Tear Down This Temple (3)
3-16-15 Sekiguchi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo — St. Mary's Cathedral, the Tokyo Cathedral.
Of the three ecclesiastical provinces in Japan, the Tokyo Province was the one they also called the archprovince, the face of Japanese Catholicism. The cathedral of the Archdiocese of Tokyo, heart of that province, was this very church in Sekiguchi.
Lately, of course, Osaka and Nagasaki had been threatening that political footing. A hardline faction had run out of control and given offense to Apostle Bartholomew, and the blame had been dumped on Archbishop Ibuki Hayato Eobano — ordinary of the Tokyo Province, and the foremost of the hardliners within the Japanese Church. Even so, the importance of Tokyo itself had not vanished. Pushed back though they were, the three provinces remained roughly abreast, or at most the other side held the slightest edge. The title of archprovince had been emptied of its meaning, and yet as a province Tokyo still stood level with Nagasaki and Osaka.
And in the basement of the cathedral that represented that province, a great many people had gathered to deliberate. Clergy and holy knights of the Church were there, and outsiders as well — the Onmyoryo, the Association of Shinto Shrines, even a few from the academic societies.
As for what this assembly was arguing so heatedly about...
"Senpai, take a look at this. They say they'll spray refrigerant to stop global warming."
"They're out of their minds. Go run it through the shredder."
"And what of these ones? Their motto, apparently, is guiding wandering spirits to their proper place."
"'A greenhouse for raising necromancers,' dressed up in the most needlessly elaborate language? Give it a rest, granny."
They were, in fact, screening candidates for an organization to cooperate with the Church.
The Rosicrucian Order — a name anyone who had so much as dabbled in the occult would have heard somewhere. Among the groups flying that banner, the one the Church had officially recognized had been dissolved not long ago, and so another Church-sanctioned Rosicrucian Order had to be raised before some dubious outfit snatched the name for itself. The authority to decide how that would be done had, by a turn of circumstance, fallen all the way to the Tokyo Province.
"Oh, look at this one. The 'Dorureki Animation Production Support Association.' These ones wouldn't get up to anything strange, would they?"
"So what, they're going to air ten seasons? Twenty? I'm not asking them to run forever like Sazae-san, but they've got to last at least as long as Conan or Precure. And more to the point — why is an animation studio even bidding?"
Needless to say, the choosing was no simple matter. The ideal was an organization of direct use to the Church. Failing that, one that would spend the faith harvested in the Rosicrucian name on something the Church considered trivial. And if even that was too much to hope for, then the least bad of a sorry lot — the best of the worst. Whoever they chose also needed a measure of real strength, since it would hardly do to lend out a precious name only to have the organization seized by cranks, and because this farce could not be repeated every year, an organization built to last as long as possible was the ideal.
...What they actually had was every species of riffraff filing an application on the off chance of an opportunity. A jewel to be dug out of a burial mound of trash. For Archbishop Ibuki Hayato, watching the proceedings, a sigh was simply inevitable.
"Why not hand it over to our side instead? As it happens, I hear they're planning to establish a new department for counterintelligence against anomalies."
Seeing the look on the archbishop's face, a man seated nearby had spoken up in a low voice. He looked to be in his early thirties, and he wore rimless glasses with red temples. He had come from the Onmyoryo, under the Disaster Prevention Division of the Fire and Disaster Management Agency — which was to say, he was attending as a de facto proxy of the Japanese government.
"An amusing joke."
"Is it?"
Ibuki Hayato did not so much as glance at the proposal. The attitude was, depending on one's view, a little insulting, but the onmyoji only smiled it off. He had likely known it would never be accepted, and tossed it out as a genuine joke.
An onmyoji of the Onmyoryo and a holy knight of the Church differed in a number of ways, beginning with what each of them was founded upon, but they were alike in being personnel who answered anomalies. They stood, at base, in a cooperative relationship, and at the same time in a certain degree of competition, and turf wars were of course not entirely absent. Handing the Rosicrucian name to a subordinate organ of the Church might have been one thing. The Onmyoryo was out of the question.
"Your Grace!"
"...Hm?"
The archbishop had only just returned to the screening when a young holy knight flung the door open and came hurrying in. Several people frowned at the discourtesy, and Ibuki himself was faintly displeased — but he steadied himself, and spoke.
"What is it?"
The boy was still no more than a trainee, and yet his temperament was remarkably calm and grown-up. He would not have done a thing like this over some trifle. Best, then, to hear him out.
"It's — Apostle Bartholomew is asking for you urgently... and her expression is rather..."
Looking again, the holy knight's face was still stiff with fear. However much the other party might be that Han Seoyeon, she did not radiate an aura of terror across a distance. If the boy was frightened even now, her expression must have been that severe.
"I'll step out for a moment."
Archbishop Ibuki rose as he said it, addressing the room. No one asked where he thought he was going without finishing the work in front of him. If an Apostle had come in a hurry, there would be a reason of matching weight. So they assumed.
I have a fair idea of what she's come about...
The matter itself, as he saw it, was not so very urgent. But that was only his view. Dawdle any longer, and Han Seoyeon would unquestionably force her way in here.
"Go to my office. Bring me the scroll in the second drawer of the desk."
"Huh? Ah — yes. Understood."
Having given the order to the trainee knight who had come as messenger, Archbishop Ibuki left the room and walked the corridor. In the chapel, where the crucifix and the altar stood, he found Bartholomew in civilian clothes, seated on one of the long pews.
"Bartholomew."
"Archbishop Ibuki."
The mere sight of her was enough to make the skin crawl. She was always like that, but it was worse today, and the fault was surely that freezing stare and the expression locked hard across her face. Han Seoyeon rose and came toward him without hurry. She set the handbag she had been carrying down on a pew, but the pistol she had already drawn from it remained in her hand.
