Saint Candidate

"Ha... Huh? What... what on earth is this?! Someone pinch me—no, seriously, what the hell is going on?!"

Iris—no, Noel, an ordinary male office worker in his late twenties who, until mere minutes ago, had been drowning his work fatigue in canned beer—collapsed onto the plush bed, clutching his head for dear life.

Even the sensation between his fingers as he buried his face in his hands was wrong.

This was not the shaggy, coarse crop of a grown man's hair. It was long, gorgeous, pink silk—so fine and smooth that it slipped effortlessly through his fingers like threads of the finest satin.

"This can't be real... This is genuinely impossible! Why... why am I a woman? And not just any woman—a pretty young nun from a world where the very existence of men has been erased?!"

Inside his skull, rational thought and instinctive denial collided violently, sparks flying off every impact.

He had been a twenty-seven-year-old man, sitting contentedly at his computer in his shabby little studio apartment, looking forward to the holiday weekend. The sheer dissonance of that gap slammed into his brain like a sledgehammer, leaving it ringing.

Desperate to verify the unbelievable reality—or better yet, to deny it outright—Noel forced strength into his trembling legs and rose from the bed. Then, on crawling, unsteady steps, he made his way toward the full-length mirror standing tall in the corner of the room.

At ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the beautiful girl reflected in the glass, Noel raised his trembling right hand high.

The girl in the mirror, eyes wide with shock, raised her right hand in perfect unison. Half-hoping to prove it all a trick, he squeezed his left eye shut. And that captivating beauty in the reflection winked her left eye back at him, every bit as adorably.

"...You've got to be kidding me."

For the final confirmation, Noel swallowed hard and brought both hands up to the voluptuous breasts that threatened to spill out over the top of her priestess habit, brimming with a weight that defied belief. Gently, cautiously, he squeezed.

Boing—

The leather of the nun habit's top dimpled ever so slightly beneath the mirror-girl's hands, and through his palms came an overwhelming elasticity, a heavy, dense weight—and above all, through the skin of his own chest, a vivid, alien sensation that surged straight into his brain in real time. The feeling that he was touching his own bare flesh with his own hands was one hundred percent unmistakable.

Goosebumps erupted across his entire body. The pink-haired nun staring back from the mirror, pale as death and shaking with horror, was without question the current him.

And that appearance—those obscenely unrealistic breasts and waistline, that scandalously revealing nun's outfit—was none other than the very image of Iris, the character he had spent hours customizing and raising with every lecherous desire he could summon, just on the other side of a monitor screen, in Futanari Academy.

A second shock that stole the breath from his lungs crushed down on his chest.

You're joking, right? Was I kidnapped? No, that's insane—what private organization abducts a guy, forces gender-reassignment surgery on him, puts a pink wig on his head, dresses him in a slutty nun costume, and locks him in an antique room? That doesn't pass the basic sanity check.

No matter how he turned it over, the situation refused to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fit within the bounds of modern medicine or common sense. But if the reflection in the mirror matched Iris down to the last detail, then the far more plausible conclusion was the kind of impossible phenomenon you only saw in web novels and game fantasy stories—in other words, that he had been transmigrated directly into the body of his game character.

And if that insane hypothesis was true, then this place was, with a very high probability, the world inside Futanari Academy, the erotic RPG he had been playing.

Wait a second... if that's the case, then maybe—just maybe—I can still bring up 'that' even now that it's reality?

Harboring a hope he only half believed in, Noel parted his lips and cautiously whispered a single word.

"Status window!"

"...Holy crap. It actually comes up."

The attribute values printed so neatly on the status window matched perfectly with the stats Noel had built before crossing into this world—points he had dumped entirely into Magic for the sake of a freak show novelty build, a gimmick run played purely for laughs.

Strength, Agility, Endurance, and Luck, all pinned at the absolute minimum of 1.0. An extreme glass cannon that seemed like a single graze would shatter her bones, paired with a bizarre stat sheet where Magic alone exploded off the charts at a perfect 100.0. He'd set it up thinking, she's a healer anyway, she'll never see the front line—and those numbers had carried over exactly as they were.

But as Noel combed through the status window in detail, his eyes abruptly locked onto a single spot and stopped dead.

The ominous word written in the innate ability slot: ■■ (???).

"■■...? What the hell is this now? I've racked my brain and I have zero memory of ever putting some mystery ability into my custom build, or dumping stat points into anything like this..."

