The Feet That Never Walked There (3)
"Haa."
The woman who had just come out of the lecture hall let out a long breath and started down the corridor, her steps heavy and unhurried.
Sanpaku eyes, the irises dull and clouded. Dark circles sunk deep beneath the lids. Shoulders unmistakably broad for a woman, and a height to match. An inverted-cross tattoo that climbed all the way out onto the back of her hand, clothes or no clothes. Add the ominous air seeping off her like something sticky, and the rank smell of death, and there was only one person like that at this university.
Han Seoyeon. Han Seoyeon Margarita — or Shion. At the advance of that chilling international student, the students drifting nearby quietly opened the distance.
Well. She was used to it. It was neither a wound nor a shock.
Han Seoyeon walked the corridor with the same deadpan air as always, and presently her thoughts turned back to the exam she had just sat.
The war was still in full swing when the course was opened, and it ended the morning of the exam.
The Church had told her beforehand that the civil war would be over before long, but the timing was truly uncanny. Because of it, several questions in the latter half had become unusable on the test. Every one of them was marked correct. It hadn't been graded on a curve, either, so that considerable share of the points was rather sweet.
"...?"
The end of the war, it seemed, was not the only thing with uncanny timing. At the vibration in her trouser pocket, Han Seoyeon drew out her phone.
A message had come from Assistant Inspector Koube. He belonged to Investigation Section Three of the Criminal Affairs Department — and he was, at the same time, an onmyoji of the Onmyoryo.
The contents were a concise report on the present inquiry. The investigation into the president of Anathema, which Han Seoyeon had requested of the government.
Among the VTubers belonging to Anathema Production, an unusual number were tied to anomalies. No — not merely a number. Everyone confirmed so far had touched the hidden world. Charlotte Lupus, a werewolf. Yugure Tama, a shrine maiden. Amairo Tsubasa, of the Hyakurenno. Serena Razania, that Professor Senjoji's younger sister. Komori Sae, a fox's bloodline, so far as one could judge by the smell. Kitayama Maya, details unknown, but an anomaly capable of shedding pressure from the far side of a screen.
Allowing for the fact that too few points of contact had kept her from a proper grasp of them, there was no guarantee the remaining two weren't anomalies either. Telling her not to suspect the company would have been absurd.
Was it possible they were flying the banner of an entertainment agency — a VTuber MCN — while in truth gathering anomalies to themselves? That was the suspicion that rose first.
Whether it was really true. If it was, to what end. As a Holy Knight of the Church, she had to find that answer. And if they were classed as a threat, then even if it was Ninomae's workplace...
"Mm."
She had thought that far, and then she drew her thoughts back. There was no need to dwell on grim possibilities for things that had not even happened.
Perhaps because she had let killing intent leak out without meaning to, the distance between her and the students around her had widened still further.
In place of that, Han Seoyeon fixed her attention on the message from Koube.
A moment later she let out a sigh of relief. It seemed, at least, that this was not the worst case.
Four out of nine. Nearly half.
Even so, the remaining VTubers, at least, had not been brought in on purpose. It seemed there had even been people whose nature as residents of the hidden world the president himself had not known.
Thinking it over, every second-generation member but one was a case of having applied for the interview and been hired that way. To call it deliberate gathering would be difficult on several counts. Of course, even then, there existed the method of sifting only anomalies out of the applicants — and yet, seeing that a report like this had come up to her, there were presumably grounds enough that it wasn't so.
By his own account, the motive was the rehabilitation of those who had suffered at the hands of anomalies. Whether that was actually true would bear more watching, but she didn't think there was any need to lay hands on it at the present moment.
Thinking any further won't get me anywhere.
She would read the formal report when it came in later. Having decided as much, Han Seoyeon put the phone away.
"Shion-chan."
And her eyes met those of a woman waving from the far end of the corridor.
The distance was considerable, but the crowd, once it registered Han Seoyeon's presence, had split wide apart like Moses's miracle, so the other woman's figure was perfectly clear.
"Sen... Chiyo-san."
