From Ten Thousand Years and Ten Thousand Generations (1)
Only after Mary had endured Sae's sermon for a good long while did the mood finally settle.
In a sense it could have been called one of Sae's rampages. But the rare glimpse of a true self she almost never showed had been genuinely funny, and the scolding had so clearly come from goodwill toward Mary that it never turned into a real problem. Above all, they had avoided the disaster of Mary taking the penalty entirely on her own.
"Well then. Since that's how it turned out, the penalty's Sae's alone, nya?"
"Nnngh... nothing for it. If I said I didn't want it and left her even a crack, Mary would come charging in like a shot, scrub that she is."
"Excuse me—why are you talking about a perfectly normal person as if she were a hyena...?"
"She's basically the same."
"Hardly any difference, nya."
"Close enough."
Mary's protest did nothing. Three voices came down on her in a rush.
"Well, she does have that side to her."
"Urk..."
Even Sister, who until then had only been watching, put in a word of her own.
"The penalty schedule can wait. It's late. Better to end here today."
And with that, under Tachibana Rin's direction, the broadcast turned toward its close. Those reptilian violet eyes skimmed the reluctant reactions filling the chat. They could hardly leave the stream running for the rest of their lives, though. The mood eased into a tidy ending, and the goodbyes went out one by one.
"See you next stream, Nekotachi."
"Sae-nara──."
"Good work, all."
"Thank you for your hard work!"
Hearing them, Han Seoyeon stretched and came over to Mary's side.
"Good work on the stream today."
"Ah, thank you."
At some point a cup had found its way into her hand—a lukewarm drink giving off a faint, sweet fragrance. Mary—Ninomae Hitomi—took it and sipped. It tasted of fruit, sweet and tart at once.
"That's lovely. What kind of tea is it?"
"Figs ground with sugar, and steeped in holy water. Something else has gone into it as well, though even I couldn't tell you the details. An acquaintance overseas sent it."
Han Seoyeon went on.
"It has gotten quite late, though... Will you stay the night at my place?"
"Hmm... shall I?"
Ninomae answered with a smile.
"The stream's still on, and so is the mic, Mary-chan!"
"Ah."
And the chat exploded.
Fortunately, the spark Mary and Sister had struck died down almost at once.
That she was spending a little time at Sister's place was already known, and nothing she had said under the impression the stream was off had contained any important personal information. All she had done was hand the yuri faithful a generous heap of material to squeal over. Strictly speaking, there was nothing even to apologize for.
The true difficulty came after that. An overnight stay decided with no plan at all—of course nothing had been prepared.
The first problem was something to change into after washing up. Pajamas could be borrowed from Seoyeon, but underwear was another matter. Once the gulf in their chest-armor defense ratings was taken into account, lending her own was out of the question, and picking something up at a convenience store was hardly feasible either. Han Seoyeon still remembered Ninomae complaining that shops quite often simply did not carry her size.
In the end they settled on her putting back on the underwear she had arrived in. Aside from coming to Han Seoyeon's place, it had been a day with virtually no going out, and the season was cool to the point of chilly, so it was a mercy she had barely sweated.
...Or so she had thought.
When Ninomae came back changed, the corners of Seoyeon's eyes gave a fine tremor. Her gaze was dragged off of its own accord by the gravity of an overwhelming mass, and she hauled it back by force.
Yes. Overwhelming mass. A violence of volume that cleared Han Seoyeon's expectations by roughly one full tier.
It was a fairly loose box tee, bought to wear in comfort at home precisely because of that roomy cut. She had thought it would be all right on Ninomae too, and only now realized how naive that had been.
That brand logo was definitely a circle... so why is it an oval?
"...It isn't too tight, is it?"
"This much is nothing... barely okay, I suppose?"
She had expected it to hang loose, and instead it had scraped a passing grade by a hair. Then again, looking at a shirt stretched until it seemed ready to burst at any moment, it was a wonder it qualified as passing at all.
Was the faint flush on Ninomae's cheeks from having just finished her shower, or from the way her chest was emphasized now? Remarking on it would be sexual harassment even between women. Thinking so, Han Seoyeon forced a calm front and turned the subject elsewhere.
"You should take the bed, Miss Ninomae."
