The Merchant's Son (4)
Scary, huh.
At a phrase so unlike Erzena, I tilted my head.
"Are you worried a ghost might come out at night, by any chance?"
The house was old, sure, but there was no way anyone was buried under it or anything like that. It did get awfully dark at night, though.
She gave me a look of pure exasperation.
"That's not it. And even if there really were one, I doubt it could do anything to me."
Now that I thought about it, fair enough.
No ghost in its right mind would come anywhere near divine holy power. One brush against her and it would be sent off to its eternal rest.
'So it's not a ghost, and it's not the dark. Then what?'
What could frighten a woman who was beloved by God, who possessed the power to bring a dragon back to life? No matter how I turned it over, I couldn't begin to guess.
"Then what is it that frightens you so much? What could be so terrifying that you're out here in the living room in the dead of night, singing with Elaine to calm yourself down?"
"It's just..."
She let the words trail off, her gaze dropping downward. For a long while, Erzena hesitated, stroking the brown hair of Elaine, asleep in her lap, before finally forcing the words out.
"...I thought I'd lost you forever that day."
The words echoed softly through the room.
That day.
I knew instantly which day she meant. The day I declared the Dragon Word. The day I nearly died from its backlash.
Throb.
The memory brought a faint ache back to the vicinity of my heart.
"Well, I did make it back alive, thanks to you."
I shrugged as if it were nothing. It had been a serious matter, yes. But nothing to be afraid of now. I had simply done what I could—what I had to do. And I'd made a full recovery besides, thanks to her holy power. What was there to worry about?
"It's all in the past now, so there's no need to worry yoursel—"
"How can you call that just the past?!"
Erzena's voice spiked for an instant.
"You truly almost died back then. Do you understand? They had actually reached the verdict that there was no hope for you. None."
A tone fierce and unyielding, so unlike her usual self.
"Mmgh..."
Elaine frowned at the noise and stirred in her sleep. I, too, could only stare at Erzena in wide-eyed surprise.
It was the first time I'd seen her like this since we'd begun living together—raw and trembling with emotion. The golden aura around her flared violently, as if resonating with her feelings.
Erzena looked down at it with conflicted eyes.
"No matter how much holy power I poured into you, you lay there without so much as a twitch for so long. Do you have any idea how... how worried I was?"
"..."
"It was probably the first time in my life. I wasn't praying anymore—I was practically begging the Lord. Please save him. I told Him to take my holy power, take everything, just please, let him live."
Her voice wavered as she murmured bitterly.
"Isn't it absurd? I prayed to Him more desperately than I ever did as a Saintess—more than I did back when I believed in Him so blindly, so faithfully."
"...And yet it's because of that that I'm alive. Because of you, precisely."
That much was simply the truth.
"So I'm scared. I was scared," she said, pressing a hand to her chest. "Scared that I wouldn't be able to save you—the man who saved me from zealotry and blind faith."
"..."
"It's the same for Elaine. Even now, the moment she closes her eyes, she says she sees you collapsing, vivid as the day it happened. I imagine Lord Mnassil feels the same way."
The rims of Erzena's eyes were slowly turning red.
"When you first woke up... it didn't really feel real. I just thought, thank goodness, he lived. I was simply glad."
"But then I came here to your homeland, and I saw you smiling with your parents and Noa... and only then did it hit me, painfully, how much you mean to me. To us. What a world without you in it would actually have been like..."
That expression.
I knew that expression well. It was the same one I had worn when I lost my Sight Officer's eyes. The death of someone precious.
Erzena had been staring at that very thing for days on end.
I had stood on the line between life and death in a downpour and then fallen into a three-day coma. What must the people left behind have felt as they waited for my eyes to open? Now that emotion was streaming down her cheeks before me.
"How much you mean to me..."
She swallowed the rest of the words along with her tears. Then she took my hand.
"Never again. Never throw yourself away like that again."
Erzena's hand, resting gently on top of mine. I stared down at it in silence for a long moment.
"..."
It was warm. Like holy power itself.
'Never throw yourself away alone, is it.'
I turned her final words over in my mind. They had clearly been spoken out of worry for me. Because she treasured me, because she wanted to protect me—that was the heart behind them.
I spoke quietly.
