The Waters of All Under Heaven, Gathered into One Place (2)
To understand how things had come to this, one had to turn the clock back a little.
"Don't you think it's about time I collected what I'm owed on our contract?"
The one who opened with that, laughing a soft hoho, was of course Shirase Hikari—the demon contracted to Hitomi. At a glance her bearing was noble enough to call Hyakurenno Yuri to mind, but underneath she overflowed with the intent to wring every last drop of payment from the deal. Well, of course. She was a demon born of faith drawn from a character who had haraguro—black-hearted to the core—stamped across her official profile in four unmistakable characters.
"You did say you'd pay whatever price I named, didn't you? I wasn't particularly looking to strike an unfair bargain, but—well. You were the one who blurted it out in such a rush. Nothing to be done. As you know perfectly well, a verbal agreement is still a contract."
That was the attitude: she hadn't meant to go so far, but the other party had offered it up first, so she had no choice but to take it. If she truly had no other motive and this had simply been forced on her, one could have set down a token scrap of silver as an offering and been done. Carrying on like this, though, her insides were plain to see.
"Let's see. What ought I to ask for in return—"
So she said, drawing the corners of her mouth up into a faint smile.
Click.
"……"
Creak. Click. Click-click.
"……Um. Why are you doing that here?"
"Ah. I'm only performing a little firearms maintenance. You needn't pay it any mind."
"No, what I mean is, why here…"
"Hitomi and I are sharing a bedroom at present. This counts as my room as well."
Hikari kept the smile fixed on her face and rolled her eyes to the side. There sat Han Seoyeon, in the middle of stripping an old rifle and tending to it.
A note, while we're here. Margarita was a woman of extreme obsession when it came to outfitting herself, and if one of her weapons looked old, that meant it was a modified piece that put something fresh off the factory line to shame—either its firepower had been physically pushed to the limit, or its long history carried a theological, even sorcerous, worth to match. Which of the two, Hikari didn't know, and she didn't want to. What she did know was that if it came to that, the thing would be more than enough to pulverize Shirase Hikari's skull and send her straight back to hell.
"Don't mind me. Please, go on. The contract is between the two of you, so you ought to be able to settle it yourselves, shouldn't you?"
It was the sort of remark that meant relax, there's no need to be nervous. Or the sort a dentist makes when they tell you to raise your left hand if it hurts.
"Uh, that's…"
"From what Hitomi tells me, aside from being summoned so you could run your mouth, you don't seem to have been much help. Ah. That was me talking to myself."
"Why is a Korean talking to herself in Japanese—no. It's nothing. Nothing at all……"
Hikari crumpled in the end. Watching her, Hitomi gave a bitter smile.
"So long as it isn't too unreasonable, I'll hear you out. Shion's only like that because she's worried about me. She won't resort to violence unless you try to stick us with some absurd bill."
Probably. So saying, she patted the thoroughly hunched Hikari on the shoulder. It had, without anyone intending it, turned into something of a bad-cop, good-cop routine.
"My married woman, the flower I was cradling in both hands……"
"Shion wasn't even a party to the contract in the first place, was she…?"
At the sight of her lamenting over a story that wasn't the least bit pitiable, Hitomi's expression stiffened for a moment as well. Setting the married-woman talk aside, Han Seoyeon had nothing to do with this contract. If Hitomi were truly bound with no way out, she would of course roll up her sleeves and step in—though not before splitting the other party's head open first.
"More to the point, back during that clone act, you slipped in beside us pretending to be a familiar, didn't you, Miss Hikari?!"
"But you never let me have the main event…! You basically only let me watch, and that's just leaving a person to wither and die! It's not like anything would fester if you let me have a piece, is it?!"
"So the demon finally shows her true colors?"
"A girl is allowed to dream, isn't she…?!"
Click. At some point—impossible to say when—Seoyeon had reassembled the rifle and was working the bolt. She wasn't exactly aiming the muzzle at Hikari. Then again, was Han Seoyeon about to shoot Hitomi with it?
"Ngh… Nothing for it. Then I'll compromise. At the very least, let me see a bikini."
"Compromise…?"
Hitomi's voice came out flat with disbelief. Before any compromise, wasn't this simply a one-sided demand?
"Hitomi in a bikini…?"
"…Hold on. Shion, why are you reacting like that?!"
"I mean, this one is genuinely hard to resist……"
And what sent Hitomi's disbelief even farther off was Han Seoyeon's attitude.
"The contractor shall guarantee a bikini!"
