The Eve of the Bizarre (4)

"See? Wouldn't it have been better to meet up with Gyokichi-san?"

The woman who said it wore a languid, seductive air, and she had paused with her coffee at her lips.

"Hm. Christmas, I should think, is a day one spends with family."

The girl across from her answered as if this were only natural. A thick down coat had rounded her out into something small and cute.

"What are you talking about, sis? There's a saying, you know. Six hours of sex."

"To begin with, Gyokichi-kun and I are hardly in that sort of relationship."

Who would ever think this tiny little thing was the older sister — and a professor in her thirties, no less, hailed as the genius of the century in her field? Well. No one, surely. Even the fierce-looking clerk minding the shop in the usual manager's place had been treating her as the younger of the two.

Senjoji Chiyo, who had an older sister like that, spoke as if lamenting the way of the world.

"So the childhood-friend heroine loses. That's the trend these days, is it..."

"And what are you suddenly on about. I am already married to my research. Bigamy is hardly permissible under the laws of Japan."

Professor Senjoji Chihaya said it with absolute composure and drained her coffee. Chiyo, for her part, had no mind to keep gnawing at the matter. Her interest turned at once, and she took out her phone.

"Huh?"

Her eyes went perfectly round.

"What's wrong with my phone?"

The phone was completely dead. The screen stuttered, as if it might recover, and then flicked off.

"Hm? ...Ha. Mine is the same."

"What is this, all of a sudden?"

Had it been only one of them, it would have been easy to call it a simple malfunction. Both of them, and it was difficult not to think something was wrong.

Chiyo thought for a moment, then spoke.

"An anomaly, right?"

She was no anomaly herself, but as someone who had brushed the hidden world, she had grasped one truth. When something strange happened, putting your money on an anomaly was, as a rule, the right answer.

"Surprisingly, no."

"What? Really?"

"It is a matter of the hidden world, yes. It is not, however, the work of an anomaly."

Nothing more than a function the manufacturer had secretly built into the handsets from the day they were made, now switched on. Chihaya grinned and added:

"The Falling Star measure. I had only ever heard of it. Experiencing the thing myself is a first."

"And what's that supposed to be?"

"When a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠large-scale incident caused by anomalies occurs, communications equipment, recording devices, all of it is rendered unusable, so that the Secrecy Protocol may be maintained."

The phone spun round and round on Chihaya's palm.

"'Oh my, look at that. I ought to film it and put it on social media!' ...You can picture that easily enough, can't you, Chiyo?"

"That... yeah. You're right. Information control might be necessary."

"It will function again once the incident is concluded, so rest at your ease. For the present, remaining quietly indoors will be safer than wandering about outside to no purpose."

She glanced at the clerk behind the counter and smiled, unhurried.

Any anomaly that had fought her in the flesh would tell you to cut the crap — but Han Seoyeon Margarita was not particularly strong. To be precise, she was vulnerable ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠when thrown into the subjugation of anomalies for which she had not prepared, and set against the Apostles and those who had once been candidates for the seat, she would likely be found somewhere in the lower ranks.

The cause was a marked lack of proficiency in consecration, among the miracles of the Church — not in quality, but in speed. The simplest and surest way for a Holy Knight to perform an exorcism was to consecrate a weapon, endow it with the power to shatter evil, and strike. That such a weapon was difficult to procure on site was Holy Knight Margarita's greatest weakness.

She knew it herself. In ordinary times she prepared with ruthless thoroughness, going so far as to employ the techniques of heathen faiths, and crushed her quarry outright. Cast in without that preparation, however, there was no helping the way difficulties came into bloom across an operation.

"…May you rest in peace."

Of course, that was only ever the case when the opponent was a formidable foe.

To struggle against a mindless walking corpse of human size would have weighed too heavily on the name of Gravekeeper.

Bang! A holy silver round punched through the anomaly's skull. The bone caved in, and brain matter sprayed. Seoyeon offered a prayer for the repose of the dead, then turned her eyes to the man who had been under attack — sprawled on the ground, waiting for nothing but to have his throat torn out.

"This place is dangerous. Please flee at once."

"Ah, y-yes. Thank you...!"

He stared blankly for a while, and only after Seoyeon spoke did he seem to grasp that he was still alive. He scrambled up and bolted. His legs tangled midway and he went down once, but he was on his feet again at once, and gone.

"Hm."

Seoyeon looked straight ahead. Four blood-soaked humans wandered in an awkward cluster. No — they were not human any longer. At the sound of the gunshot they turned their heads. Look a little closer, and farther back two vampires were crouched over a meal. They, too, seemed to have marked her.

…Am I too late?

Thinking someone might be under attack even now, she brought the muzzle to bear — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and then lowered it again. Their "meal" was already a ruin of blood.

Once bitten, vampirization could not be avoided. An Epsilon-2 vampire possessed no intelligence that might feed while holding in check the conversion of its own kind. Reversal itself was impossible. Becoming a vampire was by no means an injury, and so the miracle of healing did not take. It was the same as being unable to cure a werewolf back into a human. The same as being unable to cure a Black person into a white person, or the reverse.

Even Seoyeon's miracle offered no recourse. Once one had changed, that was now the "default state." That irreversibility was also the greatest reason Vampire Syndrome had become an object of terror in the hidden world of the Japanese archipelago.

