Quo Vadis? (1)
When they went in, it had been broad daylight, but by the time the meeting ended and they stepped outside again, dawn was breaking. Unless the sun had taken it upon itself to run backward, the conference had been dragged straight through the night without a moment's rest.
"I'm simply glad it didn't run any longer."
Han Seoyeon murmured it, gazing up at a sky where the morning glow was spreading red.
"So even Shion gets tired, if a meeting goes on this long?"
Seoyeon had always seemed nothing short of invincible, and yet perhaps spending an entire day in debate over a catastrophe on a planetary scale was wearying after all. When Hitomi asked, Seoyeon smiled faintly and answered.
"Komori Sae has a stream scheduled for this evening. If we hadn't finished before then, Alejandra would have made a break for it."
"Treating it like a limited-time event... no, before that — is she even allowed to?"
"Of course not. But once she flops onto her back and starts on her phone, how exactly is anyone supposed to stop her?"
"What even is a VTuber...?"
It was an odd thing for someone who worked as a VTuber herself to say, but weren't there far too many remarkable people seriously lost to them? Setting that above a council of the Apostles seemed, frankly, a bit much.
"If I'd had a Superchat stream of my own coming up, I would have requested a recess as well."
"...Bringing me along on this trip. Honestly, part of the reason was to put me on hiatus, wasn't it?"
"......A little?"
Oh, for goodness' sake. What kind of answer was that. Hitomi rapped Seoyeon's forearm with the back of her hand.
"But only a little, in the end. What mattered most was that I wanted to travel with you, Hitomi."
"......"
Thunk. This time she butted her forehead lightly into Han Seoyeon's arm, and leaning there, she didn't move.
Seoyeon drew that head gently into an embrace. Hitomi didn't refuse; she nuzzled her hair against her.
"Shall we go and get a meal, at least? I can't say whether any place will be open at this hour."
"I'd like that. Let's go."
Hitomi answered with a shy little smile. At that smile Seoyeon finally couldn't hold back, and kissed her forehead — and, as if in retaliation, a kiss came back against her cheek.
They weren't worried about being seen. They were still within the grounds of the Vatican, so the Italian government's surveillance would not be on them, and it was early enough that ordinary passersby were almost nowhere to be found. The Vatican had nothing that could properly be called lodging, which meant the only tourists in the country at present were a scant few who had entered at an absurdly early hour.
Even so, they had no intention of putting on a thoroughly unrestrained display in the middle of an open street. The two of them stopped at that much, and set off walking again with nothing more than their hands clasped tight.
The Goroneto Girls' High School Basketball Club. They never entered tournaments, and yet among a certain circle the name was known. Other schools invited them more than a little often — usually either as the opposition for some ultra-Spartan special training, or as a humility-injection machine meant to administer shock therapy.
For all that the Goroneto basketball club was famous for such overwhelming strength, the practices themselves were rather slack. In a sense that was only natural. Quite a few of the members were born with genuine talent, but at bottom this was a club of students who had gathered simply because they felt like playing basketball as a hobby, and there were even girls who had joined to get close to a few of the popular members, then did nothing but watch before heading home.
Mika Eru, reckoned one of the aces, had joined on the grounds that there were a lot of pretty girls here. The other ace, Sasaki Kisaki, had turned in her application declaring that she wanted to be fawned over by girls in the full bloom of youth. The question of whether she herself wasn't precisely one of those girls in full bloom did make a head tilt — but for the time being, the observation was swallowed.
Not everyone had entered the club nursing motives like those. There were members who had joined because they truly loved basketball. She had, for instance — Sakuragi Honoka. Of course, it wasn't a club that aimed at tournaments, so she hadn't come in carrying any grave ambition; all she had wanted was to move her body and enjoy it, lightly. And since she herself was perfectly satisfied with the club as it stood, there was no need to pick that point apart.
The basketball struck the gym floor with a hollow thump, sprang back, and settled once more into Honoka's hands. She turned her gaze toward one side of the gym.
Blonde, black at the roots, the dye job impossible to miss. Hardly a hairstyle fit for a student, but by now even the teachers had more or less given up on correcting her. Behind that delinquent(?), Honoka began to creep, soft step by soft step.
"Oh, Honoppi, you done with practice?"
"...How do you know every single time, Eru-chan."
She was certain she had killed the sound of her steps with everything she had, and she was still more than ten meters off, and yet that girl whipped her head around and looked straight at her.
"Some kinda pull-of-the-soul something-something?"
"Come on, what even is that."
"It's a thiiing, you knooow~"
"Never mind that. What were you looking at?"
Abandoning the stealth, Honoka walked up to Mika Eru and her nonsense, and stole a glance at the smartphone screen Eru had been fiddling with.
A messaging app. She had only meant to get that far. She had no intention of reading what was written there — if the photo sitting on the screen hadn't gone and snagged her eye.
Two women, with the Colosseum of Italy behind them, the picture fiddled over with little decorations like a sticker-booth print.
"Hey. Isn't this your big sister, Eru-chan? And her girlfriend, too."
A beauty with a severe, frightening air was staring dead into the lens, face blank. The chill Honoka had felt on seeing her before, though, had faded a great deal — expressionless as she was, she was throwing a peace sign with her fingers, and cat ears and whiskers had been drawn over the photo on top of that. The woman beside her was familiar as well. She was a considerable beauty in her own right, but what had lodged her in the memory above all was a certain "mass," the sort one rarely encountered even abroad.
