The Cow and the Bear Feed Together (1)
It was still early morning, yet the moment she stepped off the plane the muggy air settled over her like a weight. She crushed the urge to turn straight back into the cool of the air-conditioning and tugged the brim of her hat down hard.
Snow-white hair spilled out beneath it. Set against that white, her skin was black to a degree that seemed almost unreal—uncommon even among Black people—and she could feel the stares of everyone around her gathering. Or perhaps what unsettled them was simply that a girl of her apparent age was wandering on her own. She paid it no mind either way. On her passport she was already listed as an adult of Canadian nationality, and she had no reason to watch other humans for their reactions.
She cleared immigration and left the airport at once. The first thing to meet her eyes outside was a row of banners flapping from the streetlights nearby, advertising a music festival.
Shirayuri… Talk about blatant self-promotion from the people running it.
Shirayuri—white lily. Consider who was hosting the festival and managing it, and the self-assertion was so naked it didn't even rise to the level of a joke. The whole point was to advertise that the Hyakurenno Group was still standing, so there was nothing to be done about it. Even so, the timing was hardly bad. The date printed on the flyers was today.
A festival, in heat like this. She could not understand it. She suffered badly in the heat herself, and the thought even crossed her mind that they must all be hoping to drop dead of heatstroke together.
"……."
The irony, of course, was that she herself meant to attend that unhinged festival. She walked up to a banner and checked the list of participating artists along its lower edge, and her gaze stopped on a single name.
Her teeth ground together the instant she saw it. The company's very name was an anathema—a sentence of major excommunication. Japan might be a country where the Church's hold ran thin, but surely this was still a problem. What was the Church doing, if not hauling these bastards in? She grumbled on in that vein. There was, however, something she understood even less.
Why did you agree to work with a company like that, Lady Behemoth?
Behemoth. A great demon who had existed since antiquity, slain some thousand years ago after losing a battle with Leviathan. But though the flesh may die, faith does not. Someone always devours what remains of that power and that faith, and swells upon it. The one who had taken the final victory in that feeding-ground war was the Behemoth of the present day—and not long ago, she had granted Anathema Production permission to use the name, and the authority that came attached to it.
The girl could not begin to imagine what she was thinking. Behemoth was hardly someone who failed to grasp what such a thing meant. That was why she had come to Japan. If Behemoth was showing Anathema this much favor, she would surely attend the festival. Under ordinary circumstances the girl could not even have dreamed of meeting someone so far above her, but here, perhaps, they might speak. She had been set on this day from the moment a ticket happened into her hands, and it was only recently that word had reached her of Behemoth's departure.
Food first. Then, at my leisure, the festival grounds…
She sketched the plan out in her head. Simple and clean, even by her own estimation.
"Uh, uhh? Uhhhh……."
…She went on thinking so for about an hour after leaving the airport. Right up until she realized her Japanese fell short of a kindergartener's.
"Today was Mary and Rin, wasn't it."
"Yeah. And Bansei-san, on top of that."
It was no great surprise that Tsunashi Tenka and Akaba Akane were on their way to the Tokyo Shirayuri Music Festival. Akane's performance—that is, the VTuber Yugure Tama's—fell on the following day, and Tenka wasn't performing at all. Even so, a show put on by colleagues from the same company was reason enough to go and watch.
"Now that I think about it, Bansei-san's on two days in a row. That's gotta be rough… huh?"
What could, without question, be called a surprise was running into a dark-skinned girl glancing this way and that in a panic while they walked.
"You think she's lost?"
"Looks like it."
At Tenka's murmur Akane answered just so, and gave her a solid shove between the shoulders. Tenka turned toward her, puzzled, but Akane only jerked her chin at the girl.
"Ahh—. Afraid she'll get scared if you walk up yourself?"
"…Shut up. If you've got time to run your mouth, go over there and say something."
Tenka caught the intent and let a snicker slip out before she could stop it. Akane didn't grant her a yes; she only snorted. The reaction came a beat late, though, as if she had hesitated.
"What's the matter? Do you speak English?"
Tenka went over to the girl with a bright smile, bending a little so their eyes met. The sudden approach seemed to fluster her, but she soon understood that help had arrived, and nodded.
"Yes. I can. A little Japanese, too."
"Where are your parents?"
