Only, Those Who Flee (7)
It was not long after an Apostle, assisted by a handful of silver bullets, had brought about a truly groundbreaking improvement in labor rights.
"Wait, um, Ninomae-san? Why did Shion-san come to survey a shrine carrying a shotgun...?"
"She's just... a little thorough about being prepared."
"A little...?"
A girl who had thought her friend's older sister was merely frightening to look at did freeze where she stood after watching her raise hell with a shotgun, but the situation itself, somehow or other, settled into a lull.
"I'm sorry. I'm rather sensitive about this sort of thing."
Seoyeon sat down on a cushion and lightly stroked what she had set beside her. Had it been a cat, the picture would have been heartwarming. As it was a twelve-gauge shotgun, it read as nothing short of a threat.
"Th-that 'sort of thing' you just mentioned... have you, by any chance, seen something not exactly pleasant in connection with it...?"
"You'd get a faster answer asking which fields I haven't seen anything unpleasant in. I am an Apostle, after all."
"Right. Of course...?"
The oni seated formally before her averted his eyes from her gaze once more.
Thinking on it, the reaction was only natural. How much horror, how much ugliness, had someone of an Apostle's rank already been made to look upon? They were a breed around whom it would be nothing strange to find a thing one must never touch bristling in every direction.
"Well, more than anything else, I happen to be rather well attuned to the feelings of game developers. There's an acquaintance of mine to thank for that..."
"...?"
"Anyway, there's a history there. I used to have a friend who would contact me at all hours, day or night, just to heave up complaints."
The other's face shifted at once into a look that asked what on earth she was talking about, but Seoyeon ignored it lightly and turned the conversation.
"Let's finish the business we actually came here for. Tell me about this game you're making."
Even if the creator of some game happened to be an anomaly, it was not the Church's place to intervene. She had no intention of demanding anything like a quota for humans, so what need was there to meddle in who made up an organization?
Of course, if that membership skewed too far toward an extreme, they could be marked for watch and dealt with, as had happened in the case of Anathema Production... But she was not about to pick a fight over anomalies who lived on the same mountain pooling their strength—though in practice, it seemed, the arrangement had been closer to outright one-sided exploitation—in order to make a work that was theirs alone.
Even so, Seoyeon had come to the site for a reason. This was a project for the gathering of faith, underway in a place as ritually peculiar as Mount Oe.
It wore the mask of a game, but in the end it took a form not unlike religious proselytizing, and so it had to be watched. All the more so if an oni that the divine spirits were supposed to be keeping suppressed had so much as one foot in the door.
"First of all. From what I've heard, the game you're making here is a romance visual novel, and it's already been released—yet you all look remarkably busy. How did that happen?"
"Ah, that's because it doesn't merely take the usual form of a visual novel. In order to draw an even stronger response from the faithful, we worked action-game elements into it..."
"And you were working like madmen even after the release was already finished because...?"
"It's structured as a two-part work, divided into a first installment and a sequel, so at the moment we're in the thick of production on the second half..."
Han Seoyeon let out a thoughtful hum, and went on.
"Do you have something like a planning document? I'd like to look it over."
"Ah, if it's that, then here..."
Wherever his initial air of arrogance had gone, the oni fetched a sheaf of papers and presented it with thorough courtesy.
"For the time being, we have at least made certain that the order of god and ghost is never reversed, and secured a clear superiority. As you can see, the three main heroines take as their foundation the divine spirits of the shrines on Mount Oe, while the characters drawn from minor spirits—myself included—are sub-heroines, with no romance routes at all."
While Seoyeon fluttered through the pages and read, the oni tacked on one excuse after another.
Hearing him out, she had to grant that it sounded plausible enough. Honestly speaking, the question of how strong the ghosts of Mount Oe might grow was not something she needed to worry overmuch about, so long as the divine spirits, with Inari no Kami at their head, grew stronger still. Thought of that way, it was fair to take this as nothing more than a proposal that they help one another along.
"Oh. This..."
But Hitomi, who had been reading the planning document over Seoyeon's shoulder, suddenly murmured aloud, as if she had found something.
"What is it, Hitomi?"
"No, it's nothing. I just started wondering whether this is really all right... If you think it's fine, Shion, then it's probably fine, isn't it?"
