Saintess Sistina
Saintess Sistina had someone bring me clothes to wear and food to eat.
The sight of the Saintess helping me did not go unnoticed by the other people who had come to the church.
"Ohh... as expected of the Saintess...!"
"To extend a hand of salvation even to a filthy piece of trash like that man!"
Maybe I should just change my name while I'm at it. Walking Human Garbage.
Anyway, thanks to her, I managed to escape the fate of starving to death on the streets. I washed myself at the well in the church's rear courtyard and put on the clothes the priests had prepared for me.
"Starting today, you'll clean the church's rear courtyard and interior every morning and evening."
An apprentice priest who looked considerably younger than me handed me a broom and a rag as he said this. The church had decided to take me in—a man with nowhere else to go—as a janitor, providing room and board in exchange for the work. For someone with no foundation whatsoever in this other world, it was a welcome offer. I had no reason to refuse.
And yet there was something I couldn't get off my mind.
Why wasn't Saintess Sistina wearing any underwear?
That such a beautiful, sacred Saintess wasn't wearing undergarments at all. Was that even a teaching of Goddess Freya, whom this church worshipped? Did none of the priests here wear underwear?
I couldn't stop thinking about it.
"Hey! Stop spacing out and clean properly!"
A priest shouted at me as I stood in the rear courtyard, broom in hand.
Aside from Saintess Sistina, the looks I received at the church weren't particularly kind. Then again, they'd taken in a beggar who'd been wearing rags on the street, so that was only to be expected. Still, they found every excuse to pick at my work and give me a hard time, so it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience.
『Having lucked into a job as a church handyman, Yunoa was seething with discontent, utterly forgetting his place.』
Ah, yes, yes. I get it.
I'm allowed to complain a little about my lot in life, aren't I?
Listening to the Narration as it continued to drive verbal daggers into me, I diligently swept the rear courtyard.
Saintess Sistina visited the church once a week to offer her prayers.
On the days she came, I could witness the miracle of priests who normally did nothing but harass me suddenly becoming kind. The miracle, too, of the dried, shriveled bread they gave me every day transforming into meat and fruit. At this point, she might as well have been an angel descending upon me once a week.
"Yunoa, how has life at the church been treating you?"
Once her business at the church was finished, Sistina would come over and ask me that. Whenever she did, the surrounding priests would fix me with stares so intense it looked like they might shoot beams from their eyes—silent pressure not to say anything stupid.
Honestly, when the Saintess isn't around, this place is pretty fucking awful.
That's what I wanted to say. I held my tongue.
The church was an organization like any other. I knew perfectly well that a non-regular handyman who hadn't even made it to the bottom of the ladder would only suffer for speaking up. If I wanted to keep eating every day and not fall back to living on the streets, a certain amount of patience was required.
"Thanks to you, I've been eating well. Even a hundred thanks wouldn't be enough, Saintess."
"I'm glad to hear it. May the Goddess's blessing be with you as well."
Saintess Sistina answered me with a warm smile. Her otherworldly beauty made my vision swim and my heart pound.
A Saintess like this... really wasn't wearing any underwear?
I couldn't stop wondering about the true form hidden beneath that neat priestly robe.
Life as a church janitor was exhausting.
Before I was hired, there apparently hadn't been a dedicated cleaner here at all. So who had been doing the cleaning? The apprentice priests, as part of their training to become full priests. There were eight apprentice priests at the church, and I was now doing by myself the cleaning that all eight of them used to do together. It was killing me.
Once the morning and evening cleaning was done, I slept in a small shed in the rear courtyard, on a bed of straw. There were empty rooms inside the church that apprentice priests and guests from afar could use, but none of those rooms were ever offered to me.
At first, I was simply grateful that they'd given food and a place to sleep to someone who had nothing. But as time passed, the priests found fault with me every day, the meals grew smaller, and I started to wonder if this was really right.