"I came alone. And I am an adult, actually……."
"Oh, yeah? Sorry. My mistake."
The girl rummaged in her small handbag and produced a passport to show her. Seeing that it really did list an age close to their own, Tenka smiled, sheepish.
"Uh, so… Elena? That's how you read it, right?"
"Yelena. You may call me Lenushka."
"…Mm. Lenushka, then."
For a nickname, hadn't it come out longer than the original? Tenka felt as much, and decided not to dwell on it.
"You lost?"
"……Yes."
The girl, Yelena, gave another small nod.
"Where were you headed?"
"Well, I started from Tokyo Airport, and…"
"…Uh, hold on?"
Partway through, Tenka's expression stiffened.
"Tokyo? Tokyo International Airport, in Ota?"
"Yes. That's right. Ota… I'm not certain about that part."
"Uh… how did you even end up all the way out here…?"
Starting from the airport suggested she had lost her way somewhere around there, and from there to here was more than forty kilometers. That was nearly one end of Tokyo's twenty-three wards to the other. This had gone well past a little wandering.
"Do you know where you're going?"
"Um, well… that is—oh, right."
Yelena drew something else from her bag. It was a scrap of paper with a QR code printed in one corner.
"…Huh. You're going to the same place we are?"
"Um… truly?"
"Yeah. We're going here too…"
What kind of coincidence was this? Tenka was still marveling, digging through her pockets, when she remembered she had left the tickets with Akane and waved her over.
"What is it, all of a sudden?"
"Well, you see……."
She gave the puzzled Akane a rough account of the situation. Akane's brow tightened, and she muttered.
"Getting lost and still making it this far is something, isn't it? Doesn't even look like she's got a phone."
"That's true."
The one thing you must never do when lost is wander at random. That she had come this close to her destination by doing exactly that was near enough to a miracle.
"More than that—can you even get a physical ticket from overseas?"
"Uh… beats me. I've never been to a show overseas, so I wouldn't know."
Tenka had, in fact, seen a concert in France, but she had been living there at the time, so it amounted to the same thing as a domestic show. At that answer, Akane stared straight at Yelena.
Whether the look cowed her a little, Yelena drew in on herself. Akane did not stop there. She took one step closer, formed a ring of thumb and forefinger, and held it up beside her own eye, her gaze fixed on the space above Yelena's head. Yelena pressed the hat down deeper still.
"You're not human, are you."
"Eep…!"
A voice close to a scream escaped her, as if her nature had been seen through. At the sight of it, Akane scratched lightly at her head.
"…I wasn't trying to scare you."
She was used to reactions of that sort, and decided not to make much of it. Live with eyes like these, and it was unavoidable.
"Come on. Claiming you weren't trying to scare her, with that face? That's a little light on conscience, don't you think?"
"……."
Tenka, beside her, had tacked the remark on without a scrap of tact, and Akane turned a sharp glare on her for it.
"Show a look like that in front of a girl and of course she's going to be scared."
"I mean you, Tenka. I'm a girl t—no. Forget it. You've always been like this."
"Huh?"
"Drop it. Anyway, this is how things stand, so we take her to the venue. You were going to from the start, weren't you?"
"Yeah. If it meant turning around and going all the way back to Tokyo Airport, that really would be too much. But there's no reason not to go together when we're headed to the same place."
Akane sighed and flicked her eyes at Tenka. Her English was nowhere near as good, and she meant to leave the talking to her. Whether Tenka caught the intent or not, she turned back to Yelena.
"So, anyway, we happen to be going there ourselves. If it's all right with you, mind if we show you the way?"
"I-is that really all right…?"
"Can't just leave a girl who's in trouble, can we? If all we're doing is walking together, it's no real effort."
"Then… I'll impose, just a little."
Tenka smiled and held out her hand. Yelena stared at it blankly for a moment, then understood a beat late and, a little shy, set her own hand on top.
…Still hasn't shaken that high-school habit, the bastard.
Prince of the academy had never been a nickname pinned on her just for a pretty face. Did the fool even realize that if Akane hadn't been covering her from behind, some schoolgirl would already have put a knife in her twice over? And if that attitude was nothing but a passive, then why—of all people—did it have to land on her? The thought rose before she could stop it. A worry that didn't suit her. She pushed it out of her head.