Chapter 6

CHAPTER 3 The English Puritan Church’s Women’s Dorm
Russian_Roulette. 1 London’s morning came nine hours after Academy City’s. With birds chirping and the soft sunlight shining down, Kaori Kanzaki stood, stupefied, in the changing room of the women’s dormitory. In front of her was the latest in fully automatic washing machines made in Academy City. “This is why I told you not to… Don’t believe the advertising saying you can put a whole futon in!” It had finally started getting colder out recently, so in addition to her usual T-shirt and one-legged jeans, Kanzaki wore a jacket that reached her navel. Similar to her jeans, though, the jacket’s right sleeve had been removed, exposing her arm all the way up to the shoulder. “After all, this washing machine already operates on complicated theories…” Kanzaki heard a clatter. Her Seven Heavens Sword, which she’d stood against the wall, had fallen over, but even that didn’t distract her. She was assigned to clothes-washing duty on this day, October 3. Agnes Sanctis, however, had said something about the machine being able to wash futon bedding, too, after which she’d rolled up her thick bedding like sushi and shoved it into the washing machine. That was how it all started. Currently, the precision appliance, complete with artificial intelligence, was bouncing from side to side, emitting low, anxiety-inducing groans, as though it were going to start spurting out black smoke at any moment. “…” The culprit who had caused this whole mess, Agnes, seemed to be at a loss herself; her face had gone white, and she was nearly tearing up. Her back was up against the wall of the changing room, probably to get as far away from the machine as possible. She was shaking nearly as hard as the machine was, which was practically hard enough to make whipped cream. As such, Kanzaki couldn’t find it in her to blame the girl. And that was when Orsola Aquinas arrived. Veiled from head to toe in an all-black habit save for her face, the very well-endowed nun smiled at them and called, “It’s time for breakfast!” “Where did you come from?! Please, be a little more conscious of timing!!” “Oh! But we always have breakfast at this time. In fact, I would say the washing machine is what’s irregular today.” Kanzaki grunted and fell silent. She had to admit Orsola was right, now that the nun had pointed it out. Meanwhile, Agnes took advantage of Kanzaki’s lapse in attention to race out of the changing room singing “I-i-i-it’s time for breakfast! Breakfast, breakfaaast!” Kanzaki breathed a sigh, scratching the base of her black ponytail. After retrieving the katana that had fallen to the floor, she headed for the dining hall. Next to her, Orsola actually seemed a little sleepy; despite walking down the hallway with a smile, she would sway to the left or right from time to time. “By the way, Miss Kanzaki?” Orsola asked. “Yes?” “What was in the package addressed to you that arrived the other day? If I recall, it was from Mr. Tsuchimikado in Japan.” Kanzaki’s shoulders gave a shocked start. Her index finger and thumb twirling into her bangs, she said, “Uh… Nothing, nothing much. Nothing special to report.” “Oh, is that right? It had the words Fallen-Angel Maid Costume written in big letters on the label, and everyone was treating it with trepidation. It was nothing to worry about, then?” “N-nope!! Nothing to worry about!!” cried Kanzaki, her neck swinging side to side at an alarming rate. “By the way,” continued Orsola, perhaps not catching on to Kanzaki’s behavior, or maybe her train of thought just veering back on course, “does that katana not get in the way with its prodigious length?” “A-actually, the extra weight makes it a little easier for me to wield.” “Oh, I see. I had thought the length held religious meaning.” “I mean, it has a meaning in Japanese mythology, too, of course, but…,” Kanzaki said as she walked with her down the hallway, sighing with relief now that the conversation had finally gone in another direction. “The only reason there are so many religious katana is because the ruling class in Japan valued katana and swords so highly. If they’d valued axes more, there would be more axes. Some regions also respect fish or vegetables, while still others honor knives or pots. What matters is what the people of the area considered to be most important.” Her finger stroked the Seven Heavens Sword’s hilt. “In the case of Shinto, people generally believe in the Myriad Kami theory, which states that kami, the essence of divinity, resides in all things, and that every object has the potential to become a tool for sorcery, no matter what the object is. The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church’s frequently used tactic of utilizing everyday items to weave spells is one application of that theory. Of course, different kami reside in different objects, so you can’t use a single item to cast any spell you want.” Orsola gave a big yawn. “I am just so sleepy today!” “!! You were the one who asked me, and now it’s going in one ear and out the other!” cried Kanzaki, baffled, but Orsola just