Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh (1)
"Strictly speaking, it isn't the orthodox method—but this way, it will sit properly with the wine…"
The woman with the reddish hair went on explaining, a faint smile on her lips. Watching her, Han Seoyeon sank briefly into thought.
She's doing this entirely to feed her own appetite, isn't she.
Then again, a chef personally walking guests through a dish in a room this refined wasn't necessarily unusual… and still, turn it over as she might, Seoyeon couldn't shake the sense of some other purpose. Nisroc clearly believed she was being subtle, but Seoyeon could see her drifting, little by little, toward the table where the Anathema VTubers sat.
Well. This, too, had been granted to her as a kind of compensation, and so long as the people being approached weren't displeased, it wasn't Seoyeon's place to object……. She turned her attention elsewhere and took a light sip of wine to cleanse her palate.
"This is seriously incredible……."
"Isn't it?"
Hitomi, who had drunk at nearly the same moment, let the words out on a sigh of pure admiration.
Neither of them disliked alcohol, though it would have been a stretch to say they liked it, and neither had any professional training. They could tell cheap liquor from expensive well enough; past a certain grade, their tongues simply registered it all as more of the same. Even so, this was unmistakable. It belonged, quite literally, to another dimension.
It wasn't taste alone. All five senses came sharply awake—past the pleasure of fine dining and into something close to ecstasy. She doubted any liquid in the world deserved the word luscious more than this one.
"Some call it nectar. Others, the precious blood of the Lord."
"I can certainly see why."
A delicacy that could be produced only when very particular conditions were met—and not at just any wedding. That alone raised its worth still higher.
"Thank God I'm aliiive… hnnnngh……."
"This crazy bastard, I swear……."
From one of the tables, the sound of someone quietly sobbing had begun to carry. She was fairly sure she knew who it was without looking, but for the sake of that person's dignity, she decided not to check.
"And the dishes that have to follow this are even more extraordinary, you know."
"Hearing you say so makes it worth having been hired."
With any ordinary skill, a plate would either have been swallowed up by the wine or would have ruined the wine—one of the two—and yet neither had happened. Hitomi marveled all over again. She found herself wondering just how much training it took to reach a level like this.
"If I could manage even a tenth of this, I'd be so happy."
Hitomi murmured it on a light sigh.
"It'd be a real problem if tasting cooking this incredible meant you couldn't be satisfied with mine anymore."
"That will never happen. No matter what, nothing compares to what you make for me."
"Pfft. There you go, flirting again like it's nothing."
At Seoyeon's words, Hitomi jabbed a finger into her side, poke after poke.
"I meant it sincerely, though……."
"…Which is exactly why it's flirting."
Cheeks flushed, she leaned lightly against Seoyeon's shoulder, offering the complaint in a thoroughly pleased voice. It wasn't empty talk—she knew Seoyeon truly believed it—and that was precisely why she couldn't help being swept off her feet.
"If you really want to, why not learn some of it? Ask her, and I imagine she'd be glad to share all sorts of tips you could use in home cooking."
"She runs a restaurant in Korea, though. Wouldn't that be asking too much?"
"If Mary were the one who asked, she'd close the shop and naturalize in Japan."
"That… mm. Hard to deny, maybe."
Remembering how Nisroc had behaved at her own restaurant last time, Hitomi scratched at her cheek.
If that fell through, there was always a video call. Nisroc advising while Hitomi cooked was perfectly workable. Or perhaps she could even turn it into a stream—a concept where she was taking bridal lessons, for instance. She hated to say it herself, but Mary Tepes was one of the vanishingly few characters, in an Anathema overflowing with lunatics, who could occupy the good-wife-and-wise-mother slot.
And then she caught herself. That even now, even over something like this, her first thought was broadcast content—the absurdity of it pulled a soft little laugh out of her before she knew it.
"Shion, a dish you like… ah. Right. You said there isn't one."
"Well… no. There isn't any particular dish I'm fond of."
