The Calling Is the Name (2)

A woman's shriek came through the earphones, and what followed it was Korean laced with a faint Gyeongsang accent, the cadence of the southeast. On the screen, the character took four critical hits in a row and died; the bang of a fist coming down on a keyboard followed. Her fury stood, of course, in inverse proportion to the chat, which had become a sea of laughter...

"Well, now. Shion, watching a VTuber from outside Anathema Production. There's a rare sight. An affair, is it—for the sake of a different mood?"

"...Professor."

At the voice that came suddenly from behind, Han Seoyeon pulled one earphone free. Even so, her eyes stayed fixed on the screen of her phone.

"Quite an amusing sight, I must say. May I venture to imagine what this is about?"

"You may say it outright. If it's you, Professor Senjoji."

"I thought as much."

The professor, Senjoji Chihaya, lifted the hem of the white coat she wore, drew out the chair nearest where Han Seoyeon sat, and took it.

"You came here today because you, too, are a judge for the third-generation audition. And so you are watching other VTubers, ones you do not usually watch, hoping to cultivate even a little more of the discernment the seat requires."

"..."

"...That would be the cover, I suppose?"

Han Seoyeon did not answer. She was deep in the broadcast; there was likely no room to spare for a lengthy reply.

"I cannot imagine you sinking this deep into anyone but Ninomae. To begin with, even if it were Ninomae's broadcast, you are not so rude a person as to keep your eyes on a screen while someone is speaking to you."

In other words, this behavior—rude at a glance—had some other reason behind it.

"The broadcast is a means of receiving classified information, then? But you showed it to me, and said I might try to infer, so the party from whom the contents must be hidden is gathering information by anomalous power."

Psychometry, clairvoyance, or prophecy—one of the three? The moment Professor Senjoji had said as much, Seoyeon turned her head to look at her. It was hardly likely, of course, that Han Seoyeon was flustered at this late hour. The cipher transmission had simply, by coincidence, ended at this timing.

"So. Which of them is the answer?"

"Precognition."

"Ah, a pity. Personally, I had been weighting it more toward clairvoyance."

"You were being so careful that I was certain it had to be that."

The professor shrugged.

"The matter is important enough to warrant it."

"Then it cannot be helped."

"...It was not especially welcome news."

"Dear me."

Han Seoyeon let out a long sigh. The subjugation of Vampire Syndrome—at present, the operation the Church in Japan regarded as the most important of all. Its first step was the handling of the prophet who served as the mastermind's eyes and ears. In short, the suppression of Kan'in Tomoe. The cipher was for that. The concealment was for that.

Given the level of precognition expected of the target, peering as far as this place was thought to be impossible. Even so, the hunting of a prophet was a thing one undertook with the utmost caution. Against precognition, even a halfway cipher could not be used. Read so much as the moment of decryption, and security evaporated on the spot.

All decryption, therefore, had to be carried out inside the mind alone. Han Seoyeon recalled the parcel Abraham had sent to the hotel in Italy the last time. What it contained was a book of braille—a codebook he had made by himself, in a room of perfect dark, and sent on to her without it ever once seeing the light.

Never having been set beneath a light, it could not be confirmed by sight no matter which stretch of time one peered into; and because she had destroyed it the instant she committed its contents to memory, the only ones who knew the information were she and Abraham. The message encrypted in that fashion was this very internet broadcast.

It put on the airs of a livestream, but was in fact a recording. Every bit of the content was staged, and of the seventeen viewers typing in the chat, all but Han Seoyeon were programs of Abraham's own make—what people commonly call bots. The streamer's lines. The patterns by which the monsters moved in the game. The attack coefficients, and the timing of the critical hits. Even the chat scrolling past, save for a scattering of dummy lines, was cipher, all of it. Abraham's report on the progress of the prophet hunt.

"—That opponent is not a thing I am in a position to know. Still, I shall wish you luck, Shion."

Only after Chihaya had said as much did Han Seoyeon draw her awareness back into the room.

"Ah. Thank you."

"Nothing to thank me for. Where in this world is there anything so meaningless as a prayer of mine?"

She shrugged once more, and grinned.

