The One Who Receives Grace (4)
"..."
Ninomae Hitomi stared at the restaurant before her.
"...So it seems he really did look the place up beforehand."
A wry little laugh escaped her as she murmured it.
It was a high-end Japanese restaurant of the kind usually called a ryotei, and there was nothing ordinary about the atmosphere—the sort of place that left one feeling a month-long wait for a reservation would not have been strange at all. Even so, it was only yesterday that her father, Hajime, had set the date for this formal meeting of the families. The day had been confirmed yesterday, which meant a reservation could only have been secured from then; in truth, the bookings could not have been stacked so deep. The food, then, was probably not so very expensive either. It would of course run several times what they usually spent at the ordinary place in front of the house, but it was not an establishment of the kind that only the upper ranks—people like Hyakurenno Yuri—could set foot in. An elegant atmosphere, and a price that did not overreach. He must have found them a place like that with some care.
Thinking so, Hitomi glanced to the side. At Han Seoyeon, standing beside her, their hands clasped tight.
"...Shion?"
"Ah. Yes. My apologies."
She had tilted her head and called her name, puzzled by the way Seoyeon stood staring blankly at the restaurant. Only then did Han Seoyeon come back to herself and turn toward Hitomi.
"You didn't seem the type. Are you nervous?"
"Nervous... Yes. Well. It isn't as though I could help it."
Han Seoyeon answered with a small nod. She had met Hitomi's parents once or twice, but they had never taken a seat together like this, and a peculiar tension was unavoidable.
"But I was occupied with a slightly different thought."
The blankness, though, had not come of that. Today's gathering was nerve-wracking, yes, but not so much that she would stop short before the restaurant and freeze where she stood.
"Then why?"
"How should I put it... Because this is a place I know."
"...What?"
A beat later, Hitomi's eyes flew wide.
Seoyeon was hardly the sort to look this shaken merely because she had heard a restaurant's name, or been there once before. Hitomi knew that perfectly well. If she had gone so far as to say it aloud, then that I know it of hers was not personal knowledge, nor experience. It meant information she held as an Apostle. In short, a restaurant bound up with the hidden world—and one that Han Seoyeon would have cause to know.
Han Seoyeon offered a sheepish smile. Hitomi, it seemed, had understood. She opened her mouth again, as if to explain.
"It isn't a building that was ever caught up in some incident... It is operated by an organization under the Onmyoryo. A place they often use when government figures require a clandestine meeting, or when the Onmyoryo must discuss internal matters that would be troublesome if they leaked. I have heard the Church borrows it as well, now and then, when a venue for a confidential talk has to be secured in a hurry."
"Can an ordinary person even make a reservation at a place like that...?"
"No. As I understand it, they cannot..."
Frowning, she looked once more toward the sign by the entrance.
To be under the Onmyoryo was, put another way, to say that a government organ ran the restaurant, in the broad sense. Even within the hidden world, it was a building used only for conversations more secret still. It was not an establishment that would take ordinary people—residents of the surface world, no less. On the surface it disguised itself as an ordinary high-end ryotei, and so civilians did sometimes inquire after a reservation; even then, the standing rule was to turn them away under one pretext or another.
"Perhaps the restaurant realized that we were the ones coming."
Han Seoyeon decided to settle on that.
Not only Han Seoyeon herself, an Apostle, but her lover, Hitomi, was already known as a person of interest. An Onmyoryo whose charge was anomalies might well have gone so far as to keep information on Hitomi's parents. Some sharp-eyed clerk must simply have accepted the booking on the spot.
"Welcome. Your reservation is... huh?"
That line of thought vanished the moment they stepped inside and saw the server's reaction.
It lasted only an instant, but Seoyeon did not miss the feeling gathered in the server's eyes: why are you here? The manner was unmistakably that of someone who had never expected Han Seoyeon's visit. Had that information been known, not even a single server could have failed to know it. Owner or otherwise, if even one person had been aware, they would have impressed the warning upon the staff again and again.
"I was told a reservation had been made under the name Ninomae Hajime."
"Ah, yes. Right this way."
They could hardly stand there in silence, so Han Seoyeon set that worry aside for the moment and turned the conversation. The server was plainly flustered, but soon steadied and took up the role.
"...That really was the face of someone who didn't know, wasn't it?"
Hitomi breathed it at her side as they followed the server deeper in. Han Seoyeon gave another small nod.
"Yes. So it seemed to me as well."
"Then how on earth did my father make the reservation? If he wasn't borrowing the weight of your authority."
"I haven't the faintest idea."
