A House of Prayer, or a Den of Thieves (6)
"Hmm. Shion-san isn't picking up..."
Had she set it to silent? Ninomae supposed as much, and still a flicker of worry crossed her face.
Dozens of minutes had passed since Han Seoyeon stepped away with a word about the restroom, and she had yet to come back. Ninomae was worried. She knew perfectly well by now how foolish it was to fret over an Apostle, of all people—but understanding a thing with your head and doing what your heart demands are two different stories entirely, aren't they? However exceptional a person might be, if they were precious to you, you couldn't help but worry.
"It's crowded, so the restroom line might just be long... but if you're really that worried, why not go look for her? I think I can manage the booth on my own now. Find her, and the two of you can wander around a bit."
"Are you sure that's all right?"
"If anything, I'm the one who ought to be sorry, keeping you tied up this long over my own business."
Nearly two hours since the doors had opened. Ninomae had come meaning to enjoy herself, and instead she had been pinned here working the whole time.
"Thank you~ I'll make today's work up to you somehow, I promise."
"It wasn't a bad experience. If you need an extra pair of hands next time, just call me."
Sakuragi caught Ninomae's hand as if for a handshake and pumped it vigorously up and down. The suspicion that her arm might pop clean out of its socket at that rate, she decided to keep to herself for the moment.
And so, having left Sakuragi's booth behind, Ninomae ran straight into one enormous problem.
So in a place this huge, how exactly am I supposed to find Shion-san...?
Setting off in such high spirits had been all well and good. The trouble was that she had no plan at all for what came next. The realization arrived late, and she managed a stiff smile. Calling was out from the start—that was why she had come looking. Perhaps the nearest restroom was the place to begin after all...
She was still turning it over when a voice came from close by.
"Looking for something, Miss Ninomae Hitomi?"
Japanese, colored by a slightly unusual accent. She turned her head. A woman stood there with a Cappello Romano perched carelessly atop her head, more set down than worn, and the brown of her skin was no tan. It was the color she had been born with.
"Alejandra-san...?"
A backpack on her shoulders, paper bags in both hands, even a battle towel slung around her neck—the very picture of a Comiket regular. Set that aside, and it was a face Ninomae remembered. Alejandra. Baptismal name, Muerte. Apostle Matthias of the current generation. And she was beaming at her, bright and easy.
"Ah, well... it's been quite a while, and Shion-san still hasn't come back. I was worried something might have happened, so I came looking for her."
"Mmm. Worrying over an Apostle..."
Alejandra scratched her cheek and let a peculiar little laugh slip out.
"You are a rather... unique person, Ninomae-san. Oh! I'm not being sarcastic. I mean that, truly."
Ninomae's worry did not come from ignorance of what an Apostle was. She understood Han Seoyeon's strength well enough, and she fretted over her safety all the same. A goodness she had been born with? Or were her feelings for the woman simply so great that they overrode the common-sense judgment that a fully armed Han Seoyeon could not possibly come to harm? That far, it was not yet Alejandra's place to decide.
"If it's Seoyeon, please don't worry too much. I know where she went. Or rather—I'm the one who called her away."
She offered the fact readily enough.
"Something came up that needed her sense of smell, so I only asked for her help. It may take a little time, but it is absolutely nothing dangerous. You can rest easy."
Hearing that, Ninomae felt a small measure of relief—and yet she stared straight at Alejandra. Something about this struck her as odd.
"...As you seem to suspect, that isn't the only reason."
It was nothing more than a baseless hunch, and she couldn't quite bring herself to say so. Alejandra cleared her throat and took up the thread herself.
"I called her away because I wanted a moment to talk with you. Without Seoyeon. ...Though I'll admit, I didn't expect you to storm out of the booth."
"With me...?"
Ninomae tilted her head.
"Didn't you finish investigating me the last time we met?"
"I did. You're quite right about that. But this time it isn't an investigation of you yourself, Ninomae-san. It's part of looking into something else."
If their last meeting had been to analyze Han Seoyeon's new "friend," this one felt closer to being called in as a witness to an incident.
"It isn't going to overturn how we read the case, so please answer at your ease. If I had to put it a certain way, this is less a Holy Knight's inquiry than the personal curiosity of Alejandra the individual."
