A Yoke upon the Disciple's Neck (1)
Narita International Airport.
A woman who had just come through the terminal glanced around. Soft, rounded eyes and brown hair together gave her the look of a squirrel.
"Come to think of it, Hitomi, didn't you say this would be your first time on a plane?"
"Yes. My heart's already pounding..."
Ninomae Hitomi bobbed her head vigorously at the words of Han Seoyeon, who had followed her in. The twenty-first century might have stitched the world into one, but an airplane still hardly counted as everyday transportation. There were surely plenty of people, like Hitomi, who had reached adulthood without ever boarding one.
"You do know you have to take your shoes off to get on a plane, yes?"
"Oh, come on—I'm not falling for something like that!"
With so many first-time flyers still around, jokes of that sort were bound to make the rounds, weren't they? Hitomi, of course, bristled and pursed her lips.
Had she actually expected her to fall for it, or was she only teasing to loosen the nerves? With Han Seoyeon, either was possible, so Hitomi turned it over for a moment.
Well... it's the latter, isn't it.
She wouldn't have set out to trick her on purpose. That conclusion arrived quickly enough.
Jokes like this usually aimed to make the target squirm at the thought of looking like a country bumpkin. But with no one watching, what was there to be embarrassed about? Thinking as much, she looked around.
No one. The only people passing through this gate were herself and Han Seoyeon. Looking back, she hadn't seen a single person who looked like a passenger from the moment they entered the terminal, let alone the gate.
Which was only natural. It was hard to imagine more than a handful of people a day using a terminal reserved for private aircraft.
And so the two of them stepped out of the gate and stood beneath the open sky. It was obvious enough that the nearest plane was the one they were meant to board, and yet men in fluorescent vests still pointed it out and ushered them toward it.
A moment later Hitomi's eyes went round. It was the emblem painted on the tail—something that looked as if it had been taken from a national flag.
An aircraft bound from Japan to Italy, to deliver Han Seoyeon to the Apostolic Council. Hitomi had assumed it would belong to one of those two countries.
Or an American plane secured through Seoyeon's military contacts. Or, since the one who had said he would handle the flying was her master, Han Jihan, perhaps something obtained from Korea. She had even entertained the notion of borrowing a Vatican-owned private jet, though the Secrecy Protocol made her dismiss that as a stretch even as she thought it.
Every one of those guesses was wrong. Hitomi stared blankly at a five-colored emblem that, at a glance, called a rainbow to mind—no, white and black were in it too, so it could never truly be a rainbow.
"...China?"
"Ah... I was wondering where Master had managed to get a business jet. So this is what it was."
Han Seoyeon smiled wryly, as if the fact had caught her off guard as well—though the murmur itself sounded as if some corner of her had already guessed.
"—Seoyeon!"
A moment later they spotted someone sitting on the stairs that led up to the plane. She was a middle-aged woman who looked well along in years, and the instant she recognized Han Seoyeon she grinned and lifted a hand.
The name that left her mouth carried a heavy accent.
"Ms. Wei."
"It's been a while. Have you been well?"
And then Hakka flowed from both their mouths. Hitomi's eyes went wide at how naturally the words came from Seoyeon.
"Shion, you speak Chinese too?"
"Only as much as I've picked up here and there."
"Anyway, that person over there..."
"Ah, I should have introduced you sooner. This is Wei Chen, a friend of my master's."
A friend of her master. If that was the case, there was nothing strange about Seoyeon knowing her.
Even so, Hitomi asked anyway.
"Which master? The one who doesn't shoot eye-beams?"
"Both of them. She's one of the quartet they traveled with, before they picked me up."
Nikolai Viktorovich Pushkaryov Vladimir.
Han Jihan, James.
Giacomo Marchisio Bonaventura.
And Wei Chen.
She had been told that, long before they ever met Han Seoyeon, the two masters had been famous as some legendary foursome—the Four Horsemen, or whatever they were called. Seoyeon herself had only ever heard it secondhand, and yet her head nodded even without any further proof.
Setting everything else aside, one of the four was a sitting Apostle and a cardinal. Multiply that by four, and... it would have been stranger if they weren't famous.
"So you're the famous Ninomae Hitomi?"
"Yes. That's right."
"Ah, hello."
Han Seoyeon nodded at Wei's question, and Hitomi bowed at the waist in greeting as well. She didn't understand a word of Chinese, but her own name—Ninomae Hitomi—had come through perfectly clear.
"Ah... there's no way she'd know Hakka."
Only then did the other woman seem to realize there was no chance they would understand each other, and she gave a bitter smile. This wasn't even Mandarin-based Standard Chinese, merely a language barely spoken in the southern regions. No ordinary Japanese person would know it.
