Grant Unto Me, and Keep the Firstborn (5)
Every building is divided into parts, and a shrine is no exception. Of its grounds, two precincts could be called essential—the honden, the inner sanctuary, and the haiden, the hall of worship. Set aside the honden, which none but those attached to the shrine may enter, and the only place that truly matters to a worshipper is the haiden.
The name itself declares it a space for worship. Put simply, it is just the shrine's front court.
Palms pressed together. A shake of the rope strung with bells. Palms together again—and, folded between the gestures, a wish, short and earnest.
"D-do I really not have to leave an offering...?"
"Well. It ends up in my wallet either way."
What set the scene apart from any ordinary visit was the figure seated atop the offering box. Dressed in a shrine maiden's robes and looking nothing like one, Akane had claimed the god's own seat, perched there at a cocky angle with her legs crossed.
Depending on the deity's temperament, irreverence of that order might well have called down divine punishment. The god who might have taken offense, however, was at that very moment rolling around on the ground in a corner over there.
True to a spirit, there was no visible wound, but the look was that of someone whose soul had stepped out. The one who had reduced Sanmeedora to that state—Han Seoyeon—explained that things would be back to normal within ten minutes. Of course, given the disposition of the god Akane served, even a lucid Sanmeedora would probably have let an insolence of this degree slide.
"What did you wish for, Ninomae-san?"
Offering a prayer to the very being she had just knocked flat was, admittedly, a little strange. The thought was not entirely absent. Even so, having finished her worship, Han Seoyeon turned toward Ninomae and asked.
"If you say it out loud, it doesn't come true, right?"
"So long as a superstition of that sort exists, it is difficult to call the notion entirely wrong on the other side. In the present case, however, you may safely treat it as an exception."
Wishing for something did not, in the first place, trip some system that granted it like a miracle. Pray to a genuine spirit, and the most one received was a blessing that nudged matters slightly in one's favor.
"Unlike demons and their kind, human beings are founded upon the flesh. At a trivial scale, spiritual anomalies do not exert much influence."
"Is that how it works?"
"That is how it works."
Honestly, talk of the material and the immaterial still only made Ninomae tilt her head. Calling flame out of empty air, closing wounds—all of it still felt like fantasy. Even if someone explained which parts lay close against the real world and which did not, none of it was going to land. She simply took Han Seoyeon's word for it. The woman was the expert.
"I wished for my streams. That I could keep going the way I have—no, even better than I have. And..."
Ninomae seemed to hesitate, then went on.
"That the live concert coming up goes well. Yeah. Something like that, I guess."
"A birthday live, then."
Ninomae Hitomi's birthday fell on February 28th. Mary Tepes's official birthday was the same. And Anathema had a tradition of holding a live concert during the week a talent's birthday came around.
Barring anything unusual, this would be Mary's first concert. It was not in the least strange that the thought should stir a number of feelings.
Even granting that the live would not actually take place until March, some people would already be fretting. By the look of the calendar, talk of it was probably circulating inside the company by now.
How matters were actually proceeding, Han Seoyeon had no way of knowing. Ninomae simply did not bring the subject up.
It was not that she was some ambiguous outsider, unfit to be told company business. Ninomae was not the sort to draw a line like that and push Han Seoyeon away, and even at the level of the company itself, Seoyeon was gradually ceasing to count as an outsider.
She discussed streams with Ninomae, and now and then even showed her face on them. Considering Anathema Production's policy of keeping its hands well off its talents, the influence she exerted ran deeper than a manager's.
There had been calls checking on Ninomae's condition under the pretext of looking after employees, and gift sets circulated among the staff had found their way to Han Seoyeon as well. In every respect, it was difficult to call the treatment that of an outsider.
Even so, Ninomae's reluctance to say much about the concert was entirely her own doing. The reason was easy to guess. She meant to keep the spoilers at bay.
A fan was a truly ironic creature—wanting advance information more than anyone, and at the same time wanting the contents spoiled less than anyone. A thoroughly self-contradictory life-form.
Han Seoyeon had gritted her teeth and waited for the official stream even at the reveal of the new model. This time, too, Ninomae had surely thought it through in her own way, hoping to heighten the impact of that first look as far as it would go.
"Still, I'm really glad I'm not going first."
"Serena-san was born in January, was she not?"
The first live concert the second generation would hold after receiving their 3D models. Fortunately, early as her February birthday was, Ninomae had managed to dodge that overloaded honor—because the witch Serena Lasagna, whose real name was Senjoji Chiyo, had a birthday in the middle of January.
"So you knew Serena-san's birthday?"
"I happened to see the stream schedule this time. A birthday stream was planned. I already knew she was born in January. Chiyo-san mentioned it once, in passing."
"Hmm... I see."
There had been points of contact with Chiyo, younger sister of Han Seoyeon's academic advisor, for some time. Now and then she was brought along as an assistant on the field surveys the professor commissioned. Knowing something as minor as a birthday was hardly strange.
Right. Nothing strange about it.
And yet the fact left Ninomae in a peculiar mood. No—enough of talking around it. What good was dressing up a feeling she had already recognized in herself?
Ninomae was jealous. Childishly so. Over something this small.
To speak plainly, until now she had believed that she and Han Seoyeon were each other's only friend.
It had never quite been so. Once Han Seoyeon revealed the hidden self she had been concealing, her circle turned out wider than Ninomae had thought. The first friend Han Seoyeon ever made had not been Ninomae Hitomi.
