q&a 'n 'chen

  It clung to Nina when she woke up, the ichor. Not thinking about anything else she took a change of clothes from her suitcase, set on the luggage shelf at the top, and threw herself into the bathroom at the back of the bus.

  Haze House had granted them the great gift of a separate shower and bathtub. One was for purifying yourself, the other was for washing away the blood? Which was for what?

  She didn't know.

  She set the water to scalding. She washed away the blood. Hers, Kaninchen's, reality's.

  Lightheaded Nina dried herself and dressed herself.

  Fifteen people. One bathroom.

  No, there was an extra toilet, was there not? The door to that fit so neatly into the back wall Nina hardly noticed it were there.

  Her point still stood. Haze House were so brilliant at logistics.

  She stumbled out.

  Who noticed her first? Kaninchen, sitting at the back. She was wearing a white sundress, though the sky was grey. She was well, and entirely intact. She was a daughter of Haze: no force should sunder her.

  No force should be able to tie Kaninchen up in red and reduce her to the level of a normal girl, however...

  Nina halted. Kaninchen stood up and hugged her.

  "Hey, hey, you're awake. Thank you," she said.

  "You're w-welcome," Nina said.

  "You're something special, aren't you?" Kaninchen said.

  Nina felt her expression become a little deplorable. This was the real article, was she not? Kaninchen hummed with heat.

  If Nina reached out with her ability, she perceived the signature seal of Haze House.

  Fine. Fine. It's all okay. (It's all K.) It's fine.

  Don't say lines like that…

  "You look sad," Kaninchen said. She let go of Nina.

  "I'm fine," Nina said.

  "Oh. That's cool," Kaninchen said.

  No, there was something that wasn't fine! Kaninchen's performance in that battle: what was that?

  Nina understood why the others had failed to aid her. She wasn’t even mad about it. Really.

  Preternatural combat was difficult. It was difficult to figure out. Each bout risked permanent psychological damage, death and loss of one's humanity. This risk became worse with inhuman constructs, such as the knight, and worse with enmity, which was risk and was harm. This was before Nina had realised that the knight or its allies held an ability that imitated Nobility.

  There was a strict inequality between Nobles and commoners, right? What normal person won against the Nobility? It didn't happen. It should, but it didn't.

  Something imitating or fundamentally similar to Nobility would be the same.

  Wait, would it? If there were objects and powers like Nobility as discovered and acquired by the 108 during the Babylon War, and as restricted and codified by the Treaty of Nowhere, then that strict inequality would be challenged.

  Reiko had thought about this scenario a lot. She had this metaphor for it that used maths. (Nina didn't need to think for herself. She had Reiko.)

  In maths, there were different number systems. There were the real numbers, which could be fitted on a single line, and there was Euclidean space and the fretful and dreaded non-Euclidean geometries and the complex numbers, which needed at least two lines to be described.

  On a single line, there was 'total order.' Given two numbers, one could easily tell which number was bigger and which number was smaller. In the other systems, one could not do this.

  This maybe wasn't a good metaphor. Michiko had challenged Reiko on this. The Treaty of Nowhere didn't create a single set or field or whatever the mathematical term she used was where everyone had a number attached to them or a unique ranking or something. It tried to create a single way to understand the world, and dichotomies to go with it.

  It failed. The Babylon War had parted the world. Everyone had their own answer; each was equally invalid, equally inept.

  Inept. Wasn't that a good word for Kaninchen?

  She was surely combat capable. The pre-industrial nobility trained their scions in hunting and war. The post-Babylon Nobility did, too.

  If Kornelia and Reiphontes Nyalius had some power similar to that of the Nobility, then fourteen out of fifteen of them couldn't be expected to face it. Kaninchen could.

  It was Kaninchen's right as a Noble to expect others to suffer in her service, yes! It was Kaninchen's responsibility as a Noble not to disgrace herself by getting into scenarios where she got pummelled and dragged across the asphalt!

  Back in the Acacia, Nina had seen or maybe made Lady Gifu falter and fumble. Lady Gifu remained admirable, despite that. She erred, she did not make Kaninchen's litany of mistakes. What was Kaninchen? What even was Kaninchen…

  "Um, you're staring," Kaninchen said.

  She was.

  "Sorry," Nina said.

  "It's okay... um... it's not March, right? It's..."

  Nina tried not to roll her eyes.

  "Nina," Kaninchen said.

  Was everyone going to go through this phase? March Inoue on her Haze House employment ID. March Inoue on the Valeriya Nekrich Women's University ID she received as part of their group's cover. Route 13 were students led by their teacher.

