A House of Prayer, or a Den of Thieves (3)
"We've arrived. You can get out now."
The brakes gave a short squeal as Han Seoyeon killed the engine of the truck she had just brought to a stop.
"It's... a church?"
"I heard there was nowhere worth parking, so I asked permission ahead of time. We'll walk from here."
Japan's largest subculture event was bound to draw a crowd, and what little parking there was would vanish in no time.
"...Is it really all right to borrow church grounds just to come to a place like this?"
"We borrowed the truck too. A little late to grow scrupulous about it, isn't it?"
"That's... true, I suppose. But still."
Strictly speaking, the truck belonged to the Church as well. Han Seoyeon borrowed it so often for work—she had even taken it to haul Ninomae's things when she moved—that people tended to mistake it for hers.
"Well. Ask as an Apostle, and they'll lend you a Church vehicle or two."
"...Miss Asmodeus?"
What Ninomae saw as she climbed down was a pink-haired woman with nothing but her head poked out of the cargo bed. Inverted eyes, the irises a deep pink, met her own.
"Didn't I shove you out? I thought you'd been sent back."
"Didn't I tell you? Same destination, so I said I'd borrow the bed."
"Then on the way here, when only a head kept appearing behind us..."
"That was me sticking my actual head out of the cargo bed."
At the discovery of cargo she had neither expected nor intended, Ninomae's expression grew complicated.
Han Seoyeon had listened to the exchange without a word. Then, abruptly, she asked.
"Setting that aside—are you all right?"
"All right?"
"The cargo bed, I mean..."
A thoroughly sincere worry flickered in her eyes as she said it.
"Just in case, I packed it full of exorcism supplies."
Draped in black cloth, the bed was crammed with every manner of sacred object. There had been that incident only recently, and they were headed somewhere a crowd would gather; she had brought them along on the off chance.
"Obviously I'm not all right. Save me."
"You only had to get out."
"I meant to, ages ago, but the strength drained out of me and I couldn't move..."
"..."
In the end Asmodeus was liberated only after Han Seoyeon caught her by the scruff, like a mother cat, and dragged her bodily out.
Is someone like this really all right as a Demon King...?
The Seven Demon Kings, each set against one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Watching a member of that company reduced to this, Ninomae began, in all sincerity, to worry.
"Thanks. I'll count the fare, and the price of my life, as payment for this job."
With that, Asmodeus hurried away, fleeing far from the church. Thinking about it, the ground around here was threat enough all by itself to a demon like her.
"Um... shall we get going too?"
"Yes. Let's."
The two of them soon shook the mood off and set out for the Comiket hall.
As for why Ninomae Hitomi and Han Seoyeon had come to the winter Comiket held at the year's end, the cause lay further back.
It had begun with nothing more than simple curiosity. In the course of conversation it had come up, quite by chance, that their first-generation senior, Kitayama Maya, would be attending winter Comiket under her real name, which was also her pen name: Sakuragi Oka.
Seems she's been busy lately getting ready for it— That was about the shape of the remark, as Ninomae remembered it.
"Comiket. Now that I think of it, I've only ever heard of it. I've never actually gone, and I live in Tokyo."
"Well, you haven't been in this world for very long, Miss Shion. You said you'd barely even read manga before you met me."
An event held only twice a year. Her meeting with Ninomae, the thing that had first brought her into contact with subculture, was only about a year and a half behind them. Count instead from her meeting with Mary—the one that had made her fall into this side of things in earnest—and it was a little over half a year at most.
"If you're interested, want to go? I think it'd be a pretty good experience. And I'm saying that having only actually been twice myself."
She had been thinking of going anyway, partly for the chance to see her senior. The larger reason, of course, was that she wanted, just once, to walk Comiket with the fellow otaku of matching tastes she had finally found.
"If it's all right with you, Miss Ninomae, then let's go."
"Ehehe. I'm looking forward to it."
"We seem to be of one mind. So am I."
And so the two of them decided on Comiket... except.
The plan began to shift a little before it had even started, once they contacted Maya—that is, Sakuragi Oka—to ask whether they might come see her.
By their very nature, VTubers had no choice but to be sensitive about their real lives. Anathema Production placed few restrictions on revealing a talent's offline existence, and Maya did not seem the sort to fuss over such things either—but how she would actually take a meeting in the flesh was something one could not know without asking.
Fortunately, Ninomae received an affirmative answer, at least at first. The message that came back a few days later, however, was well outside anything she had expected.
Hurt, suddenly, at a time like this... she must have been caught up in the Christmas Eve incident. Ninomae was certain of it. Had the Church wished, it could of course have treated every last victim. But a directive was already in place to put out a false report—a gas attack, and the rampage of certain citizens that followed—and zero injuries would itself have looked strange under that cover. So this time the Church had deliberately left alone anyone whose life was not in danger. Maya's colleague was probably one of those cases.
How to put it—the way she wrote sounded rather desperate. Then again, finding someone on a few days' notice could not be easy, and she could hardly drag in just anyone.
"...is what she said. What do you think, Miss Shion?"
"Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea. To be honest, I wonder when I'd ever get to try something like this again."
Ninomae very much wanted to help her. Still, she could hardly skip asking Han Seoyeon's opinion, and when she did, a yes fortunately came back. Then again, this one was hardly the type to leave a person in trouble alone—an acquaintance in trouble, least of all. Strictly speaking Maya fell under "an acquaintance's acquaintance," but even so.
"I'm also curious what sort of anomaly Miss Kitayama Maya is harboring."
"Ah... you did say last time that Maya-senpai was likely an anomaly too."
There was no reason to refuse, neither as a person nor as a Holy Knight. In that moment, their plans were set.
"I thought the traffic was heavy for the hour on the way here, but even this early in the morning, the crowd is incredible."
"They say some people stay up all night starting the day before."
Those who came early and kept vigil through the night, those who simply booked a hotel nearby, those who caught the first train and waited... Ninomae ran through them under her breath, a wry smile on her face.
"It's a festival that pulls in a lot of people. If there's something you're after, you have to be ready for war—exaggerating only a little."
However popular a booth, and however much stock it prepared, it could not ready an infinite supply of goods.
"Even so, I thought the second day would be somewhat lighter."
"The crowd doesn't really drop much from the first day. The participating circles change every day, so it's easier to think of it less as day two of the same event and more as a separate event held right after."
"It's a good thing we arranged to get circle tickets from Miss Maya."
Circle participants who had to open their booths inside the hall ahead of time were, of course, granted early entry. People exploited that, it seemed, and circle tickets were being sold at a premium as something like advance passes.
Han Seoyeon looked at the long line stretching into the distance and felt a genuine relief. There was a queue on the circle-entry side as well, but it still fell within what one could call the bounds of common sense. The mere thought of standing over there for any length of time made her lightheaded, and she murmured as much while unconsciously toying with the sword hilt at her waist.
"...I'm walking around this openly armed, and truly no one seems to care."
"They're probably just deciding on their own that it's cosplay."
Han Seoyeon's present attire was, quite literally, close to full armament: a cappello romano banded with a cyan ribbon, and the black habit of Bartholomew. A katana hung at one hip and a submachine gun at the other, and all manner of equipment was stowed inside the folds of her clothes.
Even so, no one stepped forward to take issue with it. Walk around this blatantly, and everyone simply assumed it must be cosplay. According to Han Seoyeon's personal doctrine in praise of the katana, in particular, the weapon possessed a curious magic that made any outfit look like a costume.
In truth it was not cosplay, so no character who looked like this existed. But rather than conclude that it wasn't cosplay, the ordinary line of thought was to assume it must be a character from some series one simply didn't know. A few did go pale the moment their eyes met hers, and pointedly looked away as if they hadn't seen—but those were plainly paranormal citizens, and could be set aside as exceptions.
"That aside, where did we agree to meet Miss Kitayama Maya?"
"Hmm, let me think. She said if we came toward the main gate, we'd spot her right away..."
"In this crowd?"
Was she holding up a sign? Picturing it, Han Seoyeon looked around.
And their eyes met.
She was cosplaying her virtual character, Kitayama Maya, and the impression she gave resembled the one from her streams to a remarkable degree. When a VTuber debuts, some agencies create the character first and then seek a person to match it; others design the character around the person. Anathema's way was the latter, and even accounting for that, Maya's presence was strikingly close to her model. That resemblance alone, of course, would never have let them find her in a crowd like this.
"Could you be Ninomae-chan~? And that one's Sister."
"Ma— no, Miss Sakuragi Oka?"
Ninomae had been about to call her by her VTuber name without thinking. Remembering that other eyes were on them, she corrected herself at once.
"Wow. It really is Ninomae-chan~"
Maya broke into a beaming grin and looked her up and down.
"I'd heard as much, but you really are a lot bigger than your model."
Her eyes were narrowed to slits so thin the pupils barely showed, but there was no need to wonder where that gaze had settled. Ninomae drew in on herself a little, as if to hide her chest, even as she looked up into the face of the agency senior she was meeting in the flesh for the first time today.
"Um... Miss Sakuragi, you're, well, a lot bigger than your model too...?"
"Oh my. Ninomae-chan is bolder than I expected."
"I-I meant your height...!"
Kitayama Maya's concept was an oni, so of course the height in her character settings was considerable. But Maya in person—Sakuragi Oka—was, even allowing for that image, how to put it... large. Immensely so.
"...Um, if it isn't rude to ask, how tall are you?"
"A neat eight shaku~"
"T-two hundred and forty...? No, it shifts a little depending on which era's measure..."
"Mmm, that was a joke... Still, converting it on the spot like that—you really are a college student, aren't you~?"
Watching the astonished Ninomae through those slit eyes, Sakuragi smiled.
"Actually, I'm 208 centimeters. Even I don't go quite that far."
"That is still plenty big!"
"A bit tall for a woman, I'll grant~"
"That's tall even for a man...!"
A few exchanges were all it took for Ninomae to be certain of one thing. She had thought as much ever since their paths had occasionally crossed on stream, but this person, too, was a menace of no small order...