Chapter 9: Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand (2)
"Man is a social animal."
When people gather, they begin of their own accord to form a community. Even the residents of the extraordinary—those who have learned that anomalies exist—are no exception to that unchanging truth. And if they gathered in the twenty-first century, there was nothing strange in the least about their gathering taking the shape of an internet community.
"Wherever people live, it's all much the same."
The world beyond the everyday was no exception either. The communities they built differed little from those of the surface world. Their members simply knew, in matters great and small, that the supernatural was real.
Akaba Akane—or, as the first generation of Anathema knew her, Yugure Tama. The site she used to dig into Sister's background was one of those very places. She had heard that Sister was a Korean exchange student, and so she decided to begin her search on that side.
October 31st. Halloween.
What that day meant differed from person to person. For one, it was a festival of masks. For another, the eve of All Saints' Day. For yet another, a day of rites once held to honor the year's harvest before winter closed in…….
She was a folklore major, of a sort, and those were the examples that came to mind. Han Seoyeon smiled a bitter smile. For her, though, today carried a meaning apart from any of those.
For one thing, today was the offline collab between the vampire Mary Tepes and the werewolf Charlotte Lupus. That pairing was the combination Han Seoyeon backed hardest of all, and already her expectations were running high.
And the other meaning the day held was—
"Shion-san, if you don't mind, would you like to have lunch together tomorrow?"
Ninomae Hitomi. It was the day she had set a meal with the woman behind Mary Tepes.
There's still plenty of time. Even so, once she had checked the hour on her phone, Seoyeon quickened her steps. They were still twenty minutes short of the appointed time, but knowing Ninomae's temperament, the odds were high she had already arrived.
A chilly late-autumn wind came up and tickled the hem of her coat. A stark white shirt, black skinny jeans, and—in concession to the autumn weather—a beige coat over the top. That was what she wore.
Far off, the meeting place came into view. It was an unidentifiable metal structure, raised by an artist whose name she had never once heard, in professed service to some -ism or other. Its most beloved designation was "that thing across from the department store," and its chief use was as a place to meet.
On a bench set nearby sat Ninomae Hitomi. …In a nun's habit, of all things. Worse, a man who had come up beside her was in the middle of hitting on her.
Under ordinary circumstances, no one short of a genuine lunatic would try to pick up a nun. The leather belt fastened just beneath her chest, however—one that only threw that fullness into sharper relief—made it plain that this was nothing more than cosplay.
Not that Ninomae had cinched the belt there in order to show off her high-defense breastplate. Put a chest like that into a loose garment and the cloth would hang from it like a curtain, and nine times out of ten she would end up looking as though she were dressed for maternity. The belt was there to draw her in once, below the bust and above the waist, and bring the line of her figure back. Ninomae's intention was easy enough to read. The finished result, of course, was the display of a figure so irreverent that to call it a nun's was blasphemy in itself.
"Ninomae-san."
Ninomae, who had been trying to turn the man aside with an awkward smile, heard the voice and turned her head. The moment her eyes found Han Seoyeon, she broke into a bright smile. The man standing before her looked this way as well, of course… and the instant his gaze met Seoyeon's, his face locked stiff and he removed himself from the premises.
How underwhelming. Han Seoyeon murmured it to herself. She had no mind to condemn the act of hitting on someone as such. Honestly, Ninomae's looks were extraordinary even to another woman. But to reach for a beauty of that caliber without even this much nerve—what kind of greed was that? She clicked her tongue, small, and went to her.
"Out early again, I see."
"It would be a problem if something happened on the way, wouldn't it?"
Ninomae smiled, soft and a little shy. And so she set out with time to spare, enough that no ordinary mishap could make her late. That was her claim.
"You came a whole twenty minutes early yourself, Shion-san."
"Only because it was obvious you would be waiting, Ninomae-san. I matched you."
"Hee. Thank you."
An artless smile. There was an unstained purity in the look of it.
"But what's with the nun's habit?"
Halloween or not, few people wandered about in cosplay from the middle of the day. The masquerade proper did not get underway until the sun began to lean toward evening.
"It's just—how do I put it. I wanted to show you first, Shion-san, before the stream."
"Well. I'm honored."
Seoyeon met her eyes and smiled, faintly.
"But… even if we file the bangs under cosplay, a rosario is not something you hang around your neck."
"A rozerio? Oh—this cross necklace?"
"As I said. It isn't a necklace."
This was something people who were not Catholic—no, even Catholics themselves—mistook with some frequency. A five-decade rosary was, after all, exactly the size one would want for a necklace.
"Mmm. Is that how it is. Nothing for it, then."
Ninomae worked the rosary off her neck in fumbling handfuls. The veil on her head made it a little troublesome.
"Ninomae-san. Your veil has slipped."
With that, Han Seoyeon set the veil to rights.
"…Shion-san?"
Even then, Seoyeon showed no intention of drawing back, and it was in puzzlement that Ninomae had said her name.
"And, in exchange… would you be satisfied with this?"
"H-hueh?"
A moment later Han Seoyeon unclasped her own necklace and wound it about Ninomae's throat. She reached with both arms as if to gather her head in, and fastened the chain again behind the nape.
"Um… if you stare quite so openly, it is a little embarrassing."
"Ah—I, I'm sorry."
Only once it had been pointed out, her face plainly mortified, did Ninomae turn her eyes awkwardly aside.
"…There. It's done."
A silver cross, a red ruby set into its crossing. It lay against Ninomae's chest.
"This isn't expensive, is it?"
"Well. I imagine it's worth a fair amount. I inherited it from a senior in the Church, so I couldn't say for certain."
A second-class holy relic some centuries old. Of course it was expensive. Ninomae's question, of course, had only meant expensive in the sense of whether it was real silver, and a real ruby.
"I'll be careful with it and give it back. Not a single scratch!"
"It already has plenty of scratches. You needn't mind them."
Seoyeon herself carried it when she hunted anomalies, so it could hardly be unmarked. And considering those who had used it before her, so long as it was not snapped clean in half, a few more scars would scarcely show.
"In any case, shall we go and eat… though it's a little early to put it that way. Shall we walk for a while?"
"Hehe, I'd like that!"
Ninomae beamed and nodded with all her might.