Confirmed, and Confirmed It Is (2)
The broadcast had begun, and yet not a sound came through. The backdrop she so often used when speaking with her viewers was up on the screen, but even Mary's avatar was nowhere to be seen.
A little more than a minute passed that way, and only when the viewers were starting to suspect a broadcast mishap did anything change. A melody rose from an electronic piano. A moment later, guitar and drums fell in behind it.
Only then did the viewers understand that the silence had been nothing more than a wait for people to gather. A fair number had already been waiting in the lobby before the stream went live, but not everyone had.
Even then, a stream usually began with a greeting and a little idle talk before reaching the point. On Mary's streams, at the very least. Never before had she waited without a word and then, without warning, begun to sing.
Even so, if the intent had been to lift the room from the first moment, it succeeded—the chat began to fly. And in the midst of that current, Mary Tepes finally opened her mouth. Not to converse. To sing.
It was a softer voice than the high, bright one she usually used on stream. If one had to place it, it sat closer to Ninomae Hitomi's natural tone than to Mary Tepes. The singing itself was more than considerable, and the voice was simply pleasant to hear. Several phrases on, a second voice slipped in.
The passionate section had not yet arrived, so the volume was not particularly great. Even so, the voice was clear and strong. Hyakurenno Yuri—Amairo Tsubasa—seized that momentum and drove straight through into the chorus. The emotion deepened, the pitch leapt in a single instant, and there was not the slightest sign of strain. At the sound of that bracing voice, hearts began to race.
Mary answered her, trading the song back and forth. She had left the unreasonably high passages—and a great deal besides—in Tsubasa's hands, so the impression was very much one of support.
The high note burst free with force. To hear it was to forget, for an instant, even to breathe, and simply stare in blank admiration.
A melody that had climbed to its peak, then settled once more into calm. On that final phrase the two voices overlapped, as if engraving the lingering echo into the air.
A brief stillness, once the song had ended. Mary Tepes's avatar appeared on the screen as she let out a long breath. She wore a triumphant smile, thoroughly satisfied with what she had just sung. Right after her, the figure of a blonde holy knight appeared as well.
"Konmea! I am Mary Tepes, the Vampire Queen!"
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amairo Tsubasa, of Anathema's second generation."
Tsubasa offered her greeting as well, as if following in Mary's wake.
"As we announced, today is a song stream with Tsubasa-chan! We opened with the soundtrack from Crimson Song—how did you find it?"
"You liked it? How fortunate."
It was a short version, not even two minutes, the one that had been cut into the film—but it was more than enough to draw cheers from the viewers.
Plainly delighted by the response, the two of them went on in bright voices with a bit of light chatter.
"At first I thought the stream had crashed… Well, I suppose that was fair. But coming on with a whole song before so much as a hello—didn't it feel rather like a concert?"
"It was Lady Mary's suggestion," Tsubasa added with a smile.
"Might there have been some further reason, Lady Mary? You aren't the sort to propose a thing simply because it sounds like fun."
"Uh… now that you mention it, did I never explain, before the stream began?"
"I accepted the suggestion on the spot, purely because it sounded like fun."
At that, Mary answered as if showing off.
"Among my servants, there are bound to be those who don't truly know how well Tsubasa-chan can sing. Rather than a long explanation, better to show them once, with impact, no?"
"So you mean to say it was for my sake?"
"Uh… is that how it comes out…?"
"Oh my. Is this person truly claiming to be a wicked vampire, over this of all things?"
The reaction that came back, however, made her eyes go wide.
"Don't say it twice…!"
"It is a truth that does not need saying more than once."
"It is not!"
A soft laugh spilled out. Mary's avatar, by contrast, flushed red.
"In any case, this time it is truly Lady Mary's turn. You did yield every highlight of that last song to me."
"H-hmph. Leave it to me! …No, wait—I have never yielded a thing to the likes of you!"
"Lady Mary Tepes performs Natasha McMillan's Sweety Hell—!"
"Ngh—ah, I'm not ready, don't start the song!"
"Miss Shion. Today's stream… how was it?"
"Miss Ninomae. That is the third time you have asked."