If she was going to learn, wouldn't it be best to start with something her partner actually liked? She had been about to ask when she remembered she had asked the very same thing before, and stopped.
Seoyeon had never been someone who enjoyed eating in the first place. Food was nothing more than a means of taking in calories, and before she lived with Hitomi, skipping meals had been common. Ask what she wanted to eat, and a real answer was never going to come. What could you do with a person who said, in the most literal sense, that anything was fine?
"Ah. If I had to choose, Japanese home cooking, I suppose. It's what you've made for me the most."
"…Do you seriously have to say something that unfair?"
Thump. She butted her head lightly against Seoyeon's neck. Han Seoyeon only smiled, and brought the tip of her nose to rest against that hair.
"Miss Han Seoyeon Margarita."
They had been about to let the moment carry on when someone approached. Han Seoyeon slowly lifted her head.
A middle-aged Black man, in a black soutane wholly unsuited to a Japanese summer. The scarlet sash wound at his waist, the silk mozzetta, the crimson of his cap—it was not difficult to guess that he was a cardinal.
Two cardinals had attended the wedding, and only one of them was Black, so even Hitomi knew who this was. Cardinal Adam Greenie.
They had met face to face at an Apostolic council, but in truth the people around him had left a stronger impression than the man himself. He was the one who, back then, had brought Apostle John bound into a wheelchair, and Apostle James the Greater housed inside a terminal.
That he had been invited despite no particular closeness with Seoyeon or Hitomi followed the same logic. He was attending strictly as companion to an acquaintance of theirs—Abraham-Delta, or, in the VTuber world, Sarah Groothuizen.
They would already have exchanged greetings with Sarah Groothuizen before the appetizer of the course was even served. And even if, by some remote chance, he had failed to manage that and now wished to speak with the couple, rising mid-meal to approach someone else's table could hardly be called polite. Needless to say, a man who didn't know even that much etiquette could never have become a cardinal.
"Is something the matter?"
In other words… the business was serious enough to justify discarding ordinary courtesy and committing a rudeness. Guessing it had to be urgent, Seoyeon drew her brows together.
For today's wedding, they had gone so far as to declare the Peace of God. The Church had staked its own name in the open and warned everyone not to cause trouble for a while—and some idiot, it seemed, had gone and caused trouble anyway.
"……."
What he recited, as he drew a smartphone from his breast and held it out, was a code phrase arranged in advance. Once Seoyeon understood its meaning, her expression creased further.
"…I'm sorry, Hitomi. I'll step away for a moment."
"Ah, okay. I understand."
Hitomi couldn't have grasped what Adam Greenie meant; she likely hadn't even understood the words, since they hadn't been Japanese to begin with… and yet, reading from Seoyeon's reaction that this was no ordinary matter, she nodded without another question.
Then she called over Chiyo, who was nearby, and spoke with her briefly. Chiyo couldn't have known the details either, but she seemed to have agreed to cooperate, because she picked up a microphone.
In itself, that wasn't particularly strange. Changing out of the wedding clothes and returning in traditional dress around the middle of the reception was a common enough sequence. Anyone sharp enough to feel something off would already have realized matters were amiss from the moment the cardinal approached and spoke.
Using that as cover, Han Seoyeon brought Hitomi out of the banquet hall, stood in the corridor, and let out a sigh.
"Shion, that phone—is it…"
"Yes. It should be Abraham's terminal."
Seoyeon worked the smartphone the cardinal had given her and entered a passcode. She tried a few candidates; the lock opened on the third. A black screen, a sigil drawn across it in red. She stared at it a moment, then began to type. She caught no one else's scent in the corridor, but she typed all the same, in case someone might be listening.
Apostle John. The Preacher. Matchbox—Elif Yazıcı Nino.
It would hardly be an overstatement to call her the quickest mind among everyone Han Seoyeon knew. She held that figure in her mind and waited, and text printed itself across the screen. Abraham-Delta's reply, no doubt.
Reading it, Han Seoyeon unconsciously clenched the phone. She had already heard as much from Adam Greenie, but having the confirmation in front of her sent a foul feeling rushing in.
