My Light and My Salvation (4)
The body hung half-severed at the waist, dangling, wounds scattered across what remained of it—and worst of all, the limbs had been cut clean away and lay tumbled across the floor.
Had he been anything other than an anomaly, she would already have taken him for a corpse. Yet the anomalous man was still writhing, still drawing breath. Even so, if Hitomi had only possessed the will for it, finishing him would not have been difficult.
"......"
Taking a life, however, was a thing she could not help but shrink from.
"S-Sarah, Sarah Groothuizen. You know. You do know, don't you..."
The man was still turning those mad eyes their way. Even with his limbs blown off, he writhed and crawled, inch by inch.
"My, my. And you think this is a moment when you're permitted to look up?"
Shirase Hikari moved before Hitomi could so much as decide how to answer. She had hung back so as not to hinder the swing of Hitomi's blade; now she planted a foot on the anomaly's head and pinned him where he lay. A light smile rested at the corner of her mouth, but the eyes looking down were unmistakably steeped in contempt. Whatever else one might say of her, she was still the sort to worry over her contractor, and the man behind that threat had just presented himself. She was distinctly displeased.
Keeping him pinned, she turned only her head toward Hitomi.
"Well? What do you intend to do now?"
"For now, we wait for the Church to arrive, don't we...? There might even be an accomplice."
The thought came from the phone call at the very start. That voice had unmistakably belonged to a woman, which was precisely why Hitomi still could not let her tension ease, even now.
"...Hold on."
"Contractor?"
"Shh."
Another set of footsteps reached the ears she had kept so sharply pricked. From the sound of them, whoever it was wasn't wearing shoes—and that alone slackened her guard a fraction. Intruders considerate enough to take their shoes off at the door were hardly common.
It still wasn't certain, though, so she loosed another bat and sent it down the hall. Soon the bat's sight began to overlay her left eye. It was the corridor she walked every day, and yet with the vantage sunk so low, the familiar space felt strangely wrong. It wasn't long before the bat came face to face with the visitor.
"It has been too long, Lady Ninomae."
"...Mr. Philotanuss?"
The blond, blue-eyed demon—one of the familiars Ninomae had scattered at the outset caught in one hand—lifted his free hand and offered a light wave. At an unhurried pace he ambled up the stairs and, soon enough, found his way to the room where Hitomi waited.
"How did you get here...?"
"Did you not fling familiars in every direction, crying out for help? Former contractor or not, there is affection between us. I thought I might look in."
Philotanuss answered with a smoothness that felt faintly shameless, then turned his gaze on the anomaly sprawled across the floor.
"Aha. So this wretch was the culprit?"
"Ah—yes. He broke in, demanding the personal information of a VTuber I know..."
"Ha... there are strange people in this world, I must say. Still, you seem to have handled it admirably, and that is a relief. Enough that I nearly wonder whether I came for nothing."
Without hesitation he stepped up to the anomaly and crouched before him. Hikari, whose foot was still on the man's head, wore a faintly cowed look as she quietly eased back. It was hardly a strange reaction. Within Belial's faction, Philotanuss was all but Shirase Hikari's direct superior.
He spared her only a glance. Then he seized the fallen creature by the hair, yanked his face up, and met his eyes.
"Oho? Those eyes. You belong to the Rosicrucian Order, do you not?"
"...Is it someone you know?"
"Not a person, no. The organization, I know. I once formed a brief contract with one of their number."
And just like that, Philotanuss had the intruder's identity laid bare. Hitomi could not have said how—some emblem of the secret society he recognized, most likely, or something of the sort.
"As you can see, this friend wears the look of a man struck to the quick... wait. No? What is this. And that inscrutable expression—what is it supposed to be?"
"Th-this guy is Phi-Philotanuss...? That can't—"
Whatever the anomaly had been about to say, Philotanuss drove his head back into the floor with a splintering crack.
"The head would seem to have taken quite the injury. Then again, a man not in his right mind—that would be just the sort to track muddy feet into the garden of lilies."
One side of the skull had caved in deeply where it struck, but the body was still writhing. Even this, it seemed, had not yet cut off his breath.
"......"
