To Call It Is to Name It (5)
"Thank you for your time, Miss Ryuumai Fuu."
The man who resembled something hauled up from the deep sea addressed the woman seated in the chair.
She was a woman of scars, an eyepatch strapped over one eye. Long trousers concealed it, but one of her legs had been severed and replaced with a prosthetic. Even so, the many wounds lent her not the slightest air of frailty. Her posture was impeccably straight, her shoulders set with a quiet, unbowed pride.
"Yes. Thank you."
Even with her one remaining eye she managed an affable smile, left them with a short bow, and took her leave.
"…And with that, we are finally finished with everyone."
The empty chair still held a trace of warmth. Gyokichi regarded it for a moment, then shifted his gaze to the desk.
A single application remained. As it belonged to Ryuumai Fuu, who had just walked out, he had in effect reviewed every candidate in the audition.
"Thank you all for your hard work as well."
"Yes. You as well."
"Good work today."
Han Seoyeon answered him, and Yuri followed, stretching as she spoke.
Sitting an interview was tense and exhausting, of course, but watching them through one after another was no less draining. There was the mental toll, and simply remaining seated for so long was grueling in itself.
"If we ever recruit a fourth generation, you must call me in again. Please."
…Put another way, it had been rather a fine stretch of time for an honorary nun already under suspicion of masochism. Faced with Yuri, whose eyes seemed oddly brimming with life, Han Seoyeon could only manage a wry smile.
"Well then, I shall be going."
"Already, Professor?"
"A good idea has just occurred to me. I must get home and look it over at once. Until next time, Shion, Yuri. And, while I am at it, Gyokichi as well."
"While you are at it. I see."
With that, Professor Senjoji sprang up from her seat as if bouncing and walked off without a backward glance, her steps pattering lightly away.
Han Seoyeon watched her go, then spoke as though something had just dawned on her.
"President."
"Yes? What is it?"
"I am quite certain the Anathema members have said on stream that your type is a loli in a white lab coat. By any chance—"
"Absolutely not."
"Absolutely not!"
Whether she quite qualified as a lolita was debatable, and yet Chihaya was unmistakably petite. It was a hypothesis Seoyeon had formed at the sight of her, and Gyokichi denied it on the spot, his already severe expression turning severer still.
Even Professor Senjoji, who had been on the point of leaving the room, whirled around and shouted. Her hearing was far keener than expected, Seoyeon marveled inwardly.
In the end the professor came scurrying back and, as if leveling an accusation with her fingertip, jabbed Seoyeon in the chest, poking her again and again.
"Shion. Wherever do notions like that come from? Kindly refrain from nonsense henceforth. I cannot begin to understand what you were thinking, saying such a thing."
"Professor Senjoji… you are speaking considerably faster than usual……."
"And what bearing does the speed of a speaker's words have upon judging their truth? What meaning could that possibly hold? In any case, what you said a moment ago is entirely without foundation. Are we clear?" Professor Senjoji said, her brows twitching.
Seoyeon was not wholly without a rebuttal, but the professor's momentum was what it was, and she decided not to pick at the scab.
"I'm sorry. I only thought so because she seemed to fit those conditions so exactly."
"Ah. Strictly speaking, the order of events is the reverse."
At Seoyeon's words, Gyokichi offered a bitter smile—in all honesty she could not be certain, but it was probably a smile—and explained.
"A member of staff saw me together with Chihaya and mistakenly assumed we were in that sort of relationship. The story got twisted from there into the idea that Chihaya's appearance is my type."
In short, it was not that Chihaya carried herself in a way that matched Gyokichi's tastes. Rumor had simply decided that Chihaya's appearance was Gyokichi's taste.
Han Seoyeon nodded.
"I see. Then what the people at the company have been saying actually has nothing at all to do with your preferences."
"Well. If pressed, I will admit I am fond of the white coat itself."
"And rightly so, the white coat. On this particular point of taste, even I acknowledge you, Gyokichi."
The two of them looked at one another and nodded. At the sight, Han Seoyeon narrowed her eyes a fraction.
I think I more or less understand how the rumor started.
For a grown man and woman, it was a rather peculiar distance. It could exist only because they were childhood friends who had grown up seeing every unsightly side of each other… and to anyone who did not know that, mistaking the nature of their relationship was hardly strange.
The thought did flicker past—that they might simply be harboring such feelings without ever having noticed. Han Seoyeon shook her head almost at once.
Senjoji Chihaya had always shown remarkably keen judgment where human feelings were concerned. She was the very one who had recognized the love between Seoyeon and Hitomi, a love the two of them had not yet grasped themselves, and offered her counsel. If a woman like that said there was no romance between them, then it was surely so. Han Seoyeon settled on that much and decided to let the matter pass.
"Hmm."
And from a step removed, Hyakurenno Yuri was observing all of them.
Childhood friends, a pure and devoted love… it might not be bad…….
Her face wore nothing but the calm, refined composure of a proper young lady. Within, it was packed with thoughts of no use whatsoever.
No. This is hardly the moment for such thoughts.
Yuri promptly shoved the idle notion into a corner of her mind. That was not what mattered now.
Seizing the gap while Han Seoyeon's attention was drawn off toward the professor, Hyakurenno slipped out her phone.
Angling the screen so it could not be seen, she quietly began to send a message.
To the girl who, even at this very moment, would be pressing a hand over her heart, wound tight with nerves.
"…Ah. Ninomae."
"Oh? Akaba-senpai?"
The whole affair had begun when she happened to run into her in the company hallway.
Ninomae Hitomi had stopped by because she needed the recording studio. She was just finishing and about to head home when she came face to face with Akaba Akane.
