The One Hung Upon the Tree (1)
The interior was dark.
Objectively speaking, there was no shortage of light. Sunlight streamed in through the stained glass, and the fluorescent lamps inside were on. Even so, it did not feel bright in the slightest. That darkness was less a physical thing than an occult one, a spiritual one — not the mere absence of light, but darkness as a particular being, something with substance that writhed.
The cause was not difficult to identify.
"Ah. You're here."
A room set deep within the church, and in it a presence seated at a desk nudged a little into the corner.
It had that sticky darkness wound about its whole body — no. Even that was not enough, and it was spilling the stuff out in every direction.
Pupils that were plainly not human shifted shape from moment to moment. Set against the dark, the skin was white past the point of pallor, and yet not a single vein showed through it. Hair braided off to one side held a color that suggested not so much fresh blood as a scarlet flame.
It was a demon. It was also an aberration that had, in the past, killed countless lives for no reason but to satisfy its own curiosity — a madwoman capable of turning a blade on the Church over nothing more than a difference in values, with neither profit nor grievance in the balance. She had even stood in direct opposition to Apostles, and more than once. That she had come through all of it with her life intact was proof she had stepped cleanly outside the bounds of the normal. And even now, was she not planted here brazenly, settled into a seat in the middle of a church?
"The payment for the deal is ready, I assume?"
She bared her teeth and grinned.
At the end of her gaze stood a single figure: a woman parting the clinging darkness as if it were nothing, walking steadily forward.
Her dress was plain. A black cotton shirt, one white cap, a bag slung over her shoulder — that was all. The air around her was the exact opposite of that light attire. Her bare arms looked solid and her build was strong, but beyond either of those there was something about her that felt uncanny.
"Of course. It's ready."
"Really? My fee is terribly expensive, you know."
The demon tossed the words out as if they were a joke, but no answer came back, and so she was left wearing a slightly stiff smile. She swallowed before she could help it, hard enough that the gulp slipped out. Her counterpart was that sort of person. If anything, the mere fact that she had managed to venture a joke at all meant she had acquitted herself rather well.
The woman with the bag — Bartholomew Margarita — closed the distance in long strides and set the bag down on the desk with a clatter.
Bartholomew's hand drew the zipper open with its distinctive rasp. And inside—
"—Here. The things you asked for."
Nine mugs, several T-shirts, well over ten button badges, a few doujinshi under the name Sakuragi Oka, and a scatter of other odds and ends. Every last one of them bore someone's signature.
…In short, signed official Anathema Production merchandise, and then some.
"Woohoo! Thank you!"
"I'm sorry. Getting signatures from everyone took a while."
"Honestly, when you called out of nowhere and asked me to cook, I nearly ignored it, thinking it was a prank. Good thing I actually took you seriously!"
The demon — Nisroc — smiled so brightly it could have been mistaken for a glow, threw both hands in the air, and cheered. At once she snatched up the empty bag she had set on the floor and began transferring the goods into it, going so far as to seal each piece in its own zipper bag.
"I'll have to wear this one home."
So saying, she picked up a T-shirt printed with the Anathema Production logo, the signatures of every VTuber under Anathema worked across it front and back. When she shrugged off the blue cardigan she had on in order to change, a chibi Mary Tepes could be seen on her back, wearing a thoroughly smug expression.
For that matter, the back of Han Seoyeon's own shirt — hidden by the backpack until a moment ago — bore a chibi Mary as well. This one was posed hugging a plump little bat, Mary's servant and thus the mascot of her fandom, and beaming.
"But are you truly all right with only this? I don't know much about cooking, but I know well enough that preparing meals for several dozen people is no easy thing."
The question came rather late, but Han Seoyeon asked it with care. Even granting that she had bought all of this merchandise herself, it was hard to imagine the prices adding up to a day's wage for a chef of that caliber — and nearly all of it had originally belonged to Nisroc, merely handed over for Seoyeon to carry. Her role, in other words, amounted to collecting signatures on Nisroc's goods in her stead. It was difficult to see how the account could possibly balance.
"Money? Someone like me can make as much of that as she wants."
