To Call Is to Name (8)
"……."
Backstage, Akaba Akane was watching Hitomi's performance.
More than half the set had been rearranged around love songs, and the intent behind the concert was a little too easy to read. Pop and subculture sat side by side with no distinction at all — a disorderly stage assembled from nothing but the songs Hitomi herself had decided were good.
She had taken a little advice here and there, but in practice she had planned nearly the entire thing alone, so the roughness was only to be expected. Ninomae Hitomi was, of course, a woman with stage experience. That expertise, however, extended only to standing on a stage someone else had already built. It was not the craft of a director who makes the stage herself.
And yet the response from that clumsy house was superb. Seoyeon, who had the vast sweep of seats all to herself, was even waving a concert light stick whose origin was a complete mystery. Hitomi, for her part, was so carried away that the staging she had prepared — and everything else besides — went straight out the window: winks, blown kisses, and at last she came down off the stage to dance right in front of her before spinning back up again. Pure chaos.
Put a little harshly, you could have called the whole thing a mess. Even so, Seoyeon, love-blind as she was, seemed unable to see a single one of those shortcomings.
No. That isn't it.
Akane, who had been thinking as much, soon shook her head. It felt somehow different from that. Rather, Seoyeon understood why the loose seams were there. In those shoddy patches, she could see the traces of the lover she adored.
There had been no objective, professional consideration behind it. It was everything Hitomi thought looked good, every element she thought would make the other person happy, all of it crammed in together — a disastrous cake decorated by a child. And even that crude plan, once her lover was actually before her eyes, had boiled over with love until she impulsively committed a heap of unplanned displays of affection. From the standpoint of someone who loved her, even a well-founded clumsiness seeping from every corner could only be precious.
"……Must be nice."
Watching, Akane muttered it without thinking, then startled at herself and looked around.
The greatest threat to a surprise was Han Seoyeon's nose. The fewer familiar scents she caught, the better. That was why, of all the Anathema Production members who might have been called in, only two had been mobilized: Yuri, to lead Han Seoyeon here, and Akane, to direct the preparations. Not that a stage could truly be built by one or two people. The staff Hyakurenno had hired were moving backstage even now.
Akane worried her mutter just now might have reached them, but fortunately no one was paying her much attention. Everyone was buried in the stage direction and looked as if they had no attention to spare. Even with Hitomi tearing around on blocking that had never been in the plan, the fact that it was still becoming a reasonably convincing show owed a great deal to them. As expected of people chosen by that Hyakurenno — every one of them was an outstanding professional. And so Akane, too, could watch the stage with a relatively easy heart.
Honestly, I am jealous.
She murmured it again, inwardly. To receive a proposal that passionate — she envied it terribly. Wasn't a wonderful confession the dream of women everywhere? Not every woman, surely. But at the very least, Akane was secretly drawn to that sort of thing.
…Not that it'll ever happen.
Even so, she had resigned herself to some degree. Looks, personality, and manner of speech — the three of them together had long since accustomed her to not quite being treated as a woman. She didn't even fall into the category of a girl who needs protecting for that damned childhood friend everyone called a prince. That said it all.
Well. She had given up on being treated like a princess ages ago. Akane sighed and turned her gaze back to the stage. It was just about time for the show to wrap up—
"Thanks to all your support, it's an encore!"
"What."
A thoroughly elated Hitomi launched herself from the stage. Not as a metaphor. She truly spread her wings and shot high into the air. It was, of course, nowhere in the plan. Akane pressed a hand to her forehead. Honestly. Thank goodness the only staff they had brought were people from the other side.
She had climbed high enough that her body nearly brushed the ceiling, and as the song ended, she began to fall. Wings folding tight to wrap her body, she plunged headlong. And yet there was no fear at all on Hitomi's face as she dropped. It wasn't that the mood had drunk her past the point of sense. She simply trusted.
And as if she had known all along, Han Seoyeon gathered her into her arms. Still holding her, she turned them in a slow spin, once and then again, and the two of them tumbled together onto the plush audience seats.
"Hitomi."
"Ehehe, I love you."
"I'm well aware."
"But I still want to say it. What about you, Shion?"
"…I love you. I do, too."
At Hitomi's question, Seoyeon answered a little shyly, yet looking straight into her eyes. Hitomi smiled softly all over again. A moment later she lifted her head and kissed her, brief and light, then crooked a fingertip behind her back.
At the gesture, the two shadows clinging together warped. The edge of that shadow crawled up Hitomi's arm, winding like a snake, and gathered in her palm. In an instant it became a box smaller than her hand.
"Shion."