Denim shorts, a T-shirt, and a white windbreaker thrown loosely over both. It was far too casual an outfit to call coming in to work.
"What brings you to the company?"
Curiosity stirred before she could help it.
At a glance Akane looked like the sort of person who might tear through the streets on a motorcycle in the dead of night, and yet in truth she was, without exaggeration, the most well-adjusted human being at Anathema Production. If someone like her had come on important business, she would certainly have dressed for the occasion. Not that there was anything wrong with the clothes she had on, of course…….
"Ah… Tenka left something at the company yesterday, so I came to pick it up."
So saying, Akane drew out the hand she had kept stuffed in her pocket the whole time.
It was a single photograph. Blurry and poor in quality, as if taken on an old digital camera.
The moment Hitomi saw it, her eyes went round.
"Is this you and Miss Tsunashi?"
"Well… yeah. As you can see."
"Wow. I've never seen you as a child before……."
Three people stood in the photograph. An elderly man, apparently their guardian, crouched in the center with a hand resting atop each of the two children's heads, as if in the middle of ruffling their hair. Near the crown of the girl on the left, a pair of triangular ears stood perkily upright.
The photo's owner was Tenka, so that one had to be her… which meant the other, by all appearances, was Akane. Impressions drifted through Hitomi as she looked—so her eyes had already been a little sharp, even back then—along with this and that besides.
"But why did she leave it at the company?"
"Because that idiot's an idiot, that's why. She ended up having to wait a while, took the photo out to look at it, and then forgot to actually bring it with her."
Akane said as much and snorted.
"Honestly… I wish she'd pick one. Either the photo is precious to her, or it isn't."
"Well… I do think she treasures it. Maybe she was preoccupied with work and just set it down without thinking?"
"Yeah, obviously. She's the type who pointlessly hauls this kind of thing around all the time."
Wearing an expression of no particular feeling, Akane tucked the photograph back into her pocket and changed the subject.
"So how's life been lately?"
"Mmm, nothing special since I got back from Italy the other day……. Oh—I've been busy preparing for the wedding, I suppose."
"Hmm."
Akane's gaze traveled up and down her. Wondering if something was wrong, Hitomi drew in on herself a little… then noticed the look had come to rest on her hand, and tilted her head.
"Did I get something on me?"
"No. The opposite. I'm looking because something isn't there."
"Sorry?"
Akane said this to the puzzled Hitomi and raised her left hand. Then she flicked the ring finger twice.
"Not planning on getting a ring made?"
"A ring… oh, you mean a wedding ring?"
"Yeah. The wedding's coming up, and it hit me I've never once seen you wearing one."
The jewelry Hitomi actually wore amounted to the necklace Han Seoyeon had given her, and a friendship bracelet she had matched with Tenka. They were not married yet, of course, but engagement rings existed, and plenty of people wore couple rings on nothing more than being lovers. Considering two personalities that could hardly live without each other, the lack of the one ring everyone else seemed to have was a little strange.
"Mmm… you're right. I'm waiting for Shion's proposal. She doesn't look the type, but she secretly fusses over special occasions, so I'm sure she's preparing one."
"Well, it does seem to be taking a while," Hitomi added, scratching her cheek.
"…Hmmmm."
Akane let out another hum.
A possibility had occurred to her. The particular sorrow, one might call it, of a same-sex couple. She had seen a similar case a few times with her own eyes back in her girls' school days.
"Maybe she's waiting for you to prepare the event on your end… no. Even then, there's no way."
She had said it on the off chance, then withdrawn it almost at once, the words awkward even by her own reckoning.
As a rule, a proposal was something the man did. With a same-sex couple, though, the question could arise of which side was meant to prepare the event. Such things were usually surprises, which made them awkward to settle by simply talking it out—and so, now and then, both parties ended up waiting, each expecting the other to be the one to move.
But handing Hitomi an event she could perfectly well arrange herself? That Han Seoyeon? Akane shook her head. Not a chance.
She shook it—and frowned instead, because another possibility had just cut across her thoughts.
"There's a pretty good chance she's decided, in the plainest way possible, that a proposal isn't necessary."
"What? What do you mean by that?"
"No—maybe that's the wrong way to put it. There's no way that lovestruck idiot would think an event for her future wife was unnecessary."
When Hitomi asked again, Akane elaborated.
"I'm saying she might think the moment for a proposal has already passed her by."
"That's—what? We aren't even married yet. How could it have already passed……."
"These days, mind you, a lot of people only propose after the marriage is effectively already settled, just to head off a disaster……."
The disaster in question was throwing a grand proposal and being refused. Even so, there were those who never considered that part and proposed without having properly confirmed the other person's wishes. A proposal was, first and foremost, asking someone to marry you. Strictly speaking, preparing one only after the answer had already been secured was a slight corruption of the thing.
"So. Since the two of you have already agreed to get married, she may have decided that a proposal—an event whose whole point is the asking—isn't necessary. That's what I'm saying."
"That's……."
Hitomi tried to answer, and in the end could not deny it. Seoyeon's sense of values had a way of slipping out of joint in the strangest places. It would not be strange in the least if she truly thought so.
"Th-then what do I do?!"
"There are two ways. You've got acquaintances lying around everywhere, so you ask one of them to drop a hint. Casually. Something along the lines of, so you're not going to propose?"
"Or," Akane said, setting up the alternative.
"You take this for the rare chance it is, and prepare a surprise from your side."
She said that much, and closed her mouth.
She had offered two choices, true enough. Even so, Akane was convinced the answer had already been decided.
"…H-how does one even prepare a proposal?"
And so, by precisely that course of events, the matter at hand had come to begin.