Senjoji Chihaya. Numbered among the mad; in the hidden world, call someone simply the Professor with no further epithet, and eight times out of ten you mean her. She was also the surface-dweller who lived nearest the hidden world. A human congenitally incapable of perceiving anomalies, or of interacting with them—and so, of course, not the slightest miraculous effect could be expected of her prayers.

It was for the same reason that Han Seoyeon had been able to let even a rough hint of the prophet hunt pass her lips. Professor Senjoji was invisible to precognition, and so there was no fear of the information leaking to the prophet on the other side.

"That encouragement alone is enough to be grateful for. I hold that goodwill toward another is, in itself, a thing akin to a miracle."

"A miracle, from the likes of me? An amusing notion, Shion."

At those words, Professor Senjoji broke into a cackling laugh—the reaction of a woman who had just been told of the lame getting up to run on two feet.

"I shall have to make use of that line later, should the chance arise. Now that I think of it, are Christ's miracles not the opening of shut eyes, and the raising of those who sit? Next time I must say that the greatest miracle is an invitation into the hidden world, extended even to this Senjoji Chihaya."

At a glance it sounded like mockery. But as far as Han Seoyeon knew, that function was not installed in the woman. She was marveling in earnest, at a notion she had never once conceived until now.

"Well. I shall save that for a later pleasure. Shall we be moving?"

"Where to?"

"The audition is not in this room, but another. Gyokichi asked me to fetch you. However he turned it over, he said, you seemed to be waiting alone in a strange place."

"...Ah."

"Wait. Seriously?"

That was what Akaba Akane had said without thinking, back when she saw the list of judges for the second-generation audition.

And upon confirming the judges for this third-generation audition, she said:

"No, fuck—seriously?!"

Of course, Akane had produced that reaction not in this room, but at her own home, a fair distance off. Han Seoyeon, who was here, had not reacted so very differently. A curse had not flown out of her on reflex—but in that she doubted whether the president was in his right mind, it came to the same thing.

A long desk. She ran her eyes over the faces seated in a row before it.

"Mmm. It seems the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time is nearly upon us."

Hyakurenno Yuri, a maid in attendance behind her. She was doing nothing in particular, only sitting, and yet a strange dignity hung about her. Probably not a trick of the mood alone.

"Hmm...! Mm!"

Senjoji Chihaya, in her white coat as always, nodding along without cease. Notebook in hand, she was writing something at a furious pace; a promising research topic must have struck her all at once.

"Yes. We ought to make ready as well."

And Nakabashi Gyokichi, who had claimed the very center with perfect composure, two such monsters notwithstanding. Unlike the other judges, he was a completely ordinary human being—and yet, on looks alone, he occupied the highest peak in the room.

No. Given that he had gone and carried an idea like this all the way through, perhaps it was simply the madness within, written across his face...

"Is something troubling you?"

She had been in the middle of that rather improper thought when the man himself suddenly addressed her. Afraid it had shown on her face, she hurriedly put her thoughts in order and answered.

"No, it's... the selection. The people."

"You find the roster too formidable."

"...Yes. Something like that."

Was "formidable" really a word one could let pass? Han Seoyeon considered it a moment, and in the end she nodded.

"Even so—is a pressure interview of this degree necessary?"

The pressure interview itself she could write off as the president's taste, but this did seem to be going too far. At her words, Gyokichi smiled until his mouth met his ears—not a figure of speech, not anything of the sort, but quite literally.

"It is necessary."

He said it as if the matter were settled.

"Anathema Production conducts its business with a particular emphasis on the relationships among its VTubers. Enter this company, and in the end all of you become people who must live shoulder to shoulder."

One had to be able to get along with the people already here, Gyokichi went on.

"The second-generation audition was the same. We seated two persons of as frightening an impression as we could manage, and held the interviews before them."

It had not been quite so bad as this, but even then, interviewees whose composure cracked had come in a steady stream.

"Ah... that. Honestly, it was really hard."

Yuri, who had been listening to the two of them from the side, smiled bitterly, her eyes on some far patch of empty air, as if calling the memory back.

"Senior Akaba would glare and just keep driving you into a corner, and Senior Kuroyuki would speak so coldly, without blinking once..."

The one who spoke gently, by comparison, was the president—and the president was Innsmouth. There had been no way not to be nervous.

