…"
Bansei Marin's pupils were shining blue—and her reaction was nothing like someone the charm had taken. Her gaze turned this way. Blue pupils; no, look closer, and even the shape of the eyes seemed a little unlike a human's. Closer to a beast's…
"Ah. Aah…!"
Only then did Ninomae grasp her own mistake. She had forgotten, taking her for a resident of the surface, but Bansei Marin—as with most of Anathema's members—was not a pure human either. According to Han Seoyeon's investigation, she was a human in whom the blood of a yokai fox very likely ran. And a fox, rather than being fascinated by others, was by nature far closer to the one who fascinates. There had never been any chance a half-baked spell would work on her.
No. If anything, she had the feeling that what she had just done had served as a stimulus, and affected her all the more…….
Ah. This is completely hopeless.
The moment she confirmed the fox ears sprouting from Bansei's head with a soft poof, Ninomae let out a dry little laugh. She might have forced the excuse that the familiar a moment ago had been something she'd mis-seen in her drowsiness, but this was utterly impossible to talk her way around. At this point her heart was almost at ease. Where she was even supposed to begin explaining any of it remained a question, though…….
That question, too, vanished before long.
"Nom—."
"Eek?!"
…Not because the problem had been solved, but simply because an entirely different problem had shoved its way in from beside her.
Tenka, who had been holding Bansei in her arms, had abruptly bitten the nape of her neck. It was a controlled bite, not enough to break the skin, but Bansei, on the receiving end, had no room to appreciate that. She yelped, startled, while Tenka only kept her eyes closed and mouthed at the neck. Most likely the smell of fox fur had stirred a wolf's instincts.
"Hkk— wait, nnh… Tenkaaa?! Kkh, how is this girl so strong… aughhh!"
"A-are you all right?!"
Bansei thrashed with everything she had, but if it was raw physical ability, her opponent was Tenka, the finest in all of Anathema. The resistance was perfectly meaningless. All she could do was remain bound from head to toe, tears welling in her eyes.
Only after Ninomae drew out every ounce of her strength as a vampire and pried Tenka's arms loose did Bansei finally win her freedom.
"Ugh… honestly, what is this supposed to be……."
Rubbing the nape where the teeth marks lingered, Bansei muttered in a trembling voice.
"……."
Ninomae quietly watched her. For some reason, looking at her set a restless stir moving through her chest. Was it the power of fascination a fox possessed? No. It felt a little different from that.
She thought for a moment, then absently fidgeted at the corner of her own mouth. Her teeth itched, somehow.
"Hyaaah?!"
"…Nnh! Ah?! I-I'm sorry!"
When she came back to herself, this time it was Ninomae biting that flushed spot as if spellbound. Startled by what she herself had done, she pulled away again.
"K-kids these days really are intense……."
"N-no, it's not like that?!"
Perhaps because it had happened twice in so short a span, Bansei seemed to have decided this was some aggressive form of skinship that happened to be in fashion. Ninomae's eyes went round, and she waved both hands.
"Or were you aiming for, you know, an indirect kiss, or something like that…?"
"That's not it either! It's just— um, my instincts as a vampire got stirred up… auuugh……."
She was dealing with someone who had only just stepped into the hidden world. Even setting aside the fact that Ninomae had become a vampire, Bansei hadn't known whether vampires so much as existed. How was she supposed to explain this? The confusion left her very nearly in tears.
"……."
"……Bansei-san?"
"Here."
And then Bansei abruptly drew Ninomae into her arms. Carefully, she tucked Ninomae's face in against her shoulder.
"I don't understand the details, but this is what you need, isn't it? Go on. Bite as much as you like."
"……!"
She murmured it gently, stroking her hair with care. At that, Ninomae's eyes went wide. Offering up her own flesh to be bitten simply because Ninomae was in distress—that was a response she had never once anticipated.
"Th-that's not— I don't specifically need to bite you, Bansei-san…?"
"Oh my. You don't?"
In truth it wasn't a particularly helpful thing to do… but the tenderness of it seemed to settle her a little, and Ninomae answered in a calmer voice.
"I was just… how should I put it. I only got like that because I was panicking over how to explain."
"I see. It's all right if you ramble a little. Take your time and tell me."
Bansei said it while patting her back a few times. Somehow, that made Ninomae's heart feel immensely at ease.
How on earth had a group that contained a person like this ever broken apart over discord? The thought crossed her mind, and she erased it at once. Honestly, it felt a little rude.
Instead she carefully opened her mouth and began to explain.
"So, you see. In this world, there are…"
By the time morning came and the sun was rising, the last of the second generation who still belonged to the surface world had set her foot into the hidden world.