Not as One Running Aimlessly (4)
"Nngh..."
Her head was heavy. She had unmistakably woken, and yet her mind felt anything but clear. Nothing covered her but a single thin summer blanket, and still Ninomae Hitomi felt as though something weighty were pressing her flat, so she squeezed her eyes shut. Of course they were already closed, which meant all she managed was a fierce grimace.
Then, through that clouded consciousness, sensation began to return by degrees: the warmth of sunlight seeping past the window, the faintly scratchy texture of the blanket, and, in contrast, the plush bed cradling her body so gently. Right. She was lying in bed. Only then did Hitomi understand that she had just woken from sleep.
At length she pressed her fingers to her throbbing forehead and rubbed. The moment she drew her arm out from under the blanket, it slipped down of its own accord and laid her bare skin open to the morning air, and that sensation told her she was naked—and that her whole body was strangely sticky besides. By now, though, it was something she had grown rather used to, so the fact itself did not fluster her.
She reached carefully to one side and felt a warmth that was not her own. When she lifted her heavy lids and looked, Han Seoyeon was lying on her side, staring straight at her.
"Ah. Are you awake?"
"Uuugh... yes."
The woman smiling softly back at her was every bit as naked, not a thread on her. Hitomi gave those lips a brief peck, as was her habit, then tried, little by little, to get her dull head moving.
They had "done it" again today. The circumstantial evidence said as much, and so did the ache still lingering low in her body—but the problem was that the memory sat in a haze. Losing consciousness partway through had happened plenty of times, and there had even been occasions when her breath had, quite literally, left her. This felt a little different from those. The memory itself was ambiguous.
Oh. Come to think of it... did I drink?
She fiddled with her mussed hair, and then the fact surfaced. Now that she thought about it, she was fairly sure she had drunk a great deal yesterday. It had turned into Antonio Cart's penalty stream, and partway through she had gotten rather drunk...
"...Ah?"
The instant she became aware of it, the memories revived all at once. As if to prove that a vampire's flesh could not have its memory ruined by mere alcohol, the blurred fog that sleep and drunkenness had laid over her cleared in a flash, and yesterday's scenes began to rise, one after another, vivid and new.
"I loooove Shion-chan sooo much♥ Our viewers love her toooo, they really, really do♥"
"Ehehe, these are the feet Shion-chan loves~ I wonder if you can still focus on the game like this?"
"Shutang doesn't know about stuff like that! Just take the missiles!"
"Tsubasa-chan, sing a song, a song! I wanna hear Tsubasa-chan siiiing..."
"No, why is there a banana peel hereeeee?!"
"The stream's over... Um, Shion, so, today's a safe day... no, what am I even saying, we're both women. Anyway, so... couldn't we...?"
"Ta-da! Drink as much as you like♥ ...Honestly, even I didn't think this much would fit in my chest."
"This time, not up top, but in this valley... they call it seaweed liquor, right? There's no seaweed in sight, though..."
"Hkyaaaaah?! Carbonation?! Carbonatioooon?!"
"Nn— Shion. Usually they say if you're hurt, licking it makes it better... hah, no, I'm just saying there's a folk remedy like that. ...Nnh♥"
"Ah♥ Shion... I love you...! A kiss, mm, kiss me while we...♥"
"Ah, aaaah...!"
"...It seems you didn't black out."
Watching Hitomi immediately start pounding her head into the pillow, Han Seoyeon let out a small laugh. At the sound of it Hitomi pushed her lip out and glared, but rather than apologize, Seoyeon only kissed that mouth.
A faint smell of alcohol still clung to both their lips.
Or rather, if one were being precise, the bed itself was a complete wreck. Sheets ending up soaked through were an everyday affair, but today liquor had been mixed in as well, which had left things in a truly dire state.
Only after a long while could Hitomi recover her reason. Her face was still scarlet with shame and self-loathing, but she had at least come back to a state in which normal thought was possible, and so she set about erasing the traces of yesterday.
Blue flame bloomed from her fingertips and wrapped the bedsheets, and the whole of both their bodies.
A flame that harmed nothing else, burning away only filth amid a gentle warmth. It was one of the chief authorities of the demon Shirase Hikari, and an ability Hitomi made fond use of in ordinary life.
"The archive... I have to delete the archive first..."
"A great many clips will have been made while you were asleep. Wouldn't it already be too late?"
Of course, it was hardly rare for a streamer to delete a VOD and demand that every clip from that day's broadcast come down with it. Yesterday, though, had been a collab, so deleting it from Mary's channel alone would accomplish nothing. Ask whether the matter rose to wiping the video from every participant's channel and erasing the record entirely, however, and one found one's head beginning to tilt.
"You might as well ease your heart, take it as the birth of two years of black history, and set it down."
"This is going to last two years?!"
"I have nothing but intuition for evidence, but it ought to last at least that long, don't you think?"