What I found hardest to endure was the way the apprentice priests—kids who still had milk behind their ears—treated me like dirt. They dumped all the church cleaning and chores that were supposed to be their job onto me, then devoted themselves more enthusiastically than anyone to making my life miserable.
"Hey! There's still dust here!"
One of the apprentice priests climbed a ladder up to a high window I couldn't even reach, ran a finger along the windowsill, and shouted as he showed me the faintest trace of dust.
"I wiped that this morning. If you keep running your finger over it, of course you're going to pick up a little dust, even right after it's been cleaned."
"A hanger-on who lucked into catching the Saintess's eye, and you're talking back?"
"...I'll wipe it again."
It was always like this.
If I disappeared, they'd have to go back to doing all the church cleaning themselves, and yet these guys had no concept of coexistence. What kind of priests serving a goddess were these supposed to be?
If I were the goddess, I'd drop a lightning bolt on each and every one of their still-wet heads.
I spat.
Bainar, known as the City of Adventurers. And I was at the church dedicated to Goddess Freya, here in Bainar.
Once I'd gotten used to the church cleaning, I started to pick up bits of conversation between the priests and the worshippers around me. Except for when the apprentice priests were finding fault with me, my presence here was about as substantial as air, which made it possible.
And as I listened to this and that, the Narration would occasionally speak up in my head. Of course, most of what it said was the usual mockery of my circumstances or brutal fact-checking. But mixed in among the unpleasant remarks, there was sometimes information I could never have learned through ordinary means.
Like the shocking fact that Saintess Sistina didn't wear underwear.
『Yunoa remained obsessed with Saintess Sistina's underwear to the very end.』
『For a man who possessed nothing, perhaps all that remained was the crude instinct of a male animal.』
No, no, it's not that bad.
I'll admit that Sistina is so beautiful that thoughts of that nature aren't entirely absent. But don't talk about a person like he's a beast with nothing left but instinct. She's a Saintess, of all people, and she's not wearing underwear. Of course I'd be curious.
Damn Narration.
Still, I'd learned a lot of new things thanks to the Narration, so I supposed it evened out. What left the strongest impression was the Saintess's role.
『Bishop Xavier was growing anxious over the fact that Saintess Sistina had yet to find the Hero, despite offering prayers every week.』
Bishop Xavier was the highest-ranking person at the church I was in. A middle-aged man who always wore a clerical hat that looked uncomfortable and, in summer, ornate priestly robes that looked like they'd steam him alive. He almost never showed himself, appearing at the church only on the days Saintess Sistina came to pray.
"Saintess, has the Hero still not appeared?"
Whenever Sistina finished her prayers, Bishop Xavier always asked her the same question. The Narration about him being anxious had come at exactly this moment.
"The Goddess has not yet given me an answer."
"I see..."
Disappointment was written plainly across Bishop Xavier's face.
『The role of the Saintess, as designated by divine oracle, was to find the one and only Hero among the countless people of this world.』
『But now, with Saintess Sistina having failed to obtain an answer from the Goddess for months on end, Bishop Xavier was growing impatient.』
The Hero, huh...
『Yunoa, who was barely scraping by as a church handyman, wondered if perhaps he himself might be that Hero.』
『But contrary to the empty hopes filling his delusion-stuffed head, Yunoa was absolutely not the Hero.』
The moment I rolled the word "Hero" around in my mind, the venom came right back.
Figures. I wasn't expecting anything anyway.
At this point, hearing that kind of thing didn't even faze me. Listen to enough verbal abuse and you build up an immunity.
That said, this church, which had looked so peaceful on the surface, apparently had its own complicated internal affairs. You could tell just from watching Bishop Xavier get anxious at the news that Sistina hadn't found the Hero. Was there some important reason they needed to find the Hero quickly?
The mention of a Hero had piqued my curiosity a little, but I soon let the thought go. As the Narration had said, this wasn't a matter for someone who wasn't even the Hero to get deeply involved in.
