A Knapsack and Two Tunics (1)
The rodents looked as though they had come down with something—every last hair had fallen out.
Somewhere in the world there were surely animals that resembled them, but one thing could be said with certainty. They had no business being in the sink of a café kitchen.
Stranger still was the sight of them drawing dish soap into that very sink and bathing in it among themselves. Even so, the woman who witnessed the spectacle simply stood with her arms folded, and did not move.
Once they had rinsed the foam from their bodies under the running water, they scurried back out in single file and toweled themselves dry on a cloth. Then they spilled from the kitchen in a rush. Shoving and tugging at one another, they clambered up onto the cupboard, arranged themselves in a perfectly straight row, and in the space of a blink vanished altogether.
What remained in their place was not a cluster of hairless little beasts, but cups with a faintly antique air.
"…Ratatouille?"
Ninomae Hitomi, who had been watching from a table in the café, could only murmur it before she knew she had.
"…That's what everyone says."
"Well… it is an incredibly famous movie."
A masterpiece plenty of people ranked the finest of Pixar's films—so well known that, among people their age, those who didn't know it were surely the rarer sort.
"Setting that aside, so that's how the dishes get done……."
"What, did you think a demon was going to scrub them by hand with a sponge?"
"Mmm."
Hitomi closed her mouth.
Not because there was nothing left to say once it was put like that. In her own house, familiars were the ones doing the dishes. Of course, setting creatures with barely a self to their name on the same plane as a great demon whose name appeared even in famous grimoires was a difficult thing…….
"Ma-chan."
Right then, a hand came down on Marbas's shoulder with a soft thump. She turned her head and found her contractor, Guroyuki Sui, regarding them with the same expressionless face as always.
"No matter how hard a broken heart is on you, taking it out on Hitomi-chan is not allowed."
"How many times do I have to say it isn't a broken heart before it gets through your skull!"
At the words that followed, Marbas immediately roared. The voice—oddly like the bellow of a beast, as if it were scraping the throat raw—was probably not merely a trick of the mood.
"All I did was agree to play that role in the first place!"
"It's fine. These things happen. Hang in there."
"You goddamn……."
Watching the routine unfold in front of her, Hitomi could only manage a wry smile. She herself held a certain share of the blame for how things stood.
The day of Charlotte Lupus's birthday stream, the mess that had driven Akane to the brink of detonation—no, past it, into a small but genuine explosion—had been papered over in a rather peculiar way. To call it papered over was generous. What Akane had quietly been demanding of her childhood friend Tenka had never actually come to pass.
In short, the problem was not solved at all. That it could still be said, to some degree, to have been "relieved" was due entirely to something else. It had been an incident too slippery to simply name a misunderstanding.
Viewed objectively, it was hard to call it Tenka's fault that she had mistaken what Akane did then for an attempt at a kiss. Set beside everything said up to that point, it could only be read as a last resort—a collision of mouths meant to demand why she wouldn't look at her. This was a point that even Akane herself, once the drink had ebbed a little, could not quite bring herself to deny.
The problem was the reaction Tenka took next. In that moment, Tsunashi Tenka had made a gesture of accepting her childhood friend's boldness. That in itself did not mean she had been harboring romantic feelings for Akane all along. Even so, Akane had no choice but to be thrown. It meant that even if Akane's approach had been wholly sincere, Tenka was willing to receive it.
Put differently: Tenka might never be the one to confess first, but if Akane came and confessed, she would deliberate a little and, in the end, very likely accept her on the spot. How many people in the world would not be rattled the instant they learned their own childhood friend regarded them as someone with whom that could happen? Who, in the course of a life, would ever have imagined such a thing?
Perhaps it was the shock. Akane even began to feel that the worries she had been turning over were a little foolish. By then Tenka, too, had realized she had only been mistaken…… but the air between them had already passed the point of no return.
They stood for a while in that awkward silence, letting the cool wind wash over them, then shuffled hesitantly back into the shop. Only the two of them knew how it had unfolded. Third parties, Hitomi among them, knew nothing more than that the pair had stepped outside and returned before long.