rubbed under her eyes and went straight for the dining hall. Left behind, Kanzaki let her shoulders hang and trudged in after her. The inside was large. There was a time when this space served around seventy people, but the former Agnes unit and its 250 or so members had suddenly been added to their ranks. The room was still able to host their numbers, which gave a good idea as to how much space was left over. Necessarius didn’t have a set time for its activities, so the nuns ate their meals at various hours. This meant the dining hall was never normally filled to capacity. Normally. “…We only have a full house on the days Orsola is in charge of cooking duty. It feels…extremely calculated on the part of the diners.” Kanzaki sighed as she arrived at the table. Near her sat Agnes, Orsola, Lucia, and Angeline. Judging by how the stern-eyed Lucia was pulling on the cheeks of the smaller, round-shouldered Angeline, Kanzaki wearily guessed that the latter had been secretly swiping food before mealtime again. “I shaid I was juft trying to afk Fifter Orfola her fecret!” “What secret? Don’t be absurd.” “You might say that, but even I wanna know how to make my boobs bigger!” Kanzaki put her hands to her head. What were they even talking about? In the meantime, Lucia and Angeline continued their loud argument. “Sister Angeline. Nuns have no need for cleavage. What would you even do with the ability to entice strangers—you, a nun, who is supposed to be cut off from worldly desires? In fact, you could say Sister Orsola and I are more lacking than you in that respect.” “What the—?! Did you just casually brag about having huge breasts?! Why wouldn’t I rebel against such a coldhearted line in the sand! Anyway, Sister Lucia, you were so worried when you came to me and said I thought I’d stopped growing, but lately I feel like I’ve been getting bigger. It feels like it’s straining, and it hurts a little… So how could you ever understand my feel—aghu?!” Lucia, red in the face, pushed Angeline’s blond, braided head onto the table before she could finish. Every time they struggled, the knives and forks on the table clattered. Next to them, Kanzaki had seen and heard quite enough. She decided to warn them. “Angeline—and you too, Lucia. It’s time for grace, so stop flailing around like that.” But Angeline wasn’t in the mood to listen to anyone. Casting a glance somewhat below Kanzaki’s face, she cried out, “The secret is Japanese food!!” “Would you please give this profane topic a rest already, Sister Angeline?! Kaori Kanzaki, you too. If you are a nun, then you should rethink such slovenly attire!!” “I… I’m not exactly trying to show off, you know!!” Kanzaki nearly shouted in spite of herself, but the other nuns who watched in a modest way (in both body and mind) looked away from her or tsked softly to themselves. Even with the strange unfriendliness tainting the air, they offered their pre-meal prayer and began eating breakfast. The meal system in the women’s dormitory could hardly be called well organized. First, they’d take all the cards submitted by those who would be eating breakfast the next day, then get an enormous pot that could have been a huge heated bath and threw in all the ingredients everyone requested, creating one type of meal every time. But Orsola was quite skillful in this regard, preparing several different meals for a single breakfast. She couldn’t prepare breakfast for hundreds of people by herself, of course, so she borrowed the help of a dozen or so other nuns. She knew many different recipes, and she was very good at accurately describing them to others. So while Kanzaki had white rice and miso soup in front of her, Agnes and Lucia had pasta, and Angeline had a French home-cooked meal. After putting her hands together and murmuring “Amen,” Kanzaki picked up her chopsticks and said, “Still, I wonder what will happen with that washing machine. It took the color out of my yukata obi, and it malfunctioned quite easily today. Don’t tell me Academy City sent us the machine so they could remove the Soul Arm effects from our clothing…” “H-ha-ha-ha. Why don’t you focus on the rice for now? Look, see?” said Agnes, changing the topic with an awfully dry laugh. Meanwhile, as for the tall Lucia and the round-shouldered Angeline… “Er, is that all you need until lunch, Sister Lucia? The pasta is only filling half your plate.” “Sister Angeline, you simply have far too much to eat. What is going on with that dish of yours? A nun’s breakfast requires no chocolate drinks nor ice cream for dessert. If you always take care to eat in moderation and give thanks for your food with discipline and faith, a single plate’s worth of pasta should fill you. In fact, you could say I have been blessed far more than I should be.” “Really… Well, if you don’t want it, then I’ll eat it for you.” “?! Get your fork out of my pasta, Sister Angeline!!” Kanzaki sighed at the big-small pair of nuns wrestling over their meal as she skillfully removed her pan-fried fish’s skin from its bones. For all their previous arguing about chests or whatever, Kanzaki would have