The One Who Receives Grace (1)
The meeting of the families.
By the dictionary, it means the moment in a wedding when bride and groom face one another and pay their formal respects. In modern life, of course, the phrase is used for something else entirely: both sets of parents gathered in one place before the marriage.
Naturally, once Seoyeon and Hitomi resolved to hold a ceremony, that subject had come up as well. The conclusion, reached not long afterward, was that arranging such a meeting would be considerably difficult.
The Ninomae family was not the problem. The difficulty lay on Han Seoyeon's side — her adoptive father, Han Jihan.
For one thing, the man wandered without the slightest regard for where in the world he happened to be. No. He went beyond even "the whole world." Should the need arise, he would storm Hell alone. And at the center of all that movement lay the hunting of vampires. A fervor that had passed beyond obsession and arrived at madness had done its part in fastening every vicious title imaginable to his name.
He was not particular about his methods, either, so long as they helped him fight vampires. Contracts with demons had not given him a moment's pause, and by now he had pawned a considerable measure of his very freedom to one. Unless a matter concerned the extermination of vampires, he could no longer so much as move of his own will. He had been that sort of man even before the contract, admittedly. A special exemption had been written in as a minimum safeguard, but it was not a chance one could spend on anything so modest as seeing the parents of his future daughter-in-law.
And so Han Seoyeon had taken it as given that the meeting itself would never come to pass. She knew perfectly well that Han Jihan's previous visit to Japan had been a truly exceptional case. There had been a pretext then. Hitomi had, without any warning, become a vampire, and he had come to investigate. Now that he already knew of Hitomi, even that pretext was beyond them, and so she had told Hitomi as much.
Hitomi's parents had heard the circumstances, if only in outline. They were people of the surface world, and an explanation to the effect that he worked abroad and was far too busy to make the time had been quite enough. Thus it was settled that there would be no meeting of the families before the wedding. He would likely be able to come on the day itself, and they could see one another's faces then. That was where things stood.
…Right up until word arrived that Han Jihan really was coming to Japan, on the trail of a vampire.
"It would seem that girl Eru was stabbed in the back by a friend, and the blow has driven her rather thoroughly out of her mind."
The will to lay hands on that vampire — Sasaki Kisaki — by any means necessary came through all too clearly. This was not a matter of bringing an ox-cleaver to kill a chicken. Judging by what had been brought to the task, it was a famed sword fit to strike a flying dragon out of the sky. If one thought of her as one of the masterminds behind Vampire Syndrome, it did feel a little unkind to dismiss her as a mere chicken… and yet the fact remained that this was overkill of a staggering order.
Relaying as much to Hitomi, Seoyeon gave a bitter smile. Hitomi's expression was much the same. Hostile or not, she was someone who had faced the Vampire Slayer head-on in a vampire's body, and she knew perfectly well that he was a vampire's natural enemy. Not merely a favorable matchup when the opponent happened to be one of them, but something far more essential. That was what she felt from Han Jihan.
"Anyway, that means he can meet my parents, doesn't it."
"If one speaks only of the conclusion, then yes. That is how it has turned out."
Even so, looking only at the result, wasn't this a good thing? Thinking so, Hitomi smiled. She was seated beside Seoyeon on the sofa, and she tipped her head lightly against her shoulder. Seoyeon did not push her away. She caught Hitomi's head and shifted it just enough that she could lean more comfortably.
"This has ended up as rather sudden notice. I am sorry to impose upon your parents."
"No. Mom will probably be pleased, if anything. Dad… mm. Honestly, I don't think he'd care at all whether we rushed the plans or not."
Hitomi thought of her parents. Her mother, who had been sure there would never be a chance for a proper meeting, would be delighted that one had appeared against every expectation. Her father was no Han Jihan, but he had an eccentric streak of his own — eccentric, or perhaps with a touch of the detached immortal about him, a man who had already let the world go. In any case, they were people who might well be pleased and would certainly not be offended. When she said as much, Han Seoyeon smiled faintly, as if set at ease.
