Chapter 136
The Sazareishi Witch, who lived in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, was a dyed-in-the-wool shut-in.
She rarely basked in sunlight, but she had her own ways of sensing the seasons.
That's right: subculture events.
When manga magazine covers were filled with heroines in swimsuits, she felt summer approaching, while winter brought a flood of doujinshi about Christmas and New Year's events. During the season of autumn appetites, cafes tended to host more food-and-drink collaboration events.
After getting excited over an April Fool's event in early spring and dutifully preordering a popular manga's rainy-season limited-edition figure, the Sazareishi Witch had recently grown bored.
There was still plenty of time before the summer doujinshi convention, and it wasn't time to start working on a manuscript.
There was no event that really sparked her interest, no exciting new manga series, and even the movie lineup was dull.
Even so, Sazareishi was a hundred-year veteran of otaku culture. No matter how bored she was, she could always find something to do.
Translating manga ordered from India, America, and China into Japanese for her own enjoyment was one of her standard otaku activities whenever she had free time.
Foreign manga cultures were weaker than Japan's, and there were fewer works. But there were definitely gems. Creative works rooted in other countries' cultures had a brilliance that could never be produced in Japan.
What she had been paying particular attention to lately was a Chinese female immortal... no, a witch who had mutated under the Succubus Frame and drew incredibly filthy manga.
Transcendents were influenced by their Frames to one degree or another, but the Succubus was strongly influenced on an emotional level, and that showed clearly in her creative work.
Transcendents mutated in accordance with the figures described in the Nameless Epic.
The Dragon Witch's speech had become strange and her intelligence had declined, while the Hell Witch had suffered from severe cannibalistic urges until fairly recently.
Last year, she had heard rumors of the Kindling Witch's scandal and laughed herself silly, but surely even the Kindling Witch, who had seemed like nothing but a painfully serious girl, had secretly awakened to some outrageous proclivities that made her doujinshi thicker.
The Chinese Succubus was, as far as anyone knew, the second person to bear the Succubus Frame. Influenced by the Frame, she chased the same phantom of Hero Tarquea as her predecessor. And unlike her predecessor, she had been a Succubus from the moment she became aware of herself, so the Frame's influence was even stronger.
It was well known in their community that a Transcendent could sometimes feel a particular emotion toward a particular other Transcendent.
Hero Conrad hated the Iruma Frame, while the Strongarm Mage had burst into tears the moment he met Saint Ruche.
Closer to home, the Phantom Mage apparently broke into a cold sweat and suffered heart palpitations and dizziness whenever the Phantom Mage saw a portrait of the Eyeball Witch. The Sazareishi Witch suspected a connection between the Eyeball Witch's ability to see through things and the Phantom Mage's transparent constitution.
Hero Tarquea, believed to be the protagonist of the Nameless Epic, had many epithets. He appeared in various incantations under names such as Country Bumpkin, Adventurer, King, the Risen One, and the Guiding Sword. He must have been quite a great man.
Even the Sazareishi Witch felt vaguely comforted just by the sound of the name Tarquea, so she had no objection to the theory that Hero Tarquea was the central figure of the Nameless Epic and, by extension, of the Transcendents. It felt right on an instinctive level.
Of all the Transcendents, the Succubus had especially intense feelings for Hero Tarquea, and her longing for him was apparently so powerful that he even appeared indistinctly in her dreams.
She was born hopelessly in love with someone she had never even met.
So far, no Transcendent bearing the Tarquea Frame had been discovered.
Perhaps one lived in a remote region outside the networks of the major civilized nations, like the King of Eromanga Island. Or perhaps one was being kept under strict secrecy as a nation's trump card, like the assassin of the United Ireland.
Either way, the location of the Tarquea Frame remained unknown, and the Succubus had no idea what to do with the love she had been born carrying.
The filthy erotic manga about the Succubus and Hero Tarquea, into which she poured every last bit of that enormous emotion, was truly incredible. Even the Sazareishi Witch, born and raised in Japan, the great nation of erotic manga, had been shocked and deeply impressed.