It wasn't important. She was curious anyway. Determined, it seemed, not to lay any burden on Ninomae, Alejandra pressed that stance again and again.
"All right. If it's something I can answer, then as much as you like."
Whether that was ordinary human consideration, or a way of setting her at ease so the testimony would come out more honest, she couldn't tell. Ninomae decided it didn't matter which, and promised an honest answer.
"I'm grateful you're willing. Then let's go straight to the point. What I'm curious about is a question regarding your actions, Ninomae-san."
Alejandra smiled, and looked at her.
"—Master."
"Ah. Thank you."
"......?"
In that same instant two women dressed in black came up, pressed the paper bags into Ninomae's hands, and vanished. The timing was so exquisitely unfortunate that an awkward air settled between them. Ninomae made a point of looking elsewhere.
"...Um, Ninomae-san. What was that just now?"
"That was, um, familiars of the Black Goat. I did decide to watch Sakuragi-san's booth, that's true, but the thought of the popular booths selling out in the meantime would have stung quite a lot, so..."
As Alejandra understood it, Ninomae had not been walking the hidden world for very long at all. And yet she had already adapted to the point of using magecraft without a second thought, purely for the sake of her fandom.
"Anyway. Let me get back to the original subject."
Alejandra cleared her throat once more and hauled the derailed conversation back on course.
"As you are now, you use magecraft readily even in ordinary life. And among those uses, there must be reinforcement of the body. Am I wrong?"
"No... it's just as you say."
It had begun as nothing more than a hunch, but by now Alejandra was all but certain.
"How did you know?"
"The way your muscles moved was different from when you were at the booth. You must have been supporting your body with magecraft then."
"...No, seriously, how did you know?!"
"Because I'm an Apostle."
Alejandra answered with a touch of mischief. It wasn't even a lie. At this level, everyone had a trick or two of that sort.
"At any rate, you're someone who uses it little by little even in daily life like this. If that's how you are on an ordinary day, then that day goes without saying, doesn't it?"
Alejandra never said when, exactly, "that day" had been. Somehow Ninomae felt she knew all the same. A few days ago—the day of the disaster on Christmas Eve.
"And judging by the reports compiled so far... Seoyeon killed you. That, too, is an established fact, isn't it?"
"...Yes. That's right. It still doesn't quite feel real that I died, though."
Han Seoyeon had put a bullet through Ninomae's head, to keep her from being infected by Vampire Syndrome and passing the point of no return.
"That is where my question lies. Seoyeon was in such a rush at the time that she doesn't seem to have noticed, but why, from that single blow, did you... no."
Alejandra shook her head, abandoning the question halfway. Why had Ninomae, who ought to have been reinforcing her body, died instantly from a single round? Any number of hypotheses offered themselves. But if Alejandra's reasoning held, only one possibility could stand in this situation.
"Why did you release your body reinforcement in that moment, Ninomae Hitomi?"
Because she could no longer sustain it? The pillar of fire, which would have been devouring far more energy than any reinforcement, had still been holding perfectly well at the time. Because she no longer needed it, then? In the middle of being set upon by vampires?
"At first I thought it was because you had understood Margarita's plan. By her own testimony, you 'saw the muzzle' then."
A brief instant, yes—but if she had grasped Seoyeon's plan and given herself over to it, everything would be explained.
"But that wasn't it. According to her, even up to that moment you still didn't know of the miracle of resurrection Seoyeon could perform."
Without knowledge of the power of revival that was the heart of the plan, Han Seoyeon's action amounted to nothing more than a sudden attempt to kill her. Put another way, the question now came down to this: why had Ninomae accepted, of her own will, that Han Seoyeon would kill her?
"A spirit of self-sacrifice, perhaps? I heard of a teacher who, the instant she was bitten, smashed her head against the floor and killed herself, afraid she would turn into a monster and harm her students. I considered it from that side as well... but it doesn't seem to have been that, either."
At least, the temperament of the Ninomae she had met and analyzed before was not like that. Exceedingly kind, yes—but not, in Alejandra's judgment, to the point of throwing her own life away for the salvation of people she didn't even know.
"If it had been not for the citizens as a whole, but for the single person named Han Seoyeon... then perhaps it would have been possible. Even so, the decision came too quickly. That part troubles me."