Even so, if two people who had left after a conversation of that sort came back with their faces flushed scarlet, avoiding each other's eyes to an unnatural degree, every imagination in the room was bound to catch. Sound them out, even gently, and they overreacted, insisting again and again that nothing had happened—and yet their expressions were not the expressions of people to whom nothing had happened. What more was there to say?
As it happened, quite a few of the staff had been at the company dinner, and the rumor that the two had ended up in "that kind of relationship" spread clean through the company. From Hitomi's point of view, it was hard to believe they had truly become a couple. These were not people who would lie outright about a thing like this; they would sooner have said nothing at all.
But since when did gossip spread by weighing whether it was reasonable, or even real? However hard Hitomi tried to make known the truth as she understood it, the effort was meaningless. All that remained was to pity Marbas, bundled into the story as a bonus and treated as the tragic heroine (?) of a love triangle.
"Anyway. Why did you call Ninomae-chan."
Apparently deciding she had teased Marbas long enough, Guroyuki promptly changed the subject. Just as the question implied, Hitomi had come today to the café—closed for business—because Marbas had summoned her.
At those words Hitomi looked to Marbas as well. She had never been given a proper explanation to begin with, and even Guroyuki, who lived with her, seemed not to know the circumstances, which only deepened the puzzlement. Receiving that look, Marbas nodded and spoke.
"You said you were going to Hokkaido."
"Ah, yes. A field survey with Shion. A trip, as well."
"Which region, exactly?"
"For now we're planning to focus mainly on the Hidaka side. We're also supposed to stop by the prefectural office and Kunashiri Island once, so the moving around will be a little hectic."
But why ask about something like this? That question sat in Hitomi's eyes. There would have been nothing odd about asking from plain curiosity… but was Marbas the sort of person—no, the sort of demon—to do that?
"The timing works out, then. Sorry, but could you deliver something for me? It's the Church's property, so a demon like me can't lay a hand on it directly."
"Ah… yes. If it's that sort of thing, well……."
Hitomi nodded, convinced by what followed. If it belonged to the Church, it was probably something along the lines of a holy relic. When a thing like that came into contact with a demon, only two outcomes were possible. If its rank were the lesser, the object would be defiled by the demon; if the reverse, the demon would be the one to take the harm. For someone who numbered a holder of an Apostle's seat among her acquaintances, leaving it in those hands was the sensible judgment. Of course, that required the thoroughly nonsensical premise—that an Apostle was an acquaintance—to be granted first.
"But what on earth is it, that you'd ask a favor like this, Marbas-san? And not by telling Shion directly, but me."
In a situation like this, the most natural explanation one might reach for was that Han Seoyeon would not agree to it if asked—or, taken further, that it was something that would do her harm. But Hitomi thought that possibility extremely slim. There was no particular reason for Marbas to bear her any hostility, and even if there were, anything that would harm Seoyeon would simply be refused on Hitomi's side. This amounted to adding strange luggage to the trip, and there was no world in which she would fail to tell Seoyeon. If it held anything problematic, Seoyeon would shut it down at once.
"Strictly speaking, it's a matter I was asked to handle as well."
"By whom?"
"Machihiro Etsuko."
"Ah. Then that explains it."
Wasn't she the president of Han Seoyeon's fan club? Then they were preparing an event, or something of the sort. Hitomi nodded at once and accepted the request. A moment ago she had said there was absolutely no way she would do anything harmful to Seoyeon, but it seemed that statement would have to be withdrawn.
Even so, did that Machihiro Etsuko possess some special connection that a request would reach all the way to Marbas? She had surely used the fan club to make contact with President Gyokichi, and from there the line had extended to Marbas as well. At that point it was as good as verified that the matter was nothing serious, and one could also guess it was something that would help the streams, or the company.
And with Han Seoyeon's own fan club tangled up in it, if it was the sort of thing Seoyeon herself would balk at…… she couldn't be sure, but the likely result was that Seoyeon would get shy. Hitomi's eyes glittered, mischief plainly stirring. This was a chance at revenge for "Shutang," who until now had only ever been on the receiving end of the relationship between streamer and audience.
The fallout is future-me's problem to handle…!
…Was it not human nature to keep choosing the option that would make one resent one's past self? Hitomi resolved, with all her heart, to shove every last bit of it onto her future self.