The magic the Succubus remembered alone was enough to reveal how strong her proclivities were.
Arousal magic: "Yield to Your Body"
Sex-change magic: "It's Not Cheating If It's Man on Man"
Age-disguise magic: "I'll Become Your Little Sister"
Fake-cry magic: "I'll Die If You Don't Give Me Your Essence Soon"
Self-destruct magic: "Don't Forget Me"
The feelings she had for Hero Tarquea showed through clearly in that series of incantations. No wonder they were standard-issue lewd magic in brothels around the world, apart from the self-destruct magic.
The Succubus was, true to her name, the incarnation of eroticism.
The Sazareishi Witch had been diligently translating the Succubus's erotic manga and writing her a fan letter when she suddenly felt something strange and stopped her pen.
Her base had originally been a manga cafe, but she had since bought up the land around it and now occupied a sizable tract in central Tokyo. Dozens of golems patrolled the grounds as guards, programmed to eliminate suspicious intruders in their master's place.
The connections to those patrol golems had begun to break one after another.
It was a first even for the Sazareishi Witch, who had lived for more than a century.
There had been times when dozens of golems were wiped out by a powerful area spell.
She had also seen them returned to clods of earth by dispelling magic.
But this was a strange reaction unlike anything she had experienced before.
"What a pain."
Even when she was genuinely annoyed, what came out of her mouth was a flat voice devoid of emotion.
The Sazareishi Witch was a shut-in, but that did not necessarily mean she cowered before threats.
To find out what was apparently approaching the entrance while neutralizing her guard golems through some bizarre method, the NEET laboriously hauled herself upright.
The Sazareishi Witch hooked her toe against the entrance's sliding door and opened it rudely. The instant she saw the old gentleman standing there, she was assailed by a strange feeling.
A black fedora.
A tasteful beige coat.
A magic staff shaped like a cane.
She should not have recognized anything about the upright old gentleman's clothes or face, yet she felt an oddly familiar sensation, as though she had met her father at her family home after a long separation.
"Uh... Miss, here."
As the Sazareishi Witch stared at the strange visitor, the old gentleman looked away with an embarrassed expression, took off his coat, and held it out to her.
"What?"
"I understand that Japan has no such culture. No matter how you identify your species, one does not go out in public in one's underwear. It is indecent."
"Oh. I forgot."
Only after being told did the Sazareishi Witch remember what she was wearing.
She had indeed been careless, but it was hardly worth making a fuss over.
Until about ten years ago, her shut-in habits had been so extreme that she was always naked at home. The Phantom Mage had once visited, been horrified, and nagged her incessantly until she started wearing underwear, so she had reluctantly complied. But putting on clothes for anything other than cosplay was a nuisance. What she wore in her own home was her business.
Still, she was not jaded enough to reject a gentleman's kindness. She accepted the coat and put it on, whereupon the mysterious old gentleman cleared his throat and finally met her eyes.
"Hmm... I see. Well, I'm glad to see you're hale and hearty."
"So. Who are you?"
She could more or less guess from his manner of speaking, appearance, impression, and entrance, but she asked anyway.
The old gentleman removed his hat and bowed elegantly.
"I apologize for the sudden visit. There is nothing about my name to be ashamed of, nor about my actions. However, I do not wish to flaunt my name and cause trouble."
"I'm not going to call the police or anything. If you won't give me your name, I'll call you Mr. Shin the gentleman."
"Indeed. Would it be better if I called you the Sazareishi Witch?"
"My friends call me Mr. Sazarey."
Once they had exchanged names, silence settled between them.
Mr. Shin gazed at the Sazareishi Witch with a deeply moved expression.
The Sazareishi Witch tilted her head as she looked at the group of golems kneeling in neat formation behind Mr. Shin.
Apparently, he had stripped them of their operating rights by hacking them, rather than by destroying or dispelling them.