"Ehehe, was it really?"
A sleepy voice came through the line. A tone about halfway between Ninomae and Shutang. Subjectively speaking, it was terribly cute.
No one who heard that voice would doubt that Ninomae was drunk on sleep. Han Seoyeon, at the other end of the call, was certain of it at least.
Until nights alone no longer frightened her, she would stay on the phone through the night. True to the promise she had made not long ago, Seoyeon had called Ninomae again today.
"So, how was it? I don't mind if it's the third time. Please tell me."
"It was the best."
"…You've only ever said that, Miss Shion. From the very start."
What came back was a sullen voice. But it was her honest impression—what else was she to do?
"I happened to be looking over the reactions online, and as expected, they are mostly favorable."
"Th-that's a relief, then."
Mary's viewers were, at baseline, a chorus of praise—lavish praise, if one were being precise. Unless one went out of one's way to dig through the hate threads, the gathered opinion seemed to be positive through and through.
As for Tsubasa's fans, that hardly needed saying. They were an unfortunate fandom that had been starving for her voice. Far past raising a toast, they were showing signs of trying to deify Mary herself, the very cause of this collaboration. Posts declaring her nothing but light, or the GOAT, uploaded beside Mary's illustrations—there was more than one or two of them.
"Fwaaah…"
As she lingered on the thought, another yawn drifted through the receiver. Off to dreamland any moment now. After the last few days, Han Seoyeon was certain of it.
"Miss Shion… aren't you sleepy? Every day, because of me, so late into the night."
"As you know, I am of a constitution that requires extremely little sleep."
A peculiar constitution, able to get by on an hour or two a day. It would ordinarily be a difficult thing to believe, but Seoyeon had often let Ninomae see for herself that she was perfectly fine on just that much.
…In truth, of course, she was only sweeping her body's fatigue away with sacred power. She had lived like this since her apprentice days, when she had been forced to cut down even her hours of sleep, and by now the habit had simply settled into the pattern of her life.
"Buuut, no matter how I think about it… that's the cause of your dark circles, riiight?"
A voice pressed flat beneath drowsiness, as if she might topple backward at any moment. The contents, however, struck uncomfortably close to the mark.
Han Seoyeon, who scarcely concerned herself with her appearance so long as it met some minimum of neatness, had never counted the dark circles left by fatigue among the things worth healing. Which was to say that, quite apart from how tired she actually was, a single glance made her look exactly like someone who slept only an hour a day.
"You're a beauty to begin with, Miss Shion, so if you actually dressed up properly, you'd be pretty……."
"Clergy are not meant to adorn themselves."
It was the sort of joke Seoyeon tossed out in play. Press the point, and she was not clergy to begin with.
A reply of that kind ought to have brought Ninomae's complaints circling right back, and yet the far end of the line was remarkably quiet. Lean in, and there was only the small, even sound of breathing.
"Miss Ninomae?"
Call the name as she might, there was still no answer. She had lost, it seemed, to her fatigue, and fallen asleep.
"…Sleep well, Miss Ninomae."
Shion murmured it, barely above a whisper. Ninomae was surely no longer listening, but she had wanted to say it all the same.
She did not hang up. It might have been only a light sleep. If Ninomae woke before long and found herself left alone, she might take fright again and begin to tremble.
From the phone's speaker, nothing but that small sound of breathing went on flowing, for a long while.
Ninomae was happy.
In part because she had just finished the report for her general-education class, and in part because she was looking forward to the four-person collab set for today. More than anything, though, her condition had been simply, ordinarily good ever since Han Seoyeon had begun staying the night—so good that, waking each morning, she could no longer even feel the thing called fatigue.
The last of these was, in truth, because Seoyeon poured a blessing over her every night before the call ended. There was no chance the sleeping Ninomae would ever have noticed.
Whatever the case, Ninomae Hitomi was happy.
She would send the email off to her professor, and get some proper rest before the collab…
Beeeep!
"Huh?"
The monitor had gone black without warning.
Click. She jabbed the power button in a hurry.
Click.
Click.
Click-click-click-click.
"……."
Ninomae Hitomi was now unhappy. Considerably.