CHAPTER 15
Art Separates the Geniuses from the Eccentrics
First Friday of October
A crowd of English Puritan Church combat personnel had gathered in a women’s dorm in London. A woman with long black hair in a ponytail named Kaori Kanzaki was one of their number.
Normally, she carried a very long Japanese katana—over two meters long—called the Seven Heavens Sword at her waist.
The sheath is a wonderful decorative accessory for the sword. Would you not like to decorate your own beloved blade to be more beautiful?
There she stood by herself in the cafeteria, trembling, a flyer in her hands with that written on it.
On the pretty, four-colored flyer were several sample photos, each bordered by little squares, making the whole thing look like an open bento box seen from above; vermilion maple leaves on black ground and detailed gold-leaf animal cutouts adorned the other sections.
There was an audible gulp.
Kanzaki didn’t realize she was the source of that sound.
Hrrrnnng…!! What is this?! I was just starting to think my cold, black sheath wasn’t quite up to par. If I could get it decorated with these scarlet maple leaves or yellow cranes… N-no, no!! The true way of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church is to extract and apply magical symbols from everyday items! I cannot recombine my sheath’s symbols so easily… B-but… Perhaps these nighttime cherry blossom petals would not cause any iconographic issues…
Kaori Kanzaki, ordinarily the spitting image of a stereotypical cool and collected, traditional Japanese woman, kept groaning under her breath as she agonized over her choices. And then, as though to deliver the killing stroke, a different flyer slipped out of her hand and floated down to the cafeteria table.
On it was written this:
A suit of armor is the best partner you can have—it will always watch your back. We want you to feel the breath of this wonderful ally on your skin as it sits snugly wrapped around you even in the most precarious of situations.
“H-hrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggg!!”
Staring a hole through the advertisement photos, which showed things that looked like dolls for the Boys’ Festival in May, she thought, she couldn’t possibly get a complete suit of armor, but perhaps just something for the arms and legs and a breastplate. Something she could integrate with her normal clothing— No, no!! she told herself, her mind racked with worries over this and that.
And then she came to her senses.
Her head snapped up, and as she quietly cleared her throat, she deliberately slid the flyers to the side. This wasn’t the time to let herself be charmed by these flyers, left here as though someone had planned on laying a trap.
Kanzaki passed from the cafeteria into the kitchen space.
The clergy here had secured a considerably large area so they could prepare food for many people at once. There was an industrial oven, an industrial refrigerator, an industrial sink—every last thing in this kitchen had the word industrial attached, and upon entering it and popping open the huge silver refrigerator, Kanzaki removed a small storage container from its recesses.
The bony parts of an already-filleted sea bream.
Kanzaki was on cooking duty today, and she’d conserved the fish bones between meals. These parts she’d gotten from using a knife to whittle off the little pieces of flesh stuck to the thicker bones.
It had put her in a slight depression when a short-statured sister named Angeline, the one who always came by to snatch food away, had said something along the lines of Wow, you have a really gluttonous appetite, huh, but right now, Kanzaki could say it openly—that Sister Angeline was correct. Kanzaki had one specific favorite food.
Kanzaki took what was left of the rice in the giant rice cooker—the sort one might use for catering—and put it in a bowl before taking a pinch of the sea bream dregs and sticking them in the center. Then, after rapidly boiling the bream’s bone and head, she stuck the resulting dashi broth in a teapot, then finally poured it over her rice bowl.
Gently, she put down the teapot, then brought her hands together in a soft clap that didn’t create any noise.
“Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh… Sea bream chazuke! ?”
Wow, clap-clap-clap. There Kanzaki was, getting quietly excited by herself. It wasn’t tea she was adding to the rice, so it wasn’t technically chazuke—but it was still acceptable. Kaori Kanzaki liked the dashi broth variety better anyway. No matter what anyone else said, she swore she could eat this one dish for the rest of her life, even if she couldn’t have anything else.
With this and that, Kanzaki felt it would take too long to bring her bowl into the cafeteria, so she took a pair of chopsticks from the cupboard and, already wiggling around her behind in her indigo-dyed yukata, wearing a smile, doing none of the above with any sort of consistent rhythm, she said:
“Okay. Time to dig i—”
“Who’s eating something so delicious in the middle of the night?! Show yourself!!”
“It smells so good!! I’m too hungry to sleep right now after all!!”
Suddenly hearing several female voices cry out from the direction of the ceiling, followed by the pattering of footsteps, Kanzaki panicked. As she did, the frantic footfalls accelerated and multiplied, steadily making their way to her location.
