Dream, Urim, and the Prophet (2)
The reunion petered out into something thoroughly dull. They looked at faces they hadn't seen in years, peddled a respectable amount of nostalgia, and talked.
Well. That was only ever going to be Tenka.
Regrettably, it had not gone that way for Akaba Akane. An outsider who had drifted well clear of her class back then simply did not have many memories worth sharing with the rest of them.
A few people did come over to speak to her, perhaps feeling that the mood made it awkward to leave her entirely alone...
Terribly sorry. A face like this, and I talk like this—
None of it lasted more than a handful of words. In the end they let their sentences die and fled, every one of them. No one knew better than she did what a hopeless synergy her severe looks and her blunt way of speaking made together.
So right up until the gathering broke, Akane passed the time alone, picking at the snacks.
"Akaba-san."
Once Tenka finished talking with that one, maybe she would collect her and head home. The thought had only just formed when a middle-aged woman's voice came from beside her.
"If you don't mind, shall we step outside and talk for a moment?"
The speaker was a teacher from her high school days. Fifty, if she had it right. The years had certainly left their mark on her face.
But a keen light still lived in her eyes. Akane looked into them for a moment, then let out a small sigh, gave a wordless nod, and rose carefully from her seat.
"Hey, Tenka. I'm stepping outside for a bit."
"Huh? ...Ah. Yeah. Go on."
Tenka looked briefly puzzled, but the moment her eyes found where Teacher Yu stood, she let it go.
Out of the restaurant, Akane set her back to a wall just clear of the streetlight's spill.
"Why'd you call me out, Teacher Yu?"
"Hmm. How should I put it. Watching you, I got the feeling you were a little left out... and I thought it might be nice to talk, it having been so long."
She thought that, and still she made no effort to turn anyone else's attention this way. She had been this sort of person back then, too. She never tried to shove an outsider child into the group by force; she made time later, came to find them quietly, and listened. That was something the Akaba Akane of her school days had liked about her.
It was a relief this part of her hadn't changed. If she had struck up a conversation over drinks, it would have been seriously awkward. Ignoring the one person across three years of high school she could actually call a mentor would have felt wrong, too...
"You still smoke?"
"No. I quit. A shrine maiden's body isn't private property."
"That's the strangest reason for quitting I've ever heard."
Teacher Yu laughed under her breath and slipped the cigarette pack she had been about to draw back where it came from.
"You can smoke if you want."
"Didn't you quit to take care of your body? Then I mustn't. Secondhand smoke is worse for you."
Looking out for a student even at a time like this—so very like Teacher Yu. Akane smiled bitterly.
"So how have you been lately, Akaba-san? ...Ah, you said just now that you'd taken over the family business."
"It's not only that. I started streaming."
"Streaming?"
"Yes. A VTuber, they call it... no, this is a pain to explain, so maybe it's better if you just watch."
Muttering that, Akane took out her phone and played a highlight clip. She was willing to show her something, but putting the character she performed on open display felt somehow embarrassing, so she chose a planned Gen 1 group collab.
"You mean all of these are people, actually moving? Technology really does move fast..."
"Well, yeah. Pretty much."
"Ah. This cat girl is you, isn't she, Akaba-san?"
"...How did you know the second you looked? She hasn't even spoken yet."
"You look just like her." Teacher Yu answered with a bright, beaming smile.
Like her... me? Akane had to narrow her eyes and think about that for a moment.
"What about you, Teacher Yu?"
"Me? Same as always. Teaching the children, looking after the basketball club..."
"So you still haven't given up being their advisor."
"That's right. Some talented kids have come in lately, so this time we might really put up a good—"
In a blink it had turned into boasting about her students. Akane, at a loss for what to do with a teacher this hopelessly devoted to bragging, listened to her all the same.
"The other day, Mika-san and Sakuragi-san..."
"Did they. That must have been a real mess."
"It really was! Especially Mika-san—just a few days ago, she even went to the advisor, Tsukasa..."
"...The basketball advisor was you, wasn't it, Teacher Yu?"
"...Huh? Uh, um..."
The moment a contradiction surfaced in those words, Akane seized it and would not let go. At the sudden point, Teacher Yu's eyes trembled.
"Ah. You're right. Why on earth did I say it like that...?"
There had been no intention of deceiving her. None at all. And yet the memory held a plain contradiction. She had never stepped down as advisor. She also remembered someone else holding the post.
"I'll ask you again. Who, exactly, is the basketball advisor now? You, Teacher Yu? Or Teacher Tsukasa?"
"..."
Teacher Yu closed her mouth, lost. Her eyes looked as though they had caught the edge of something wrong.
"Just as I thought. You can't answer."
"Akaba-san... do you know something?"
Akaba Akane, by contrast, was calm enough. Something that did not add up had happened, and even so she had a rough grasp of the situation. When a thing defied common sense, an anomaly was behind it. One of the very few pieces of common sense in the hidden world, where common sense could hardly be said to exist.
"Teacher Yu, about a year ago, you were killed by a vampire. ...From the look on your face, those memories are starting to come back. Only a little, but still."
The reason an advisor's post she had never relinquished now belonged to another teacher was truly simple. An accident. An unintended vacancy. A ghost whose memory and judgment had fallen into disorder was hardly rare—the sort of case one saw often enough in a shrine maiden's work. The first time it had been someone she knew, though...
Akane said nothing more and reached out. The teacher's body, shaking hard even as it tried to take that hand, passed straight through her.
"Ah..."
"Sorry I kept it from you. But with this sort of thing, if they don't realize it themselves, it can do them harm."
