To Call Is to Name (7)
Ninomae Hitomi was a rather fragile person.
A tender soul, who had shut herself away over something as small as overhearing a girl she believed to be her friend badmouthing her behind her back—if one could even call a thing like that small. And a tender soul all the same, who could not bear to watch her mother worry and wear herself thin, and so had put a mask on and stepped back out into the world.
That was the kind of woman Hitomi was.
The mask, though, turned out to be surprisingly elaborate. It was the moment an acting talent even Hitomi herself had not quite known she possessed came into its own. From the standpoint of holding a character without a break, one might even say she had shown the makings of a VTuber from then on.
That mask had come off against her will only twice.
The first was the very day she returned to school, when her father saw straight through the performance. The second was the moment she met Han Seoyeon.
"I thought that so long as I kept the act going, even if people criticized me, it wouldn't really be me they were criticizing. But the moment I saw Shion, the act shattered anyway."
Hitomi said it with a bitter smile.
"So you fell for her at first sight? From then on?"
Hearing that, Akane asked, glancing at her sidelong.
"No. I was terrified. That was the first time I learned a sound like eek could actually come out of a human throat."
At that first meeting, with killing intent pouring off the other girl in waves, Hitomi had been scared out of her wits—badly enough that her usual mask cracked, and a genuine, heartfelt shock showed plain on the surface.
"In other words, I was stripped completely bare. I'd lived for years on nothing but acting, and because of that I ended up showing someone else a true self that had grown unfamiliar even to me."
She had been on the verge of a total mental breakdown at the time, Hitomi said, gazing somewhere far off before she went on.
"Well, of course. If you look at it through the way I thought back then—'it's only an act, so it isn't really me getting cursed at'—that rude reaction came from my actual feelings. So if someone called me on that part, it would have been the first time in years that I myself was the one in a position to be blamed."
But Seoyeon neither scolded her for the rudeness nor offered any other reaction at all. She only looked at Hitomi for a moment with eyes so empty of feeling they seemed almost cruel, then let her gaze slip away.
"Ah, hello. We're in the same group, right...?"
"Yes. That is correct."
"I... I'll be counting on you."
"Yes. Likewise."
The conversation that followed had felt much the same.
And the next few times she met Seoyeon after that, it was only more of the same. No matter how hard she tried, keeping the act up in front of her was difficult. By the time she had grown familiar enough with Seoyeon to put the mask properly back on, she had already opened her heart so completely that there was no longer any need to act in front of her at all.
"And so, little by little, as if it were seeping in, I ended up falling in love. ...Ehehe. Saying it out loud to someone else is somehow incredibly embarrassing."
Color rose in Hitomi's cheeks. The look on her face as she said it was so utterly happy that even Akane drifted, for a moment, into thoughts of her own. Honestly, she would have had to admit she envied, just a little, a Hitomi who could smile like that.
But Akane gathered herself at once. This was no time to be soaking in sentiment.
"So. Are you ready?"
"I'm completely ready! ...Probably."
At Akane's words Hitomi squared her shoulders with pride—then, as if some worry had caught up with her after all, let the last of it slip out small. Even so, it was far too late to back out now. Her gaze rested on the stage of the theater, sunk in darkness.
"...It seems there's been some sort of accident up ahead."
Seoyeon, looking past the window, frowned. The road was badly congested. At this rate another route would be faster. Han Seoyeon let out a sigh and turned the wheel.
Hyakurenno Yuri sat in the passenger seat. The driver who was originally meant to bring her had had something come up, and so she had ended up taking a ride in Han Seoyeon's car. The maid, for her part, lay sprawled across the back seat, dead drunk. She had been perfectly fine at least through the interview; it was almost astonishing how much she had managed to put away since.
"Hmm. This way's a little backed up, too."
A good while after she had set off in the truck, Han Seoyeon left the original route yet again. It was a stretch where catching one light meant catching the next in a chain, and she judged it better to slip off to the side.
"......"
Then, all at once, a strange feeling came over her. The mood of the road was off today.
A jam could happen at any time, of course. Even so, a peculiar sense of wrongness clung to her. The cars were backed up this badly, and yet there was not the slightest bustle—if anything, there was almost a sense of unity. It was an unpleasant feeling, as though every driver on the road were cooperating to lead her somewhere.
"......Ah."
And she understood, because a memory had risen of having felt something very much like this before.
"You are watching, aren't you, Abraham?"
"Eep."
A flinch. The instant the words left her mouth, Yuri's shoulders jumped. Judging by that reaction, she was an accomplice as well.