Hitomi watched it all with an expression gone faintly stiff. The information was only fragmentary, but she had sense enough to sketch the shape of things from that alone, and Philotanuss, seeming to feel it, regarded her with a look that had turned slightly awkward.
"...The only Philotanuss I know is you, Mr. Philotanuss."
"...Truly, you are dozens of times more angelic than that friend beside you."
"Hey—why am I the one getting hit all of a sudden?! What did I even do!"
At Hitomi's words, which seemed to tell him not to trouble himself over it, Philotanuss finally let his expression loosen and huffed a short laugh. His own face had gone rigid without his noticing.
"Well. It is what it is. One might say my circumstances resemble those of the Grand Duchess of Rus."
"Uh... Lady Behemoth?"
"Just as she took unto herself the name and the power, the authority and the dignity, of that hippopotamus already dead—so too is this body of mine in much the same state. There is, of course, the difference of whether one began as human or as demon."
"I ought to keep this a secret too, shouldn't I...?"
"I would be grateful if you did. It is a matter known to precious few, even among my acquaintances."
So saying, he grinned and added one thing more.
"Ah. Lady Margarita, you may tell."
"Is that really all right?"
"In truth, it is not. But should Lady Margarita ask, you would answer her in the end regardless, would you not?"
"...Mmm."
Hitomi looked away.
If she were made to choose between her loyalty to Philotanuss and her loyalty to Han Seoyeon, she would choose the latter. She knew that much about herself. Were she familiar enough with his circumstances to understand that exposure would truly leave him in trouble, and were she certain it would do Seoyeon no real harm, then yes—she might keep the secret. But to say that she might hide it if only he explained the details would be little better than blackmail. With someone else, perhaps. It was not an attitude one took toward a person who had come running, worried she might have been caught up in something awful.
"You scattered the familiars so, I take it, because reaching the Church by ordinary means would not do."
"Ah, yes. That's right. It seemed our communications had been hijacked..."
"Now that we have him in hand, I should think it safe enough to make contact. Still, one never knows, so I shall use my own network as well. Whatever the trouble, one of the two is certain to reach the Church."
"Thank you."
Hitomi dipped her head in a small bow.
The Church's Holy Knights arrived before even a minute had passed. Judging by the time, they had most likely come after spotting the familiars she had scattered at the start. Even granting that, it was astonishingly fast—though the speed made sense once she considered just how highly the Church in Japan valued her.
"Our apologies. Bartholomew stepped away for a moment, and we ought to have been that much more vigilant in her stead..."
"No. It's all right. Honestly, who could have expected an attack like this?"
The man who seemed to speak for the dispatched Holy Knights bent at the waist as he apologized, and Hitomi waved him off. To demand they have foreseen this and prepared a response in advance would have been unreasonable, no matter how one looked at it.
"Um... but this, to Shion..."
"As a rule, we will report it. No—I haven't the confidence to survive what would follow if we didn't."
"...I suppose not."
What do I do. She's going to worry so much. Hitomi's smile stiffened, just a little. That was only how she felt, of course. In her head, she had already accepted that Seoyeon ought to be told.
"By the way, Mr. Philotanuss said the culprit was with the Rosicrucian Order, or something along those lines..."
Rather than face the trouble waiting in her future, Hitomi decided to protect her sanity by turning the conversation elsewhere.
"The Rosicrucian Order, you say?"
"Yes. He took one look at the eyes and said so."
"He knew from the eyes alone? One moment—you, the demon. Explain this in a little more detail..."
Surprise plain on his face, the Holy Knight turned to address Philotanuss. A conversation might actually have followed, had the demon in the suit not already vanished from the spot.
"...What kind of organization is it?"
"To put it simply, think of them as a group that holds a kind of eugenics as its creed. You know the scientist villains who turn up in manga? The ones going on about forging a new humanity through biotechnology, and so on."
"Ah... I see what you mean."
"They used to keep to themselves, though. To do a thing like this... Have the organization's directives changed? Or is it simply one man going off on his own? Some internal split, perhaps...?"
With that, the Holy Knight sank into muttering, his expression deeply grave.
"Hmmmmm..."
In a situation this serious, was it really all right to reveal the truth—that they hadn't even been after Mary herself, but that this was only the rampage of a blackened fan out for another VTuber's personal information? Really...? Hitomi could not help turning the worry over.