The One Who Receives Grace (5)
"So, to sum it up... Hitomi, you've been doing these internet broadcasts, and somewhere in the middle of all that you somehow ended up turning into the sort of vampire you see in the movies..."
Ninomae Fumiyo said it while rubbing at her eyelids. No small amount of confusion still clung to her face.
"And Shion-chan here is a Church exorcist who hunts yokai like that, and Shion-chan's father is an exorcist who specializes in vampires in particular. Is that right?"
"Yes... that's about the shape of it."
For someone so thoroughly rattled, it was a remarkably clean summary. Privately impressed, Hitomi nodded.
"It's a story I can hardly believe... and yet I have no choice but to believe it."
Fumiyo murmured the words as she watched the black bat wings fluttering gently right before her eyes.
"And above all, you're not the sort of child who would trick us for a joke."
She let out a small sigh, then turned her gaze on her husband.
"Thinking back on what you said just now—you already knew this child was doing internet broadcasts, didn't you? And all that business about exorcists, too?"
"Not that far."
"For someone who didn't, you're far too calm, dear."
Hajime only stared back blankly, as if he could not imagine what there was to be shaken by. Right. He had always been like this. Muttering as much to herself, Fumiyo sighed again.
"M-maybe I really did spring it on you too suddenly?"
"No. It's a great shock, I'll grant you... but thank you for telling us even now, Hitomi-chan."
A smile rose to her face as she said it, warm and gentle. Her daughter must have agonized in her own way before confessing; how could a mother fail to accept that?
"But is Shion-chan's father all right? You said his work is hunting vampires..."
She shifted her gaze to Han Jihan and asked with care. Han Seoyeon was one thing. She would have decided on the marriage already knowing what Hitomi was, so there was little need to worry on that account. This man, however, she could not help but worry about.
"Did you already know?"
"...I did."
Meeting her eyes with his own sharp ones, Han Jihan answered in a voice slightly cracked.
"And even so, it's all right?"
"Not every vampire deserves to die. That certain vampires do is something no one can deny."
Han Jihan's byname was the Vampire Slayer, but that did not mean he put every blood-drinker to death. The name came simply from an epithet of Glasya-Labolas, the demon he had contracted; strictly speaking, executioner suited him better. He beheaded only those upon whom sentence had already been passed. That was why he was an executioner. It could never be called fair, of course—he listened to no one's orders, and judged solely by whether a soul had crossed a line he had drawn for himself.
By that measure, Hitomi had passed with room to spare. It was a conclusion he had reached only after going so far as to stage something very like an ambush.
"From the talk we had before, she struck me as nothing but a thoroughly good person."
Mad Van Helsing though he was, he still had enough of a human being left in him not to tell a pair of parents that he had attacked their daughter to test her. Han Jihan was a man called a lunatic for the lengths he would go to in hunting vampires, and those lengths included talking people around and sitting down to negotiate. His infamy was such that most who heard the name feared his violence; those who truly knew him, however, named this as the frightening part—that a man who held such convictions and committed such acts was by no means slow in the head. Talks fell apart often enough in the end. The extermination of any vampire who had crossed the line was the one point on which he would never negotiate.
Rather than talk around what had happened back then, he chose to praise Ninomae Hitomi's goodness of heart. It was what he had actually felt, so it was hardly a lie.
"If I ever tried to lay a hand on her, she would not stand by and watch. Seoyeon said as much. The girl matters to her to that degree."
"Master?!"
As if even that were not enough, he sold out his adoptive daughter and turned the conversation aside. Whatever Han Seoyeon thought of Hitomi, had the girl committed a crime her name would have gone on the kill list all the same—and Seoyeon, abruptly recast as the sort of romantic who would challenge her own father to a duel for love, was appalled.
"Oh my. Shion-chan, you're a far more passionate child than I imagined..."
To the one listening, at least, it was nothing more than an interesting story. Breathing a delighted oh my, oh my, Fumiyo hid her mouth behind her hand.
...It's not actually all that different, is it?
Hitomi, seated across from Han Seoyeon and watching her reaction, tilted her head. She hadn't delivered the line with every particle in its place, but she was fairly sure she had said something along those lines.
"Truth be told, our Hitomi praised Shion-chan just as much the last time we spoke on the phone..."
Once the conversation found an opening, the rest followed quickly. Han Jihan and Fumiyo traded stories about their daughters, with Hajime tossing in a word or two now and then, while Seoyeon and Hitomi simply went on with their meal in quiet. When the talk swung their way, they offered little more than a murmur of agreement.
