A New Teaching with Authority (2)
The maid, Momomomo Chisa, was keeping the civilian manager occupied. In her place, Han Seoyeon had taken up, for the time being, the duty of guarding Hyakurenno Yuri.
It was not an explicit contract, but it amounted to the same thing as a tacit agreement. At least, that was how Seoyeon saw it.
"…What are you doing?"
Which was why, even under the look Hyakurenno Yuri gave her—as if the whole business were absurd—she could stand there with perfect composure.
"The protection of my charge."
"Not preparations to summon a demon?"
Yuri sat crouched on the bedding, and around her every sort of implement had been laid out: totems of unknowable origin, a silver cross, talismans red and yellowed with age, even a magic circle drawn in chalk upon the floor. No matter how one looked at it, the arrangement made her seem less a person under guard than an offering set out for a rite, and her reaction was hardly unreasonable.
Seoyeon, however, only regarded her with a deadpan gaze, as if to ask whether there was a problem.
"Isn't this a little excessive?"
"I don't know what degree of protection the young lady of the Hyakurenno family ordinarily receives, so I did the best I could with the tools I had on hand."
"That is exactly why I'm saying it's excessive!"
Han Seoyeon had no measure of Chisa's ability, Chisa having been the bodyguard to begin with, and so calibrating things to about what Chisa usually did was impossible. Even so, there was such a thing as a proper limit. By any ordinary standard, there ought to have been a point at which one thought, this should be enough…
…No. This person's common sense might be a little different. Just a little.
Yuri thought that far, then shook her head. And who, after all, was the person standing in front of her?
On the day Han Seoyeon had carried home Chisa, collapsed in the street, the maid's own account had told Yuri that she was a Holy Knight, and the Sister who knew Mary. Unkind as it was to say of the woman herself, Yuri had had no choice but to look into her in her own way. Among the Holy Knights of Japan there were a great many especially fond of presuming guilt, and one of Yuri's own classmates was an anomaly—a werewolf.
Saint Bartholomew, Han Seoyeon, was a child who had been picked up by a Holy Knight and raised from quite a young age, and it seemed she had not been long in contact with the world outside the Church either. Raised as a Holy Knight from childhood, it would be no surprise if a common sense or two had come out crooked. Yuri muttered as much to herself.
"Haa… Fine. It's not as if I can tell you to clear all of this away now……."
She sighed, nodded, and then, dawdling, slipped under the covers.
Han Seoyeon, her work finished, rose and turned out the lights, and started toward her own bedding, set aside in a corner of the room…….
"Wait. Where are you going?"
"Pardon?"
At the voice that came in that instant, Seoyeon's steps stopped dead.
"Where am I going? I'm going to lie down as well…"
"That's what I'm asking. Why over there?"
Silence. Their eyes met.
Then where, exactly, was she meant to sleep? Seoyeon put the question into her gaze, and Yuri, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, lifted the blanket she was under—as if to tell her to come in. Looking now, Yuri had settled herself off to one side from the start, as though she had accounted all along for one more person.
"I… I'm to sleep there?"
"Hm? Were you planning to sleep out there?"
It was Yuri whose eyes went wide. Seoyeon was the one who had a right to be startled.
"Listen, Miss Shion. I am of the Hyakurenno."
"Yes. I'm well aware."
"Which means that if I chose to, I could carry ritual defenses of this level with me no matter when I was, or where."
"I suppose so. No—for a house of that standing, it would be strange not to……."
Seoyeon got that far and closed her mouth.
Thinking it over, a person as precious as this could have had a ward of this caliber follow her anywhere, and it would not have been strange. And yet the ritual presence coming off Yuri herself was faint. At most, she carried a protective charm, an amulet or two.
"Do you know why I don't use magic that's too strong?"
"Hmm. I couldn't say."
"Too much protection, and a curse has a way of splashing onto the person beside you."
Because she feared the maid who never left her side might be hurt. She did not say that much, but it was plain enough.
"So I'll ask just one thing. This ward is extremely sturdy, isn't it?"
"Among what I can make with my skill under the present conditions, it is the finest."
"Then, if someone cursed me like this, who would it run to?"
Han Seoyeon, of course. Had they been in different rooms it might have been otherwise, but in the same room there was no question.
"No. I'm a Holy Knight, so a curse or two would be a light—"
"Get in."
"That is…"
"Come in."
