Episode 207 — Sent Forth into the Heart (3)
"Mmm..."
Hitomi felt the warmth first, and only then lifted her heavy eyelids. She was still lying down; she merely raised her eyes, and there was Han Seoyeon's face beside her. Seoyeon sat leaned against the wall with a pillow for a backrest, a smartphone in one hand, her gaze lowered to the screen.
Hitomi pressed her cheek more firmly into the leg she had been hugging. The dolphin shorts left those thighs bare, so the feel of skin came through with nothing between them. They had become Han Seoyeon's indoor wear a few days ago, after Hitomi asked whether—now that summer was here—she might not try them on just once. Spoils, in other words, won by earnest pleading. And so Hitomi, peculiarly proud of their very existence, rubbed her cheek against that firm thigh.
"Are you awake?"
"Hehe. Good morning."
Only then did Han Seoyeon seem to notice she was up, and a faint smile touched her face. She brushed the corner of Hitomi's eye with a fingertip, gently lifting away a speck of sleep, and stroked her hair.
"What time is it?"
"Four in the morning."
It was June now, summer, with the solstice not far off, and still the sky beyond the window was dark. By any ordinary measure it was far too early to be getting up. Hitomi stretched as if it were nothing and sat up.
A vampire's body had cut her need for sleep down to almost nothing. Some kinds of vampire made up for it by sleeping the day away, but she was not one of those. One might ask, then, what to make of Han Seoyeon—a human who slept even less than she did. Hitomi had long since given up trying to fit her inside the bounds of common sense. This was a woman who carried out, on a grander scale still, the sort of stunt that appeared only in wartime records: a dose of stimulants, then three days and nights in the field without sleep, and not a single thing wrong with her body afterward. And even if a person could manage that, an ordinary one simply wouldn't, would they?
Seoyeon had rattled off no end of virtues belonging to this sleepless method of sleep—and even as I say it, that phrasing is strange, Hitomi muttered to herself—but the conclusion Hitomi reached was the same as ever. She was not a normal person. No need to rotate the night watch did not, to Hitomi's mind, amount to a reason a human being should be fine without sleep.
Where a way of thinking like that even came from... I never imagined I'd learn it like this.
Presently she recalled the man who had come to the house yesterday. Strictly speaking they had met outside and she had brought him home, but he had come looking to see her, so it came to much the same thing. Han Jihan. Seoyeon's adoptive father. Hitomi called up that blunt, machine-like figure, and felt certain Han Seoyeon's values had begun with him. Seoyeon had said so herself—that her old personality had been like his.
"What has you thinking so hard?" Seoyeon asked, studying the absorbed look on her face.
"I was thinking how much you take after your father, Shion."
"Looking back, you used to be incredibly stiff too. Living with me seems to have softened you, I think."
"It's true I've changed a great deal, thanks to you."
"I can't really judge from a single day. But set beside your father, even the you from back then seems just a little softer."
If the Han Seoyeon of those days had been frightening and taciturn, the Han Jihan of yesterday had been a machine outright. Almost no emotion showed on him, and he skipped every sentimental consideration to lead with the conclusion.
"Well... in my case, there was Eru's influence as well."
Han Seoyeon answered with a bitter smile. The words had called up her sworn younger sister, who staked her claim whenever the matter had faded just enough to bear repeating: still, she was the one who had made Natacchi into something resembling a person. It rankled a little. What, then, had she been before that, if not a person? And yet there was truth enough in it that she could not deny it outright, which was why, before Hitomi, she conceded the point freely and nodded.
"Even so, my master is not a man without affection."
"I know. Taking in two orphans... no, you said he never formally adopted either of you. Anyway, someone who'd keep children with him and raise them could never truly be heartless."
It was a world in which people abandoned even the children they had carried and borne in pain. To take in a child who was no relation at all, and accept the raising of her for no reason other than that she might be in danger, could not have been an easy decision.
"As for the bluntness... well, honestly, most of it really is his nature. But the contract with a demon is part of it, too."
"A demon?"
Hitomi tilted her head, the gesture itself asking her to go on. She was contracted to a demon herself, granted, but with one thing and another Philotanuss had been the one to extend courtesies first, so hers could hardly be called a typical case.
"To come at it from another angle—why do you think my master came looking for you?"
"That was... while he was at it, since he was seeing you anyway...?"
"If that were so, he could have come looking for me from the start. To the church, or straight to the house."
Han Jihan had been blocking the road Hitomi was walking. He had, in effect, gone out of his way to single her out.
"And having met you like that, he left without really saying anything, didn't he?"
"Yes... that's right."
If one were being precise, he had said before leaving that he would look over her technique when he had the time—but it was hard to believe that had been his original purpose. He had brought it up, surely, because he had watched her draw a weapon at their first meeting and found something to correct. That, of course, had only come about after he met her. Short of being a prophet, he could not have come for that. Turning it over, she could not think of a single reason Han Jihan would have sought her out on purpose, and in the end she furrowed her brow as if surrendering.
"If there was no reason to meet, then the meeting itself must have been the purpose."
Han Seoyeon said it with a thin smile, then drew an arm around Hitomi's shoulders and settled her against her own.