  "You totally have a question," Kaninchen said.

  Nina didn't want to ask it.

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  "Come on. Don't be shy. You can ask me anything..."

  Could she? Could she really?

  Nina looked towards the ground, then out the window. They were still getting out of London. Then she mustered her bravery.

  "Your housekey," Nina asked.

  "Huh?" Kaninchen said.

  "Why didn't you use your housekey to erase the enemy?"

  "Ah. You really are a little usurper."

  ...couldn't she ask anything?

  "I ap—"

  "I wonder if that's really a bad thing."

  Kaninchen sat back down. Nina remained standing.

  "You've been getting so much praise, you know! Anny, blondie... they think you're, like. Impossibly cool. That's a little bad for Young-hoon's role, but well... well, well."

  She should be more worried about that. Shouldn't a Noble demonstrate their House's ethos and nomos through their every action?

  "I didn't do anything impossible," Nina said.

  "Hah. Sure, sure. I have very good vision, you know. I can see the world of nomoi. I know who should be let into it, and who shouldn't. I know what I can do, and what I can't. I know when Emiliya looks at you with adorable puppy dog eyes. I know when Aine..."

  Kaninchen trailed off.

  "The point is, you're very impressive. We're all very impressed with you."

  Nina nodded. Kaninchen wasn't unlike her mirror?

  "You'll have to forgive me for not facing up to such an adverse threat, Nina. Please."

  "I'll forgive you," Nina said.

  "Thanks!" Kaninchen said.

  "I didn't... I didn't steal his role. Not on purpose," Nina blurted out. She didn't steal his role at all! She was so very used to being accused of everything, though, always doing the worst. She had learned to preempt the accusations.

  "Sure you didn't," Kaninchen said. "If you did, it's in your nature. 'It can't be helped.'"

  A thirty minute explanation by April Kauzaki of history of the phrase 'it can't be helped' delivered to Nina alone and not the other four in April Kauzaki's bedroom immediately started playing in Nina's head.

  (Nina didn't need to think for herself. She had April. And she had to listen, or else...)

  "I fully intend to do what's best for the mission."

  "I never doubted that. Therein lies the problem!"

  What.

  Kaninchen laughed, lecherous. "No, no, I shouldn't be saying that! If you'll listen, may I say more?"

  Who was permitted to ignore the Nobility? "You may," Nina said.

  "Okay! Yay."

  Nina did not even point out that Kaninchen had not yet answered her question.

  "I'm a lady, and a good daughter of Haze, I really am... I'm really trying my best. I fuck-up. I don't organise things perfectly... you'll have to forgive me. I hope the bus is livable. I mean, now I do, because I'm living on it! I know our ethos. I know our nomos. You don't... there's an imbalance. You don't get it, Nina, not yet."

  "I don't." Should she?

  "You're trying so hard to get it, though. Going in your school uniform was a nice touch. Method acting... I suppose that it helps that you're definitely still high school age, so you still have a uniform. There's a little gap between the next oldest... Emiliya, Haio, Sarai, Aine, they're all above eighteen, and it could go either way, I think."

  Wait, was Kaninchen actually pretending to not know her name? Had she memorised everyone's details Aine-style between Nina exhausting herself and Nina waking up?

  "I suppose you always have been acting," Kaninchen said. "Yes. You admitted as much on your application form."

  She had been. Nina's expression betrayed her.

  "'I think my lack is my inability to fit into the mould they made for me.' 'The others got to be the young women Shin Kumamoto needed, so why not me?'"

  Nina wavered.

  "I'll stop, haha. You look embarrassed. You didn't need to write a preamble about your words being clumsy, too..."

  "They were..."

  "Well, it's good that you didn't do it on those international exams. They would have marked you down further."

  "Further!?"

  Nina didn't know her final exam results, having left Shin Kumamoto before it had been mailed to her, and having destroyed her old phone as soon as Reiko and Michiko had picked her up.

  "I was exaggerating. I just wanted to see your reaction! We scried to find your results, you did well. Very well... if you had applied to the Second City International Institutes with that score, you would have been able to pick any one you want. Like one of the girls you wrote about, what was her name?"

  "April..." Nina said.

  "Yeah, her. I think she's going to Lydia Wark, now? Not that even we can breach their systems with our insight, look up what she's doing now, even if you wanted that."

  April had said that she was explicitly avoiding Lydia Wark, the most prestigious of the Second City International Institutes for preternatural research. It had a partnership system: every student was paired, a student's grade was directly linked to their partner. Three-quarters of one's grade was shared? No, it was something more convoluted, that was a simplification.

