The Cow and the Bear Shall Feed Together (4)
"Ninomae-chan. Over here. I saved us a spot."
The voice found her through the crush of the crowd. Hitomi turned and met the eyes of a woman seated on a picnic mat spread over the grass.
A mask hid everything but those eyes, yet Hitomi knew her at once.
"Oh—Guroyuki-san."
Guroyuki Sui. The woman inside the first-generation talent Tachibana Rin, which made her Hitomi's senior. She was also the person Hitomi had arranged to spend the music festival with today.
Any other time, a place like this would have meant Han Seoyeon at her side. Today, though, Hitomi could hardly claim she had come only to enjoy the festival. She and the Guroyuki sitting here were both scheduled to perform.
Ordinary musicians might have managed differently, but the two of them had to take the stage wearing virtual avatars. They were out on the grounds for now, partly to get a feel for the atmosphere, but around the midpoint of the day they would have to move to the studio and prepare. Seoyeon following them even that far was not an option that existed.
For today, Ninomae Hitomi had to come second to Mary Tepes. Seoyeon and Hitomi were of one mind on that. Not Hitomi laboring in a studio with motion-capture gear strapped to her—Mary, flawless and complete. Not the frantic paddling beneath the water, but only the swan's elegant poise. If she could help it, she didn't even want the preparations seen. She wanted Seoyeon to enjoy nothing but the stage itself.
And so they had decided not to attend the festival's first day together at all. They had left the house separately from the very start. Guroyuki would have to head to the studio with her later anyway, so the two of them had simply agreed to meet from the beginning and walk the grounds together.
"What about the others? I heard they were coming with you."
Noticing that Guroyuki was alone on the mat, Hitomi tilted her head. She was fairly sure she'd been told the two cafe employees would be along as well.
Guroyuki pointed off toward somewhere in the distance.
"Food court. Sent them to buy something to eat. The lines are longer than they look."
"Ah, I caught a glimpse on the way in, and it did seem that way. There are so many kinds of food trucks, and so many of them, that you'd think the crowd would spread out—but it was still pretty intense."
"Might be because the prices don't hurt."
Food sold at festivals like this was usually far more expensive than normal. Sign a single contract and a vendor could, to put it in the bluntest terms, run the most brazen shop imaginable. If you don't buy it here, what exactly are you going to eat?
This festival, though, was less about turning a profit and closer to a showcase of how magnificent the Hyakurenno Group was. They surely hadn't staged the whole thing at an outright loss, but it was clear enough that net profit had not been much of a consideration.
Even the food trucks, from what she'd heard, had been paid a premium when the contracts were signed and told to sell cheap. It had come to her as a bit of "so I hear, anyway," but the source was Yuri, so it was safe to treat as fact. And if the information had been wrong, it would have been corrected into the truth by now.
This was a festival hosted by the Hyakurenno Group. The moment Her Highness the Hyakurenno princess herself came out with so much as "The prices are a little different from what I heard," the fate of whoever was responsible would not be difficult to picture. They would, at the very least, be gone by the next day. The only question was whether they would next be discovered at an employment agency, or somewhere in the depths of Tokyo Bay.
"Um, excuse me."
"Ah... yes?"
They had been sitting on the mat, resting and trading that rather ominous talk, when an unfamiliar voice addressed them from close by.
Hitomi looked over. A woman with a faintly foreign air was seated on the mat right beside theirs.
Brown hair spilled from beneath a snow-white hat. Behind her sunglasses, blue eyes left a gentle impression. A peculiar maturity hung about her whole presence, certain rather conspicuous features included, and yet there was not a trace of aging on her. Strip the atmosphere away and look only at an expressionless photograph, and she could easily have passed for her early twenties. If Hitomi had to compare the feeling to anyone, it was not unlike Bansei Marin.
Which would mean this air she's wrapped in is the work of some youkai, wouldn't it? Even as the thought occurred to her, Hitomi studied that face with care and made ready to listen to whatever the woman said next.
"You wouldn't happen to be Guroyuki Sui-san?"
"...Yes. That's me."
"Then this person is with the same Anathema, I take it..."
"As you've guessed, I'm with Anapro. Beyond that, given the nature of the work, I'm afraid answering would be difficult. I ask for your understanding."
Guroyuki set an index finger against her mask and said it quietly.
The woman had clearly recognized her and started the conversation. Guroyuki was masked, yes, but she wasn't hiding her face in any other way. She was retired now, but she had been an actress of some standing, and lately she had even appeared on a TV show alongside Bansei. Someone recognizing her was not especially strange. That the someone looked, at a glance, like a foreigner was still a surprise, even so.
Of course, being glad to be recognized had to stop with Guroyuki herself. Letting the situation unfold until the identity of the Hitomi beside her came out as well would be a problem.
"Guroyuki-san, the way you handled that just now was so incredibly... celebrity of you...!"
