In the Evening, What Was Grasped (4)
"No. Why would I ever do something like that..."
As was only to be expected, Marbas looked distinctly put out by Hitomi's proposal.
However much ornamental phrasing had been draped over it, what she was asking, in the end, was that he stage a rosy little atmosphere with a human. It was true that he had grown comparatively well-disposed toward humankind in the long while since he had become "her." That was not the same thing as regarding them as his equals.
The strong, he acknowledged. The noble, he acknowledged as well. But such people were only ever a sliver. For him, it remained unchanged that most humans—fondness aside—were inferior beings, riddled with lack. If one had to name the feeling, it was nearer to the way one looks at a beast one happens to like.
His contractor Kuroyuki might have been Hitomi's peer since the day of her debut, but that hardly meant he himself could claim any real acquaintance. Until not long ago, the two of them had been nothing more than a foreign part-timer hired on at Kuroyuki's café and a customer who drifted into the shop now and then. And even had they been close, a request like this, sprung without warning, could only have left him at a loss.
"Mmm. I see."
Knowing as much, Hitomi met his reaction with an awkward smile.
"If you'd rather not, then it can't be helped."
Most people would have pressed the matter once or twice here. The Ninomae Hitomi that Marbas knew, however, was not that sort of woman, and sure enough, though a shade of disappointment crossed her face, she withdrew at once. The consideration was enough to leave him vaguely guilty. Not that he meant to change his mind.
"I'll try asking someone else."
"Yeah. Sorry, but I—"
If Marbas wouldn't do it, there was nothing for it but to ask another. That was only reasonable, and he nodded along in understanding.
"...Wait. What?"
A beat later, something caught up with him, and he locked in place exactly as he was.
What had surfaced was the company Ninomae Hitomi kept. Set aside anyone tied to Anathema Production, and what manner of beings were left in her circle?
"Me—! I'll do it!"
"What? But just a moment ago you clearly—"
"Please. Just let me be the one...!"
His face had gone nearly bloodless, and he cried it out as if in horror.
Thanks to the outlier known as Han Seoyeon Margarita, Hitomi's connections on the other side of the world had taken on a profoundly misshapen form. Put plainly, draw a name at random and the odds of pulling a nuclear weapon of the very largest class were one in three at the least. The chance of things going quite that far was slim, he would grant. But if Hitomi so much as routed the request through Seoyeon, it was entirely possible that Behemoth would descend upon Japan all over again.
A matter of the heart, and the Apostle Bartholomew. Either one of the two alone would have been enough to send that woman gleefully out of her mind. One monster of that caliber was plenty for this archipelago.
And so, consoling himself with the excuse that it was only for today, Marbas had no choice but to choke it down—tears, mustard, and all—and join the Anathema dinner.
"Thank you for all your hard work, Tsunashi-san."
"Ah, thank you."
In celebration of second-generation talent Charlotte Lupus—Tsunashi Tenka—having brought her live safely to a close, the performers and staff had agreed to hold a dinner among themselves. A fair number had begged off, their circumstances not permitting, but even so a respectable crowd had turned out.
In truth, gatherings of this sort were not all that common. The reason was simple enough: among the VTubers signed to Anathema, there were not many who actually enjoyed an occasion like this. People would say everyone had worked hard, but the real star of the evening was the one who had given the concert, and if that star herself had no taste for the celebration, what was the point? So despite a birthday live being held once a year for every member, the dinners held to mark them were few and far between.
A company dinner did not, of course, strictly require someone's birthday. Even counting the ones that didn't, Anathema's tally could hardly be called high beside other companies. And precisely because they were so rare, there was, admittedly, a tendency to make a grand affair of it whenever one did happen.
Today alone they had rented out the restaurant in its entirety, which meant Tenka could leave her ears and tail out without a second thought. She gave those ears a light twitch and knocked back the drink in her glass. Her body did not take to liquor easily, so she was not the sort to enjoy drinking for its own sake, but the rowdy air of a drinking party was something she rather liked. The live had gone well, and she liked being among people besides, and so her face was quite bright. Hitomi watched her in silence.
Then she turned her gaze at once to Akaba Akane, seated over on the far side.
Seen this way, the arrangement sat strangely. At gatherings like this, Akane usually settled near Tenka, or near her fellow first-generation members. Not today. On one side of her sat a member of the video staff. The other side was occupied by Marbas, wearing an expression that asked, plainly, why she was here at all.