"And Huayu—Standard Chinese—would be hopeless too, I suppose?"
"She speaks a little Korean."
"Oh? That's the best news I've heard all day."
Wei laid a hand on her chest and let out a sigh of relief. Then she pushed her horn-rimmed glasses back into place, turned a bright smile on Hitomi, and began to speak in Korean.
"So then, Miss Hitomi? Come inside first. We'll talk once we're seated."
"Ah, yes. Thank you."
"Nothing to thank me for. Lending out my plane was the arrangement from the start."
"Uh, um."
Put that way, there wasn't much to say. Hitomi had only offered the thanks out of habit, without thinking, and she had no reply to Wei's correction.
The other woman didn't seem to have meant it as a serious rebuke, though; she was soon on her feet and climbing the stairs. The thought of why would she thank me? had probably only flickered past.
Hitomi glanced at Han Seoyeon for a moment, then started up the stairs herself.
From up high she could also see the workers in fluorescent vests loading the luggage. ...There was something among it that, no matter how she looked, could only be a towed field gun, but she decided to ignore it.
And besides, this was no time to dwell on it. The moment Hitomi stepped into the cabin, her eyes went wider than they had all day.
"Eh? Huh? Wait?"
Her gaze darted left and right. Only after several passes did she turn her head stiffly toward Seoyeon, who was still climbing the stairs.
"Th-this is the plane we're taking...?"
"Is there a problem?"
"No, I just... I heard it was business class..."
The word jet had been attached, but she hadn't paid that much mind. If anything, she had assumed they had sacrificed a little comfort for the sake of speed and left it at that.
But this was far beyond anything she had expected. A flustered little auu, auu spilled from Hitomi's open mouth.
What spread out before her was less an airplane cabin than something closer to a hotel lobby.
"Business class is that thing, right? The middle tier, between economy and first...?"
"I hear the line between business and first has blurred a great deal these days. Still, this is rather exceptional."
It was a private jet of the sort that came with the interior bundled in as part of the product. Jaws dropping at the mere sight of it was only to be expected.
"So an Apostle can just... arrange something like this, if they decide they want to."
She had always known Apostles were absurdly incredible, but she rarely got to feel it this directly. Hitomi murmured the words in a slightly dazed voice.
"If this is my first flight, the whiplash later is going to be brutal."
"You could simply fly like this next time as well."
"No—you said this isn't a commercial flight. It's a private jet."
In short, it was something you couldn't even attempt to buy a ticket for. It wasn't a product an airline kept in its own hands while selling only the seats.
"Shall I buy you one?"
"...No. I feel like I just heard a bombshell dropped like it was nothing. That's my imagination, right?"
"It was a joke."
"When you say it, Shion, it doesn't sound like a joke, so please, seriously, stop..."
When someone who could actually afford to buy the thing said it, it refused to register as a joke. An offer to buy her something had never been this chilling before. Hitomi rubbed the goosebumps from her forearm.
"Which is precisely why you need to be careful saying things like that, Hitomi."
"No, this is one hundred percent you suddenly saying something weird, Shion. Normally, saying 'oh, I wish I had a private jet' doesn't turn into a disaster, you know?"
"Miss Yuri."
"...Ah."
That one, she really did need to watch her mouth around. Hitomi found herself nodding before she knew it.
Hyakurenno Yuri. At Anathema Production, she ranked number one among people you must never casually ask to buy you something.
The incident in which someone had grumbled that their stocks had fallen, only for a single Shall I raise them for you? to incinerate the mood, remained legend to this day.
"Well, even setting that aside, if you brought up planes, don't you think she'd gladly lend you hers? Whatever Miss Yuri owns is probably no less than this."
"Miss Yuri really would, so please stop saying scary things...!"
She had never heard it from the woman herself, but no matter how she thought about it, a young lady like that owning several private jets would not be the least bit strange. Hitomi was certain that the day Shall I lend you one? left those lips, a hole would open in her stomach and she would collapse on the spot.
"You know you mustn't bring up space travel, not even as a joke, yes?"
"Yes. Of course I— wait, what? Huh?"
"So long as you know, that's enough."
"No?! Hold on?! What is it?! What on earth does Miss Yuri own?!"
"Haha."
"That is not a haha!!!"
Han Seoyeon gazed at the Hitomi who had finally exploded, as if she were adorable. Of course, that led to a minor mishap in which Hitomi sulked and, for a little while, refused to speak to her at all.
Fortunately it didn't last long—partly because she was kind by nature, and partly because her fondness for Han Seoyeon ran far too deep.
...She never did, however, get an answer to the question of just how far Hyakurenno Yuri's personal possessions actually extended.