"Uuugh..."
Hitomi groaned again.
Thinking of just how long yesterday would be milked for content made her whole body tremble at the imagination alone. Unless she quit streaming, it had well and truly become a piece of black history she would have to carry for the rest of her life.
"I-for now, let's wash up and think after..."
She forced herself together and squirmed up out of the bed. She had already purified every trace of filth, but not washing at all would still have felt far too unpleasant. Even aside from that, she wanted to stand under some water and cool her head.
"Shall we bathe together?"
At the words that followed from Seoyeon, the face that had only just begun to cool flared bright red all over again.
"......"
...Of course, Hitomi nodded. Quietly, but with perfect certainty.
──And about an hour after that.
"By the way, Shion, you've been going to church a lot lately, haven't you? Did something happen?"
After nearly an hour of a long, clinging wash—no. After the clinging, and then the wash—Hitomi came out and, leaning lightly into the familiar who was toweling her hair dry, put the question forward.
As she said, Han Seoyeon had gone to the church several times of late. And not merely to stop in; she seemed to be doing something there for quite a long while. Even on the day the liquor had arrived by courier, Seoyeon had been at church all day, and yesterday too, Hitomi had heard she had dropped by for a short while in the morning. She went often enough as it was, but recently the frequency seemed to have climbed.
"Well... it amounts to clearing the work away before the wedding. And on top of that, recruiting a chef, perhaps."
"Recruiting a chef?"
At that, Hitomi tilted her head. As she remembered it, they had already contracted a vendor when they booked the reception venue.
Seeing her expression, Han Seoyeon tied the knot of her bathrobe and gave a wry smile.
"Well, how shall I put it. They begged me for mercy—saying that even so, they simply hadn't the confidence to serve cuisine of this order..."
"Ah..."
It went without saying that the person in charge of the cooking did not always know who would be eating it. All the more so for someone employed by a wedding company, as in this case.
And then, it seemed, the head chef had gotten a look at the liquor they intended to serve as the reception's aperitif. It was a drink taken apart from the food, so perhaps he had meant to consult the pairing while composing the course, or perhaps he had simply happened upon it—she couldn't say.
What became the root of the trouble was that the man in charge this time was not only someone of the hidden world, but, true to a chef, considerably knowledgeable about wine. Had he been someone who didn't know, he would have taken it for an expensive sparkling wine and prepared dishes to suit a sparkling wine.
But he recognized the liquor for what it was. He recognized it, and that was that.
What followed naturally was the realization that the people he would be cooking for were no ordinary clients. Groups capable of procuring this much of a liquor like that could be counted on one hand in Japan. Even without knowing precisely who they were, that alone was enough to terrify him.
The moment he learned it, he asked around among the wedding company's people, and in the end he arrived at the fact that the party who had signed the contract was Han Seoyeon. From a remark let slip lightly in the course of idle chatter, he also learned that the guests would include figures capable of wiping a small nation off the map.
Somehow, going through the church, he succeeded in reaching Han Seoyeon, and along with a plea that she please spare his life, he begged her to cancel the contract. He had his pride in his cooking, in his own way, but even so he was not of a level that could suit the palates of people like these.
So long as it met a minimum of quality and flavor, Han Seoyeon, for her part, could not have cared either way. But he wanted it that desperately, and she could not bring herself to be cold about it.
"So I found someone else. They arrived in Japan only yesterday."
"Arrived in Japan? A chef who works overseas?"
Even that rough explanation made it sound like some incredible cook, which was why Hitomi asked back, puzzled.
It was a wedding that would not come twice, and wanting to set incredible food on the reception table was not a feeling she failed to understand. But if Seoyeon had been thinking that way, wouldn't she have brought in a truly extraordinary chef from the very start? Seoyeon would have had the money for it, too. They had been leaving it to an ordinary vendor until now, so the sudden sharp rise in the chef's caliber was bound to raise questions.
"The chef who canceled the contract said that unless it was a cook with a name even in the hidden world, they would take one look at the guest list and collapse..."
"...I can't deny that."
Leave it to some suitable vendor, and if that place too turned out to have someone from the hidden world, the present situation would only repeat itself. They had to bring in a person of a level who could set their own cooking, unashamed, before even guests that terrifying—and so the tier had shot far above the original plan.
"Well. The only reason I went out of my way to bring them from outside Japan is that a connection happened to lie in that direction."
"You know a chef, too... no. I mean, it wouldn't be strange if you did."
Hitomi started to ask again, then swallowed it. After all, with the Pope among her acquaintances, she would know a person or two of matching caliber, wouldn't she?
At her reaction Han Seoyeon gave a short laugh, and went on.
"It is someone you know as well, Hitomi."
"What? Me? Who in the world is it?"
"Though... can one even call them a person?"
Of course, to Hitomi, it was nothing but a dumbfounding thing to be told.