She only had one sea bream chazuke.
It didn’t matter if they’d sniffed it out—she couldn’t acquiesce to their request.
Which meant there was only one thing to do.
At this rate, we’ll have a mad scramble on our hands…!
Kanzaki steeled herself, snatched up the bowl with hot steam billowing from it, put her lips to the edge of it, and then began madly driving her chopsticks back and forth and slurping it down. She felt tears rising to her eyes, but she didn’t have time to worry about it. This was the only way to stop the senseless conflict. It was not, of course, because she was afraid of others falling in love with the sea bream chazuke at first sight.
With the bowl empty, she threw her chopsticks into the dishpan, which was already filled with water, then washed down the scant remainder of the dashi broth left in the pan and the teapot. As the finishing touch, she sprayed some deodorizer everywhere. Pshhh-pshh-pshh!!
All of it took her just thirty seconds.
Kanzaki returned the deodorizing spray to its original location and bolted upright just as she heard the crash of the door as a group of sisters overwhelmed with hunger came scampering into the kitchen.
Leading the charge was, as she’d expected, the short sister with blond hair in French braids, Angeline. Her little nose perked up as she sniffed around.
“K-Kanzaki! Did you see any mysterious people holding extremely delicious-looking food around here?!”
“N-no. You mean like a mysterious old man coming to deliver ramen or something? Not at all.”
“That’s strange. I could have sworn the smell was coming from this direction…”
Making a series of audible sniffing noises, Angeline wandered about the kitchen like a military hound who’d lost its prey. Behind her there were several other sisters following suit. Kanzaki slowly looked away from the group, casually glanced at the window, noticed in her reflection that a grain of rice was stuck to her lip, and hastily brushed it into her mouth.
In the meantime, the tall, cat-eyed Sister Lucia, who was always with Angeline and was here now, possibly having noticed all the ruckus, began talking to Angeline about something.
“Sister Angeline… What is the meaning of this?”
“It’s autumn! And everyone knows autumn is for art! And I’m expressing myself through art.”
Confused, Kanzaki looked over and saw Angeline had a chocolate coronet pastry in her hand, with three silver forks stuck into each side of the bread for a total of six. Seeing that, Lucia’s eyes said it all: How dare you play with your food; that’s one hundred spanks for you.
Holding the sweetbread, forks unfurling from it like some kind of wings, Angeline said, “This symbolizes the anger swirling inside me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My heart is about to burst from my chest, full of rage and wrath. But it needs energy to burst out. And the exchange of that energy means that the anger I direct toward others will eventually come back to me—anyway, what I’m trying to say is, I’m so angry that it’s made me even more hungry!!!!!!”
“……” Lucia sighed heavily. Now that Miss Angeline’s audio commentary was over, it was time for those hundred spanks.
But just as she thought that, Sherry Cromwell, a sorcerer with blond hair like a lion, brown skin, and gothic-lolita-style clothing, came into the kitchen, having been later than the rest.
“It is art…!!”
“D-don’t make jokes that are just going to fly over everyone’s head!!” cried Lucia. “Look—now that you said that strange thing, Sister Angeline is gasping and having a peculiar flash of enlightenment!!”
What seemed like enlightenment was actually the result of Lucia flaring up at Sherry, which caused Lucia to spank Angeline with 80 percent more power, but she didn’t notice that fact.
Meanwhile, Sherry, for her part, as though showing respect to the sweetbread forks mysteriously invoking human emotions, put on thin gloves like she was about to handle a precious antique and said, “Hey! You two—the tall and short duo!!”
““Please don’t refer to us like we’re plumbers!!””
“…Can…can I touch that sw-sweetbread…? Wait!! I understand! I’m fully aware that I’m making a tactless request!! But since it’s three-dimensional…I can’t help but want to view it from all different angles…!!”
The dark-skinned sculptor seemed to be agonizing over something, but Lucia figured that it didn’t matter to her if she was going to eat it. It quickly changed hands, but then Sherry started groaning and muttering. “The forks’ directions… The shape of these wings… I see—so this symbolizes anger on an empty stomach making one even hungrier…!!”
The rest of the sisters began to file out of the kitchen, muttering that they simply didn’t understand artists. Kanzaki slipped into their ranks, sighing. She’d gotten down the hallway when something suddenly struck her as strange.
Wait.
How did we get on the topic of art anyway?
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