The Cow and the Bear Shall Feed Together (3)
"So… mm. If I haven't misunderstood you."
Han Seoyeon murmured it with a black coat still on her shoulders, heat or no heat. Ordinarily that gaze was enough, merely by being met, to send an instinctive terror crawling in—but just now a considerable bewilderment had settled in her eyes.
"Miss Yelena Petrovna, you have come representing your kin to denounce yuri-inclined works for the sake of preserving the Arctic. And because Lady Behemoth, whom you yourself support, has been seen cooperating with Anapro, you mean to stop it, and so you've come to offer a word of loyal remonstrance. That is the shape of it, yes?"
"That's exactly it. And your Russian is very good."
"I picked up a little while subjugating a heretic monk."
It had been long enough ago that the language had gone hazy, but a few minutes of talk stirred the memory back to life, and she found she could hold up her end of a conversation well enough.
"Setting that strange business aside for the moment… the way you tell it, it sounds as though Lady Behemoth is here. Right now."
"Ah, yes. According to the intelligence I've gathered, I've confirmed that she has already left the country."
"Dear God."
Seoyeon pressed a hand to her brow. There was nothing else for it. Tenka and Akane, watching, wore nothing but puzzled looks.
"Uh, but it's not that weird, is it? She's the one who said Anathema could make a character based on her… If she got curious and came to look, that tracks just fine, I think."
If anything, a total lack of interest would have been the stranger thing. A demon as famous as Behemoth had few fields where her name failed to turn up, and she might well not spare much attention for any single one of them, and yet—
At those words, Han Seoyeon shook her head.
"This is not a problem of that order."
"Then… maybe she's just insanely strong?"
"No. She is powerful, of course, but that is not the reason. She is merely far too exalted a personage."
"If we're going by that, Hyakurenno's already here anyway."
Yuri, for her part, had a performance booked for the following day, and the odds were good she was in the audience today as well—though in her case "honored guest" was perhaps the truer title. It was the show of a beloved only daughter and the youngest of the family besides, so her people were likely to come and watch; Yuri herself had said they probably would, which made it as good as certain. With matters already at that pass, what trouble could one or two more dignitaries pose? Even so, all Seoyeon did was let out a thin sigh.
"Did I not say so just now? Far too exalted."
"Wait. Higher than Hyakurenno?"
Only then did Tenka's face lock stiff. Akane said nothing, but the stare she fixed on Seoyeon carried a faint edge of alarm.
The Hyakurenno Group was spoken of as a power that simply declined to rule Japan, for want of the will to bother. This was a festival at which even the apex of that house might, depending on the day, put in an appearance—and if one still reached for "far too exalted" in spite of that…
"…A king?"
"Close. Save that it is an imperial throne, not a royal one."
Tenka's eyes said You're joking. Han Seoyeon could not give her the answer she was hoping for. It happened to be the truth.
"No, hold on. But Russia was a republic, wasn't it…?"
"On the surface. Beneath it, the empire remains."
There is a saying that democracy, once every other system of government humanity has endured is set aside, is the worst form of rule there is. Its flaws are endless; it is merely, in the end, the least bad of the options.
Granted, if one assumed ideal conditions, something like absolute monarchy might carry the higher ceiling. Tell modern Koreans to choose between a democratic republic of popular sovereignty and the dictatorship of a resurrected King Sejong, and no small number would take the latter.
The trouble was that the floor sat as low as that lofty ceiling sat high. The greater trouble was that whether the monarch set over you proved a Sejong or a Yeonsangun was left to a variable-rate gacha with no pity ceiling at all.
Even supposing you cleared the sage-king banner at a rate so generous that pity would have triggered against any opponent you cared to name, the live service called reality was an absurd system in which every character you collected came time-limited. However great the enlightened monarch, they grew old in the end, and one day they stopped breathing.
And after that, it was gacha hours all over again, with no telling when the next dud would drop.
Which was why, in the present age, democracy was regarded in most cases as the best system available. The more checks you piled on, the harder it became for any one person to play the hero—but by the same token, you could at least keep some incompetent from single-handedly running the whole of it into the ground.