He wracked his brain and retraced his memories, but no answer surfaced. He couldn't tell whether it was a system error or something that had sprouted into existence upon crossing into this world. But this wasn't a problem that groaning over it would solve right now, so Noel decided to close the status window and put the strange innate ability out of his mind.

That was the exact moment it happened.

Along with the crisp system chime in his ear, a small envelope-shaped icon began blinking in the corner of the status window. Noel—no, Iris—stretched out a finger as if in a trance and touched the mailbox icon.

"A special bonus gift...? I can't exactly open it or not open it until I know what it is..."

Grumbling all the while, Iris could not resist her curiosity and quietly pressed [YES].

And in that instant—

BOOOOOM—!!

"Ugh?! WaaAAAARGH──!!"

The moment his finger hit the button, a mental shockwave powerful enough to blow his skull apart burst through him, and thousands upon thousands of memory fragments came flooding down into Iris's mind like a waterfall unleashed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠without mercy.

They were the traces of a life—and the fragments of memories—of the eighteen-year-old girl Iris, the original owner of this body, from the moment of her birth until now, before the man Noel had possessed it.

The loneliness of the freezing streets, the grueling and exhausting mana training that repeated itself after entering the Priest Academy, the cool, quiet scent of cedar that filled the temple halls, the crushing weight of expectation she had to bear as a Saint candidate—and waves of every vivid emotion ever felt through her skin surged in, fiercely invading every last one of her brain cells.

Amid the merciless storm of information wracking his mind, the soul of the transmigrated man Noel began to merge and assimilate with the ego of Iris, the body's original owner, at a terrifying speed.

"Hahk—hah... hah...! My head... my head feels like it's going to split open... ugh...!"

How much time had passed? When the information storm that had raged through him like a tsunami finally began to subside, Iris was clawing at the sheets until her fingers turned white, breathing in ragged gasps. Clear beads of sweat trickled down her forehead and along the line of her collarbone.

"Haa... haa... What was that just now...? Those were... the original Iris's memories...?"

Her skull was ringing as if it might crack open, but thanks to the memories that had just been transplanted into her, she was able to piece together several crucial facts about life in this world.

The most shocking revelation was that Iris, the character she herself had created, was in fact a pitiful orphan with no parents and no relatives of any kind. And that Iris, now revered as one of the ten Saint candidates, owed a life debt to a girl named Marie—one of her fellow Saint candidates—who had once saved her very life, and as a result worshipped her with a blind devotion one might reserve for a god.

What was even more staggering was that even the emotions embedded in those memories had seeped deep into her soul. Despite the ego of the twenty-seven-year-old man Noel being alive and well within her, merely recalling Marie's name and face in her head sent her heart hammering madly from somewhere deep in her chest, and a tide of blind worship and adoration came surging up from below.

"This is insane... this bursting feeling toward Lady Marie... it's not mine. I'm a man—I'm Noel...! So why is my heart pounding like this, why am I aching so badly to see her...?"

His original self and the intense emotions that Iris had imprinted upon this body had tangled together into one, and a severe identity crisis came crashing down on him.

Am I Noel? Or am I Iris, the Saint candidate who worships Marie?

He had been staring blankly at his own reflection in the mirror, drowning in that deep identity confusion and the whirl of contradictory feelings, when—

Knock— knock—

Beyond the door of the room, a composed, tidy knock broke the silence.

"Lady Iris, are you within? I have been informed that Lady Marie is urgently requesting your presence. Whenever you are ready, shall I escort you to the reception room at once?"

What came through the door was the crisp, well-ordered voice of her dedicated academy maid.

"...!"

Startled by the sudden summons, Iris panicked, at a complete loss. Marie was looking for her? She had just had an entire life's worth of memories dumped into her head; her mind was a chaotic mess, her very sense of self in disarray—she was not ready for this at all. What if she went out there and gave some slip that betrayed the man inside? No—more than that, she was terrified of how her own heart would react the moment she actually came face to face with Marie.

Even in the middle of that white-out moment of sheer desperation, Iris clenched her fists tight and steeled herself with grim resolve.

Focus. If I panic and fumble around in here and look suspicious, it's truly game over. Remember how 'Iris' spoke and carried herself in those memories I just absorbed... If I act calm and normal, I can get through this somehow!

Iris swallowed hard, and with a long, deep breath, quelled the pounding in her chest and the rush of her quickened pulse. Then, producing the calm, gentle, saintly voice that was Iris's trademark—etched now into her very memories—she offered a courteous reply through the door.

"...Yes, of course. I will just tidy my appearance and be right out, so please wait for me a moment."