Cast Them Before Pharaoh (2)
Guroyuki Sui.
She was the daughter of Director Guroyuki, famous for animation of lavish staging and a mood all his own, and a celebrity in her own right who had worked in the entertainment world since her days as a child actor.
Her acting was superb, and her command of an emotional line was nothing to scoff at; from childhood she had been counted among the promising ones. And yet a traffic accident several years back had driven her into retirement, an actress of unhappy fortune. Her life had never been in danger. From her limbs down to her organs she had recovered cleanly, with no aftereffects left behind.
But if the single aftereffect that remained was that she could no longer control her own expression, then as an actress she might sooner have wished a leg taken off instead. Tachibana Rin, the serpent of Anathema Production's first generation, was a woman exactly of that kind.
Ninomae slurped her smoothie through a straw and quietly took the temperature of the room. The face itself was not a particularly sharp one, but a face on which no expression could be found at all was, needless to say, a different matter.
"Don't worry. This café belongs to my contractor. You don't have to sweat anyone walking in. What I'm saying is, you can quit fretting over the Secrecy Protocol."
As if to prove his own claim that no one needed to mind outside eyes, the demon Marbas was sitting there as a lion-headed man—a shape no one could possibly mistake for anything but an anomaly. This, most likely, was his true form.
No, what I'm tense about is your contractor...!
A reassurance that was, of course, no help whatsoever. Then again, it was a little odd to sympathize with Ninomae's fear in the first place. The rest of the company was dazzling—far too dazzling for that.
A black lion of such enormous build that folding an ordinary person clean in half would have been nothing to him sat wearing a shirt printed with an illustration of his contractor, Rin. Beside him a blond, blue-eyed man sat grinning ear to ear: a silk hat of absurd height, and a T-shirt of a cat-eared girl—Yugure Tama merchandise—an ensemble that forced one to stop and consider which of the two was the greater punchline.
As for Han Seoyeon, there was scarcely any need to explain. The byname of Arbiter was no empty title. She was hardly the sort to shrink merely because a person looked a little cold—or perhaps, where frightening faces were concerned, one would have to say hers was the more severe.
"I'm sorry. This is a lot to be thrown into, isn't it."
"Ah, no... I'm all right."
Still perfectly expressionless, Rin—Guroyuki—ducked her head in a small bow, and Ninomae answered on reflex. But once the words were out, even if they were only words, her heart eased a little. Right. There was nothing to be afraid of. If it came to it, Han Seoyeon would handle things somehow.
"And, um... Miss Guroyuki? I'm the junior here, so it's fine if you speak comfortably."
"Mm. Even so..."
"I'd be more comfortable that way too. We've talked on stream before."
"Yeah? Then I won't hold back."
So saying, Guroyuki drew the corners of her mouth up, just barely, into a smile.
...It did go up, right?
The movement was so slight that it began to seem like nothing more than a trick of the angle. Even Ninomae, tempered by long exposure to Han Seoyeon, felt it.
"That aside, Miss Ninomae—you're cuter than I expected. No. That's not it. You give off a milder impression than I thought."
Perhaps she had read that faint flicker of bewilderment, for Guroyuki offered this.
"Mil... der?"
"The cute part held even when you were 'Mary,' but the feeling ran sharper than soft. If you were a cat in virtual, seeing you in person you're closer to a dog... hmm. A squirrel, maybe."
"Mmm..."
It seemed to be a compliment, at any rate. Ninomae nodded with an awkward smile.
"A gap like that is certainly part of the charm."
"Right. You live right beside her, so of course you'd know. ...Ah. Sorry. Was I too familiar, for a first meeting?"
"Well, you're the same age as Miss Ninomae. Speak however is comfortable."
Han Seoyeon, having taken a sip of coffee, cut in as if seizing an opening. Ninomae narrowed her eyes at the woman who was, over the subject of Mary, about to fall into instant accord.
"......?"
"......"
The one on the receiving end of that look only stared back, blank as a board, as if she had no idea what the problem could be.