In the end, the question remained unsolved right up to the moment they entered the room.
"Oh my, Hitomi-chan, you're here! And Shion-chan, it's been so long."
"It has been a long time."
In the room they were shown to, the two of the Ninomae household were already waiting. Hitomi's mother—Fumiyo—received them with a bright smile, and Han Seoyeon bent at the waist to offer her greeting.
Not only Fumiyo, but even Hajime, who ordinarily spared no thought for his appearance, seemed to have made a little effort today. He was a man who often shut himself in his room for days to work and never came out, and yet his hair, at the very least, had been put into a presentable shape—that alone was telling. It curled stubbornly as it was, and since he usually could not be bothered to tend it at all, it was ordinarily a considerable disaster.
"Dad. How did you even book a place like this? No matter how I think about it, this isn't an ordinary restaurant..."
Hitomi, for her part, let the question she had been holding spill out as it was. Her father had always been a difficult man to read, but this time she had not even a guess as to what means he had used.
"An old student recommended it. Said that if I gave their name, they would see to me."
Hajime, who had considered her words for a moment, answered like that.
"An old student?"
At a phrase she had not expected, Han Seoyeon murmured it in open puzzlement, and Hitomi explained.
"Ah, actually, my father did a brief turn as a university lecturer, once."
"Only very briefly, mind you. Shion-chan, you have some sense of it, don't you? With a temperament like my husband's, he was never going to last. Was it two years?"
"A year and a half."
"Same difference. Anyway, it seems he still hears now and then from a student he met back then."
"I was a mere lecturer. Strictly speaking, not my pupil—simply someone who attended the course."
Fumiyo had added her piece between soft chuckles. Hajime demanded the correction, and she hardly seemed to care.
"It seems one of your students has risen rather high."
"Risen high? Hmm, they have become quite well-known, but I'm not sure I'd go so far as that...? Isn't that right, dear?"
"They are one of the most famous professors in the field. Not that the field itself draws much interest."
The answer only left Han Seoyeon more bewildered. Not someone who had climbed high enough to pin a lawmaker's badge to their chest—an authority in an unpopular field? A connection of that degree could not possibly book a place like this...
"...Ah."
The one who made a sound, as if something had just come clear, was Hitomi. At that reaction, Han Seoyeon turned without thinking and looked at her.
"Has something occurred to you?"
"No, it's only..."
With a look of quietly absorbed shock, Hitomi rubbed at her temple.
"My father... he came out of the folklore department, you see..."
"...Ah."
Come to think of it, the reason Hitomi had chosen folklore was that she had come across the books her father kept. Recalling that, Han Seoyeon's expression stiffened as well. The foremost professor of folklore in all of academia, and at the same time someone with the authority to reach even into a place like this. The figure rising in both their minds was one and the same.
"Could this be the one?"
Hitomi held out her phone, a photograph of Senjoji Chihaya just searched up on the screen, and Hajime nodded.
"Yes."
Hitomi could only laugh, hollowly. Not for a moment had she imagined a connection of this kind.
"So. Does that present some problem? I had only thought of them as someone well-known in academic circles."
"Um... well, about that..."
But the only ones convinced were Han Seoyeon and Hitomi, the two who knew precisely how Professor Senjoji was regarded in the hidden world. Hitomi's parents, as was only natural, could not begin to understand why the two of them were reacting this way.
Noticing, Hitomi stole a careful glance at Han Seoyeon. Seoyeon caught the intent behind that searching look at once and answered with a small nod.
"Um... Mom. Dad. There's something I need to tell you."
She drew in a long breath. Forcing the tension down, Hitomi looked from one parent to the other. Yes—this was what she had been meant to say today, in any case.
Hitomi inclined herself, lightly, and from her back something began slowly to grow. Pitch-black, sheathed in membrane, it resembled the body of a bat, and when at last that growth ceased, what stood revealed were wings perhaps two or three handspans across.
Ninomae Hitomi looked at her parents through eyes flushed red. Fumiyo's own, needless to say, had gone as wide as it was possible for them to go.
"Hitomi-chan...? What in the world is this?!"
"This is a little unexpected. I thought you were going to confess that you have been streaming."
"...Hm? Dear, what are you talking about now? Hitomi, streaming?!"
"No. I was going to tell you that as well."
"What?! Hitomi?! And you?! Why are the two of you having a conversation only you understand?! Wait—what is this?!"
"First, don't stand there. Sit down, daughter."
"Excuse me, dear?!"
A sliding door rattled open.
"Ah, you've arrived. It has been some time, Master. Please, sit over here."
...It was summer.