Han Seoyeon's action had been exceedingly swift, and the soonest Ninomae could have recognized her will to kill was after the muzzle was already trained on her. It would have required a speed at which she canceled the reinforcement magecraft almost the instant she saw it.
"What about the zombie-movie cliché—wanting to die as a human before you turned? Well. We run into the problem of time again."
For one thing, Ninomae had seen the muzzle and accepted death before a vampire ever bit her. They say a master sees several moves ahead with perfect clarity, but Ninomae's judgment was close to that of an ordinary person. Magecraft or not, until not long ago she had been a human of the surface world. To be certain the attack could not be avoided, to recognize the vampirization that would follow, and then to finish weighing the worth of that and abandon her life—all within a heartbeat... she doubted there had been so much room.
"Why? Why on earth? Why did you quietly let yourself be killed by her, when she had suddenly turned?"
In the end she was back where she had started, with no answer in hand. The question of why still remained, circling before her eyes.
But Ninomae smiled, and shook her head.
"No. She didn't turn. Shion-san only did it for my sake."
"Well, that much is true. But that only makes sense if you knew the miracle she could perform... the mira—"
Alejandra, on the verge of answering, met Ninomae's eyes and closed her mouth. Or it would be fairer to say the words simply failed her. The gaze of a woman who had not once lost her composure until now trembled.
"D-don't tell me you...?"
The voice and the face that gave the answer were so assured, so full of certainty, that it felt less like one person's sentiment and more like the statement of an axiom too obvious to require proof. Ninomae Hitomi had, in that moment, truly believed that having a bullet blow her skull open was something that would do her good. For no reason other than that it was an action taken by Han Seoyeon. And given the time involved, there would not have been so much as a shred of hesitation.
Could that really be called the thinking of a sane person? Alejandra's eyes wavered.
"Ninomae-san. To you, Han Seoyeon is... what, exactly?"
It was already difficult to call that an ordinary degree of conduct. What in the world had made her hold a trust this deep? Alejandra remembered a line an old friend had once offered, half in jest.
"Hmm...? A precious friend, of course?"
Ninomae tipped her head a little, and then broke into a bright ehehe.
"No, that's—"
"Ninomae-san? And Alejandra-san as well? What's going on here?"
Surely it was strange to simply let a thing like that pass. Alejandra was about to say so when the voice that followed cut her short.
"Oh! Shion-san!"
Ninomae's face lit up all at once. At the end of her gaze, Han Seoyeon was walking toward them, one hand resting on the hilt of her sword.
"You weren't coming back, so I got worried and came to find you."
"I apologize. Holy Knight business came up on short notice."
So saying, she turned a faintly dubious look on Alejandra at Ninomae's side. The Vampire Syndrome incident had been only a matter of days ago. She had gone so far as to claim she'd merely stepped out to the restroom, lest Ninomae be left anxious—you didn't go and say something unnecessary, did you? Her eyes pressed the question. But she soon looked back to Ninomae, and a faint smile rose to her face.
"It seems I've given you cause to worry."
A little apology was mixed into those smiling eyes. Then she dipped her head and kissed Ninomae's forehead.
"Hweh?!"
"Even so, I've come back safe and sound without causing any trouble, so won't you forgive me this once?"
"N-n-no, what are you doing when people are watching?!"
Ninomae, of course, cried out with her face gone scarlet. Only then did Han Seoyeon glance around and let out an "Ah," as if she understood.
"I apologize. Force of habit, I'm afraid..."
For a place so thick with people, surprisingly few eyes seemed to have gathered on them—but a public place was a public place all the same. Han Seoyeon reflected on her thoughtless conduct.
"I'm really asking you to show a little restraint..."
Ninomae muttered it like a scolding, but her expression had gone strangely soft, and so it carried very little force.
"Then shall I receive Ninomae-san's thanks once we're home?"
"Thanks, she says... ...Well. If you want it, I'll give it to you."
The two of them looked at one another, and burst out laughing all over again.
"......"
And Alejandra was staring at the whole of it, utterly dumbfounded.
"If this is what you call a friend, then I don't have any. You hear me, you two?"
"?"
"Especially you, Margarita. Sure, reach Gravekeeper rank or higher and you'll throw canon law to the dogs without a blink—but a cleric advertising to the whole neighborhood that she means to work her way through all seven sacraments is a bit much, isn't it?!"
"????"