I Bestow, Who Guards the Firstborn (2)
A paper cup met the table with a soft click, the liquid inside rocking gently against the rim. From the faint sweetness drifting up, it was easy enough to guess: amazake, the sweet rice drink kept ready for worshippers.
"Drink."
"Th-thank you……."
Akaba Akane, the shrine maiden who had set the cup down, said it curtly, and with the toe of her foot prodded the floor across from where her two guests sat.
Of the pair, the masked woman bundled in a pure-white hoodie dipped her head in thanks.
"Natsugahara."
A hannya mask today, then. So Akane thought, even as she spoke.
"We're indoors. How about taking that off already?"
"Take it off? Isn't that a little hasty, Akaba-chan~?"
"The mask and the hood. You perverted bastard!"
She snapped it at the one tossing out nonsense beside her, then looked back to the hooded woman.
"Y-yes, um, maybe I shouuuld……."
The woman seemed to hesitate, yet in the end she nodded at Akane's suggestion. A hand in a jet-black glove trembled as it caught hold of the mask.
What emerged was a timid face, the expression on it heaving with anxiety — an air about her that would not have seemed strange if she burst into tears on the spot. The eyes, though, were red. It was not a question of what shade the irises happened to be; they were simply red, through and through. White and black had no division left between them. Each eye was filled entire with a single dark crimson.
Natsugahara Hina. Her virtual name was Rokumondera Aki. First generation at Anathema, which made her Akane's own cohort, and her concept on the virtual side was a shrine maiden — for one fleeting instant, and for no reason she could have named, Hina remembered the days before her debut. W-wait, really? Miko roleplay, in front of an actual working shrine maiden…? — a small woman, slight of build.
She fidgeted, glanced around, and took a sip of the amazake.
"It's stuffy, so let's get that hood off too~"
"Eeh… uh, okaaay……."
Watching her, Sakuragi Oka eased the hood back and smoothed her hair with a gentle hand.
"Shame, though. If only Rin-chan were here, the whole first gen would've been together."
"Now that you mention it — you didn't call her?"
"I-I did ask, but… she said she'd be at her family home for about a week……."
Well, nothing to be done, then. Akane fiddled for a moment with the phone lying on the table, then set it back down.
"So. How have you two been lately? Might as well ask."
"Comiket's over, so I'm on a little break from drawing~ For a while I think I'll just post doodles."
"I, um… I've been busy practicing the new song that's coming out……. Oh, and some building in Prasava, I suppose……."
"You seriously never get tired of that."
Filling a solid eight hours a day, packed to the brim, with construction was something Akane could not begin to understand. The woman herself insisted it was fun, and there had been a stretch where she played without so much as a rest.
"Anyway, you're here, so rest however you like and then go."
"Ehh~ Where are you going, Akane-chan?"
"Did you not see me cleaning just now? I've still got sweeping to finish."
"There aren't even any worshippers."
"Then I sweep while there aren't any. You want me cleaning with people here?"
With that, Akane straightened her clothes.
"C-can I help…?"
"No. This is my work."
Hina had clearly meant to lend a hand, but Akane refused at once. This was a shrine maiden's duty; it was not something she could pass to someone else. Not as a matter of pride, and not as a matter of obligation.
"B-but…… ah, my mask…!"
"Confiscated until I finish cleaning and come back."
"Uuu, I can't go outside without it……."
"I know. That's why I'm doing it. Sit still until I get back. That's what I'm telling you."
Akane snatched the hannya mask off the table and snorted. Leave the girl alone and she would hem and haw and then come bursting out insisting she help; that much was obvious.
"Auuu… you're so meeean……."
It was a rather forceful method, and Akane had been just about to feel a little bad—
"Doing something like this, nn, so mean. You're so meeean♡"
…Cancel. All of it.
Watching Hina begin to twist and squirm, Akane folded away, intact, the apology she had been on the verge of feeling — brief as that verge had been. Freshly reminded of nothing except the fact that a masochist is invincible, she left the room. Kindness didn't make Hina dislike her, either, which only made the girl a more difficult person to deal with.
"Huee… you really, really just locked me in here and left. I want to be kept imprisoned like this my whole life, huehehe……."