And mad geniuses who thought along different lines from everyone else had existed in every age. To put it more concretely: human beings who had arrived at the notion, Then why not simply enthrone a being that is wise, and that neither ages nor dies?
"Uh… so in reality, it's a country ruled by a demon from behind the curtain?"
"Well… if one summarizes it very roughly, yes. It comes to that."
Tenka stumbled a little as she condensed the explanation, and her own face, even as she spoke, looked as though she could not believe what she was saying.
It was the sort of remark one might have made in the age of the Crusades, denouncing some Islamic empire. Had the one explaining it been anyone but Han Seoyeon, they might have written it off as the ravings of an extreme racist and moved on.
"No, wait. Demon or otherwise, set all of that aside. This is basically the Emperor giving Anapro permission to make a VTuber modeled on himself, isn't it…?"
Akane followed in a shaking voice. Only then did the weight of it seem to land on Tenka, and her face went faintly pale.
The two of them were childhood friends, and both were ordinarily quite composed, so a sight like this was rare indeed.
"There are plenty of characters based on Behemoth, so I couldn't figure out why that little bear was grinding her teeth at Anapro alone, of all things…"
A hollow laugh slipped out unbidden. What with the passionate speech on the one hand and the way she munched takoyaki in perfect contentment on the other, looking a little vacant, they had taken her for a rather slow girl who had simply made a strange decision and come all the way to Japan on impulse. A personage of this caliber, though—from the standpoint of a given faction, it was entirely reasonable to panic and come running to stop her. Not that Anathema by itself seemed likely to be doing the Arctic any meaningful harm.
"What in the world were you thinking, deciding to go and ask her yourself?"
"She isn't some total stranger. If we meant to use her as a motif, I thought we ought to get permission, at least… And it happened to be something the president asked of me."
"For fuck's sake, President Gyokichi…!"
The groan tore out of Akane on its own. What on earth was that insane fish-man thinking? At this point, did he simply have no human heart at all?
"Mmm. Knowing D-chan, the principle of the thing would matter too, sure—but I figure they were aiming for the viral marketing as well, at least to some extent."
"Even viral has its limits…!"
"Ahaha… yeah, that's fair."
Somewhere in Nakabashi Gyokichi's head, even more than in his face, he had left ordinary people far behind. They ought to have known it from the moment the young lady of Hyakurenno came storming the audition and he came out with, "No talent. Shall we just fail her?"
"Shiiiit. The publicity's going to be incredible, I'll give it that. Some crazy bitch sat down across from the emperor of a twenty-first-century empire, walked off with the likeness rights, and is out here playing VTuber."
How did that man from Innsmouth manage to line up a public firestorm of this scale at the character-design stage, before debut was even in question? It beggared belief.
"…More to the point. A person like that is here? Or is going to be?"
"If what this Yelena said is not mistaken."
"Hey. Wait. Seriously, just wait a second."
Akane screwed her face up tight and pressed on.
"Tenka, you bastard. You said you heard from Yuri that the chairman of the Hyakurenno Group is likely coming too. I'm sure that's what you said."
"Yeah. As far as I know."
"Then this is basically an unofficial Japan–Russia summit, isn't it…?"
"……Huh?"
A man who could shake Japan at will, should he ever set his mind to it, and an empress already shaking the widest domain in the world inside her grip—gathering in the same place. This had already blown past anything one could wave off as a concert, hadn't it?
"Ah, um, th-they might not even meet! Yuri's show is tomorrow. So there's a good chance he comes tomorrow, which means…"
Tenka laughed awkwardly, offering up a wish.
"Is Lady Behemoth attending today only?"
"Uh, as far as I know, she's here both days."
"…So she comes tomorrow as well. Whenever the chairman of Hyakurenno arrives, they are certain to share at least one day."
"……"
Akane covered her face with her palm.
"Can't I just skip the performance and bail?"
"…Do hang in there."
Han Seoyeon only patted her shoulder, light and encouraging.
"You already had an audience with His Holiness the Pope at the wedding. What is there to worry about?"
"You are not seriously calling that comfort…"
"Besides, this much falls within the margin of error. There are already at least three Apostles in this park."
"What."