Where Those Feet Have Never Been (1)
Han Seoyeon sat on the sofa, fluttering through a stapled printout. She had an exam today in one of her general-education courses.
The lecture was titled Understanding the Romanian Civil War. She had picked it on a whim—the professor was famous for generous grades—and somewhere along the way she had done rather well on the assignments. So long as she didn't blunder too badly on this exam, an A was as good as locked in.
"Studying?"
"Yes. More or less."
Then came the sound of feet striking the stairs. It was so very faint that she turned her head without any real confidence—and met the eyes of Ninomae, just coming down to the first floor.
"Um... your shoes?"
"Ah, well, about that..."
Her gaze dropped, and a moment later Han Seoyeon's eyes went wide with bewilderment. Ninomae had come downstairs barefoot, without the slippers she ordinarily wore—though, granted, they had not been living together for very long.
She had already thought the footsteps quieter than usual. No shoes. Just bare feet. That would explain it.
"W-well, Shion-san seems to prefer it this way... and you've been looking after me, so..."
In short, she had gone all in for Han Seoyeon, whose tastes happened to run in this direction, and as a bit of everyday repayment besides. Barefoot. In the most literal sense of the phrase.
"I-I don't think this pays everything back, of course..."
Saying outright that she was doing it on purpose, to stir up a fetish, apparently came with a considerable amount of shame. Even as she spoke, Ninomae kept fidgeting her feet.
"I-I see."
Hearing that, Han Seoyeon looked more than a little thrown. She could hardly have seen it coming, so the reaction was only natural.
It was, in effect, no different from announcing that she would wander the house in a bikini as thanks for the usual, so Seoyeon might feast her eyes.
Taking off one's clothes and taking off one's shoes were, of course, very different things. But to do this while knowing Han Seoyeon had that sort of taste—no, to do it precisely because she knew—made them practically the same.
"More to the point, aren't your feet cold?"
"Mmm. The floor might be a little chilly."
Ninomae answered as she settled softly at Seoyeon's side.
It was December: winter, with no room left to argue. The place had floor heating, yes, but the coils did not run beneath every part of the house.
"Shall I turn the heat all the way up?"
If she simply blasted it until the floor never had a chance to cool, wouldn't that solve the thing from the start? Han Seoyeon offered it as the simplest remedy in the world, and spared not a single thought for the heating bill.
The corner of Ninomae's mouth twitched. Han Seoyeon already had more money than she knew what to do with, and a vice learned late is a frightening thing. Picture her charging in a straight line just to indulge this taste, and...
"If you heat the air until the floor's nice and toasty, it'll just get so hot we can't stand it."
"Then shall we tear the floor up and lay the heating wires back down, packed in closer?"
"Just how serious are you about feet?!"
Ninomae's expression landed somewhere between horror, astonishment, and pure disbelief. That the method was excessive was the lesser problem. This was meant as a kind of repayment; making Seoyeon spend a fortune on it would never do.
"But if this makes things hard on you, Ninomae-san, then there's no point."
"...Good grief."
Ninomae grumbled, and quietly looked away. That Seoyeon was looking after her even beyond her own desire made her glad, for no good reason at all. She pinned down hard the foolish smile trying to climb onto her lips, and went on.
"I'll handle the floor. I do have a way."
A black grimoire materialized across Ninomae's knees. She called back an entry she had found once before, while poring through a catalog.
Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain, Earth. Turn back again: Water, Wind, Thunder, Earth; Heaven, Lake, Mountain, Fire. Hexagram of Earth.
O beast that draws the plow of human bone. O indecency of Pasiphaë. O beast of brass that bugles forth a scream.
Standing in the authority of the lord who mines the gold of gematria, I command thee: in place of an innocent's blood, receive my faith. Receive it—and with it, heat thy belly.
Thud. The instant Ninomae shut the book, still midway through the chant, the floor surged warm. The whole house, Han Seoyeon guessed, had likely gone the same way.
"...Ah. But if I were to warm them myself, would that have been my chance to... get my hands on them?"
"Don't say weird things. You dummy, Shion-san...!"
"Nee, today's a collab stream with Mary-oneechan!"
A red-haired demon, beaming. Confidence spilled from that smile, the same as always.
"Konmea. I am Mary Tepes, the vampire queen who shall one day reign over every puzzle game!"
The character beside her was a platinum-blonde woman of aristocratic cut, a small tiara set upon her head.
A demon and a vampire. The two classmates of Anathema's second generation sat side by side beside the chat window.
At the center of the screen, a chibi character was plunging out of the sky at tremendous speed, and beneath it a line of text blinked.
