When He Turns Us Back from Captivity (2)

Non-magical grimoires.

The name was ironic and self-contradictory from the very start—no different, really, from a hot iced Americano. And yet almost no one denied the term to its face.

They were non-magical in that the books had come into being untouched by any anomaly, and still the four volumes were far too dangerous to classify as anything but grimoires. Whether their authors had meant it or not, each had been twisted into a pretext for slaughtering countless lives, until the blood gathered upon them and they were reborn as true anomalies. These were the beings known as the Four Great Grimoires.

Anyone who found it suspiciously convenient that every one of these books was tangled up with Germany was probably not imagining things. After all, nations licensed to host a world war do not exactly grow on trees.

In any case: if the Communist Manifesto was the book that killed the most people in the world, the Hammer of Witches—the Malleus Maleficarum—the one that killed them most barbarically, and the Secrecy Protocol the one that killed them most thoroughly, then the Protocols of Zion was the book that killed people most persistently. It had further inflamed antisemitism across the Europe of its day, and the Nazis took it up until it served as one of the justifications for the Holocaust. A problem volume, in short, which—set beside its answer key, the minutes of the Wannsee Conference’s Final Solution—could fairly be called the antisemitic edition of a witch-hunter’s manual. Put another way, it was the Old Testament of the Nazi Party, which remains to this day a hotbed for every species of conspiracy theory.

Which meant that securing the original, and making proper sorcerous use of it, would allow a certain measure of control over the anomalies born of faith in Nazi conspiracies. With a thing like that hovering right before one’s eyes, it was hardly strange to think, Why not just hand her the Rosicrucian name? and quietly arrange a meeting with Seoyeon.

“Don’t you ever want to stop firing rockets at the moon every time you’ve almost managed to forget about it?”

“…….”

And so, even when Machihiro Etsuko smiled brightly and offered the line with a touch of shamelessness, Seoyeon could not quite bring herself to refute it. It had struck dead center.

Seal off nothing more than the base on the far side of the moon—the one that kept spawning, for lack of any better word Seoyeon could find—and the Church’s coffers would grow comfortable overnight. How much budget was poured into that place every year, Seoyeon, an Apostle, knew better than anyone.

“If I may.”

She held a brief silence, then spoke.

“What do you intend to do, Miss Machihiro, if we try to tear the original Protocols of Zion out of your hands by force?”

“You mean seize me here and torture me, or something of the sort?”

“Even setting that aside, there is the Hypnosis App… Well. The Church is not short on cards to play.”

“Because I know you won’t.”

Machihiro, however, was entirely undaunted.

“The Church isn’t foolish. I’ve offered to handle the Protocols of Zion and the Rosicrucian problem as a package. There’s no need to pick a fight.”

Outsourcing the work to someone volunteering to do it was far more efficient than the Church seizing the Protocols and trying to accomplish something with them itself. That much was plain fact.

“And if you stab in the back the very person who brought you a lost grimoire, who is ever going to step forward and cooperate with the Church like this again?”

That, too, was true. Unable to deny it, Seoyeon nodded.

“And above all—even if, on the vanishing chance, they resolved to do something heartless for a moment’s gain… you, at the very least, would never permit it.”

“…….”

Collateral damage, for the sake of the Church.

It was a phrase the hardline holy knights of Japan had been especially fond of. Han Seoyeon had found it repugnant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and thrown a wrench into it time and again; she was not about to act any differently now. That confidence glimmered in Machihiro’s eyes.

“…Hah. So that’s how it is.”

Best to give up on cowing the woman with empty bluster that was never going to work. Thinking as much, Seoyeon let out a sigh.

In truth she had wanted less to wrench the original away than simply to satisfy her own curiosity. But how was she supposed to win against someone convinced that even if the Japanese Church turns hostile, I win so long as I have Bartholomew?

“I wondered why you’d been reckless enough to bring the original here. You had something to count on after all.”

“Yes. You could… say that……?”

Machihiro had been about to laugh in triumph. A moment later her face was flooded with bewilderment.