There was considerable force in the voice, the kind of presence that suited the heir of a great house. In the end Han Seoyeon had no choice but to be the one who yielded and went in. There was simply no air of the other side giving ground.
"Then… excuse me."
She took only her pillow and carefully slipped beneath Hyakurenno Yuri's blanket, into a distance where each could feel the other's warmth and scent—close enough that, if one were not careful, even the touch of the other might be felt.
"…Heh."
Only then did Yuri smile, satisfied and thoroughly pleased with herself. At point-blank range, their eyes met.
"……?"
And Yuri wrapped an arm around Seoyeon's waist.
At a development far too sudden, Han Seoyeon froze solid. She was so thoroughly flustered that her brain, in the most literal sense, simply stopped.
"Um… Miss Hyakurenno?"
"Ah! I-I'm sorry. I have a habit of holding something when I sleep……."
Yuri, too, realized a moment late what she had done, and startled. Her eyes went wide, and in the dark her cheeks flushed all at once.
"……Huh?"
Naturally she moved to take her hand off Han Seoyeon, and a moment later her face turned somehow peculiar—a complicated feeling, if one had to name it, in which disbelief and admiration had snarled together.
"Um… Miss Shion? If it isn't rude, could you tense your stomach?"
"Yes? Well…"
Bewildered as she was, Seoyeon did as she was asked. Strictly speaking it was already more than rude enough, but it was not a request there was much reason to refuse. What followed was Yuri's hand, and at the ticklish sensation Han Seoyeon flinched for an instant.
"Whoa. Whoooa……."
Hyakurenno Yuri's eyes began to shine. By now even Han Seoyeon had no choice but to understand what she was after.
"Whoa. I thought they were impressive when I saw them at the hot spring, but this is beyond anything I imagined……."
That hunger, seeking out another person's muscle, belonged to what people called a gym rat. Han Seoyeon recalled that the woman's hobby was self-cultivation, though she had never imagined the category covered not only the mind but the body as well.
"At this level, she's past Chisa… no, beyond even that?"
"…It would be a problem if someone who can restore her body with holy power fell short of someone who cannot."
"Wrapping divinity around the body and training for strength… so there was a method like that…!"
The reaction was a little much, but if it was nothing but praise, Seoyeon could hardly feel bad about it. No—if she were precise, she was rather glad. She was not the sort whose eyes rolled back at the mere mention of exercise, but her profession left her no choice but to put effort into keeping her body, and when someone praised the results of hard training, anyone would be pleased. That was only natural.
"Would you like to feel them yourself?"
So it had to be said that, without quite meaning to—or quite unlike herself—she had gotten carried away.
"Really? Is that all right?"
"Of course. There's no reason it wouldn't be."
Praise heaped upon praise, the easing of resistance that came of them both being women, the peculiar fellow-feeling of people who trained, and beneath it all a very faint wish to show off. Amid those feelings Han Seoyeon smiled faintly and carefully undid the front of her yukata.
Yuri reached out and, very carefully, felt along her stomach. The abdominals, tracing a captivating line, were as distinctly firm under the hand as they were sharp to the eye—not merely hard, but carrying a strange softness as well. Truly…….
Yuri swallowed.
"Sister!"
"……!"
It was then, with a crash, that the sliding door flew open and Tsunashi Tenka appeared.
Yuri startled and turned her head, and her eyes met Tenka's. What was odd was that even the one who had thrown the door open wore bewilderment plain on her face.
"S-sorry!"
A moment later Tenka shut the door in a hurry and was gone, as if she had seen something she was never meant to see…….
"Ah."
Only then did Hyakurenno Yuri realize how the two of them must look to a third party: one futon, clothes undone, hands on bare skin.
And only then did Han Seoyeon herself begin to register, detail by detail. A sports bra, nearly black, that seemed to prize function above all else; above it, a tattoo of thorned vines climbing from her chest to the nape of her neck; muscle that was distinct without surrendering its femininity, and skin whose spring could be felt by the eyes alone.
"Ah, that's…"
The moment all of it finally came into focus, shame crashed over her all at once, and Yuri's lips parted without quite forming the words.
Crash!
"—Eek?!"
But Tsunashi Tenka burst in again, and with her another tremendous noise. Thinking back, she had flung the door open without hesitation the first time as well; she had plainly come on urgent business. She had fled for a moment, but it seemed Tenka's errand was important enough to overcome even that.
"Ninomae-chan went outside and she won't come back! It's been almost an hour now…!"
Han Seoyeon's expression went cold. Thoroughly.