"Hina-chan really never changes~"
The mistress of the house had gone, leaving the two of them. Sakuragi Oka said it, beaming.
"Heuut, I'm sorryyy for being such a hopeless masochist…!"
"You don't waver even a little, do you~"
What passed between them seemed to mesh and to slip out of joint at the same time. Talk between these two, once the brakes had come off, had a way of ending up exactly like this.
"Oh, right. A good composition just came to me — Hina-chan. Mind if I draw some erotic illustrations of Aki? You don't mind, right?"
"Yes, as much as you liiike…! No, more than that — draw them, upload them, and then tell me!"
"Wow, I'm so happy~ I'll draw one a week and post it. ……Huh?"
They had been chattering on like that when they noticed the smartphone on the table blinking. Akane had left it behind on her way out.
"Oh my. It's Ninomae-chan?"
"Wh-what do we do? We should take it to her right away… ah, but my mask…"
"Eh, I'll just answer it~"
"Sakuragi-san?!"
And Sakuragi, grinning loosely, picked up the call as she was.
"Yes, Sakuragi here~ Mm. Akane-chan stepped out for a bit. Me? I was coming anyway, so I came all the way to Takaku Shrine to pay my respects. Mm-hm."
Hina hovered in distress, unsure this was really all right, while Sakuragi carried the call along behind an easy smile.
"……Hm?"
"W-why? What's the matter…?"
But that smile stiffened, if only a little. At the change, Hina looked toward her, uneasy.
"It's, um…"
Sakuragi let the eyes she had kept nearly shut come open, and the bewilderment showed.
"She says she's right out front…?"
"……What?"
And then silence fell.
"Eeeeh?! I-I-I don't have my mask right now?!"
"Yeah, what do we do? Can't exactly run before she gets here."
"I-I have to hide… uuu, there's nowhere to hide…!"
Right. Natsugahara Hina suffered from a considerable case of commu-phobia — that particular terror of having to face another person — and hers was a truly severe one. Fully panicked, she began to pace the room, half unconsciously hunting for any hole she might stuff her head into.
"If it really comes to that, you could hide in here… oh my."
"Pardon the intrusion!"
For just as Sakuragi, half in play, began to loosen the overlapping front of her kimono, Hina shot forward at tremendous speed and buried her face inside it.
"Hey, sorry. I'd forgotten myself — a second-gen junior was supposed to come, so hide for a second— You bastards, what the hell are you doing sprawled out in somebody else's house?!"
Akane's return, bamboo broom in hand, happened to be — or rather, could not have been worse timed than — that exact moment.
A woman with the front of her kimono undone, and a woman with her face buried in it. Look at it any way you liked, it could only be the scene of something thoroughly obscene.
"Ah, ah, there's a reason for this, in its own way…"
Akane had without question gotten a wildly wrong idea. Having judged as much, Sakuragi moved to explain.
"—Doing it with a coworker, in another coworker's house. Don't you think the taboo on that would be absolutely incredible?"
…She had started to explain. Then it occurred to her that this would be more entertaining, and she reversed course on the spot.
"You crazy bitch!"
"Hrk—!"
The price was not a small one. Akane threw herself in and drove a kick, her full weight behind it, into Sakuragi's side.
You greet the new year, and you go to a shrine to pray the year ahead will pass in peace and without mishap. As a Japanese custom for the start of the year, there was nothing especially strange about it.
"…But Shion, you're Korean. And a Christian."
"Which is precisely why we are on our way to a shrine of peninsular lineage, is it not?"
"That was not the question!"
From the driver's seat of the rattling truck, Han Seoyeon allowed herself a small smile and looked over at Ninomae.
Not her usual clothes: a black kimono that had been laid carefully away in the wardrobe. Altered from something off the rack, perhaps, or else made to order from the start. Whichever it was, it seemed fitted so that the more particular expanses of Ninomae's figure were covered, while nowhere else was there cloth to spare. Seoyeon, by contrast, wore what she always wore — black robes that gave off holiness and ill omen in the same glance, the sort of thing that called to mind the billowing martial robes of a period drama, or of a wuxia tale.
"In my case, this is formal dress."
That was her answer when Ninomae asked why she was not in a kimono.