Narrow the field strictly to Japanese people, and the woman she had run into on the hot-spring trip—Mika Eru—came first. Close enough to stick her with the nickname Natacchi. Given how frivolous the other woman could be, the name had probably been slapped on from that side alone. Even so, Seoyeon still went by Natacchi online, which suggested the relationship had not been entirely one-sided either.
If the condition was simply who she had first met in Japan, then Natsugahara Hina, standing right here, came before her—investigation or not. As for Senjoji Chiyo, the two of them had even traveled together more than once.
Maybe I should just make the wish over again.
Not being the first was fine. What had already passed could not be rewound, and she knew well enough that the order was not what mattered. Not being the only one was... well, acceptable, if only just. Jealous or not, she could hardly throw a fit and demand that Han Seoyeon cut off every other relationship.
But the thought that she might not be the best soured her mood.
However many times she turned it over, she did not want to yield the place of dearest friend. She knew it was no small greed. Even so, this one thing she refused to give up.
"...Ninomae-san?"
"...Why?"
"Mm. It is nothing."
So Ninomae drew a quiet breath, took one step to the side, and lightly gathered Seoyeon's left arm in, all but tucking it between her breasts.
Akane glanced over, then looked away at once, as if it were not worth much notice. Skinship of this degree was nothing close friends could not manage. She had probably decided to let it pass with a private look at them.
Ninomae's intent was not merely that. But she had never meant the display for Akane's benefit, so it hardly mattered.
"Uh, umm..."
"Ehehe..."
While Akane's eyes were elsewhere—aimed at empty air, so she was probably still watching the god groan where she lay—Ninomae quickly turned her face toward Han Seoyeon and pressed a kiss to her cheek. Seoyeon looked a little startled. Ninomae, shy and pleased at once, broke into a soft smile.
Hah—! That's not it!
Then she caught herself, all over again, that she had not done this merely for her own satisfaction, and turned her gaze. Natsugahara Hina was standing right there. The mask hid her expression, but the stunned, vacant air about her was easy enough to read.
"What did you wish for, Shion-san? You're my most precious friend, so I really want to hear it."
Looking at Hina, Ninomae produced a practiced smile—a specialty she was quietly confident in—and spoke to Han Seoyeon, deliberately leaning on a certain phrase.
However early Hina had met her upon coming to Japan, the relationship had been for the sake of an interrogation. It seemed unlikely that Han Seoyeon harbored any special feeling toward her. Even so, the woman over there had brought a sacred bulwark into bloom through Seoyeon. Not someone one could afford to relax around.
"F-f-friends do that sort of...? Eh? Hueh? A-am I the weird one...?"
Judging by the reaction, the opening strike had landed reasonably well. Hina was only muttering to herself, in a crawling voice that barely carried.
Han Seoyeon seemed mildly puzzled by Ninomae's manner, but she must have decided it was no great matter, for she went on.
"Your health and safety, Ninomae-san."
"No—at a time like this, you're supposed to wish for yourself."
"I do not think it differs greatly, at the root, from a wish made for myself. And in the first place, this is not a body that needs to wish for its health."
To put it bluntly, this was something she could settle by her own power. Why go so far as to wish for it? The thought had been unavoidable.
"And you, Natsugahara-san?"
"Y-yes?! M-m-me?!"
Instead, Han Seoyeon passed the ball to someone else. Called on by name, Hina flustered and flailed.
"Th-that's... I mean... uuh."
Even so, she seemed to make up her mind, and opened her mouth.
"That the members went somewhere good. Yeah, well..."
Finding the courage to speak did not, of course, always yield a positive result. At a confession heavier than anyone had imagined, every mouth closed. An awkward understanding spread among them: they had stepped squarely on a land mine.
"Members" could not mean her present colleagues at Anathema Production. It had to mean the ones from before—the group from her days as an idol. And every one of them, at present, was dead.
"...If I may offer an opinion as an Apostle, they will have gone to a good place."
After a moment, Han Seoyeon spoke, carefully.
In truth, she did not know them well. Data on paper, and testimony through Hina—that was the whole of what she had grasped. She could not guarantee it absolutely. But if someone this frail still remembered those colleagues fondly, even after they had turned to monsters and attacked her, then they had probably been decent people. And if so, their souls had surely gone somewhere good. That was what Han Seoyeon thought.
"Yes, yes! That's right. They were Aki-senpai's colleagues, so they must have been good people..."
Ninomae lent a hand as well. She knew nothing whatsoever of the afterlife, and still she offered the most hopeful reading she could, so her senior would not grieve.
"...Aki-senpai?"
Hearing that, Hina stood blank for a moment, then went pattering off into the distance. They were wondering whether they had said something they should not have when she spun around to face them—and set a hand upon her mask.
"Th-thank you for saying that...!"
She took the mask off, bared her face, and offered her thanks. Red eyes turned their way. A safe distance had already been secured, but even so, it seemed she had been accepted far enough to overcome her trauma and show her skin.
"And, um, also! From now on... p-please take care of me...!"
"So she says."
Akane, who had been watching, tapped her heel against the offering box and turned her head. Ninomae, briefly dazed, soon broke into a bright smile.
"Yes! Please take care of me too, senpai!"
"Nngh... a sunshine character really might be too much for me after all..."
"Senpai?!"
Unable to endure that unclouded brightness, Hina pulled the mask back over her face.