A bed too narrow for two. Seoyeon said it while indicating the thing, and Ninomae waved her off at once.
"What? No. I'm already in someone else's home—that would be far too much. I sleep on the floor anyway..."
"I cannot allow it. A host sleeping alone in the bed while leaving her guest is no better."
Their eyes met, and each immediately saw that the other had no intention of yielding. Ninomae Hitomi, gentle as she looked and quietly stubborn all the same; and Han Seoyeon, who, it hardly needed saying, had a blind streak befitting a woman of the cloth.
"Then shall we both just sleep on the floor? Like we did at my place last time."
"Not a bad idea. That had a feeling of its own."
Seoyeon nodded. They would shove aside the bed—the bedroom, like the other rooms in Han Seoyeon's house, held nothing but a single bed—and spread one more blanket on the floor. If neither of them would yield, and what they were refusing to yield was the privilege of sleeping in the comfortable bed, there was simply no other way. Or perhaps that earlier night had lingered in both of them, unconsciously, as a good memory. At the very least, not a bad one.
"Shall we move the bed first?"
"Let us."
Soon the two of them stood side by side at one end of the bed and set their hands on it to push.
...Wait. What is this? I can't shake the feeling I've forgotten something......
The thought struck Han Seoyeon all at once—an unease, as if she had let something important slip her mind.
"One, two!"
But before she could identify the source of that ominous feeling, Ninomae called the count, and Han Seoyeon put her strength into it without a second thought. With a creak, the bed began to slide, and the thing hidden beneath it came into view.
"Huh?"
"Ah."
The first was Ninomae's bewildered voice. The second was Han Seoyeon's sigh, thick with regret that she had forgotten this, of all things.
What had been lying under the bed was black, with a strangely slick sheen—
Thwack! Han Seoyeon kicked the object away in a hurry. Spinning, it slid neatly back under the bed.
"It is a model gun. Which is to say—um. It is fake. That is what I mean."
She tacked it on by reflex, like an excuse.
"Ah... r-right. Is it?"
Ninomae's reply was, of course, profoundly unconvinced. By common sense Han Seoyeon was correct; there was no way a real gun would be here. But the frantic response felt wrong. She had hidden the gun far too quickly, and insisted it was fake far too suspiciously. And above all, the image of Han Seoyeon holding a gun rose in the mind far too naturally.
Her "church work," paid at a sum so large it was suspicious in itself, and the air she usually carried, somehow chilling and thick with ill omen—the moment those things were tied to the acrid bite of gunpowder, everything fell into place.
In truth, the instant Ninomae Hitomi saw the firearm she was flustered, and yet in one corner of her chest there was also the quiet click of understanding. Ah. So that was it. She was certain then. Han Seoyeon killed things for a living. The target might not necessarily be human, but it was secretive, or less than honorable, at least enough that she had to hide it even from a friend.
"Is it for cosplay? I didn't know you had a hobby like that."
Even so, Ninomae said it with an awkward smile. She could have pressed as far as she liked. She refrained, out of regard for whatever Han Seoyeon had been concealing all this time. From here on she would pretend not to know, and avoid the subject. That resolve was plain in the eyes she turned on Seoyeon.
"......"
There was no chance Han Seoyeon, close with her for more than a year, would fail to read a feeling so bare. Set against Ninomae, whose will was locked firmly in place, her own expression hardly shifted—and yet her eyes flailed, at a loss for what to do.
Leaning on Ninomae's kindness was one option. A single Yes, it's for cosplay, and Ninomae would let it pass without a question. After that, the subject would never come up between them again.
"...Miss Ninomae."
But at length a resolve settled into Han Seoyeon's face—a resolve she would never have needed, had she taken that simple path.
So saying, Seoyeon reached under the bed once more. When her hand came back out, it held a submachine gun with a short, stubby barrel. She drew another deep breath.
The truth is, this was never something I had to hide from Miss Ninomae, no matter what.
She had even considered telling her outright. She simply had not been sure the words would be believed, and she had never imagined being caught like this.
"I-it is a real gun. Would you like to touch it? I should think it a rather rare opportunity."
"Uh... pardon?"
But she had no sense at all of where a confession ought to begin, and in the end what came out of her was only this bizarre little offer.