"Eep—?"
It happened in that very instant. An arm shot out from behind the sofa and drew Hitomi lightly in. Her eyes went round. She turned her head, found the woman standing at her back, and broke into a soft smile.
"Oh — you're done with the dishes already?"
It was a familiar she had summoned. She had asked her to wash the dishes a little while ago, and the work was evidently finished. Hitomi stroked the hair of the woman clinging to her like a little puppy.
"She is rather more given to acting spoiled than I expected."
"Yeah. Unlike the other servants, this one really does seem to be that sort of individual."
"…Hm."
Hearing the answer, Seoyeon frowned at once.
"Huh? Shion, don't tell me you're jealous?"
The reaction must have been far outside anything she had expected; Hitomi tilted her head. This was Seoyeon, who carried herself so consistently that one could almost believe the concept of jealousy did not apply to her at all.
"No. It is not that. Something about this strikes me as strange."
"Strange?"
"As I understand it, that power of yours — the one you use to command familiars — was obtained by contracting with a demon. Is that not so?"
"Yes, that's right."
Hitomi nodded. To be more precise, it was not only the familiars. Most of the abilities she possessed as a vampire were, in truth, power gained through contracts with demons. She was borrowing strength from them regardless. Given that, the form she had now was simply that power adapted a little more efficiently, fitted a little more closely to the body of a True Ancestor.
"And the origin of the power to command familiars was that Black Goat."
"Yes. That's what I've understood it to be, at least… Is that a problem?"
Ninomae Hitomi had contracted, with Philotanuss as intermediary, with eight demons under Belial. Even after Philotanuss stepped aside and the pacts took a direct form, that composition had not changed. And the familiars she used from day to day were founded on the Black Goat's power to summon subordinates.
"One does usually call them subordinates. But if that Black Goat is the creature I know, then strictly speaking the word is wrong. They are closer to divided bodies, or divided spirits — or to pieces cut from the body and set moving on their own."
Viewed in that light, the times Hitomi shaped them into forms resembling herself and took control of them could be called a thoroughly fundamental use of the power.
"Which would mean…"
"Unless you yourself constructed them to be so, or commanded it, there can be no difference between one and another. They are the same being from the outset, sharing a single root."
To "share a root," here, was not a figurative way of calling them sisters. It meant, quite literally, a single continuous being. One entity. And so the claim that this one in particular was that sort of individual could not stand.
In other words—
"…This servant wasn't made with the Black Goat's power?"
Hitomi's eyes went round, as if she had caught hold of something all at once. Her knowledge of the hidden world was still lacking, but the mind itself was sharp enough. Told this much, of course she would notice. It was true that Hitomi had summoned her, and so the creature must stem from Hitomi's power… but it was not the Black Goat. It was the power of some other demon among those contracted to her. And yet, as far as Hitomi knew, none of the other demons she had contracted possessed the ability to summon a human-shaped servant. There was only one way to explain a situation that seemed, at a glance, contradictory.
…Not a servant. One of the other seven demons, in person?
Having reached that far, Hitomi slowly turned to look behind her. The familiar's arms, which had been clinging to her only a moment ago, had long since fallen away.
"…?"
Immediately afterward, she could only go blank. Her gaze darted left and right. What met her eyes was a woman planted in a handstand. The familiar — no, the demon — had turned herself fully upside down, and did not seem to care in the least that the long maid's dress was spilling toward the floor. It was not quite an ordinary handstand, either. Her forearms were braced against the floor, a considerably harder pose, and to hold it without another person's help or any equipment at all would demand a great deal of strength.
"Oh. A forearm stand… This is the first time I have seen one."
"A fore— huh? No, never mind that, what are you doing?! Get up, first!"
"I-If you swear that you will spare me, I-I'll get up!"
Something very much like this had happened once before, hadn't it. Watching Hitomi flap her hands in a fluster, Han Seoyeon found the thought occurring to her out of nowhere.