"All right, enough talk—let's get started!"
"Before that, why is this thing falling?"
"Who knows?"
They pressed a key, as instructed—hardly vital information, though in Mary's case she tapped the spacebar with a light, cheerful beat—and the title swept past across the falling backdrop. Fall Over.
Splat! The falling character finally struck the ground. The sound was wet and sticky, like a soaked rag flung onto the floorboards.
"Waaah?!"
Another character kissed the dirt with a splat, the name MeryTepes floating over its head. A moment later both of them staggered upright; the camera climbed, lingered on the sky they had fallen out of, and drifted back down.
"Is the point of the game to climb back up there?"
"Ohhh. So that's it."
Mary offered the guess while jiggling the character, control of it restored to her hands.
Next their eyes turned to a signboard with the controls written on it.
"Left click for the left hand, right click for the right... wait, what are you doing?"
"Seeing if I can grab a person, too!"
"Mm, it grabs? Well done. Thanks to you, we've learned something."
So saying, Mary set off toward the signboard with the next set of instructions.
"Um, would you mind letting go of me?"
She set off. She never arrived. Komori Sae had hold of her and would not let go, trailing behind in a dead-weight cling.
"Ehh? How come?"
"Think about it normally. You're in the way of me moving."
How long would it take to get anywhere with a whole person hanging off you? Mary said it as if it were obvious.
"S-so to Mary-oneechan, I was nothing but a nuisance...?"
"Eeeeh...?"
The reply, however, landed several meters off from what she had expected, and on a diagonal. Sae said it in a voice that suddenly shrank, let go of Mary, and hung her head.
"Eeh...? Sae-chan?!"
"So this heart that liked Oneechan was a one-way street. Yeah. Mary-oneechan doesn't need me."
"No, wait a second?! Sae-chan?! That isn't what I meant!"
A voice on the verge of tears came through, and Mary's character flailed, circling the crouched Sae in helpless loops.
"I'm sorry, a slip of the tongue, it was just a slip?!"
"But this heart of mine is already hurt. Who's going to hold it...?"
"Th-then I'll make it up to you somehow..."
"Oh, then may I demand compensation for emotional damages, Mary-oneechan?"
And just like that, Sae snapped back into her original bright voice. She tilted her head a little, needling.
"Yeees...?"
Mary's voice had gone blank. Then, as if she had seen through it, her eyes flew wide.
"Y-you tricked me?!"
"I mean... think about it with common sense. Nobody falls into despair like that over one little comment. It's not like I'm a menhera."
"Oneechan, are you maybe an idiot?"
Sae giggled.
"Y-you...!"
This time Mary grabbed Sae, as if she meant to seize her by the collar and shake her.
"Nnh. Oneechan, that's a sensitive spot... ah!"
"Hyaah?!"
But at the moan that followed, Mary recoiled in horror and had no choice but to snatch her hands away.
"Aaah, I've been defiled by Oneechan..."
"Ugh, no, the collar! What I grabbed just now was the collar?! I didn't mean it like that!"
"Haaah?!"
"To lay hands so passionately on Sae's immature chest, of all things... Oneechan, don't tell me you're a lolicon?"
"Haaaaaah?!"
Broadcaster and viewers alike had joined forces to beat on Mary. The chat, which on a normal day would have been hard at work pummeling the cheeky little brat, had for once turned its fire on her—and Mary's streams, forever swarming with the abuse brigade, hardly needed to be told.
"Excuse meee?!"
"Ahahaha! As expected, Mary-oneechan's reactions are so much fun I just can't stop teasing her."
"Uuuu..."
Sae laughed like a mischievous imp all over again. Watching her, Mary slipped, if only slightly, into confusion.
This really is Bansei-san, isn't it?
Not long ago she had met the woman in person: an adult, thoroughly mature in body and in mind. That person and the image before her now did not match in the least—so little that she half suspected the one she had met that day hadn't been Sae at all, but a stand-in sent in her place.
"Sorry. I'll tease you more reasonably from here, so forgive me?"
"...Is not teasing me not an option?"
"That's your fault, for giving off a lewd smell, Oneechan?"
"Lewd... haah?!"
"No?! I do not smell like that?!"
"Then a different smell?"
"The True Ancestor Queen does not give off a smell!"
"Heeh...?"
In that instant Mary could have sworn Sae's eyes glittered, even though the model had no such function.
"Sniiiiiff...! Sniff, sniff!"
"Hyaah?! Don't lunge at me! I said don't smell meee...!"
"I'm not selling! No—I don't even smell like that in the first place!"