"But getting through the pressure is a basic premise. Fail to endure this, and one will not survive in a company this thick with anomalies."

"Gyokichi. It is a little late to be saying so, but is it not because you built a gateway this bizarre that anomalies flock here in particular?"

"...In any case, please think of it as a personal principle of hiring."

"Unable to deny it, I see. My, my."

"...This being a company meant to fulfill the dreams of those harmed by anomalous incidents, an increase in anomalies cannot be avoided."

Doing his best to ignore Professor Senjoji, who was taking jabs from the side, Gyokichi looked at Han Seoyeon.

"In any case, we are filtering for people possessed of the qualities to pass this pressure."

"Those qualities—nerve, I take it?"

"That would be included. It is not the whole of it."

So saying, Gyokichi spread a few of his long, gaunt fingers. Unexpectedly, there was no webbing between them.

"First, as I said just now: those in possession of considerable nerve. The type that forces the matter through on physique alone, with neither technique nor anything of the sort. And, added to that, those in possession of tremendous affinity."

"Affinity."

"Yes. A human capybara—able to be warm even to people handpicked for a pressure interview—would have no trouble at all adapting."

He went on, folding the fingers one by one.

"Or the type desperate enough to keep hold of their mind, somehow, even in a situation like this. Or swift of judgment. Or insensitive enough that any abuse to their face would not matter. Whichever it is, none is a poor virtue in a broadcaster."

"That... is certainly not wrong, but."

"There would be this and that besides. And another would be the fan."

"A fan?"

Han Seoyeon turned the word over once more, as if it puzzled her.

"Yes. Whatever the judges' looks, whatever their manner—simply a fan with a high understanding of them."

"Does that... hmm. Does it help so much, with a pressure interview?"

"Of course."

Gyokichi nodded.

"If I may put it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in terms you will readily grasp, Ms. Shion. Do you happen to know this program? It was called one of Korea's national variety shows."

"Only if you mean the sort of thing I catch in reruns, very occasionally."

"Then the explanation will be simple."

Presently he searched up a broadcast on his phone and held it out. Han Seoyeon had no great interest in television variety, but the program had been popular enough that a Korean who didn't know it was as good as a spy, and so she knew it well enough.

"Were you, Ms. Shion, actually to meet Mr. Park Myung-soo, and were he to bellow at you—do you suppose you would be frightened?"

"...Ah. I think I have a rough sense of it."

"Yes. Roughly that."

Han Seoyeon herself was no particular fan. But if there were a true devotee of that show—the long-running Infinite Challenge, on which Park Myung-soo made a career of hollering—wouldn't they cheer all the harder, the more they were cursed at? The picture drew itself easily in her mind.

"Ms. Ninomae was that case, at the previous audition. Strictly speaking, there were a fair number of such persons. Among those who passed, however, Ms. Ninomae was the only one."

"Hmm. Well. If it were Hitomi, I can certainly see it..."

"Of course, it was not at the level of losing her head entirely and running wild. Personally, I suspect that growing accustomed to your appearance, Ms. Shion, had something to do with it."

An outrageous thing to say—that she looked so frightening, Hitomi had simply adapted. But it was also, if one insisted, the fact of the matter, and the one saying it was Gyokichi, so she did not particularly feel insulted.

It was something like the N-word, passed back and forth between Black people.

"At any rate, that seems to have served as a rough explanation, so let us actually begin the audition."

"Yes. Understood."

So saying, Han Seoyeon turned the first sheet of the stack set before her.

What lay beneath it was a document that looked for all the world like a résumé.

"...?"

Han Seoyeon turned her head, her face blank.

"Hm?"

"Oho."

Judging by the reactions around her, the other two—Gyokichi excepted—looked considerably surprised as well. But that name had certainly earned it.

Click, click. The sound of heels, and the interviewee sat down in the chair. Except that there had been, until now, no sound of a door opening. Only natural. It had never actually opened.

Han Seoyeon stared at Candidate No. 1 with a rare, vacant look.

And while everyone else sat there afflicted with the Stun status, Gyokichi—the only one who had looked over the interviewee list in advance—wore a creeping grin and addressed the woman who had come to audition.

"First. Would you introduce yourself?"

She smiled softly, and in a voice that did not waver, she declared her own name.