never guessed she’d be seeing something like this from people who were, just a few weeks ago, raging about killing all heretics. Does human worth really change that much based on your perspective…? Feeling strangely subdued, Kanzaki finished removing all the fish bones and then popped open a small jar and took out one of the umeboshi within. The pickled Japanese apricot was closer to beige than red, possibly because food coloring hadn’t been added. Then. She looked up abruptly to find Lucia and Angeline staring wide-eyed at her. “What…what is it?” she said, drawing back. The two nuns whispered to each other. “(…Sister Angeline. The Asian woman is about to eat something strange, something I’ve never seen before. Could that be the rumored ooh-may-boh-shee from the land of the samurai?)” “(…She probably needs it for an Amakusa spell. Don’t they have this thing called the rising sun bento over there? I hear it’s supposed to resemble their national flag.)” “(…Perhaps there is some religious meaning attached to the act of eating the national flag. This may be a good chance for us to learn the origins of Amakusa spells, since they followed a unique direction in their development.)” While worrying about whether she should correct the strange misinterpretation, Kanzaki felt Agnes tap her on the shoulder. Kanzaki looked over and saw Agnes’s eyes glued to her umeboshi. “What does that taste like? Can you share one?” “I, er, I don’t mind, but… Wait, on your pasta?!” As Kanzaki looked on blankly, Agnes had already dropped the umeboshi right into the white sauce covering her cream-colored noodles and mixed it in, mashing it into a paste with her fork. The pasta’s color steadily changed to a light pink. Kanzaki blanched as she watched, but when Agnes twirled some pasta and put it in her mouth, her expression softened, making it look like it was good, surprisingly. “Hompf. This is a new taste. And it’s quite refreshing.” “Seriously?!” “Truly?!” Lucia and Angeline both flared up with an odd excitement. The most surprised, however, was Kanzaki. When it came to seasonings added to pasta to make it more Japanese, most thought of soy sauce or mentaiko, the roe of a pollock served with spices. Was mixing umeboshi with creamy sauce really that good? Incidentally, Orsola, the only one who hadn’t jumped at the opportunity, had had her head bent to the side for a while now with an extremely happy expression. She murmured “Hee-hee. I wonder how many meters of pasta there are here…” and twirled her fork around endlessly in empty space. She must have been asleep. Kanzaki couldn’t help but wonder about how her own rice tasted so good when the cook had been…like that. Setting that aside… “K-Kanzaki! Here, here! Me too!! Please! I want to eat the ooh-may-boh-shee, too!!” called out Angeline, leaning over the table. Her main dish was a soft-looking croissant. Kanzaki nearly wondered aloud where she planned to put the umeboshi, but then she had a thought. No, I cannot let myself be shackled to the preconception that umeboshi must be eaten with rice. I must have an open mind like Agnes. First, I’ll introduce them to the taste of umeboshi and use that as a jumping-off point to show them true Japanese cooking. There should be no problem with that. “O-okay. Well, I have enough, so if you want to try one…” It was a reserved affirmation, but these umeboshi were actually ones that Kanzaki, unsatisfied with store-bought products, had made herself, having borrowed the rooftop to sun-dry them. Worried about them getting enough sunlight in the ever-changing London weather, she’d guarded them with a plastic greenhouse; the results were satisfactory end-products of a trial-and-error phase that saw her going back and forth between “Just use magic to create light” and “No, the sunlight would have no meaning, then.” At this moment, with the pickled fruits about to be approved and accepted by her peers, Kanzaki was actually delighted on the inside. But she played the part of the ideal traditional Japanese woman and hid all those emotions behind a mask of still calmness. Kanzaki used her chopsticks to take one out of the jar, setting it on a small plate. Angeline gave a whoop and took it. Kanzaki watched Angeline’s expression, waiting to see what kind of reaction she’d get. “Ooh-may-boh-shee is eaten with the main dish, right? I just can’t help myself with fruit stuff like jam and marmalade.” What? Kanzaki’s eyes shrank to pinpoints. Was Angeline misunderstanding something really important? Ignoring her concern, Angeline said, “Asian sweetness tastes different from ours, right? What was it called—wah-gah-shee? I’ve always been interested in it!” And then, with zero caution, she plopped the umeboshi into her mouth. A moment later. Angeline’s eyes turned into big Xs, and her lips puckered before she fell over backward in her chair. Abandoning her food, shouting something in her wake, she dashed out of the dining hall. These umeboshi, a concentration of the essence of Amakusa-Style Crossist Church history and expertise, were on a whole other level compared to the store-bought variety.