All of Us Together in One Place (5)
Night had fallen dark. A girl in a pure white dress sat on a bench, staring blankly up at the sky. Her skin, deep and dark against the white of her hair, looked as though it might dissolve into the darkness at any moment, and out of that pitch-black void a flash of vivid gold flickered for an instant.
She had turned, catching the presence of someone drawing near from behind. Those golden eyes came to rest on the woman before her.
"Sorry I'm late. I had a little something to take care of."
"Ah—no! I wouldn't dream of it! Lady Behemoth!"
The moment their eyes met, the girl—Yelena—shot to her feet. This was not someone she dared receive while still seated. The legitimate successor of Imperial Russia, and a grand duchess of the direct line; one who had clothed herself in a demon's body and become a saint of the eight sects, and who, true to her name, had risen again. Empress, and imperial princess. That being, Behemoth, came toward Yelena with a cigarette held between her lips.
"You've fallen in pretty deep, haven't you."
"P-pardon?"
"I can tell from your eyes alone. I'm used to looks like that."
That strange, swelling fullness one feels upon first beholding something precious—not yet risen all the way to yearning. Behemoth knew that look very well.
"The moment you saw her on stage won't leave your head, will it?"
"Ah, no, that's..."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of. Becoming someone's fan isn't a thing you can manage by will in the first place."
"My husband was exactly like that the first time he saw me."
So saying, Behemoth laughed to herself, a quiet little chuckle.
"Th-that is absolutely not the sort of feeling I mean!"
"I know. I said he was like my husband, but I'm not talking about romance."
At Behemoth's words Yelena recoiled in horror and waved her hands—though of course she did. The notion that a polar bear who had come all this way south over the matter of the Arctic might harbor feelings of that kind was absurd.
"My husband didn't fall for me at first sight, either. Back then it truly would have been nothing but loyalty to his sovereign, and admiration. At least, that's how I see it."
With a light tap she flicked the cigarette from her fingertips and sent a scatter of ash into the air. The ash circled and circled around her, and somewhere along the way it became a butterfly and darted off into the distance.
"Anyway, you don't need to fret so much over feelings like that. Even if she's your rival on paper, that's no reason you can't think well of her. Setting aside, of course, whether she really is your rival at all."
A mere glance through the records of war turned up no end of cases in which men praised the enemy's commanders, did it not? Even an enemy might be held in high regard, and sometimes admired outright, without that being something one could simply call strange.
At those words Yelena gave a small nod. A moment later, though, she spoke, her voice sunk cold and low.
"But she really is someone helping to destroy our home."
"Well... I won't deny that."
Behemoth smiled as she said it. Not because anything in particular pleased her—closer to a smile offered for no reason at all.
Unofficial though it was, they were a same-sex couple recognized by the Pope, and the ripples that wedding had sent through faith and through sorcery could hardly have been ordinary. It was difficult, of course, to imagine that this one thing alone could deal the Arctic a meaningful blow. Still, whether the margin was a tenth of a percent or a full one, this was not a situation in which anyone could claim there was no harm at all. Yelena's argument, in other words, was not entirely wrong.
"In the first place, for women to bind themselves together like that is wrong—!"
"...Eek?!"
Yelena, halfway through working herself up into a fervent speech, jolted at a sudden ominous presence and whipped her head around. Eyes blown wide and round with fright, she stared blankly at the empty air behind her, then fumbled at her lips with a dazed look. There was nothing there. And yet she could have sworn she had felt something like an immensely powerful will...
"Wh-what was that...?"
Behemoth's brow drew in. Only after she had flicked ash into the air once more did she let her expression ease.
"Honestly. You cross paths for a moment and already that fish-stink reaches all the way here? ...Ah, sorry. Do go on. I've sent that friend back."
"So, women ending up together is wrong..."
She got that far, glanced back over her shoulder to read the air, and then went on.
"N-not wrong! But if a meme like that actually exists, and it's taken shape as an anomaly strong enough to affect reality, then we can't just stand by and watch!"
Even as she felt, somehow, that she had buckled under outside pressure, she thumped a fist against her chest and cried out.
