What Was Clutched in the Evening (2)
She didn't seem like a girl. It was a verdict Akaba Akane had heard from childhood on, often enough to callus her ears.
She had never once tried to deny the fact itself. True enough—to some extent, she was. If anything, she had gone on living with that thought held close. Nor did she believe she had ever fretted over it very much. She had simply been born with a temperament like this, and that was hardly a realm she could do anything about.
Her childhood friend, Tsunashi Tenka, had been the opposite: a child with a rather tender, gentle heart. These days one grew cautious even saying such a thing, but she'd had a fair share of "feminine" qualities about her. Back then, Akane had also taken her for something of a crybaby.
That tender girl, when they met again in Japan, had become considerably more dependable. Tenka had shot up while leaving the androgynous look peculiar to children still written across her face, and she gave off a sense of sturdiness in body and in mind alike. Even so, living together and laying their hearts open, Akane could tell that her true nature hadn't really changed so very much after all.
"You always protected me, Akane-chan. When I come back, I'll get strong enough to protect you."
That she should recall that old promise at their long-awaited reunion was probably not mere chance. Of course, almost nothing afterward ever went the way the promise said it would.
Whether the old impression lingered too strongly—Akane shielding her from the other little kids—or whether people simply figured she was someone who could handle herself just fine on her own…… Even while Tenka was called a kind, gentle prince among the girls at school, Akaba Akane was the one and only exception.
…I'm a girl too, you know.
She could hardly claim she had never felt that grievance. Honestly, an attitude that seemed not to see her as a woman at all had sat quite poorly with her. But that, too, was nothing more than an old story. By now Akane had grown used to being treated that way.
……Or so it ought to have been.
"……."
Why a remark in that same vein had gotten under her skin today of all days, she didn't really know herself. All she could do was sigh on the inside.
"So you're saying it isn't the feeling of, 'Worry about yourself—who are you to nitpick me over this'?"
"That's what I'm telling you. I've never thought that."
"Hmmmm……."
At Akane's words, the bear cocked both its heads. The fox kit watching meant to follow suit, tipping its own head so far that it tumbled over sideways in a roll.
"And it isn't a matter with romantic feelings tangled up in it, either."
"Right."
"Then I suppose there's nothing for it but to look for a substitute."
The bear, after seeming to turn it over for a moment, said so.
"A substitute?"
"If the point, in the end, is to soothe that feeling, then you have to find someone who can satisfy it."
As he saw it, the cause of the problem was simple. Two people who, whether for their looks or their personalities, got told they didn't seem like women—and yet both of them harbored a desire to become "feminine." Not that feminine, here, meant anything as serious and heavy as a crisis of gender identity. It was closer to a girl who sees a Disney princess in a pretty dress and dreams, just once, that she might like to be a princess like that.
But their self-esteem ran quietly low, and so they had decided there could be no one who would ever treat them that way. That resignation was by no means a healthy conclusion. It was only that they had been pressing the feeling down all this time. And so, in a sense, each was seeking a relative femininity from a friend who had, if anything, even more of "the unwomanly" about her than she did. …The trouble, of course, was that both of them, to a greater or lesser degree, harbored that very feeling.
So it's basically like the mess you get when both of them are subs, isn't it? They want something, but of all people they want it from each other…….
…As for whether this bear had actually understood the situation, let us not dig into that, and simply move along.
"If not that, then a strategy of provoking jealousy would work as well."
"I told you, it isn't a romance problem."
"And is that a strategy used only in romance? Showing that you can take someone else's hand whenever you please is a tactic employed often enough in negotiations……. Above all, the aim is to make them see you anew, is it not?"
He gave a shrug and went on.
"Show them there's someone who looks at you this way, and their perspective might shift a little. That's all I mean."
"……."
It wasn't so utterly absurd that she could dismiss it outright. Somehow, it sounded plausible.
"So then, what… I just need to get along with the others?"
"Would merely getting along be enough for any meaningful effect? At the very least, whenever you go about with that person, wear a skirt you don't usually wear. Something of that sort."
"…Do I have to go that far?"
Akane seemed a little hesitant. Well, if playing the part of an ordinary girl and hearing herself called feminine would have been enough, she would have done it long ago. Praise for a personality she had only acted would leave her nothing but hollow.
"Showing a side of yourself unlike the usual ought to be enough, even if it's only for a while. The point isn't to play some character and buy direct affection with it. It's simply to let them know that what they've seen isn't all of you."
"……Well, if that's all it is."