"Ah. Forgive me. Some things really ought to be settled properly. That Shu-ttang is cute on a world-class scale is correct, but if one must compare, Miss Ninomae is the more charmi—mmph."
"Eugh! Miss Shion, you keep that mouth shut until you've drunk all of this!"
At the follow-up, delivered as though this were surely the right answer, Ninomae yelped and jammed the straw she had been drinking from between those lips. Han Seoyeon looked thoroughly startled, eyes going round, but perhaps meaning to obey, she quietly sucked the juice down.
"You two seem close. Is this part the same as on stream?"
"This person is quietly just as much of a menace in real life as she looks on stream."
"Flip it around. It means she likes 'Ninomae' every bit as much as she likes Mary."
"Ugh... that... I wouldn't go so far as to say it has to be true."
Ninomae answered curtly, as if ashamed to admit the fact, and then quietly turned the subject aside.
"How do I put it. You feel a little different from the broadcast too, Miss Guroyuki. Ah! I don't mean that in a bad way..."
"Mm. I get the shape of it."
Guroyuki covered her mouth with a hand. It might have been a demure hiding of a laugh, except that her lips were still rigid.
"'Change of perspective: recommended. Meaning—she likes Ninomae Hitomi as much as Shu-ttang.' ...You don't mean a delivery like that. You mean it's awkward."
Her voice had always been nearly flat, quite inorganic, and with the manner of speech adjusted even slightly it gave off an unmistakably robotic impression.
"I don't keep that way of talking up in real life, obviously. It's an acting note. That's as far as it goes."
There are any number of ways to build a character, but Anathema Production, as a rule, fits the character to the person. Only after an audition, and several interviews besides, is the foundation of the role each of them will play finally complete. Even so, the performer and the character are separate things. Streaming in a manner of speech one never uses in ordinary life, for the sake of carrying the concept, is nothing rare.
"Now and then 'Rin's' way of talking slips out like a habit, though. Occupational hazard, I guess."
So roleplay that swapped one's speech had its own private sufferings. Thinking of Mary, she let a small wry smile surface.
"That aside. Miss Ninomae. How did you end up with a demon."
"Mmm, that story's a long one. Something like damages, I suppose..."
It looked like a genuinely complicated tale. Guroyuki blinked twice and looked her way.
"Because I had no desire to be punished by that Bartholomew, I tell you! A measure of sorcerous power, as the price of my life, comes cheap enough."
"Sorcery?"
"What. Why. Why are you looking at me, contractor?"
It was, most likely, a look carrying envy. At least, that was how Mary would have guessed it.
"Ah, might you be interested? If you like, we could contract a grimoire or so, right here..."
"Don't you outbid me for my contractor, you hat-wearing bastard!"
The black lion Marbas exploded, slamming the table, and Philotanuss clicked his tongue in regret but withdrew for the moment.
"So what you're saying is, what Miss Guroyuki received from the demon wasn't a magical power...?"
"Mm. Right."
Then what, exactly? That, of course, was the question that followed.
"Treatment for her father. The price was this woman's potential."
The one who answered was Marbas again, cutting in with that booming voice.
"Her potential?"
"I scraped up every last scrap of the fame I was going to earn as an actress and offered it to a demon."
Guroyuki, answering so, hooked an index finger at the corner of her own mouth and forced a smile into place. The story that an accident's aftereffects had left her unable to control her expressions was, it seemed, a disguise prepared for the surface.
"Couldn't you have asked the Church to do something...? You were a popular celebrity, Miss Guroyuki, so I wouldn't have thought money was the problem..."
"I didn't know about the hidden world back then. Mar just found the gap and drove straight in."
Ninomae's hand drifted awkwardly over the tabletop, and Han Seoyeon took a sip of the coffee that had been hers to begin with. Merely listening was enough to leave a mouth bone-dry. Even had it not been, she would have stoppered her own mouth with the drink, for want of any reply worth giving.
"For... for something like that, you address a demon awfully fondly."
But Guroyuki kept the silence with her until Ninomae had emptied half the glass, and so, with no other choice, Ninomae picked the thread back up—careful, as far as she could manage, not to step on a mine.