A cleric's formal dress varied endlessly, of course, with rank and with circumstance. In Han Seoyeon's case, however, the sacred relic she had inherited as an Apostle happened to be a garment: a keepsake Apostle Bartholomew had possessed from the moment of his birth, and which at his death he had not kept even then, departing wholly naked. His successor was therefore granted, by exception, the right to disregard prescribed attire at every official function. The Apostle's shroud was deemed formal dress under every circumstance there was.
"Hmm… I did want to see you in a kimono at least once, Shion."
At that, Ninomae murmured as if it were a shame. In Mary Tepes's voice.
"No. Say what you like, I do not own a kimono……."
"…Shion? You've left the navigation route."
"No, it's just… I remembered seeing a kimono shop somewhere around here…"
"I did mean it, up to a point, but this is working way too well, isn't it?!"
The sheer initiative — a scheme which, even so, registered to Seoyeon as nothing more than cute, which was precisely why she surrendered to the temptation at once — was enough to leave even Ninomae, the one who had laid it, a little thrown. And so, not thirty minutes after the remark, Seoyeon had finished changing.
"I don't much care for hairpins. Move too sharply and they come undone…… How do I look?"
Changed in the shop, Han Seoyeon lifted her arms a little and looked herself over this way and that as she asked.
The shroud she ordinarily wore was an old-fashioned garment itself, so at a glance the design did not seem so very different. Worn, though, it was another feeling entirely — the difference, one might say, between a thing made from the outset with violent combat in mind and a thing that was not. A kimono, in particular, was less a loose robe than a form of dress cut to follow the line of the body. A certain tightness while wearing it could not be helped. On that point, at least, Seoyeon compromised.
"Even so, the color does seem far too loud……."
If something still refused to sit with her, it was the color. At Ninomae's vehement insistence — the clothes you usually wear are dreary through and through, so at a time like this you ought to dress brightly — Seoyeon's kimono had been settled on red.
"No! It suits you so well! So well!"
"You seem… considerably delighted?"
At Ninomae puffing her satisfaction out through her nose, Seoyeon smiled, a little abashed.
"Well, of course. When your favorite character's New Year outfit gets added to the game, the law says you scream, open your wallet, and tell them to take your money."
"Mm. Mmm…?"
To Han Seoyeon, who was not in the middle of any mobile game in particular, it seemed to be a difficult comparison.
"New Year commemorative Mary Tepes kimono. New costume reveal."
"…The color?"
"Black, to contrast with the platinum blonde. Something like what I'm wearing now, I'd say."
"Ngh……."
Seoyeon let the groan slip with an exceedingly serious face. Taken as a reaction to a new VTuber costume, it left no atmosphere worth mentioning.
Ninomae watched that, then landed the follow-up without a moment's hesitation.
"For reference, the hairstyle is a ponytail. Which she rarely wears."
"Would it be permissible to scream and open my wallet?"
"We're still in the shop, so please restrain yourself."
"Nnngh……."
She looked so sincerely bereft that Ninomae decided to answer with a look just sober enough to break the spell a little. In the end, Han Seoyeon's wallet was spent on nothing but the purchase of her own kimono.
"…The truth is, I was only expecting a one-day rental."
"It is clothing you complimented as suiting me, Ninomae."
Kimonos, as it happened, cost a surprising amount. Enough that it was not uncommon, depending on the household, to inherit one's mother's. Order one custom at the high end and the price could climb to a figure that left the mind genuinely dazed. What they had bought this time was not on that level… and yet it could hardly be called cheap.
Seoyeon making an impulsive purchase that had never been in the plan — Ninomae could not help being a little aghast. She was made to realize, all over again, that this woman's sense of money was, in a quiet way, bizarre. It wasn't that the principle of not buying unnecessary things had failed to plant itself in her head. It was that the moment she judged a thing necessary, she was the sort who paid for it without a second's hesitation.
The money really ought to be mine to manage…….
No — what was she even thinking? Ninomae shook her head from side to side. They weren't a married couple. What business did mere friends have handing the finances over to each other?
"Anyway. You've had your kimono fitted too, Shion, so let's get to the shrine. I already let Akaba-senpai know."