"…I'm sorry. I got too worked up for a moment."
Warmth touched her forearm. Hitomi's hand. Seeing Seoyeon's face, she had taken hold of her arm, gently, trying to ease even a little of it. Seoyeon glanced at Hitomi's eyes, and only then offered a faint smile.
Right. What had happened had happened. Sitting here and being irritated wouldn't solve anything. She needed to grasp the situation as calmly as she could.
One of Elif Yazıcı's nicknames was the great detective, for the simple reason that her deductions always verged on prophecy. And that woman had recently been scheduled for deployment to Japan.
The reason, of course, was to capture Sasaki Kisaki—the last remaining member of Vampire Syndrome.
The moment Kisaki had slipped and dodged even Han Seoyeon and Han Jihan, it was certain that either a prophet or a mole was involved. One of the two. But the Church had given no further support on this front, insisting that crushing the Necromancer's legacy came first. In truth, that had been the correct judgment. Monsters not merely excellent but excessive had already been committed to the field.
…Or rather, that was the feint they had allowed to show. Behind it, they had been searching all the same for some way to take Sasaki.
She would surely have spoken at great length, while the woman still lived, with Sanjou Miyuki—presumed to be the Necromancer's disciple. In a situation where no one even knew how many more of the Necromancer's disciples existed, Kisaki could become a precious source of intelligence. And so, to pin down Sasaki Kisaki's whereabouts, they had decided to summon the great detective Elif Yazıcı to the scene in secret.
If it was that woman, she would probably be all right—but one never knew. Han Seoyeon rubbed lightly at her brow, as if a headache had set in.
She typed again, and a concrete number came back.
If the other side learned that their position had been pinned down, they would simply turn that knowledge around and run. Security would have been prepared with care—countermeasures against prophecy included. Every contour of the operation had been drawn by Abraham-Delta and Elif Yazıcı together, and the only ones who knew the operation even existed were the barest handful of indispensable personnel. Even Han Seoyeon had not possessed the whole of it.
Which meant this much was now certain. It was an absurd thing to think even now, but with the result laid out in front of her, she had no choice but to believe it.
Han Seoyeon sighed and entered the sentence. Her feelings, in more ways than one, were heavy.
And no wonder. Anyone in possession of information this sensitive would have to occupy a considerably high station, and of course they were all people Seoyeon knew well. To be told a traitor sat among them was not a thought that could sit easily.
She could state with certainty that they had not lost a contest of wits. This was an operation conceived between a monster who could, even shut in a back room, strike dead-on at events on the far side of the earth, and the incarnation of a database that could prophesy besides. They had even used Han Seoyeon's wedding—an event without precedent—as a smokescreen. Setting aside whether a being capable of surpassing that could physically exist at all, if such a thing had been possible, matters would never have come to this pass in the first place.
She didn't know precisely which of them was the mole. So she would have no choice but to set every one of them aside for the time being, and track Sasaki Kisaki that way. The moment she typed the thought, Abraham's answer came straight back.
What? At those words, Seoyeon's eyes widened a little.
Only then did she catch the intent. From the very beginning, the information had been fed out on the premise that it would leak.
Give every person a slightly altered version, and identify the leaker by which version got out. It was one of the ordinary methods for catching a plant siphoning intelligence.
There was no leisure to admire the stratagem. Before that, Seoyeon's fingers were already striking the keys. Who in the world the mole was. If she didn't learn it immediately, the nagging of it would keep her from sleeping.
But the answer was exceedingly slow to return. Abraham's processing, of course, could not possibly have lagged; this was nothing more than a hesitation over what to say.
For an instant she couldn't understand the sentence. That was how far beyond belief it was.
A confession that they themself had been the traitor? No—that was strange. The attitude had been that of someone who, just like her, had identified the mole through this very attack.
While Seoyeon floundered, more text began to print itself out in rapid succession.
A twitch. The tips of Seoyeon's fingers trembled, ever so lightly—she had already guessed what Abraham was about to say.