"What on earth were you thinking, Lady Behemoth, cooperating with a company like that?! Did you... did you really take them on out of nothing but personal feeling?"
For a demon to declare, in her own voice, that she would lend out her name was no light matter. It carried the meaning of ceding a share of the power and the faith bound up in it as well. Han Seoyeon, even when she received permission for a character built on the Behemoth motif, had surely never imagined the favor would extend this far. The gesture was that audacious.
"As I said—if it's Ryuumai Fuu of the Triage Team, then I can trust her."
"That's a reason it's allowed. It isn't a reason it has to be done."
"...Sharper than I gave you credit for."
At that, the corner of Behemoth's mouth stiffened. That Ryuumai Fuu was someone safe to trust amounted only to this: it would be safe, if the thing were carried out.
Or was it because Han Seoyeon Margarita was her benefactor? Even so, she would never have demanded such treatment, nor even hoped for it. Yelena faltered, looking a little lost.
"Why, exactly? There has to be... there has to be some reason..."
"The Northern Sea Route."
"...What?"
At the words that followed, her face locked for an instant, her eyes those of someone who could not quite take in what she had heard. But she understood soon enough, and turned a look of horror on Behemoth.
"Y-you can't be in your right mind..."
"Yelena."
"No. No, you aren't, are you? You can't do that..."
"Yelena. Quiet."
"...Urk."
The protest was checked at once. Behemoth had bared her teeth and met her eyes, and before the far more overwhelming presence of the beast, Yelena shrank in on herself.
"I am speaking."
"But how could you do this to us..."
"Let's correct one thing first. I have never wanted the support of the likes of you. I merely have a small connection with your mother."
Put plainly, what need did the emperor of an empire have for the backing of a mere pack of beasts? Behemoth only shrugged.
"But we share the same goal..."
"What goal?"
"If the glaciers melt and the sea rises, then in the end even the great land you take such pride in, Lady Behemoth, will sink beneath the ocean...!"
"Snow heaping up doesn't make the ground beneath it disappear."
Only a little water spreads across the top. The earth does not vanish for that. Behemoth said as much, and lightly caught the end of the cigarette between her lips once more.
"Which is why I go on like this, inheriting the name of Behemoth and keeping the seal with everything I have."
In her prime she had been a demon held as Leviathan's very equal. ...She had lost, in the end, at the final battle.
Even so, the weight of the name she still had to bear was anything but light. The sea was forever being invoked as the symbol of vastness, and yet set against the enormous Earth it amounted to no more than a single layer of scales.
This way of seeing things, of course, owed something to Behemoth's instinctive rivalry with Leviathan. To take in another being's self was, in the end, to be eaten away by it, and she herself was no exception. Where a self was truly well defined, there were cases that came near to symbiosis, as with the Necromancer and the Doctor... but that was a genuinely exceptional case.
"How can you say such a thing..."
"Let me ask you the other way around. Yelena, how do you expect 'us' to endure having no ice-free port?"
Yelena's eyes trembled. Spoken like this, it was all too certain.
This was not what came of simply showing Anathema Production a little goodwill and letting things turn out as they had. She had held this purpose from the very beginning; Anathema's proposal had merely reached her along the way.
"......"
What stood before her was no kindly young lady of a wealthy house. She was a sovereign maintaining an absolute monarchy from the shadows of the modern world.
"Of course, there are plans to open the route properly and build a city on the sea there. How would it be if you compromised so far as to move there and live?"
"...There's no way we would accept something like that."
Yelena glared at her, tears welling. It was the home she had lived in all her life. There was no way she could cast it aside so easily...
"Yahoo! One insanely awesome, super-colossal maritime mobile base!"
"Father?! No—but it's our home?! Mother, please, say something too...!"
"It's true we couldn't abandon our home for that alone."
"I knew it, Mother..."
"But if it were a sea fortress packed full of scramjet hypersonic cruise missiles, that would be rather a different matter, wouldn't it?"
"Mother?!"
...To add a note in advance: surprisingly enough, everyone except Yelena herself arrived at a happy ending. Or so they say.