"Hitomi, a contract really ought to be kept where it can be, don't you think?"
Hitomi stared, eyes round, at the woman who had been on her side a moment ago and had stuck herself to the other in a flash.
"Ngh……"
Hikari's words could have been ignored outright—though, given Hitomi's temperament, even that would have pricked her conscience a little—but when the one making the demand was none other than Han Seoyeon, retreat was difficult. A bikini. She had never worn one in her life. Most of Hitomi's hobbies were shut up indoors, and she had no memory of a beach or a pool since elementary school; swimming class through middle and high school was the whole of it. In short, the only swimsuits she had ever put on were a child's and a school one, and both were one-pieces that showed relatively little. Resistance, on any number of fronts, was hard to avoid.
"Then you're wearing one too, Shion!"
"…Me?"
Seoyeon faltered for an instant, as if it had never once occurred to her that the arrow might come flying back her way. She had received the full measure of Hitomi's affection up to now, and still the idea of her own bare body being looked at in that light was unfamiliar to her. What most people felt upon looking at Han Seoyeon was nothing other than a biological dread.
"Well… if that's what it takes for you to wear one too, Hitomi."
And so she accepted the deal without much hesitation. In the end, what she would be wearing was only a scrap of cloth, and if she was wearing it for Hitomi to see, there was little reason to shrink from it. Hadn't she shown Hitomi far more than that already? Thinking of what they often saw of each other in bed, a swimsuit might even count as covered.
…Had she recalled blushing in that airy, fluttering dress at the dress shop the other day, she might have realized how complacent the thought was. But human beings are creatures who repeat the same mistakes.
If they were going to wear swimsuits anyway, and the weather was hot, they might as well go to the beach. It wasn't particularly strange for the plan to run in that direction. The catch was that Hitomi had been attacked not so long ago, and a crowded place was hard not to shy from.
"Above all, a swimsuit leaves almost nowhere to hide a weapon."
"Wait, that's your standard…?"
By now she was giving off the distinct air of a child clutching a security doll, and Hitomi let out a dry laugh before she could stop herself. In any case, that was why the question came up of whether they might borrow Hyakurenno Yuri's private beach. As a side note, what came out of her mouth was not a check on whether such a beach existed, but a direct may we borrow it—which hardly needed explaining. Common sense said there was no way she lacked one. For a house like the Hyakurenno, a private island hidden from the Japanese government would not have been strange, let alone a swimming beach.
…Even that Han Seoyeon, however, had not expected the answer that came back to offer not the Hyakurenno private beach, but Hyakurenno Yuri's private beach.
And so the two of them—plus one creature, perhaps—settled on a day to visit the shore. Judging by the way the talk had gone, Yuri would probably turn up as well, which meant her two bodyguards would come along as a matter of course. What followed, just as naturally, was the swimsuit problem. It went without saying that neither Han Seoyeon nor Hitomi owned one of her own. They would have to begin at the shopping stage.
"……"
"……"
And so, stepping into the department store, the two of them fell silent without either having to go first. It was a weekend afternoon, and yet there was not a single person inside who looked like a customer. Wherever they turned, there were only the occasional figures who seemed to be clerks.
"…Did Miss Yuri say something?"
"…She did ask when we were planning to go shopping."
"Ah……"
She had never imagined that was a hint the store would be emptied out. Obvious as it was, even Yuri didn't charter an entire department store every time someone from Anathema came to shop. If she had gone out of her way to do something she didn't usually do, it was probably a consideration in her own fashion: swimsuit shopping would involve trying things on, and she didn't want them embarrassed under other people's eyes. That was what Seoyeon thought. The scale of the consideration was bizarre no matter how she turned it over, but when had Yuri's behavior ever been a matter of a day or two?
"Anyway, as for where they sell the swimsuits…"
Having talked herself into a reasonable acceptance, Seoyeon turned her head. Summer was drawing to a close, but put another way, it was still summer. The swimsuits were unlikely to be tucked away in some corner. Sure enough, Han Seoyeon found a rack with them hanging and pointed.
"Hitomi. I believe it's that way."
"It's over there, Shion."
"……?"
"……Yes?"
The two of them had pointed in precisely opposite directions. They turned and looked at each other, and a moment later each looked the way the other had indicated.
……Swimsuits were on display not only where they had each pointed, but everywhere they looked, and both their faces went stiff again.
"Miss Yuuuriiii?!"
"…This is, even for her, genuinely beyond what I expected."