The Eve of the Uncanny (9)
"Um... don't you think you ought to calm down?"
"I am calm. My composure has only... wavered. A very little."
"No, you really do seem incredibly angry..."
Angry. Hmm. Perhaps she was. Listening to Shirase Hikari, she turned the thought over.
Ninomae, a breath away from a vampire's fangs. Witnessing it, Han Seoyeon had leveled the muzzle—not at the vampire, but at Ninomae. She had judged the creature faster than any bullet could be, and the judgment proved right. Hesitation had caught her at the very last instant, and still Ninomae's turning was stopped, barely.
Even so, having had to pull the trigger on Ninomae with her own hand... yes, perhaps she was considerably angry after all. Han Seoyeon conceded it in the end.
"But what changes, if I admit it?"
"Thaaat... is fair, I guess?"
Shirase nodded, unconvinced.
"Anyway. So with a face like that, what are you actually planning to do?"
"The Backfire Protocol. I will carry out the counterfire measure."
Han Seoyeon said as much, then murmured that this alone might be difficult to follow.
"Put into words, it is simple. I kill everyone in the city, vampire and human without distinction, and then I resurrect only the humans."
"Ah, right... wait, what?"
"Originally it is a measure that sweeps the humans away first, to halt the spread of vampires and the like. But this time, I am here."
In short, she was the one person in the world who could tidy the aftermath of the Backfire Protocol with the least trouble imaginable.
"Which brings me to this. Could you perhaps alter that flame, so that it takes humans as well?"
Shirase spent a moment hunting for the connection between everything said so far and that breezy which brings me to this, then caught the faint madness pooled in Han Seoyeon's eyes and stopped thinking altogether. Just then, that woman's head held a single thought: end the situation as fast as possible. Collateral damage did not enter into it.
"...I don't have any technique that harms people. Unfortunately."
Whatever Han Seoyeon intended, there was nothing Shirase could do for her. Had she possessed anything useful, she would have spent it long ago on keeping her contractor alive.
"Is that so. Then it cannot be helped. It was not a method I particularly wished to use..."
Han Seoyeon rubbed at her temple as if a headache had already set in, then picked up the grimoire lying beside Ninomae's body. She set it on the level floor, drew the sword at her hip, and drove it hard into the center of the book. Not content with that, she produced a silver hammer from her coat and struck the pommel three times, four, shoving the steel deeper still.
Pinning the grimoire under her foot, she wrenched the blade free. A deep hole remained. Han Seoyeon drew one short breath, then thrust her hand inside.
The opening was a little narrow for a hand, and yet, strangely, it slid in without catching anywhere at all. Stranger still was the depth. The book was plainly a handspan thick at most, and still the gap accepted Han Seoyeon's arm nearly to the elbow.
"HYAAAAAAK?!"
When she snatched hold of something and yanked her arm back out, someone's ankle was clutched in her grip. An inverted hem and a reddish ponytail spilled toward the floor. The face alone made it difficult to say man or woman, but a closer look at the frame suggested that, at least for now, he was male.
"Eh...?"
Shirase, staring, let out a vacant sound.
"......!"
A moment later she realized the man was her superior, and fled the material plane in a panic. Superior, if one could call it that. In a company, the chairman. In a nation, something on the order of a king.
"I regret having summoned you by so improper a means, Belial. But that is that. You and I shall make a contract."
Belial. Beliar. Great king of Hell, and lord of every vice. Bael's adversary, and the one who stood nearest the Antichrist. That being dangled from Han Seoyeon's hand, lingering on the border between boy and young man. Round glasses and a T-shirt made for a decidedly shabby appearance, given the office.
"Oh, damn it. Bartholomew again?"
Hanging upside down, Belial met her eyes and lamented. Han Seoyeon released the leg, but Belial did not fall. He simply remained floating in the air.
"Still, it's been a while, Bartholomew. Seeing your face in the flesh—nearly ten years, hasn't it?"
"Since the Mayan apocalypse scenario, so roughly that long. We did not meet in person during the Sheol civil war..."
Han Seoyeon said it while briefly turning over old days. There was no leisure to sink into memory. They had not been pleasant memories, besides.
"In any case, I shall say it again. Let us make one contract."
"What's this. You seem furious."
She had meant to keep a blank face, but some strange current must have leaked through even so. Belial looked her over from head to toe—from toe to head, given that inverted vantage.
"Hmm. I see. So that's what this is. Well, well... your switch has been flipped completely, hasn't it? The you I saw last time definitely didn't seem to have a switch at all..."
"Put away the armchair analysis and answer what I have asked. If you have no mind to contract, I shall send you back at once."