Something about it must have struck her as off. But she was quick to add that Seoyeon was the expert on the hidden world, far more so than she was, and so she herself had probably simply been mistaken.
"I make mistakes too, on occasion. If something's caught on you, I'd be grateful if you said so without holding back."
"The thing is—and this is only my personal opinion, I'm no expert—doesn't it feel like the sub-heroines are going to end up more popular?"
Only once Seoyeon had encouraged her to speak as freely as she liked did Hitomi, at last, begin to set her opinion out with care.
"Popularity, you say?"
"No matter how I turn it over, the flow of it seems to play up this oni character's charm even more. The sort of thing where 'why on earth doesn't this one have a romance route?' rises to become the prevailing opinion online... If the line between main heroine and sub-heroine is just clearly drawn, does that mean no problem actually arises when it comes to taking in faith?"
At Hitomi's words, Seoyeon looked through the planning document once more. Then she raised her head and studied the oni's face.
It was the expression of a man utterly ruined. That alone was enough to convince her the question did not need to be asked.
And so Han Seoyeon skipped the question and moved straight to the interrogation. As a concrete means to that end, she picked up the shotgun at her side once again.
"Is there anything you'd like to say?"
There was almost no change in Seoyeon's expression, but her eyes said it clearly enough: she would prefer that whatever he had to say not turn out to be his last words.
"Mm. Spare me."
"The first part of this game has already been released, and stopping the sequel from coming out would be unfair to the fans. Wouldn't it be faster, then, to simply smash the vessel the faith is meant to flow into?"
"S-screen time! Nothing can be done about the first installment we've already put out, but in the sequel I'll increase the divine spirits' share! And I'll cut my own events drastically!"
"Th-the scenario's already finished, though?!"
"Enough! My neck is about to come off right here—does that really matter?!"
At the sudden decision to change the scenario, a one-horned youkai farther inside shrieked in horror. One of the people in charge of the scenario, by the look of it.
But the oni's will was firm. Cling to his own share here out of regret for the faith due to come in, and his head and his torso might part ways on the spot.
Watching that, Han Seoyeon murmured, lightly.
"It's a gun, so your neck won't be cut. Everything from the lower jaw upward will simply be blown off."
"Shuten-doji will cut his screen time! Cutting it is enough, isn't it?!"
"Aaah! No! I mean it, you can't! Just gut me instead!"
"Then it's my head that gets split!"
And immediately, the place descended into chaos.
Whether it was because Seoyeon's arrival had only just won them a guarantee of their labor rights, or whether this was payback for the drudgery endured until now—a chance, at last, to make someone choke on it—the youkai in charge sprawled out on the floor and began to howl.
"Um, what if we did it like this?"
While Han Seoyeon watched the spectacle with her brow faintly creased, it was Hitomi who spoke, as if a good idea had just occurred to her.
"In the end, the problem is that the game became too much of a hit, and so too much faith might come pouring in on this oni here, right? Enough that it could be dangerous."
It was a game already released, and enjoying a fair success of its own. Even in a situation like this, mobilizing the Church's power would make it possible to bury the game... but doing so risked the harm reaching the other divine spirits who had joined the project as well.
The faith coming in, in other words, could not be helped. All this talk of killing the oni or letting him live was only a means of scattering elsewhere a faith that was going to arise regardless. And if that was all it was, then surely there was no need to go so far as spilling blood. That was the thought that came to Hitomi.
"And while we're settling the matter of paying them for their labor—couldn't the anomalous beings here simply divide up the faith that comes in, so the amount any one person receives goes down?"
"What..."
In short, it was the proposal to raise a hundred thousand Shuten-dojis.
"Wow! That's a great idea!"
"Boss, put this plan into effect at once! Remember the principle—the land belongs to the one who tills it!"
"Yeah! Now that I think about it, this is faith we earned by working, so why are you gulping it down alone?! Give us some of the crumbs too!"
...Or else the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, as set forth in the writings of a certain bearded Heavenly Demon.
It did not take long at all before the youkai cave of Mount Oe had, in a flash, become the site of a labor dispute and a bamboo-spear revolution against the privileged.
"I did suggest it, but this isn't what I was trying to do..."
"Miss Ninomae Hitomi. May I confirm one thing?"
"Wh-what is it...?"
"This Mount Oe communist community you have just proposed. How does its system of taxation work?"
"I never proposed anything like that!"