While the Cow and the Bear Eat Together (2)
"So... I don't really follow all of it, but Lenushka came all the way to Japan because there's someone she wants to meet."
"Yes. They're someone I absolutely have to persuade..."
Tsunashi Tenka and Yelena traded one thing and another as they made their way toward the festival grounds. Yelena had not laid out every particular of her situation, but that much understanding would likely do.
"So the festival itself isn't the point... If you weren't already interested, tickets wouldn't have been easy to get. No trouble on that front?"
"Ah, well. A friend of my father's happened to get a ticket, and it passed from hand to hand until it reached me."
Luck, come by chance. Yelena had not let the chance slip. She had made no real plan at all and simply come straight over to Japan, and just how headlong that had been was plain enough from the fact that she had entered the country not through Narita — closer to the venue — but through Tokyo International Airport. Her handbag held nothing but a wallet, a passport, and an admission ticket. One could be quite certain this was no thoroughly planned journey. That the money in the wallet had even been changed into yen was, one might say, close to a miracle.
"Still, since you've come all the way to Japan, I hope you get to enjoy the festival."
"...I don't think that's going to happen."
Watching the performances had never been her true purpose, but if she could enjoy the festival itself as well, would that not be better? Tenka had offered the remark from that light thought, and what came back was a voice that had sunk, strangely. Real feeling lay in it. Tenka, too, seemed to decide this was not a thing to set lightly aside, and she composed her face.
"Would it be all right if I asked why?"
"...Because one of the performers is an enemy of my clan."
"An enemy... That's someone else, though, right? Not the person Lenushka wants to meet?"
Yelena gave another small nod. Then, in sharp contrast to the calm she had shown until now, she ground her teeth as if in a blaze of indignation.
"That person is going to take our enemy's side! After everything we've done for them... no, if I think about it, it wasn't really that much...! Even so, we're part of their support, and morally they simply shouldn't!"
"Uh, um. I see...?"
"How could they do this to us!"
Tenka answered with an awkward smile. For now, she thought, better to let the girl get it out than to try to stop her.
"Must be a real piece of work. Can you tell me who it is?"
"That, of course. If it is Miss Tsunashi Tenka, who so kindly extended a helping hand, then you have every right to know."
With that Yelena huffed through her nose and thumped a fist against her own chest.
"Anathema Production. The name of those who are at once an utterly heinous, wicked enterprise without equal, and the enemy of our clan."
"......Uh. Yeah?"
Tenka's face locked. She had never once imagined that name would come up here, and she was too thrown to manage any proper reply — she could only cut her eyes toward Akaba Akane, searching for a cue. Something in Yelena's declaration and in that look seemed to catch with Akane. Her brow creased.
"E-eh? Wh-what is it...?"
"Good. This ought to keep anyone around from seeing. —Excuse me a moment."
And Akane closed the distance in long strides and planted herself squarely in Yelena's path. A severe-looking woman standing dead in front of her — the tension of it put a tremor in Yelena's voice, though Akane paid her no mind at all and only swept a glance around. Once she had confirmed that few people were nearby, and that even those few were not placed to see past the cover of her own body, she took hold of Yelena's hat.
"Hyahk?!"
The moment she was sure of it, Akane pulled the hat off without a shred of hesitation. A thin scream broke from between Yelena's lips.
"...I had a feeling. Thought I'd check, just in case."
"So you really are a beast-spirit's half-breed."
What came out from under the hat were the ears of a beast, pure white. Counting the human pair, Yelena had four ears in all.
"Mmph! Give it back!"
Eyes gone perfectly round, Yelena snatched the hat from Akane's hand and yanked it back down over her head. Which, of course, did nothing to lift the sight just witnessed out of either woman's memory.
"A bear... so that's what you were?"
Tenka murmured it, a little flustered. In truth, she had already half expected beast blood in the girl. Akane had said outright that she was not human, and walking close beside her, Tenka had caught a faint animal smell.
"That's right. Polar bears are losing more and more of the ground they live on, and to publicly endorse a company that goes right on with its yuri business anyway is no different from a breach of trust against us...!"
"Huh? But if you mean public support..."
"She's talking about Behemoth, most likely."
Yelena in full passionate spate, Tenka cocking her head at it, and Akane, who thought a moment and then produced the answer. As far as she knew, that was the only thing that fit — an affirmative had come back to the proposal of using Behemoth as a motif.
"Uh... but is that really such a huge problem?"