"Anyway. There's also the fact that I get to live a second life now, as a VTuber."
Guroyuki looked at Marbas's chest. More precisely, at the serpentine character drawn on the cloth—taking in the likeness of Tachibana Rin.
"And after living together a while, I got to thinking he isn't entirely a bad sort."
Then she slowly lifted her gaze to the black lion's head. In the golden eyes, Guroyuki's own image was reflected. Marbas snorted at the look, but turned his head aside with a strangely sulky light in his eye.
"—Living together?"
What broke that atmosphere was a voice gone cold.
"Did I mishear just now, friend? You speak as though you've signed an exclusive contract with Lady Tachibana."
His face had hardened so stiffly that one could hardly believe it belonged to the same man as that usual slack grin. Slowly rising from his seat, he already held a slender sword of pitch-black blade in his hand.
"Hm? Well, we do li—"
BOOM!
"Eep?!"
"...Startled."
At the blast that followed, Ninomae flinched and hunched in on herself. Guroyuki, deadpan as ever, registered a burden of her own. Philotanuss's stance had changed—into a posture as if he had driven the slender sword dead ahead. And Marbas, who by all rights ought to have been at the end of that line, was gone. He was planted in a wall a good distance off instead.
"Damn it. What the hell was that, you cursed hat!"
"Speak my name."
"...What? Philotanuss?"
"And the domain I govern?"
Marbas, on the verge of venting his rage at the sudden ambush, answered in a dazed voice at the utterly contextless demand.
"Uh... homosexuality, as I recall."
"And before such a me, you say a man is living under one roof with someone who plies the yuri trade?!"
"No, what kind of unreasonable—"
"Cut!"
"Ghk—?!"
Philotanuss roared and charged, the sword raised high.
Gematria–Mer, One-Handed Sword
Unicorn
"Koff— no, look, you know this already, but even if I look like this I'm a demon, so in the end gender doesn't even mean—"
"I shall hear no rebuttal."
Gematria Form
Twin-Headed Eagle
"Ghk! You crazy bastard...! You come at me like this and I can't just sit still, you damned brat!"
From one corner of the shop, a crashing clatter began to ring out.
"Th-th-that—shouldn't we stop them?!"
"It's fine. They're demons. I'm sure they'll see to repairing the damage well enough on their own."
Right about then the drink gave a last gurgle and showed its bottom. Han Seoyeon set the cup down on the table with a tap as she answered.
"Agh! That hit bone!"
"It really is all right to leave that alone, isn't it...?"
"Yes. It's fine."
Ninomae said it worriedly, stealing glances at the chair legs and table fragments whipping past beside them. And yet, just as Han Seoyeon had said, whatever the damage to the furnishings, they were not touching the walls—so none of it would leak outside. A minimum of restraint, perhaps?
"You goddamn son of a..."
"Whatever is the matter? Cub of a lion."
The fight was not a long one, either. After a little while they wrapped it up and came back to their seats. Or so it seemed.
"It really was all right to leave them, wasn't it?!"
"It's... fine. Probably."
"No, because your voice is shaking too, Miss Shion?! A perfectly normal man from just a few minutes ago has come back with his sex changed!"
"......sluuurp."
"That's a cup you've already finished, so please pull yourself together...!"
Han Seoyeon applied herself diligently to looking elsewhere. Away from Ninomae, whose voice kept climbing in panic, and away from the feral black-haired beauty seething at the side of a thoroughly triumphant Philotanuss.
...How am I supposed to report this to the higher-ups.
Han Seoyeon broke into a cold sweat for the first time in a very long while. She did not think she had been this thrown since that incident in Poland, long ago. Even if she tried her utmost to flee from reality, the Tachibana T-shirt the woman was wearing made even that impossible.
"Oh... that's a dead-center strike for my taste."
"I am glad it satisfies you. Let it be some small comfort to this heart, grieved that the world now holds one handsome man the fewer."
"Just give me my body back, you damned bastard...!"
And even amid all of that, the people who were calm remained exceedingly calm.