Shring. The point of the blade leveled at Belial's throat. Under an air that suggested repatriation—physical repatriation—might arrive at any moment, he sighed, spun himself upright, and landed properly on the floor.
"Honestly. At this rate I can't tell which of us is the demon. So, the terms? Even demons disclose a contract beforehand. You know that."
"Exterminate, to the fullest of your ability, every life in the city. As for the price, I will offer anything."
"...Oh. You're serious?"
Belial looked briefly stunned, but once his pupils flickered gold he seemed to understand, and he stroked his chin.
"Aha. Yeah, they're certainly worth killing to the last. Aside from the small matter of the one proposing it being that Bartholomew Margarita, who hates measures like this."
"......"
As he said, Han Seoyeon was, by nature, the sort who balked hard at extermination. By any ordinary measure it was the obvious feeling, and above all she feared the psychological threshold dropping beneath the comfort of I can simply bring them back later anyway. But now that the disaster had already broken loose, the situation was a little different.
"Fine. I understand the situation. A contract is another matter. Holy Knights tearing up contracts by force after the fact—that's hardly a once-in-a-while affair."
Holy Knights capable of such a thing were few, of course, but strictly speaking the number was not the point. What mattered was that the Seoyeon standing before him could do it. Even a blank check from Han Seoyeon would mean nothing, if the other party held the power to tear it up whenever she pleased.
"So you will not make the contract?"
"Now, now. I didn't say that."
So please, put the sword away. Belial carefully pushed the blade aside, and went on.
"Promises for later are worthless. Hand me something now, and there's no telling when you'll take it back. Therefore the conclusion is this. The price must be paid in full, here and now, and thereafter it must cease to exist, so that nothing remains which might be reclaimed."
"Stop circling around it..."
"Shall I stop circling and simply say it? —Get on your knees and beg. Right now."
"...Oh."
Their gazes crossed in the empty air.
Honestly, Han Seoyeon was a little impressed. With terms like these, once the price was paid, breaking the contract afterward would be meaningless. A king of demons, she supposed, ought to possess a mind of at least this order.
"Ah. That was nearly a disaster. Wait a moment."
But just as Han Seoyeon steeled herself and moved to act, it was Belial who stopped her. He stretched, long and languid, then undid the hair tied back. Before long the frame began to warp.
"If I make a woman kneel and fawn while I'm still in a male body, Philotanuss will actually kill me this time."
"...You suffer a surprising amount over your subordinates."
"Right? You think so too?"
The face was nearly unchanged, but the lines of the body had become, to any eye, considerably feminine. Belial grumbled it out.
"All right, then, on your knees— no. Aren't you moving a little too fast?"
"Because a contract with you is the optimal solution to the present situation."
Whoever was meant to hold the advantage, Belial's lot just then was closer to that of a contractor worked ruthlessly to the bone.
"...Tch. The mood's ruined. Get up. I wasn't particularly satisfied, but we'll leave it at this, and put the rest of the price on credit at the 'pasture.'"
The movement was quick this time as well. Another sigh slipped from Belial's mouth.
"Is that child really so precious? I should have come a few years earlier. The reaction would have been so much more entertaining."
When someone came through it wearing not humiliation but a look of this is getting off cheap, of course the mood would break. Even so, that attitude seemed to displease Han Seoyeon, and she grumbled as she rose.
"No. You have me kneel, and now, because it does not satisfy you, you mean to collect a separate price? Truly?"
"I really wasn't satisfied, I'm telling you. Originally, rare chance that it was, I meant to have an Apostle get down and lick my fe— hmm?"
Mid-complaint, Belial stopped. For some reason, it felt as though a slow, crawling chill of a gaze had settled there.
"......?"
"No. That cannot be."
But the head shook a moment later. The instant just past had been no situation for harboring anything lewd, and besides, that Bartholomew Margarita would never wear a look of the sort.
"Anyway. We may call the contract sealed, yes? I will work for as much as I have been paid."
And then he—no, she grinned, and snapped her fingers.
"Come. Cut the throat of the lamb. Stain the threshold red."
"—From this moment, it is the eve of Pascha."
"Hmm..."
Senjoji Chihaya—professor of folklore at the university, and presently on her third cup of coffee in a café—murmured as if troubled.
"Dead. Plain as that."
Having felt for the pulse of her younger sister, collapsed before her eyes, Chihaya was certain. The girl had asked whether a bell was not ringing somewhere, and not long after she was in this state. So the Backfire measure had begun, had it...
Jingle. A bell sounded once more. This time, though, it was far smaller and daintier than anything her sister Chiyo had described.