Senjoji Chiyo — or Serena Razania, the witch of Anathema's second generation.
Long straight hair, and glasses. A thick book in her arms besides, so that she was the very picture of a literary girl. And yet the air wrapped around her, taken as a whole, was intensely bewitching. The strange smile in her eyes, the tear-mole set beneath them, the feminine curves that showed through even a loose knit sweater — all of it must have contributed to that air.
"What brings you here?"
"Is it strange for a little sister to come see her big sister?"
She was also the younger sister of Senjoji Chihaya, the professor in charge of Han Seoyeon.
Certainly, coming to someone's workplace to see family would not be a strange thing, but...
"You haven't made a habit of it."
If it was something she did not ordinarily do, that changed the story. Had she been a frequent visitor to this university, would Ninomae really have gone all this time without knowing she was the professor's younger sister? Ninomae had come to realize that fact only in an extremely recent incident.
"Heh, you caught me. As a prize for winning, I'll give you me."
"I have no need of that."
"What a shame—"
Chiyo answered in a face and a voice that were not the least bit regretful.
"So what did you actually come for?"
"My sister asked me to bring her some books from home."
"You live together, then."
"Well, yeah?"
She hadn't known that much. As if it interested her, Han Seoyeon shifted her gaze, just slightly.
"Sisters living together isn't anything special. The strange one would be you, Shion."
"Taking a university classmate as a roommate is hardly so very rare, is it?"
"An idol and her fan living together still isn't exactly common."
"Mmm..."
Looked at from that angle, it could indeed be called a curious cohabitation. There was a quiet persuasiveness to the remark.
"So, Shion-chan, how's it going these days? You haven't shown your face on stream once since you actually started living together."
"However close we may be in private, appearing on someone else's broadcast every time would be poor manners."
"And the answer to the part about how the living together is going?"
"I am living very happily."
Perhaps it was unexpected that she had answered at once, without a trace of hesitation; Chiyo looked surprised.
"That's a remarkably confident answer."
"Because it is a solid truth."
If she lived with her — if that figure were always there, in the midst of daily life — then everyday life would be a happy one. She had proposed they live together thinking exactly that, and the estimate had, before long, proved true.
"I thought your composure only cracked around Mary, but you crack a little when you talk about Hitomi, too, huh?"
"Honestly, I'm a little jealous." Chiyo murmured it with a smile whose true feeling was hard to read. Her voice, a little low, tickled the ear.
"If I could be loved like this by you, Shion, I'd sell my soul to a demon."
That Senjoji Chiyo was a lesbian was something one could tell easily after meeting her only a few times. It wasn't that she hid it; she went so far as to turn herself into a caricature, and often.
"You are aware, I trust, that there are no longer any demons who deal in souls?"
"Because of a certain someone, right?"
A soft, stifled laugh followed, but Han Seoyeon ignored it with a placid look.
As she had said, souls had become, among demons, all but a prohibited commodity. More precisely, a bad debt of catastrophic quality.
Holy Knights who smashed a demon's skull and annulled the contracts it had sealed were not uncommon. Historically, demons had gone on making their deals with that risk in mind. Even so, there had never before been an item this difficult to trade. Hence the Loathsome Margarita. Hence the Incarnation of Unfair Contracts.
The only ones who still wanted to deal in a currency that had lost its credit were swindlers, or people already stuck holding it. It had not taken long for I'd sell my soul to a demon to become synonymous with I'm going to fleece that bastard dry.
"And in the first place, I have never harbored such thoughts toward Miss Ninomae."
"Hmm? You fall over yourself for her like that, and it isn't love?"
"Even if one calls it love, it would be the affection between friends."
As if to correct Chiyo's misunderstanding, Han Seoyeon said it with one eyebrow twitching, lightly.
"At the root of it, it isn't as though I am a homosexual, or anything of the sort. Neither I, nor Miss Ninomae."
"Shall we just say that's the case for now and move on?"
"It is not a matter of 'for now.' It is, in fact, the case."