"They didn't just give permission to use the name! They actually split off part of the name's own authority and handed it over, I'm telling you!"
"Hnnnnnngh......"
Honestly, Tenka didn't know much about demons. Akane was probably the same. So talk of a demon's name-authority and all the rest was never going to feel real to either of them.
"So. What do we do?"
Tenka leaned in and whispered it at Akane's ear.
"What do you mean, what do we do? About what?"
"If we tell her we're with Anapro, it might be a problem."
Akane answered that with a look that asked what there was even to be troubled about. Judging by the personality the other girl had shown so far, the worst of it would be some fuss along the lines of Kh! So you've been deceiving me, have you?! — and that would be the end of it.
"No, I mean she probably wouldn't even let us guide her. We've come this close already, and it'd be a little pitiful if she got lost here and missed the festival, don't you think?"
"That... hm."
At once Akane's brows lifted. Picturing it, she had to admit it seemed likely. She could see, easily enough, the girl fleeing on the spot because she could not accept help from an enemy.
There was also the beast's instinct that had somehow muddled Yelena along this far. Now that she had come this close, perhaps she could manage the rest well enough on her own...
No. There was no telling. This was a woman bullheaded enough to come from the airport in Ota Ward all the way to the far edge of Edogawa without knowing a single road. Let her charge about at that pace and take one wrong turn, and no one could begin to guess where she would turn up. The worst of it was that she was an anomaly. Wander somewhere she shouldn't and fall into the hands of a Holy Knight of the Church, and that would be the end of her. The next time anyone found her, it might not be a lost-child center, but the near bank of the Sanzu.
"Can't be helped. We'll hide it for now. At least until we reach the venue."
"Yeah. Figured you'd say that. No point coming clean and souring her mood when we don't have to, so better to just keep it quiet."
The two of them settled on it almost at once. However much the girl might rant that Anathema Production was her enemy and whatever else, they had already seen her face and spoken with her. Neither of them much wanted to imagine someone like that abruptly becoming a guest who never came home.
"What are you talking about?"
"Nah, nothing. Come on, let's go. There's gonna be a crowd, so the line to get in should be pretty long."
"Ah, yes. We really should hurry, then."
When Tenka brushed it off, Yelena nodded without harboring any particular suspicion. Still hand in hand, the two of them started toward the venue. Akane watched their backs for a moment, then found herself sinking into thought.
What is it? I feel as though I'm forgetting something...
A sense of wrongness, almost within reach and never quite, kept flickering through her mind — the feeling that she had forgotten something important. However she turned it over, nothing came, and in the end she had no choice but to shove it into a corner of her thoughts and leave it there, unease and all.
"I trust you're enjoying yourselves? ...Oh. A face I haven't seen before. There's still a faint smell of jet fuel clinging to you — a foreign tourist? That blend would be TS-1, I think. From the CIS? Do you speak Russian?"
"I was about to remark on your complexion as well... though you don't appear to be Black. You smell of bear." Han Seoyeon added it with her hands in her pockets, in a tone that suggested she was making the lightest of small talk.
"M—Margarita?! What are you doing here?!"
"I happened to be assigned to the control staff. Even if I hadn't, I would have come to see the Shutang performance."
"More to the point, this atmosphere, as if you all know one another... Y-you people! Don't tell me you were the vanguard of that wicked environment-destroying corporation all along?! So you deceived me! ...Mmph, mmph."
"Hah. So that's what was nagging at me. Think about it, and there was never any way to hide it in the first place. ...And anyway, shouldn't you put down the chicken skewer Tenka bought you before you start complaining?"
Having recognized the unease that had been sitting so unpleasantly with her, Akane heaved a long sigh and looked at the chicken skewer in the girl's hand. Be that as it may, she could not begin to understand what sort of behavior it was to eat something someone else had bought you while denouncing that same person. The truth coming out in the middle of the meal couldn't be helped, so she would set that aside — but even afterward, angry as she was, the girl had not particularly stopped eating.
"Then I'll finish eating first, and start condemning you again after! ...Nom."
"Looks like they're selling takoyaki over there, too. Want me to buy you some?"
"Mmph... Ah, um, you don't have to, but I won't refuse!"
"So we fight once you've eaten all of that, too?"
"Ah, yes. I understand."
"...Is she, perhaps, a little — considerably — lacking?"
"...As you can see. Seems that way."
Then again, perhaps the girl could be won over more easily than expected. It was a thought Akane could not quite help having.