The café door opened, and a woman whose looks called South America to mind stepped inside. Soon their eyes met.
"N-now, wait a moment, if you would!"
Had there not been an axe in that hand, and had she not been closing the distance in long strides, Chihaya would not have been nearly so flustered.
"Wait. Now that I look—you wouldn't happen to be Professor Senjoji? I saw you on the list of persons of interest within Japan."
"Ah. Ah, yes. That I am."
"You're alive right now probably because of that constitution which doesn't take well to anomalies."
"I have been supposing the same... I grasp the situation well enough, but might you spare me? On account of this constitution, I have no confidence I would rise again even should I die."
Well, she did not look like a vampire. Was it all right? The Visitor, Alejandra, judged that it was, and turned her gaze aside—toward the one other person in the café who had not collapsed.
"No weapons on the premises, you goddamn Holy Knight customer."
The woman wiping a cup glared at Alejandra with feral golden eyes. Alejandra, easy as ever, walked right up to her. What rose to mind as she crossed the floor was the account of Apostle John, passed along through Cardinal Adam Greenie on the way to Tokyo.
The Preacher... Elif Yazıcı said as much. She added that, on their part, it amounted to nothing more than a hope with very little to stand on.
Alejandra then set her axe—the holy relic of Apostle Matthias—down on the counter with a solid thunk. Smiling, she opened her mouth.
"If Vampire Syndrome has passed beyond the realm of an intangible anomaly and become a disease possessed of a material vector, a virus or something of the kind... then perhaps this vampirization, once irreversible, might yet be treated. So it was said."
"Shall we talk about a deal that does us both some good, Miss Marbas?"
Marbas, president of the Hell Council. The black lion who kept the outrider of plague beneath her forepaw.
She prays, desperately. More desperately, perhaps, than in any moment since the one in which she was born.
The hand clasped in hers belonged to Ninomae Hitomi. Precious, this one, too. No warmth could be felt in those limbs. And yet, slowly, color began to return to the skin. Warmth came back, and a pulse made itself known.
"Nn...?"
Another little while, and Ninomae opened her eyes.
"Ah..."
Han Seoyeon let out that vacant sound without meaning to, and looked upon Ninomae's face. The wound Seoyeon had left was long since gone, healed away.
"Miss Ninomae...!"
"Nnh, Miss Shion...?"
By the time Ninomae pushed herself upright on dazed eyes, Han Seoyeon's body was already moving. She paid no mind to having been sprawled across the floor a moment before, and pulled the other woman hard into her arms. Ninomae still wore the look of someone who did not understand, and even so she carefully held Seoyeon in return.
"Miss Ninomae..."
Han Seoyeon murmured the name again.
She could bring her back. She had not doubted that power of hers. But the fact itself—that she had struck Ninomae with her own hand, and that Ninomae had been in danger deep enough to leave no other way—Han Seoyeon could not endure the fear of it.
Never. Never, ever again...
A dark feeling crept upward, little by little.
Why had this happened? The root of it was that Han Seoyeon had left her side. That she had sent Ninomae somewhere these hands could not reach. True, if one listened to Alejandra, even the worst case had held a slender chance of undoing everything, and word had only just come that this last bastion had worked. Even so, there was no staking Ninomae's fate on a probability. And where was any guarantee the next time would go well?
Yes. This must never happen again. She would stop it, by whatever means it took.
How? Simple. Keep her somewhere these hands could always reach.
Thinking it through, that was obvious. A person had no particular need to go outside in order to live. These days one could manage any number of things digitally without leaving the house... and they were living together besides, so if it came to it, Seoyeon could see to every outdoor errand herself. The shopping, all of it...
"...Hoo."
"Hht?!"
In that instant a breath tickled her ear, and Han Seoyeon's shoulders jumped. She looked at Ninomae in startlement, and found her smiling, soft and still a little sleepy.
"Hehe. I told you, didn't I? That I'd get my revenge."
And she did not even stop there.
—Chu.
"Ah... ah?"
"And this is, um, what I said back then... the thing I said I would do. ...Auu."
"......"
Blushing, Ninomae looked away. The corners of her mouth still drew a faint curve. Han Seoyeon carefully touched the feeling left upon her right cheek.
"Hweh—Miss Shion?!"
Nothing else mattered now. Han Seoyeon locked Ninomae tight in her arms and buried her face against her chest.
"...Let us go back. Home."
"I-I, um, I agree with that. I-it's embarrassing, so a little distance— hiyah?!"
"Of course, that is that. This is retribution for a petty revenge. Nom."
"M-my ears are sensitive, I said...! No, before that—people! There are other people here! Hyaaaak?!"