Teacher Yu stared at her with vacant eyes. Akane sighed.
"How long... have you known?"
"I told you. You died."
Of course. See a dead woman walking around in front of you, and ghost was the only conclusion left. She meant she had known from the moment they met.
"No. From before that. I'd heard a rumor your ghost was walking the school. That's why I came."
So saying, Akane drew something from her pocket. Four talismans, folded with care.
"I came here today to lay you to rest, Teacher Yu," she added, evenly.
"..."
Of course, nothing guaranteed the one hearing it would be equally calm.
A spirit's body is mental before it is material. As if to give the confusion a shape, her form warped wildly, beginning with the hand that had passed through Akane's. Akane sighed again. Even so, for someone who had only just realized she had not known she was dead—and a woman of the surface world, killed by an anomaly, at that—it was a mild reaction. Better this than bolting, or attacking, out of nowhere. Muttering that, she snapped one talisman open, stiff and flat.
And even as she extended the hand holding it toward that form, Teacher Yu offered no resistance at all. If anything, she seemed to lean her body this way. Whether because she trusted her former student, Akaba Akane; because she accepted being laid to rest; or simply because she was too lost to do anything about it.
"—Ah, hold on just a moment."
"?!"
What stopped her instead was a voice with a slightly unusual lilt. Young, if one judged by the voice alone. Startled, Akane looked around for the source.
"Not over there. Up above."
At that, Akane's head came up on reflex, and there was a figure standing atop the streetlight beyond.
What? Is this bitch crazy?
That was the thought that flashed past. She very nearly let it out of her mouth. But a sense of danger sounded the alarm at once. Someone trying to climb a streetlight was certainly not right in the head, yet if they had the body to actually do it, that was a very different story. No—unhinged, and possessed of power like that, they would be more dangerous still.
They say it is darkest right under the lamp, and the darkest part of a streetlight ought to have been its top; even so, in the little light that leaked upward, the thing in the stranger's hand flashed. A hand axe, ground to a vicious edge. A moment later she dropped with a light smack of impact and, despite the height, landed with room to spare. Only then did the hat on her head register. A Cappello Romano, and the band wound around it for show was cyan—the color of a Gravekeeper.
Skin browned as if by long sun, and a foreign set to the bones of her face. Likely a foreigner, then, and not of the Japanese diocese. Probably answerable directly to the Vatican. Enemy or ally—she could not tell. She thrust out the hand clenched around the talisman as if to check her, but it was pure bluff. She had not brought any talismans meant for use against people today.
A footstep, coming this way. Unhurried, as if she knew perfectly well the threat was empty. Beneath the streetlight, the figure came clear.
"Uh."
"Apostle Saint Matthias, Alejandra Monica Lopez Sanchez Muerte. As a representative of the Holy See, I request your cooperation... though, where exactly are you looking?"
"No, that's—"
Why was she wearing Anathema merch? Akane never got the sentence finished. She could only point. The woman who had named herself Alejandra was wearing, under her cardigan, a T-shirt printed with the shrine maiden Rokumondera Aki. The shock of it meant her brain needed a moment just to take in the word Apostle. Then the shock hit her all over again. An Apostle, wearing one of Aki's shirts, of all things...
"I may not look it, but Shutang's cute little screams have me overflowing with happiness."
"And to learn you're an acquaintance of Shutang's—I can say with pride that this is the third greatest stroke of luck in my life."
...Wait. Are Apostles just all like this?
The only Apostle she knew rose unbidden in her mind, and the thought carried her that far before she hauled herself back to the present, a beat too late. An Apostle—someone on Sister's level—was not a person she could afford to relax around. Whether staying tense meant any chance of winning existed at all was a separate question.
"So what's an Apostle doing here? What's your business in this country?"
Japan already had an asymmetric weapon by the name of Sister. For another Apostle to come calling on top of that could only be called an uneasy situation, whichever way she turned it.
"Why do you think?"
"Cut the crap and answer."
"Oh my. How cold."
Alejandra laughed under her breath and set the back of the hand axe against her own neck with a light tap.
"Both questions have the same answer. And... it would be the same answer for Seoyeon, the one you call Sister."
"The same answer as for Sister? What are you talking about?"
"Have you never thought it strange?"
With that, she turned the axe blade forward—toward Teacher Yu, who was slowly gathering her shape back together.
"At the root of it, why has a monster by the name of Saint Bartholomew been dispatched to Japan?"
Sister—Han Seoyeon—was Korean. Which was to say, a foreigner, so far as Japan was concerned. She had not been born there, nor raised there. She held no Japanese citizenship. She had no particular tie to the place, and until she came to Japan and met Mary Tepes, she had not even taken an interest in subculture.
Then. If that was so... why?
"The answer is simple. Being sent to Japan was not her own choice. Bartholomew—Han Seoyeon Margarita—came here out of necessity."
Since learning that Han Seoyeon existed, Akane had dug up a fair amount about the hidden world. Knowledge of the Catholic Church's reverse face had been part of it, of course. The dispatch of an Apostle. Known, in short, as a Seal-class measure. Formally it was called the Vatican Special Measure, First Stage, and needless to say it was never invoked for a matter the nation in question could settle on its own.
Which was another way of saying—
"She came here to catch a certain villain."
And that was part of why Alejandra herself had entered the country, and why she had appeared before Akane here.
"So I'd like you to hold off on laying her to rest. There is a great deal I want to hear from the victim herself."
Alejandra smiled a strangely chilling smile.
"You'll cooperate, won't you? If only to avenge your mentor?"