In any case, if it was already too late to save them, better to spare the silver bullets. Not a question of money. A question of managing the rounds that remained. Only a moment ago it had been an emergency in which a single second decided whether a vampire's teeth found flesh, and so she had used the gun. Now, at a glance, there was no living ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠soul nearby.

Seoyeon returned the pistol to her coat pocket and drew a hammer and a knife from the inner one instead. Even in that interval, the vampires took a long stride toward her.

"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit—"

"?!"

The holy knight was already before their eyes.

The silver-plated iron hammer swung into the vampire at the front. A sacred ripple of gold ran through the air, and the head burst apart as if it had exploded from within — all of it before the trailing foot of Seoyeon's leap touched the ground again.

She did not slow. The knife in her left hand drove into the neck of the next nearest, and with that same momentum she flattened the creature and nailed its throat to the asphalt.

"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be…"

Then, of the four — no, of the two they had been reduced to in a single breath — she hurled the hammer at the farther one. The head turned at an angle that would have been troublesome for a human neck, and no less so for an anomaly's.

"You are too late to run."

"……!!"

Another vampire, having watched its comrades die before it and behind, showed an uncharacteristic glimmer of sense and turned to flee. Seoyeon's hand on the back of its head was faster. With a crash the body was driven into the ground, thrown so hard that it sprang back up like a rubber ball. She struck the carcass with her palm and launched it. One vampire in the distance, which had abandoned its meal and was staggering upright to rush her, tangled with the kin that came hurtling in and rolled across the ground.

One remained: the one that had been feeding beside it. Seoyeon leisurely retrieved the knife she had planted in the earth along with the vampire before, and threw. The blade flew with a whistle of cut air and buried itself in the forehead.

Last of all she charged the ones still tangled together, shoving each other off. A talisman drawn from her sleeve clenched tight in her fist, she broke their heads, one after another, with her bare hands.

Oh, right. Almost forgot.

She let out a breath, steadied herself, and then kicked, with all her strength, the head of a corpse that had just finished turning and was twitching as it tried to rise, laying it back down.

With that truly finished, and her weapons retrieved, a vibration sounded from her pocket. She drew out the terminal.

"Canary... no. Might something not be done about this call sign? It has the ring of a name to be used once and thrown away."

"You have no intention of listening to me, I see."

Han Seoyeon sighed, and answered.

"At present, it does not particularly seem necessary. For one that finally sprang out after lying so still, the offensive is far too weak..."

The very next instant, the truck across the way exploded.

No. Giant monsters tore through the container it carried and came pouring out.

"…Retract that. They came out meaning it, after all."

"On hold. On hold. Kindly take a step back from the massacre."

Backfire. The word meant precisely what it said: a fire set to meet a fire. The principle was to burn every last combustible, so the blaze would have nothing left on which to feed.

Among anomalies, too, there were more than a few that proliferated by using human beings as their medium, and the strategy of last resort against such things was Backfire. With Seoyeon present, the risk of that measure could be driven down to a minimum — but even that had its limits. She would carry it out if it were needed. It was not a strategy she found particularly appealing.

"Seven individuals that do not look ordinary even at a glance. All of them between two and four meters. These are not opponents I can fight while keeping the line open, so I will end the transmission here."

She slipped the terminal into her pocket and changed weapons once more. The hammer went to her right hand, the pistol to her left.

"……!"

She had been about to break into a run just so when she sprang urgently backward. A werewolf standing over two meters — this one, too, stank of walking corpse — had seized a nearby car and hurled it. The vehicle hit the ground with a heavy thud and sent snow spraying in every direction.

"Tch."

From a distance she sighted along the slope of its shoulder and cracked off several silver rounds, but the effect was not what she had hoped. A sturdy one. She had wanted at least an arm. Seoyeon clicked her tongue and charged in again.

Bang! She drove the hammer up into the werewolf's jaw from below. The head snapped back, and neck and shoulders took their leave of one another. The problem was that the enemy was not alone.

A gigantic vampire, its limbs swollen to a bizarre degree, swept an arm around in a great arc.

"…Oh."

Leaping aside to avoid it had been well enough — but there was a pool of blood where she came down. She did not even entertain the complacent thought that the blood had, by some unhappy chance, simply happened to gather there.

Dark crimson blood writhed, tangled about her leg, and closed on her ankle. An instant later a streetlight, sheared in half, laid a dark shadow across her vision as it came hammering down from above.

Evasion was too late. Striking the blow back was the best left to her. How much a single small claw hammer could manage, she could not say.

Nothing for it but to try, ready to spend an arm on the exchange. She could mend it afterward.

Seoyeon put her whole waist behind the hammer and swung with everything she had—.

"Hmm?"

Her eyes opened wide, thrown by a plush, yielding give she had not expected at all. Far too light to be a lump of metal, the thing was giving off, from somewhere, the fragrance of something baked golden-brown.

Bread?

The savory smell of wheat flour. Through it she saw a man with his hand laid upon the streetlight — no. Upon what had been a streetlight.

"…Master?"

Giacomo Marchisio Bonaventura. Apostle Thomas. He stood there, a gentle smile on his face.

"You seemed to be up against a rather poor matchup, so as your master I came to lend a hand without quite thinking, Seoyeon."