"What does that mean?"
"This, too, is a matter of the contract I mentioned."
From so close, Hitomi looked up into Seoyeon's face.
"The Vampire Slayer, barring a few exceptions, cannot act unless the matter concerns vampires. That is the contract."
Glasya-Labolas. Han Seoyeon let the name fall, low.
"Presider over slaughter, and President to the Slayer."
"That president—he doesn't glow in the dark, does he?"
"Pardon?"
"Ah, no... it's nothing. Nothing at all."
The words had slipped out without ever passing through her brain, and Hitomi reproached herself. Was she still not properly awake?
"He can't act unless it involves vampires... what could a demon possibly gain from a contract like that?"
But turning the explanation over again, she felt there was something slightly off about it. A demon would only have contracted because there was profit in it. They would not, at the least, have stepped forward meaning to take a loss. Even that absurdly favorable contract—possible only because she was that Bartholomew's VIP—which she had made with Philotanuss when he came to pay damages after his subordinate caused an incident, had still been an exchange from which the demon's side could fully recoup its costs.
"It isn't that the demon gains nothing. He is a demon of slaughter, so the more famous his contractor becomes as a slaughterer, the more faith he can gather."
Considering the epithets currently fastened to Han Jihan, that part could be called a considerable success.
"But that is only incidental... and strictly speaking, this is the same as what I said a moment ago. The act itself is the purpose."
"The purpose is making the contract?"
"Yes. Becoming a body that can move only in matters concerning vampires. That penalty itself is my master's purpose."
Hitomi stared blankly into Han Seoyeon's eyes. It did not, in any case, sound like a joke.
"What... does that even mean?"
"Whether he loses his memory, or falls under someone else's control, he can still throw himself into a vampire incident."
Han Seoyeon smiled bitterly once more. It was the sort of story that left no other expression. Hitomi, for her part, could not smile at all.
"My master is broken, somewhere, beyond what you imagine. His is a life lived in order to kill vampires."
"That's... practically a curse, isn't it...?"
"It isn't a curse. In a sense it's worse. A conviction cannot be exorcised."
The worst of it, she supposed, was that he lived this way in genuine contentment. Han Seoyeon let out a sigh, and added as much.
"In any case, he came to see me, and the reason he sought you out is simple. As things stand, he cannot come to me without going through you—a vampire."
"......"
Hitomi quietly closed her mouth. She had expected something on the order of my father is blunt, but deep down he has a warm heart, and instead out had come a story she could never have imagined.
"A-anyway, what were you looking at, Shion?"
She forced the subject aside. Going on felt somehow unfair to Han Seoyeon, his daughter, and a little less than courteous toward Han Jihan, who was not even here.
"Ah, this? I was looking into wedding venues."
"Urk..."
And at the sight of Han Seoyeon holding out the phone, Hitomi was sunk on the spot. Ninomae Hitomi's fierce one-woman protest (?), mounted to push the wedding forward, had been only yesterday. Remembering it, perhaps, she flushed. Thinking again of herself half out of her mind, shouting that they ought to get married, she could not help the shame. Even with Han Seoyeon accepting, they were in no position to hold a ceremony at once, and she had gotten far too worked up without even realizing it.
A wedding took considerable preparation, once one booked a venue and gathered the guests. If they simply set their minds to it, they could hold a same-day ceremony for just the two of them, and if that was what it took to marry Seoyeon, Hitomi would have accepted without the slightest hesitation...
...Even so, I want to be blessed by as many people as I can.
That was the heart of it. A wedding of their own could be arranged somewhere even now, but if they meant to invite guests, they would have to give notice of the date at least a fortnight ahead, however late they cut it. Guests needed time to look over their own schedules and adjust them, and Hitomi, given the choice, had wanted to be joined before as many people as possible.
...Well. Considering her connections, the people she could invite were few. Family and relatives, her fellow VTubers, her manager, and the company president—that was the whole of it. She even caught herself, now and then, quite seriously entertaining the thought of simply sending invitations through the entire company, ties or no ties.
It was a mercy, at least, that Han Seoyeon's reach was monstrously wide. Even so, she said, more than half of those connections could not be invited, on account of it being a same-sex marriage.
"In any case, it's something to think about after we return from Italy."
"Ah, you're right. So this comes first."
"It's strangely amusing. It feels as if we're taking the honeymoon first."
"...The wedding night came even before that."
"Ahem......"
Han Seoyeon looked away, awkward. She was remembering, no doubt, what they had done then. Hitomi drew a little closer to her and pressed in.
"...You said you didn't have any plans to go out today, right?"
"Mm. Yes. That's true, but..."
She whispered it at her ear, then breathed a soft breath in, and for an instant Seoyeon's body trembled.
"Just through the morning. That's all right, isn't it?"
"It is four in the morning, however."
"No?"
Han Seoyeon closed her mouth and gave no answer. But Hitomi did not miss the faint heat lingering in her eyes. She smiled, drawing up the corners of her mouth with a languid allure, gathered Han Seoyeon fully into her arms, and toppled with her onto the bed.
...The two of them did not leave the bedroom until the sun stood high overhead, just as she had said they would.