“What? Wait. How did you…….”

What she had just shown was, plain at a glance, a printout—unmistakably a copy. Common sense said that anyone who saw it would assume she had hidden the original somewhere else, in case it was taken from her.

There was trust to be gained by showing the original, and safety to be gained by showing a copy instead. Bringing the original all the way to the meeting only to display a copy was a fool’s move that forfeited both. By any ordinary logic, she would never have done it. And yet Seoyeon tapped the tip of her nose twice with her index finger, as if there were no chance her guess was wrong.

“Because I can smell it from your bag.”

“What? The Church hasn’t had a fix on the original’s whereabouts at least since the day you were born. How can you even tell that smell apart?”

“How many Hitlers do you imagine are walking this earth right now, thanks to conspiracy theories?”

“……Ah.”

Well, then of course she would remember the smell. Machihiro nodded, persuaded. Even so, Seoyeon saw fit to add that yet another one had just turned up on the moon, and that she would have to go collect him.

“Anyway. Then why bring the original at all, and show me the copy first?”

“If things went well, I meant to take the original out on the spot and push the negotiation forward. I didn’t produce it immediately because the Church won’t be the only one after this.”

The Church likely would not snatch it on a whim, but a third party still had to be considered. Until she could be certain that Han Seoyeon would come down firmly on her side—and protect her if it came to that—she could not carelessly produce the real thing. It was not a reason Seoyeon found difficult to accept. Not from where Han Seoyeon stood, at least.

“So what does Miss Machihiro stand to gain? From everything I’ve heard, it sounds like a deal in which only the Church profits.”

Of course, no such deal could truly exist. If a bargain looked as though one side took everything, it was one of two things: either they had set ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out to fleece someone inexperienced, or the other party was sitting on a hidden gain of their own.

“The first, of course, is faith. You aren’t going to spend every bit of the faith gathered by pairing the Rosicrucians with the Protocols of Zion on nothing but crushing neo-Nazis.”

In short, she meant to brazenly pocket (?) whatever scraps of faith were left over. Well—pocket change on that scale was hardly something Seoyeon could refuse to allow. Provided, of course, that the power was not turned to anything strange…….

“May I ask what you intend to use the faith you gather for?”

“I want to use it to blow up on the Etube algorithm. My odds of getting shown ought to go up at least a little.”

“…Ah. Come to think of it, you did say you were active as a VTuber.”

For an Etuber, the algorithm was a matter of the utmost importance. Given the chance, no shortage of them would pay a fortune to twist it however they pleased.

“The second benefit is related to that as well. I’ll be blunt. I want to stick a straw into Anapro.”

“A straw, you say?”

“If a VTuber is also the president of another VTuber’s fan club, that catches people’s interest in all sorts of ways, doesn’t it?”

“I am not a VTuber myself, mind you…”

“Well, you can suck up viewers all the same, in the end. It comes out identical.”

She seemed, in every respect, dead serious about streaming. Here she was with one of the world’s Four Great Grimoires in hand, negotiating with the Church—and this was what she asked for.

“Oh, and while we’re at it, if you know people at Anapro, or any other VTubers, I’d really like you to arrange as many collabs as you can…….”

“Well, that much I ought to do for you, of course. Leave things as they are, and I’d be left with far too much change.”

“You mean it? You’re not going to turn around later and say something else, right?”

“I will not. What could I possibly gain by deceiving you like that?”

If this was nothing more than someone giving her all to streaming, without a shred of malice, then Seoyeon had no reason not to cheer her on. She was under no obligation to help every VTuber in the world, of course… but this was a person coming forward to cooperate with the Church to this degree, wasn’t she? Helping as far as she reasonably could was only proper.

……Yes. Gazing at the woman before her, Han Seoyeon resolved to do her very ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠best, within the bounds of what was possible.

Haruka Kanata, indie VTuber. Real name: Machihiro Etsuko. The backlash of abusing a grimoire’s power had robbed her of consciousness.