"Yunoa."
I was sweeping and lost in thought when Saintess Sistina called my name from behind. Wondering if she was going to ask after my well-being again, I turned to look at her.
"Thank you for always working so hard to keep the church clean. It must be difficult, given how large the church is. I'm certain Goddess Freya is pleased by your efforts as well, Yunoa."
Sistina smiled warmly at me and drew a small pouch from her robes, holding it out.
"This is...?"
"A small token of compensation, given on the church's behalf. You're dedicating far more to this church than the church is providing for you."
I opened the pouch a crack. There were a few silver coins inside.
I'd actually been thinking it was a bit unfair. I was doing by myself the cleaning that eight people used to do, and I wasn't receiving a single coin because they were providing room and board. It was the picture of a convenient slave, with "we saved you from the streets" as the excuse to work him.
"Thank you! Thank you so much."
I thanked the Saintess from the bottom of my heart.
Ah. She truly deserved to be called a Saintess.
"How much is this?"
"Five gold."
I asked the price as I looked over the swords packed hilt-and-all into a large wooden barrel. The weapon shop owner, having lost interest in a customer who kept asking prices without buying anything, answered in a bored tone.
Suddenly in possession of money thanks to Saintess Sistina's kindness, I spent a long time thinking about how to spend it. Church cleaning was only in the morning and evening, so I'd taken time out at midday to come to a nearby street.
Should I go to a restaurant and stuff myself with a proper meal until I burst? Should I buy some clothes to change into?
After considering various options, I decided that if I'd come to another world, I ought to aim to become an adventurer, and chose to invest in the future. And so I arrived at the weapon shop, but...
"Do you have anything cheaper?"
I hadn't expected swords to be this expensive. The money Sistina had given me was thirty silver. But even a decent sword started at a minimum of one gold.
The shop owner no longer even bothered to reply, and pointed with an annoyed finger toward a corner of the shop. There, swords labeled Used were dumped haphazardly in a large crate. Some had no scabbards, and some even had cracks in the blade, on the verge of snapping.
"There's not a single decent one."
『Unable to let go of his dream of becoming an adventurer, Yunoa was rummaging through the used goods at a weapon shop with money that couldn't even buy a toy sword.』
『But for a man who had never swung a blade even once in his life, even a cheap sword that was practically garbage was a luxury.』
True enough. At this point, I'd be paying money for garbage.
But I could learn swordsmanship somehow, couldn't I? Who in the world is good at everything from the start?
Anyway, buying a sword with the money I had now didn't seem like a great idea. Under the shop owner's withering stare, I went back outside.
"Hm?"
Just then, a familiar figure caught my eye down the street.
It was Bishop Xavier. So that's what he did on days the Saintess didn't come to the church—he was here. Unlike when I'd seen him at the church, he wasn't wearing his priestly robes. Well, this wasn't the church, so that made sense.
But who was that next to him?
Looking closer, he was talking with someone wearing a pitch-black hood.
Well, it had nothing to do with me anyway.
I was about to head back to the church with that thought when a voice spoke in my head.
『Having at last seized control of the church, Bishop Xavier resented the Saintess for her failure to find the Hero quickly.』
『Because of her inability to locate the Hero, his master was furious.』
This wasn't the kind of content I could just let go in one ear and out the other like usual. I secretly watched Bishop Xavier talking with someone from a distance, waiting for the Narration's next words.
『But Bishop Xavier had received a new order from a master whose patience had run dry.』
『Instead of waiting for a Hero who might appear at any moment—or never—he was to take the Saintess's life.』
I stared at Bishop Xavier in disbelief.
The figure in the black hood he'd been speaking with vanished like smoke a moment later. Bishop Xavier started to turn his head in my direction, and I instinctively ducked behind a building wall.
"What the hell did I just hear?"
Cold sweat ran down me, and my heart pounded.
Something enormous was about to happen.