Clutching the box tight, she stared straight into Seoyeon's eyes. She had drawn on her vampiric power this way and that all through the performance, and perhaps because of it her irises had gone red. She smiled with those red eyes and carefully lifted the lid.
Inside lay two rings, side by side. The design was plain, but the small ruby set at the center caught the eye.
A voice still warm with the afterglow of the stage. In that voice, Hitomi spoke.
Han Seoyeon's gaze rested blankly on the rings, then returned to Hitomi's face — bright with a smile, a little flushed. The answer, of course, was already decided.
"Of course. …I'll be in your care from this day on."
"Ehehe."
Hitomi pulled her into one more fierce embrace, then put a little distance between them. She drew a single ring from the box and glanced at Seoyeon. Han Seoyeon considered the look for a moment, then held out her hand. Her left, naturally.
At that, Hitomi slipped fully out of her arms and went down on one knee before her where she sat. The bat wings stretching from her back, large as her own body, stood out especially. One hand lightly caught Seoyeon's wrist. The other slid the ring onto her ring finger. Last of all she pressed a peck to the ring, then lifted her gaze and met Seoyeon's eyes.
"I love you."
"Hitomi."
"Will you do mine, too?"
"Of course."
Still seated, Hitomi held out her hand, and Han Seoyeon knelt before her in turn. They came to sit formally, facing one another, like a couple meeting for the first time before the bedding of their wedding night.
"I will love you for as long as there is time, Hitomi."
"Hehe. That's the line I wanted to give you."
Han Seoyeon slipped the ring onto her finger and kissed it, just as Hitomi had. She did not stop there. She kissed the wrist as well, and then, as if climbing the arm, pressed her lips to it again and again. She grazed the shoulder once, and the nape of the neck once, and at the last their mouths met.
"……♥"
"…Shall we leave it here, for now?"
"Mmm… well, I guess it can't be helped."
They went no further because Han Seoyeon, too, had noticed the staff. She had watched the lights shifting this way and that, and short of a haunting, a person had to be running them. Looking at Seoyeon as their lips parted, Hitomi smiled, soft and a little regretful. On the other hand, she also shivered with the near certainty that tonight she was not going to be allowed to sleep.
Even so, they did not loosen the arms around each other, and stayed like that a moment longer.
"A ruby, I see."
"I think people usually say it ought to be a diamond… but if it was a gift for you, Shion, I thought it had to be a ruby."
A red the same as the eyes of Mary Tepes — of Ninomae Hitomi, who had become a True Ancestor. The same stone, too, that was set into the necklaces the two of them had given each other.
"I'm sorry for dragging you out like this all of a sudden, without a word."
"Not at all. I was truly happy. I never imagined you would propose after we'd already set the wedding date……."
"Ah… so you really didn't know……. Apparently, more often than you'd think, people do the proposal after they've already decided to get married, while they're preparing for the wedding."
"…Is that true?"
"Yes. If you prepare a whole proposal and the other person has no intention of saying yes, that'd be a disaster, wouldn't it?"
When Hitomi told her so, Han Seoyeon looked genuinely shocked.
"Of course I never thought you would refuse, Shion… but the marriage got decided so quickly that this was the only timing left."
"Hmm. I see."
Seoyeon seemed to choose her words for a moment, then went on.
"To be honest, I thought that if I had already proposed, there was no need for an additional proposal on top of it."
But, she continued.
"…This is happier than I ever imagined. We had already talked it through and agreed to marry, and yet being proposed to like this makes my heart pound so hard I feel I could collapse on the spot. It seems the notion that a proposal becomes unnecessary once you've promised to marry was nothing but my own misconception."
"Right?"
Those words seemed to delight Hitomi truly. She smiled, bright as anything.
"Still, I would ask you to refrain from that last stunt if you can. Honestly, my heart dropped."
"I just believed that if it was you, Shion, you'd catch me."
"Of course it turned out fine in the end, and I thought so as well, but……. Um. May I be honest?"
"Huh? What is it, that you're acting like that?"
"……How should I put this. Well. The truth is, your chest bounced so hard I very nearly dropped you."
"……U-um."
It was certainly a remark that was difficult to comment on. Hitomi averted her eyes, abashed. The reason she had nearly been dropped was a reason all its own — and if Seoyeon really had let her go for that, in that moment, what on earth would have become of the mood?
"Anyway… shall we head back? Home."
"Yes. I'd like that. Let's go together."
To their home. Ninomae Hitomi smiled and took Han Seoyeon's hand. She held the left one, and for no particular reason fidgeted, savoring the feel of the metal circling her ring finger.