After turning it over, Akane nodded. It wasn't particularly strange advice, she told herself…….
Satisfied, she gave the fox one last stroke and left the shrine. Nothing had been resolved yet, but her steps looked far lighter than when she had come.
"Hope it works out……."
He thought it a small mercy that she had come around so quickly. Given the way he talked, he had worried she might take his advice for the scheming of some romance-mad shipper out to sink a friendship, but she seemed to have grasped well enough that it was nothing of the sort. As if a fellow with a dear friend in the Arctic would ever steer anyone down that road. She must have understood that much.
He only hoped that a colleague who had once helped him with the work of this shrine might go on keeping an easy friendship with her friend. Friendship was a truly precious thing. For no particular reason, companions of the past and of the present rose to mind, and a fond smile came over him unbidden.
"Hm?"
Even as he sat with the thought, the fox kit that had been fidgeting nearby let out a short yip, then tore off somewhere with its tail lashing. Wondering what the matter was, he followed, and found the fox circling a man, crying out as if delighted to see him. The foreigner, dressed in attire one rarely saw in the present day, had crouched down there as well and was lightly stroking the little one's head.
"……."
At a glance it was an exceedingly heartwarming scene… but the yokai could not smile. He prided himself on being reasonably wise, and so he understood at once what this situation meant.
"Ah. A pleasure to make your acquaintance."
There goes the friendship.
How the seed he had only just sown would come to bear—he looked upon the demon before him, upon Philotanuss, and was suddenly certain.
"Pray take this."
"W-what is it?"
"The hide of an umibozu. I have come to offer it up to the shrine."
Philotanuss said it while giving the paper bag in his hand a light shake.
"……That thing fits in there?"
"Set one's mind to putting it in, and what in the world would fail to fit?"
Philotanuss glanced about, confirmed that no eyes were on them, and held the paper bag out before the offertory box. At once a plump bat, the very image of the mascot of Mary's viewers—the Minions—came fluttering out, bit down on the bag itself, and vanished again.
"Thanks to this shrine, faith looks set to come flowing in once more, so I ought to do at least this much."
"Is it really going to develop into that sort of relationship?"
"That, I do not know. I have no gift for reading the distant future."
"…Then why?"
"To speak with precision, the seed has been confirmed, and so it is more accurate to say I have come to pray that it may come to pass. If this is the shrine of that remarkable goddess who tempted an Apostle and hooked him clean, would a prayer for fortune in love not take splendidly well?"
So the genuine ship-fiend had been right here. The words rose as far as his throat, and both heads swallowed them at once.
"Why go so far?"
"Why, the nature of a demon, is it not? What do you take my name for? I could hardly help delighting in such things."
"No, that name of yours is—"
He meant to go on, and instead shut both maws. Philotanuss was looking at him, wearing a soft little smile.
"So it was true, then, that you are quick on the uptake."
"…Did something happen? I don't know what you mean."
The bear turned aside, peered into the worship hall, and muttered it.
"Oh, I am merely living on because I have failed to die. Though I will grant that of late I have found a reason to live."
"A great many amusing VTubers about, you see."
The man gave a light chuckle, pressed his hands together, and bowed toward the interior of the hall.
"We went to the trouble of turning the conversation aside, and now you're the one raising the subject again?"
"Ah, my apologies for that. And yet, were you not curious at heart?"
He could not deny it. To say he wasn't curious would have been a lie.
"I know perfectly well that no good comes of digging recklessly into someone else's private thoughts."
But he had learned that truth to the bone. When someone said, in this fashion, that it was all right, it was very often not all right at all. So he had held his tongue, and Philotanuss answered with a gentle smile.
"No, it is hardly as though I threaten others merely because something displeases me…"
"Lisbon."
"Mm, that is…"
"Nankai."
"……."
"Valdivia."
"…I was in the wrong."
In the end Philotanuss pressed a hand to his brow and declared surrender.
"At any rate, I only mean that you needn't worry so. These days I truly live at my leisure, watching VTuber broadcasts. …Linger any longer and even the capital I haven't got will be stripped from me. I shall take my leave."
"Not buying any merch?"
"…Hawking wares, at a moment like this?"
"That's that, and this is this."
At those words Philotanuss let out a short laugh, then said:
"I already own everything officially released, so I am quite all right."
"Holy shit. That's even crazier."
The bear's eyes went perfectly round, and one thick forepaw crept up to cover a mouth. …Every fan's dearest wish was standing right here.