"You had better explain yourself well."
As she closed the distance she racked the slide, and the pistol answered with a hard metallic click. Archbishop or not, he could not fail to know what that gun was for. The only people here were the two of them. This Bartholomew was hardly about to shoot herself. Seoyeon came on at a steady tread until she was point-blank, and set the muzzle against Ibuki's forehead.
The archbishop's face showed a trace of tension. That, and nothing more. An Apostle was a being of an entirely different order, but the office of archbishop was no small thing either. He had lived a life far removed from combat, yet Ibuki Hayato had not won this seat in a game of dice. A man who had weathered his share of storms was not about to fall into a panic over so little.
"An explanation. Of what?"
"You mean to play innocent? Very well. If you insist, I suppose there is no reason I cannot spell it out for you."
Han Seoyeon held the muzzle steady and stared the archbishop down.
"Ninomae Hitomi. You were the one who induced Himei Hidetaka of the Rosicrucian Order to attack my wife. Were you not?"
Her voice was cold.
"The number used in the crime belonged to the late Masazawa Reina. Yes — one of the dead from the Placeholder incident. An anomaly, I imagine, built by twisting the urban legend of the ghost phone call."
"And how does that become proof that I put the man up to it?"
"I heard about her colleagues from Placeholder's sole survivor... Natsugahara Hina. Even as a ghost, she originated in Masazawa herself, and that let me narrow the candidates easily."
If any stray dog or ox could seize a ghost and set it to work, the world would have ended long ago and then some. It required technique. It required conditions. Cross-checking every scrap of information — among them the fact that Masazawa Reina had been Catholic — produced a single conclusion. Her soul was bound here, at Sekiguchi Cathedral.
"You had better explain yourself well, Ibuki Hayato Eobano."
The title of archbishop had been left off the address. What that meant was plain: depending on his answer, she might strip him of the office by apostolic authority alone. Not that it would come to that. The bullet would pass through Ibuki Hayato's skull first.
"And if I said it was necessary for the sake of the Church?"
"...What is that supposed to mean."
"The usual sort of thing, isn't it? Accepting a few sacrifices in order to preserve order — the Church does it often enough."
This time, the object of that sacrifice had simply been Ninomae Hitomi. The archbishop said it without a flicker.
"Why do you think a matter as important as the Rosicrucian name was entrusted to the Tokyo Province, after its momentum had already broken?"
"...Payment for this affair?"
"Yes. That's right."
In exchange for Archbishop Ibuki Hayato undertaking the work, the upper ranks would grant him a political gain. That, he said, had been the transaction.
"What in the world—"
Seoyeon had just set her teeth, about to demand the rest, when the young holy knight reached the chapel and cried out, his face blank with shock.
"Your Grace?!"
Well he might scream. An Apostle was holding a gun to an archbishop's head.
"Hand it over."
"Ah — that's — yes, yes..."
Only after the archbishop spoke did the trainee knight creep forward and surrender what he was carrying.
Parchment... no. By the smell of it, vellum?
It was a scroll, rolled tight, and Seoyeon frowned when she saw it. The archbishop held it out. She hesitated a moment, then set the pistol down and took the scroll. The gun had only ever been a means of giving the threat a concrete shape. If she meant to, she could handle a man like this perfectly well with her bare hands.
She unrolled it, and her expression set harder still. An ichthys in the shape of a fish, drawn in dark crimson blood. A labarum rendered in black ink. And beneath the two of them, a pair of signatures — nothing more.
There was nothing else. But that was enough.
"The Boanerges Indulgence..."
What the document signified was unmistakable. The purpose of this act was to be kept under the strictest secrecy, and the Church guaranteed that it was indispensable to the preservation of the Church — of the order of the world. It would therefore be counted as no sin whatsoever. And should anyone seek to take revenge for it, they would have to make an enemy of the Church entire.
"If you lay a hand on Hitomi, do you imagine I will hesitate simply because my opponent is the Church?"
"And if doing harm to Ninomae Hitomi was never the principal purpose?"
"...Then please, continue."
"The objective was the attack on Ninomae Hitomi itself, that day. A safeguard had been set, so that he would destroy himself in the instant before any harm could reach her."
She had simply never once allowed an opening, and had counterattacked so perfectly that the safeguard never had a chance to show. So the archbishop explained.
"Which is to say, the purpose has already been achieved. There will be no second attack. I swear it on my priesthood, my life, and my faith. And that purpose, seen in the wider view, will rather come back as a benefit to Ninomae Hitomi herself."
At the words that followed, Seoyeon was silent for a moment, looking into his eyes.
"...Very well. For today, I will take my leave."
In the end she let out a short breath, and went on.
"But if this is a lie... you had better be prepared for Scenario J."
"...I will keep it in mind."
Scenario J. What the expression meant was the defection of a principal figure within the Church — a declaration, in so many words, that she would then spend all her strength going to smash the Church apart. It was only natural. If Ibuki Hayato stabbed her in the back, the Church that had stood surety for him would bear responsibility as well. She might not be able to break the Church completely, but she could damage it badly enough to cause real trouble. She had that confidence, which was why she had produced the threat, and why the archbishop, his face drawn tight, had nodded.
Leaving those words behind, Han Seoyeon retrieved the pistol she had set down and swept out of the chapel.
Only then did the archbishop's legs give way. He staggered, and dropped heavily onto a pew. And he lamented. Laying his life on the line to persuade an Apostle, and receiving in return nothing more than the authority to decide the Rosicrucians' fate — it had been, when all was said, far too unfavorable a bargain.