  They'd gone through her background. No, no, of course they did. But, what?

  "Do you want that?"

  "No," Nina lied.

  "Oh. Okay. By the way, I went to Lydia Wark, too! Eight or nine years ago, when I was your age," Kaninchen said.

  "Was... was she your designated partner there?" Kornelia.

  "Yes," Kaninchen said. "We were so entangled."

  Was that K? Them together.

  "Ah, I'm getting all sappy. You don't want to hear that. Back to you!"

  Nina didn't want to hear about herself.

  "I suppose you always have played along. You've been taught the principles you should follow, and you've tried your hardest to follow them. But... there's something in you that overtakes, overrides, overwrites everything else. It's an interesting quality, as we search the corpse of the Coalition to find the power to rewrite reality."

  Kaninchen searched for a response from Nina.

  "I... hope I'm useful."

  "I'm sure you are. The teacher... is he useful? Do you think so?"

  Nina didn't respond, here.

  "Is he useful enough for Haze House? Is he useful enough for me? I grant you permission to have an opinion on that. You can tell him I asked you this, too. He hasn't figured everything out, though I wonder if he's actually trying to."

  "Everyone's trying their best," Nina said.

  "Do you believe yourself?"

  "Um."

  "You're so sweet. You believe so much in decorum! That everyone will adhere to it. Perhaps you'd be a more responsible leader?"

  What was Kaninchen trying to bait her into?

  "Hah. You look so confused. You're right to be? What am I even saying? I'm just saying stuff. I'm fine back here. I have my phone. Go find blondie."

  "W-wait."

  "Unless you want to spend more time with me?"

  "You wouldn't still be here, if they hadn't..."

  "You want to spend less time with me?"

  "Affixed all the red to you..."

  Kaninchen threw herself back. Her head hit the windowsill lightly, lay next to the whir of the traffic outside.

  "They did the ritual for me, I suppose. I'm one of you now, surely. I'll do what you say, Commander Inoue."

  "Commander?"

  "Oh, was that a bad term? Plutonowa, maybe?"

  "What does that mean?"

  "I picked it up from Marzena, Miss Inoue..."

  "I—"

  "It's okay, not to get her at first. She's very difficult to understand. You don't have to try to get her, if you don't want to. I'm sure you will, though."

  Nina couldn't bear all these orders. Could you really not disobey the Nobility? It seemed like a good idea. This was getting to be…

  "Twelve girls, all on the same level. And you."

  "I'm not special."

  "So it is."

  "We wrote an application form, and you didn't. You can know what you want about us, what's aching in our hearts, what we lack, but we..."

  "Ah. The inequality. That's life, I think. I don't know. I'm just a stupid bunny..."

  "...I understand. Thank you," Nina said.

  Had Nina received even one direct answer?

  "Well, have fun!" Kaninchen said.

  It was as if what Kaninchen had said did not matter. It was as if Kaninchen had not spent her time teasing and taunting Nina, flaunting what she knew, what she pretended not to know, what she really didn't, knowing Nina wouldn't and couldn't do anything about it.

  That was the Nobility for you!

  That organisation, Society's Therapists, wasn't wrong—probably!—for wishing that they fell.

  Oh, no! Nina was being a heretic. Nina was saying awful, evil things, as she always did. Sorry! It was in her nature.

  The Nobility was necessary. It had been necessary for the conventional, pre-industrial nobility to have existed, surely. Without kings and knights, how would humanity have built massive agrarian societies? Without resource surpluses, how could humans rise out of the animal muck?

  Likewise, it was necessary for the modern Nobility to exist. There was so much dangerous information: wasn't it better to have certained custodians, trained from birth for the role? So many dangerous powers abounded and ran amok: wasn't it better to amass them and lock them away in a great big vault, a vault to part Earth and the Outside?

  Without the Nobility, everything would go awry.

  Awry. Screwed up. Nina walked away and that screwed up smile was still in her head, Kaninchen and the other one.

  It was her right. It was Kaninchen's right to be happy. Hadn't she done so much for them all? She had given them the mission! That was so important. It was what kept Nina from giving up or giving in. Nina could be fixed, this world could be repaired. All they had to do was build the artifact that would do this themselves. Kaninchen couldn't do anything on her own.

  Oh, but Kaninchen didn't come up with the mission, did she? Haze House did.

  Nina needed to come up with something else that was good about Kaninchen.

  Like...

  Nina couldn't name anything.

  Whatever. Kaninchen was surely great.

  She waved goodbye to Nina. Nina waved back.

  It was time to reunite with the other girls. The ones she knew how to talk to, at least.