Nisroc shrugged, as if wondering why she was being asked something so obvious.
"If I wanted a fortune, I'd quit the hermit life and put up a notice that I'm for hire. Cash I can earn whenever I like, so I ought to take my payment in something I can't get by my own power."
"…In truth, signed merchandise is also something money can solve."
Resellers were despised by most of any fandom, whatever the field, but with enough money one could certainly have obtained signed goods through them. This alone, then, did not explain it.
"Well, this part is just a bonus."
When Seoyeon pressed her again, Nisroc grinned and only then let her real motive out.
"The thing you're asking of me is a gain for me all by itself. Enough that I'd want the job even if I had to pay to be hired."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"First — how many times in my life am I going to get to cook for people of this standing?"
Nisroc flicked a finger straight up.
On the strength of that single day, she would become a chef who had been entrusted with meals for the Pope, for cardinals, for several Apostles, for the young lady of the Hyakuren, and for others of their rank. Most would fail to bear the pressure and flee, but if one's nerve could only hold, no greater honor existed for a cook.
"And the chance to serve a meal alongside that Thomas Bonaventura's greatest masterpiece won't come again for the rest of my life."
There was that way of seeing it, too. Seoyeon nodded. It was a set of values she found hard to share, but one she could understand well enough with her head.
"And second. VTuber merch, you can buy with money. Signed merch as well… it takes a little more money and a little more effort, but it can be had."
Nisroc went on, unfolding another finger. Seen again, the gesture just now had not been an accusing jab so much as a counting-off.
"But this is a chance to meet every last VTuber and treat them to a meal."
"Ah…"
That, too, was true. Han Seoyeon found herself nodding.
It was a gathering attended by every VTuber under Anathema. Someone might be unable to come because something had suddenly arisen, and still, for a fan, it was the sort of seat that might come once in a lifetime or might never come at all. Given the chance to go, a person would pay a premium to be there. Even the Seoyeon of the days when she had not known Ninomae was Mary would have done exactly that, without question, in anything like the same position.
"And last, third."
"There's another?"
"Of course. This is the most important one."
Spreading a third finger, Nisroc continued.
"How am I supposed to miss my OTP's wedding?"
She said it in so perfectly level a voice that it sounded like the statement of some immutable truth. The very calm of it was enough to leave a faintly flustered look on Han Seoyeon's face.
"…Uh, um. Anyway, I understand."
With that, she shouldered the empty bag onto her back again.
"Leaving already?"
"The business is finished."
"You seem to be in a hurry."
"……"
Nisroc watched her with eyes half-lowered and a soft smile. Han Seoyeon gave no answer and kept her mouth shut.
"Not just you, either. Lately the churches have been restless all the way through. The lower ranks don't seem to know the exact reason, but it feels as if something has come down on the people up top."
"…It probably isn't as serious a problem as you're imagining, Miss Nisroc."
"Is that so?"
As if her interest had been pricked, Nisroc stared straight into Seoyeon's eyes — then, deciding she would be told nothing further, she let it go at once. Clinging to something she would never even get to hear would amount to nothing but obsession.
"Then I'll take my leave. I'm counting on you for the wedding."
"Of course. I'll have the finest dishes ready. Within the limits of Japanese law, naturally."
Han Seoyeon turned her back and set off once more at that same steady pace, turning Nisroc's words over in her mind all the while.
A restless atmosphere. It might not be entirely wrong. She herself had been coming and going from the Church to settle the matter, never telling Hitomi the details. All of it sprang from a single thing she had been briefed on not long ago.
…There is a possibility that a successor to that Necromancer exists.
A name never left out of any debate over who among the Seven Sisters was the worst. No — the Church had failed to learn the thing's name even at the moment of its death, so it was more accurate to call it an alias.
Something may have inherited the arts of that nameless Necromancer. With the possibility lately come to the fore, churches the world over were in an uproar.
Alive, it had plagued the Church for a whole lifetime, and now, dead, it was doing the same. Han Seoyeon turned her head, looked upon the stained glass of a shepherd set into the church, and let out a hollow laugh.