Strictly speaking, she was an outsider by Anathema's measure, though she did turn up at the company now and then in place of Kuroyuki, her contractor and the woman she lived with. In short, the staff knew her to roughly the degree they had known Han Seoyeon before she officially joined. So when the president remarked that, since she was visiting anyway, she might as well come along, no one found it particularly strange, and no one objected.
Among them, though, there would not be a single person who knew that Marbas was here not because of President Gyokichi's usual whim, but because Hitomi had asked her in secret.
As for whether the Marbas she had hauled along was faithfully playing her part—that was another question entirely. She had been told what was required of her. Her face was the face of someone who had not the faintest idea what she was then supposed to do about it. And the Akane seated beside her was no different.
An operation to provoke jealousy? The words sounded well enough. They also invited the inevitable thought: so how, exactly, does one do that? The two of them were simply sitting a little nearer than necessary, stealing the occasional glance at one another.
"...You."
"Hm?"
Akane broke a stretch of quiet by calling over to her. Marbas, who had been sitting there in a daze, turned her head, and Akane slid the plate in front of herself smoothly across to her.
It was a plate of fish. The bones, however, had been picked entirely clean. A moment ago she had seemed to be fiddling at something with her chopsticks; so that was what it had been.
To be honest about it, Akane had never once laid her fondness for another person bare where people could see. Even when she tried to do something, no good method came to mind. And for that impulse to come out as deboning a fish—affection, yes, but wasn't it closer to the sort a grandmother shows a granddaughter? Watching, Hitomi found herself thinking exactly that before she could stop herself. She had known for a long time, of course, from any number of stories, even from before she debuted as Mary and actually met the woman, that for all the sharpness of her tongue Akane looked after the people around her...
No, wait. But depending on how you look at it, this might actually be... passable?
Hitomi revised the thought almost at once. Come to think of it, she had heard that Korea once had its so-called perilla-leaf debate—the endless argument over whether it was too intimate a thing to peel a clinging perilla leaf off someone else's at the table. The very existence of the argument was proof that plenty of people bristled at kindness that excessive and quietly nursed something like jealousy. Thought of that way, this might not be bad at all as a means of stirring jealousy. With that in mind, she stole a sidelong look at Tsunashi Tenka.
"...?"
Tenka, having witnessed the whole display from her childhood friend, was utterly unmoved.
Ah... right. Tsunashi-san was always this kind of person...
Hitomi ended up pressing a hand to her forehead. Thinking on it, Tsunashi Tenka had been like this from the start. Bring up the perilla-leaf debate and she was the sort who would ask, in complete earnest, whether there was supposed to be a problem. No—worse than that. She was the sort who held that helping someone was simply and unconditionally a good thing. To stay with the metaphor, she was not the one being posed the question. She was closer to the lover who peels the leaf off for you.
She took this degree of thing for manners, or for consideration, and so she had no reason not to extend it to whoever was nearest. It was because she went about scattering "consideration" of that kind that word had it she had made more than a few girls cry back in high school. Even without reaching all the way back to then, it was plain enough from everything Hitomi had seen of her as a coworker.
I miss Shion...
Just what was one supposed to do, to stir jealousy in a person like that without crossing the line? Unable to produce an answer, Hitomi gave up and simply devoted herself to her meal.
"..."
And Akaba Akane, watching that reaction from directly across the way, went stiffer still. Her face had been stiff to begin with. Now a deeper displeasure began to seep into her eyes. Tenka had not noticed in the slightest. As it happened, she had just started helping a woman on the staff nearby who was struggling to pick the bones from her fish.
"...You've got it rough too, human."
"...Rough? Please."
"What does it matter to me what that idiot does."
Akane snorted and let it fall under her breath. The tone sounded thoroughly indifferent. It would not do, however, to forget that the one who had asked for this favor in the first place—all for the sake of doing something about the very person she claimed had nothing to do with her—was Akane herself. In practice she looked thoroughly irritated, and she began knocking her drinks back in great gulps.
Drinking that fast... well. Not my problem to worry about.
Whether she was even drinking within her limits was an open question, but Marbas soon put it out of mind. If anything happened, there were easily enough people around to help that one would need two digits to count them. It would be fine. That was the thought.
...Of course, as with most of what comes of thinking so carelessly, it was not fine at all.