Hitomi, watching from the side, whispered it with a little sparkle in her eyes. Conversing so gently while drawing a perfectly firm line—it had, somehow, radiated professional.
"If I had to say, it felt more like serving a customer than a fan."
It had been a very long time since she had lived the life of the actress Guroyuki Sui, so the reaction puzzled her a little. She had gone on television recently under the banner of a retired actress, but that appearance had been a project with the VTuber Tachibana Rin as its main event. What she had just done was less an actress receiving a fan than the people-handling she had picked up as a cafe manager.
"...Still, an identity that specific is already as good as established, isn't it? Is there much point in hiding it?"
The woman glanced at Hitomi's upper body and offered an exceedingly commonsensical observation. Even so, there was meaning in insisting in any case, I am not that person, even when everyone already knew the truth. One hundred percent and ninety-nine percent were, strictly speaking, not the same.
"Even so, I'm not sure that's a conversation you need to be having."
You're walking around with an overwhelming identifiability pouch of your own, aren't you. That was what Guroyuki was telling her.
Heard in passing, the tone could have passed for a cold cross-examination. Guroyuki was not actually displeased. She simply had difficulty showing emotion, thanks to her deal with a demon.
She hadn't failed to anticipate how her manner of speaking would land, but this was a woman who had recognized Guroyuki as she was now. She had most likely seen that recent TV show, in which case she would already know something of Guroyuki's present condition. The guess seemed not far off. From the other side came only a soft little laugh, as if to grant the point.
"Still, I never imagined I'd meet all of you right next to me like this. There's a performance today, so I assumed you wouldn't be out here."
"Watching other people's sets, and getting a feel for the mood. We'll probably be here another hour or two."
"Is that so? Then I'll be in your care until then, at least. ...Ah, and what should I call you? Masha?"
So the talk of an identity already being established had not been entirely a joke. Out came remarks like that.
"Ninomae is fine. ...You're Russian, then?"
Hearing her, Hitomi answered with a small smile. Someone who rendered Mary as Masha was very likely from the Russian-speaking world.
"Yes, that's right. Please, call me Nastya."
"Nastya-san... that's a lovely name. Your Japanese is incredible, though. Have you lived in Japan a long time?"
"Ah, well, about that—"
Nastya had only just begun to answer Hitomi's question.
"Brought the food, Contractor."
A low, husky voice cut in between them.
A beauty with black hair and golden eyes, muscle drawn tight along her frame. Marbas—the demon contracted to Guroyuki Sui, and these days an employee at her cafe.
She was carrying an assortment of food bought at the food zone. Guroyuki had said a moment ago that she'd sent someone off to buy it, so that much was no surprise. The company she had brought along was.
Hitomi was certain she'd heard that Marbas had gone with Anri, the cafe's other employee. The person standing beside her now, though—blond hair and blue eyes aside—was someone else entirely, starting with the gender.
"It has been an age, Lady Ninomae Hitomi!"
"Philotanuss-san?"
He was the last person Hitomi had expected, and her eyes went round. She had never imagined meeting him here.
"What brings you here?"
"The load seemed rather too much for one to carry alone, so I was merely lending a hand to a dear friend."
So saying, Philotanuss held up the food he was carrying, just as Marbas had. Guroyuki, face blank, tilted her head.
"Where did Anri go?"
"Said there's no opportunity like a festival and ran off to pick up women. Must've been a female to her taste among the humans who went by."
"Think it'll work?"
"Not a chance."
Immediate. Guroyuki, for her part, did not particularly dispute the prediction.
"Anyway. Who's this? I've got a strangely familiar feeling......"
And then Marbas's gaze landed elsewhere. She leaned her whole body in and stared straight at the face of the sunglassed Nastya.
"......Ah."
Those eyes flew wide.
She was so startled that the food slipped right out of her hands—Philotanuss snatched every last piece out of the air with a movement that defied all reason—and she jabbed a finger at Nastya.
"B-Be— Bebe— Beheh...?!"
"It's been a while, Marbas. You've changed quite a bit, haven't you?"
Her tongue seemed to have tied itself. She stammered wildly, then slipped quick as anything behind Philotanuss's back and hid. Philotanuss was tall, granted, but the difference in their builds meant she was not hidden in the slightest.
"Philotanuss! Do something and drive her off! The usual bit—no cocks barging in between the lilies, or whatever it is you always spout...!"
"But in this case we have, on both sides, virtuous wives and model mothers—married women with not the slightest possibility of any intrusion. Must we receive her quite so coldly?"
"Y-you goddamn—you raise unholy hell about this every other day, so what the hell is this nonsense?!"
"Hmm. True enough, on an ordinary day I might have called this grounds enough for an out. At present, however, the sight of you trembling like a newborn kitten is so very entertaining that I can scarcely endure it. Whatever shall I do?"
"You—you son of a—!"
"Ha-ha-hah."
Watching someone who never once let a chance to screw the other party slip past, Hitomi caught herself thinking that the two of them really must be friends.