They were afraid that stepping in at the wrong moment would bend the conversation somewhere strange and send some mortifying old story spilling into the open. They had also read online that, at a formal meeting of the families, the heart of the occasion was the parents getting acquainted—not the couple-to-be. Hitomi was an only child, and Han Seoyeon had no older siblings either. A meeting of this kind was wholly unknown territory to them, so while they prepared for the wedding they had sat glued together on the sofa, combing through site after site on their phones.
Today's gathering had been thrown together in some haste, so they could hardly follow the ordinary cases they had looked up to the letter. It was certainly not one of those meticulous Japanese family meetings, treated as a proper event and complete with homemade pamphlets passed from hand to hand. If one had to name it, it was simply both sets of parents sitting down, seeing each other's faces, and talking—and, a step beyond that, confirming the marriage of the two before the family. Everyone had already given permission, and yet it still carried the feeling of a small rite.
Even so, there was no need to go out of their way to break the manners said to govern such meetings. That was what Seoyeon and Hitomi had decided.
There was, however, one thing they had failed to account for...
"Aaaaah...!"
"...?!"
...namely, that a pleasant mood is sometimes ruined by people who have nothing to do with the occasion at all.
A scream from just beyond the door. At that alien noise, everyone started and turned toward it. It was not a very loud sound, but it was loud enough to leave no doubt that someone was screaming, and the one who looked particularly unsettled was Han Seoyeon.
This was a restaurant built for confidential talks among the highly placed and every other sort of important person, and its soundproofing was, as a matter of course, maintained with considerable rigor. That they could hear the cry even so meant it had been loosed at a considerable volume. Han Seoyeon understood that much. A moment later the smell of blood came drifting in from outside, and her brow tightened.
Had some visitor caused an incident? Anomalies that came into great power sometimes failed to contain the violence rising in them and ran wild. This place, of course, was a facility under the management of the Onmyoryo. To commit violence here was to fling mud straight into the face of the Japanese government, and such acts were meant to be met with a hard hand. Left alone, the staff would resolve it well enough on their own...
"—One moment. I'll go and see."
Han Seoyeon rose as she said it to the others. In all likelihood it was a situation that would sort itself out even without her help. That, however, was no reason not to help someone else—unless her stepping in was more likely to be a hindrance. And besides, things among the family-to-be had just been warming so nicely. Far better to settle the anomaly as quickly as possible and return to the original current. She had no wish, either, to leave Hitomi's parents fretting over what might be wrong, when they had only just learned that a hidden world existed.
So she stood, put on her shoes, and slid the door open with a rattle.
What waited in the corridor beyond was a single man, collapsed and slumped against the wall. He looked to be fifty or sixty, and blood was running from a scalp gone quite bald with the years. His face was twisted in pain and terror, yet it was familiar to Han Seoyeon. A member of the House of Councillors, if she remembered right—one said to enjoy a certain popularity up in Tohoku.
Half out of his senses, he stared farther down the corridor and jabbed a violently trembling finger that way. Someone stood beyond him. The culprit who had left him like this, most likely. Who was the fool who had caused trouble without even fearing punishment at the hands of a landlord as foul-tempered as the Onmyoryo? Wondering as much, Han Seoyeon lifted her eyes to the face cast in shadow.
It belonged to a woman of ageless, blooming looks, wrapped layer upon layer in the famously elaborate junihitoe. Golden hair spilled long down her back, and she bared fangs difficult to believe could belong to a human. Above all else, the sharp fox ears rising from her head announced that she was an anomaly.
At the sight, Han Seoyeon caught her breath. This was someone entirely outside anything she had expected.
No—why is the landlord out here?
Unexpected, but not unknown. If anything, the trouble was that she knew the woman too well. However one looked at it, a person serving as a Holy Knight in Japan was not about to fail to recognize the head of the organization that answered for Japan's anomalies.
Then the other looked at Han Seoyeon as well. And, with the smile still fixed on her face, she froze where she stood.
W-wait. Why is Margarita here...?
She had just unlocked a first-in-Japan title: the woman who interrupted an Apostle's family gathering. For a very serious five seconds, she weighed whether she ought to drop to her knees right then and there.
"...I trust you'll see to the cleanup yourself."
"Eh? W-wait..."
But before she could settle on how to act, Han Seoyeon shut the door again and went back inside. Why the person charged with overall responsibility for this place should be the one running wild in it, she had no idea. Still—if you caused the mess, you could take responsibility for the mess.
I'm so fucked.
The hand the woman thrust out on reflex only stirred empty air. The fluttering hems of the junihitoe swayed, to no purpose at all.