At that habit of reaching her own conclusions, Seoyeon let out a long sigh. More talk seemed unlikely to get them off parallel lines, so she turned the subject.
"In any event, I will go with you. As it happens, I had business with the professor as well."
"Oh? I'd be grateful if you did."
Company for the walk would be no bad thing. And if that company were a kind — here Han Seoyeon recalled her own reputation and tilted her head — beauty, then so much the better. Senjoji Chiyo smiled.
"I've fallen for that kindness all over again. Mind if I confess?"
"I believe I told you only a moment ago that I am not a homosexual."
"A roundabout rejection like that can't push back my boiling lust! Shion, will you date me seriously, with marriage in mind?"
And with that, Chiyo softly gathered Han Seoyeon's arm into hers. At the ample softness conveyed through the knit sweater, Han Seoyeon flinched for an instant, but she soon recovered her composure and answered.
"Then I shall refuse, in earnest."
"Oh dear. What a pity."
Even so, she did not forcibly shake off the arm that held her. She had judged, no doubt, that there was no need to be quite that cold. They were not total strangers; they had traveled together a few times. It cost her nothing, and if it pleased Chiyo, then this much consideration she could give.
"It's that gentleness. I can't stop confessing."
"No — I would very much like you to stop."
"Not happening. At least come back having cut that heart-stirring consideration in half. And from the start, saying you'll come along because you have business with my sister is a lie, isn't it?"
"......"
A brief silence, born of the thought — how on earth did she — and there before she could help it. The time was comparatively short, but it was a long enough gap for Chiyo to take it as a yes.
"You were going the other way until you spotted me, weren't you? Asking me not to notice is a bit much, don't you think?"
"Mm... I was."
"So why did you decide to come along? Really just so I wouldn't be bored?"
"Because if I had left you alone, someone would certainly have hit on you and held you up along the way."
It was something she could never have imagined while growing up in the Church, but people who attempted pickups in public places were, unexpectedly, not rare. In a place packed with hot-blooded university students, it went without saying. Even short of an outright pickup, she had seen, very often through her years at university, people coming up on a whim to ask for a contact.
Even before she met Han Seoyeon, quiet talk had already called her an iron wall, and lately the rumor had spread of Ninomae Hitomi as the eccentric who willingly kept Seoyeon's company. Even she was stopped now and then on the street, whenever Seoyeon wasn't there. Chiyo, a complete outsider with nothing for a bad rumor to stick to, would be as bad as that, or worse. Seoyeon did sometimes think her personality a rather regrettable one — but her looks, in themselves, were of a truly outstanding level.
"Uh... mm. I don't think you should say things like that. I might seriously fall for you."
Hearing that explanation, Chiyo opened her eyes a little wide and carefully let go of Seoyeon's arm. Very faintly, her cheeks could be seen to be flushed.
"'You're pretty, so I'll keep anyone else from pulling something on you' — that's a critical hit on a girl's heart. Be careful from now on."
"I did not go so far as to say that."
"It was more or less the same."
"I didn't know I still had a girl's heart left in me." She murmured as much, and then cleared her throat once or twice. "Ahem. Ahem."
"Hitomi said you were secretly kind of a natural airhead, and so this is why, huh? Haa..."
What weighed on Han Seoyeon more than that, however, was the part about seriously falling for her.
Put another way, it meant that the usual frivolous confessions — however much of her desire they might contain — did not, for the present, leave the realm of jokes. The thought had come to her that perhaps even this manner of speech, the one that made a half-clown of herself, was a kind of defense. As a lesbian, an othered existence; as a strategy for keeping a suitable distance from other people...
Han Seoyeon, for no particular reason, looked into Chiyo's eyes for a moment. Those eyes, with their strangely hazy cast, that only added to the bewitching air.
"Ah, would it be all right to talk about that just now on stream? I think the viewers would love it."
"Yes, well... I don't see why not. Do as you like."
She had returned, before long, to her usual grin, and so Han Seoyeon could only tilt her head — Did I think too deeply? — whether she wished to or not.