As expected, people from the magical civilization did things differently.
The man from the magical civilization who had appeared out of nowhere was a key person of interest believed to have a history of unprecedented mass murder. The Blue Witch had described him as possessing tremendous power, so if he put his mind to it, he could probably blast away someone like the Sazareishi Witch with ease.
And yet, strangely, he did not feel like a dangerous person.
If anything, she felt reassured that he would absolutely be on her side no matter what happened.
She understood intellectually that she should ask why he had come to visit her, but even that seemed like a trivial matter.
Surely he had merely come to see how she was doing.
He was kind. To her... or perhaps to people of doll-kind like her.
The Sazareishi Witch remembered one thing she needed to apologize to that kind Mr. Shin for.
If she kept quiet, he probably would not find out. But if he happened to learn of it somehow, she would never be able to face him again. Should she tell him, or shouldn't she...?
"Um... You know..."
"What is it?"
After wavering for a while, the Sazareishi Witch fidgeted with the hem of her coat and timidly broached the subject. Mr. Shin gently urged her on.
"There's something I need to apologize for."
"... Hmm. I can imagine what it is, but there is no need to apologize. No one will blame you."
"What are you talking about? I was just going to tell you that I once drew a BL doujinshi about you and Vampire."
At the Sazareishi Witch's words, Mr. Shin tilted his head in utter bewilderment.
"Huh? That's completely different from what I imagined. BL...?"
"BL is short for boys' love. Put simply, I'd long interpreted the relationship between Vampire and Mr. Shin as kill-love, so I drew a doujinshi with Vampire as the top and Mr. Shin as the bottom. I wrote it back when I didn't think Mr. Shin really existed, and I wondered if I'd done something wrong. I regret it now."
"????? Strange. Translation magic should be working normally..."
The Sazareishi Witch gave the blankly staring Mr. Shin a painstakingly thorough explanation.
Subculture enriches life. Not even knowing the word BL meant he was missing out on five percent of life.
After spending nearly an hour taking a beginner's BL course at the entrance, Mr. Shin looked utterly exhausted and wilted.
"I understand... No, I understand it now, unfortunately. Well, how should I put this? Anyway, I'm glad to see you're hale and hearty. Yes. Though I do feel it's somewhat unhealthy."
"You weren't listening. If you had listened properly, you wouldn't have used the word unhealthy."
"I-I misspoke. Actually, I'm very busy, so I'm glad I was able to check on Mr. Sazarey's condition today. It pains me to leave, but I should be going now."
Mr. Shin hurriedly sent magic through his staff and began working an apparently wordless spell, but the Sazareishi Witch clamped a hand around his shoulder. His cheek twitched.
"Don't leave. I hate people who nibble on a little otaku knowledge and then think they understand it. I'll explain until you really get it. Listen to me. Sit down."
"I must decline. Excuse me!"
With those words, Mr. Shin transformed into golden particles, rose into the sky, and was sucked away until he disappeared.
The Sazareishi Witch looked up at the sky and clicked her tongue loudly. He had escaped. The golems' operating rights had somehow returned as well.
"...Ah. Damn it. I should have asked which of them was the top and which was the bottom."
She belatedly remembered something important and was stunned.
She had missed a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear directly from him whether it was Vampire × Dollmaker or Dollmaker × Vampire.
It was the mistake of a lifetime. Judging by the way he had acted, he probably would never come back.
After regretting it for a while, the Sazareishi Witch pulled herself together and trudged back into the depths of her lair.
He had been a strange visitor, but he had also been a worthwhile one.
Her boredom was over. She had decided on the subject of her next Summer Comiket doujinshi.
And so the terrifying witch who turned any relationship she found appealing into a doujinshi without mercy eagerly picked up her pen in her dim, comfortable workroom, ready to turn the love-and-hatred dynamic of a dangerous person wanted around the world into manga, whether true or invented.
The Sazareishi Witch, who lived in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, was a dyed-in-the-wool shut-in.