"An Apostle's intuition really is terrifying."
Seoyeon's sense of smell is much the same. There are times I suspect she may be some manner of beast. Are you aware of this.
Yuri drew a smartphone from her pocket. Floating on the screen was the emblem Abraham-Delta so often took as their own mark. The synthesized voice that then spilled out of it was a deeply familiar one.
"Predicting an opponent and leading them along like this is one of your specialties, after all."
That is true. I lent a hand this once, as practice for a plan soon to come.
"It would certainly work. ...So where, exactly, are you trying to take me?"
Even as she asked, Han Seoyeon was thinking.
Cooperation, is it.
If one were to be precise, Abraham was the accomplice, and Yuri, here beside her, the one who had drawn the plan up. Her gaze shifted toward Yuri.
"Haa... I truly didn't think you would notice......"
"Even so, this is not meant to do me harm, I trust."
"Well, of course not."
"Then let us go. Guide me. I will not ask the reason."
She did not know the reason yet. But it was plain that there was somewhere they meant to take her while keeping something from her. She was also fairly certain that the one behind it was Hitomi. However much of a Hyakurenno Yuri might be, reaching all the way to Abraham would have been impossible. The one who had connected Abraham and Yuri could only have been Hitomi.
In that case, she had no complaint. If this was Hitomi's will, then Seoyeon had only to follow.
"Haa. Yes. All right. Would you go this way?"
Yuri marked a spot on a map application and held it out for her to see. Hiding the destination even now would have been pointless. She could only count it a mercy that Seoyeon was not asking why. Han Seoyeon nodded and turned the wheel once more.
"...It has been a long time since I was here."
When she saw where they had arrived, Han Seoyeon's eyes widened a little. What stood before her was a theater.
"Have you been here before?"
"Yes. Only once. I came with Hitomi to see a musical."
At Yuri's question, Han Seoyeon's gaze went briefly distant, as if she had sunk into the memory.
"I told Abraham once, did I not? How I came to decide that Hitomi would be the pillar of my life."
Of course.
"What—hold on. I am considerably interested in that story myself...!"
"...I will tell you next time, if there is a chance."
Yuri's eyes lit—no, flared wide, almost glaring with hunger—and she lunged in, but Seoyeon turned the talk neatly aside. Come to think of it, she had forgotten that Yuri, living as she did in circumstances where romance was all but impossible, was a woman parched for love stories. Han Seoyeon cleared her throat and went on.
"You might call it one of the desperate flailings I went through, trying somehow to get closer to Hitomi. ...Well. In short, after all that wavering and agonizing, this was the place I finally made plans and brought her."
"Did you like musicals?"
"Not I. The person at the church who advised me. That priest was a musical devotee of considerable standing, and recommended this place at once."
In the end it had not quite been to her taste, so a single visit was the end of it. It was not that she had failed to enjoy it, nor that it had not been worth seeing. It was simply the sort of impression that left her unlikely to go so far as booking a ticket herself, unless the chance happened to arise.
But why had they meant to bring her here? Puzzled as she was, Han Seoyeon followed Yuri's lead and stepped inside.
"Here, this way. A seat of honor, prepared for Lady Shion."
The very front row, and the center seat besides—the place closest to the stage. Walking into the dim theater, Han Seoyeon sat there still full of questions.
"...Lady Yuri, you are not sitting?"
Yuri, having seated her, was already making to leave, and Seoyeon asked it in puzzlement. Yuri answered with a playful smile.
"Even I am not so lacking in tact as to wedge myself into an occasion like this, you know?"
"Hmm...?"
Han Seoyeon still looked baffled, but Yuri spun on her heel and swept straight outside. The door shut, and a short while passed in the seat where she had been left alone.
A faint melody began to rise. It swelled, and soon it was enough to fill the theater.
"......"
Han Seoyeon recognized the piece at once. Of all people, there was no chance she would fail to know it. It was an original song of Mary Tepes.
Then the lights came up on the stage. No one stood there, of course. But it was not long before bats came gathering from every direction. They massed, and massed again, until they had formed one enormous sphere—then scattered in every direction in a flash.
A woman stood where they had been. She wore a fluttering wine-red dress that called cosplay to mind, and one hand was clenched tight around a microphone. Crimson eyes looked upon Han Seoyeon. The hair, though, was its original brown.
"Konmea! Anathema's second generation—the True Ancestor Queen! And your love, Mary Tepes... and also, Ninomae Hitomi!"
She was beaming as she said it, tracing a lively V with the hand that did not hold the microphone, shouting with all her might.
A concert prepared for a single person was just about to begin.