"...She's really different from the impression she gives."
"Well, Natacchi does turn into kind of a different person over chaaat."
Reading Seoyeon's messages on the phone Eru held out, Honoka let a small sound slip. It had probably been offered so she could look at the photo more closely, but the lines beneath it couldn't help entering her eyes.
"They really do like each other so much......"
Even just reading the words, the joy seemed to be spilling over. She could picture it perfectly: someone this delighted, rushing to show off, over nothing more than having a photo decorated for her. Maybe she's a cuter person than I thought. So Honoka thought, privately, and the gulf between that and the way the woman looked only made the feeling stronger.
"And suddenly trying to set a date just because the mood struck her... that's pretty unexpected, too."
A revelation, and then a meetup arranged on the spot. It was a difficult thing to imagine from that blunt impression.
"Ah, a 'revelation' isn't exactly— ...nah. Mm. Let's just leave it as that."
For a second Eru looked as if she meant to explain something. Then she shook her head and closed her mouth.
"Anyway, you think she's a good big sister too, right, Eru-chan?"
"Yeaaah~ Natacchi really is a good person. She's my savior, even. Like, she saved my life."
"Huh? What's that about?"
"Natacchi's the one who picked me up after I ended up alone. If she hadn't, I basically would've died right there on the street."
In truth a far more complicated story was tangled up in it, but this was about the limit of what could be explained to Honoka, a resident of the surface world. Honoka was a reasonably tactful person; she wouldn't go digging into someone else's painful memories, and that, at least, was a mercy.
"I see......"
"What about your big sister, Honoppi? What's she liiike? I remember she was huge when she came for that observation class."
"Hm? Didn't I tell you last time, too?"
"Mmm, I don't think I really got the detaaails that time either."
At Eru's words Honoka thought it over, then opened her mouth again.
"Did I mention she's an illustrator?"
"Uh-huh. And that she specializes in the lewd stuff."
"If I already told you that, I feel like I've pretty much covered it......"
She was, for all practical purposes, a person constructed out of erotica, so once you knew that much there was nothing left to say. Thinking so, Honoka scratched at her cheek.
"Aside from that... hmm. I wonder if it's all right to tell you, Eru-chan."
"Heh. So that's you saying it's the kind of thing you can't just go telling people?"
"Well, it comes to that. My sister actually does livestreams, too."
Hearing it, Eru's eyes sparkled with interest.
"What's the channel naaame?"
"No — I really can't give you that much without her permission. Not even you, Eru-chan."
"Heh heh, is that sooo~"
It was a perfectly reasonable thing to be turned down on, and once turned down, Eru pressed no further questions about Honoka's older sister — Maya.
"Buuut... you say all that, and you still went and told me she streams, didn't you, Honoppi?"
Strictly speaking, it was closer to the truth that her attention had been yanked so hard in other directions that the thought of prying had never even occurred.
"If you're gonna hide it, wouldn't it be smarter to hide the fact that she streams, toooo? If somebody wanted to pin her down, they totally could. And you're not enough of a dummy not to know that, Honoppi."
She hitched one corner of her mouth into a grin and looked into Honoka's eyes.
"Even if it means letting a little about your sister slip, there's something you want to get off your chest to me, isn't theeeere~ Something to do with livestreaming, specifically."
"...Eru-chan, sometimes you are sharp to a genuinely creepy degree."
"Creepy? I'm wouuunded~"
She said it while giggling, wearing a face that was not wounded in the slightest. At the sight of it, Honoka could only manage a wry smile.
"The truth is, um, I've been thinking about trying streaming myself. Following my sister."
"Aaah, right, the Gen 3 auditions are soon, aren't theey?"
"Yeah. They are. I already put in an application, but... huh?"
Honoka's expression, which had been carrying the conversation along as naturally as anything, froze solid — as if she had never once imagined Eru might say such a thing.
"An— an audition? No, the, Gen 3, uh......"
"It's Anathema Production, isn't iiit?"
"H-how did you know?!"
"Some kinda pull-of-the-soul something-something?"
"Don't joke around!"
Grinning, Eru caught the Honoka who was about to thrash in a panic and pinned her as if in a hug. ...Or perhaps she was simply indulging a selfish little want of her own.
"There were clues, and I had a bit of information, so the rest was a reasonable hunch?"
"Wow. What are you, a detective out of a mystery novel."
"This much isn't even that amaaazing? Yazucchi had you figured the second she met your eyes, Honoppi."
"No — and who is Yazucchi."
"A big sister whose deductions are incredibly, incredibly incredible?"
Honoka decided to set that particular person aside for the moment. One more name in Mika Eru's inexplicably vast circle of foreign acquaintances, no doubt.
"So... anyway, that's what I've been worrying about......"
"But you already applied, riiight?"
"Well... yeah."
"Then worrying isn't gonna do you any gooood. All that's left is to make up your mind."
She wasn't wrong. Fretting by itself wouldn't get her through the audition, and it wouldn't help her stream well afterward, either.
"I'll help you rehearse for the audition. If you need it, I'll even come with you to the interview."
"Yeah. Thanks, Eru-chan. I'll give it everything I've got."
"Oh. I can't help with the pillow business, though."
"I never needed that kind of help in the first place!"
Honoka shouted it, face gone red.
And then, a moment later, a small laugh broke out of her. Nothing had particularly changed from before she had put the worry into words, and yet somehow her heart felt lighter.