"That day, I had a dream."
"...A dream?"
"Yes. It flashed past like a dying man's last moments—except what surfaced was the day I first met Processing Director Hailin."
Erzena, who had been staring at me with a sorrowful face, narrowed her eyes all at once.
"On the verge of death, the person you thought of wasn't just anyone—it was the Processing Director?"
I hurried to add, "But it wasn't her."
"What on earth does that mean?"
A dream of the past, yet the being in it had known my present position. "There was a sunset behind them like a halo, and they had an androgynous voice, and they knew both my present and my past."
I gave her a brief account of that someone.
"A being that knows the present and the past, and can enter someone's dream..."
After a moment of silent thought, she stared at me with eyes gone wide with shock.
"D-don't tell me..."
She didn't need to finish. "Yes. That is likely the case."
We had both arrived at the same guess as to who that being was, after all.
"That being told me something. Not to lose my original conviction. To remember the heart I'd resolved on at the very beginning—the resolve to see things through to the end, whether it became a tragedy or a comedy."
"Your... original conviction?"
I nodded lightly.
"I'm sorry, Erzena. I will do everything within my power. And if I must do it, all the more so."
That was how I'd saved you.
Because I had thrown my entire self on the line, I had saved Elaine and Mnassil, Kirba and everyone else. No compromises, no bending—I simply fought with everything I had.
I laid my heart bare, calm and matter-of-fact.
"Because I never want to regret anything ever again."
"That's such a you answer. It's foolish."
Even though I had gently turned down her plea, Erzena nodded as if she understood.
"No, wait—that being, you said you might have received them..."
"I'm not certain. They never said who they were."
"...But then, perhaps this is no coincidence at all."
"What do you mean by that?"
She stroked the cheek of the sleeping Elaine and changed the subject.
"...I love it here. Your home, the Immigration Office, the Five Senses Officers, Elaine—and even Lord Mnassil. All of it."
"Really? That's a relief to hear."
"Even if I don't appreciate how Mnassil tries to sneak into your room every single day."
"Ah."
That was a bit blunt, wasn't it?
Which was, come to think of it, why I'd started locking my door recently.
She went on. "This already feels like home to me. But... Noa told me some news about the Order. While you were out in the courtyard."
"The—the Order?"
This time it was my turn to react with surprise.
Come to think of it, Noa had been visibly startled when she first saw Erzena at the office. The Order is searching for the Saintess like their lives depend on it. Only now did my little sister's words come back to me.
"The Pilgrimage has arrived at the Order's southern branch. And Mohaim is almost certainly among them."
A name I hadn't heard in a long time. Mohaim Espirentse. The Blind Sword—the holy knight who had gone back to seek answers.
"And yet a full month has passed, and there's been no word of the Pope's authority wavering. Which means he must be silencing the Pilgrims who learned the truth, one way or another."
Erzena reached out a hand toward the holy power shimmering around her as she spoke.
"While those who know the truth are being persecuted... is it really right for me to stay here?"
She had already cast aside the office of Saintess. She no longer bore any obligation or duty that could bind her—which was exactly why she'd introduced herself as nothing more than "Erzena."
And yet the divine holy power—undeniable proof of God's favor—was overflowing, rippling around her in waves.
Why? Was it a mission? A revelation? Or merely a mark of His favor?
"I'm scared, Nathan."
She shivered. "I want to stay here, by your side. I want to be with the people of the office, with Elaine, with Lord Mnassil. But I can't bear to leave those who know the truth to suffer under a false Pope's hand, either."
For the first time, I was seeing a fragile side of Erzena.
"What... what should I do? What choice should I make?"
A woman wrapped in golden light, beloved by God—and yet trembling with anxiety. Somehow, that sight made my own head go still and clear.
So I wasn't the only one who was anxious. She, too, who I'd believed had found peace only after leaving the Order, had been carrying this worry all along.
And she had already been giving us everything she had. She could have simply lived quietly as a refugee, yet she had volunteered to serve as the office's healer. Like an elder sister to us all.
But even that Erzena had always carried this fear and doubt. The sense of responsibility that came with a power like divine holy power, and the liberating relief of having escaped a corrupted Order—those two things had been swirling violently inside her.
The woman who had stood by my side ever since the kidnapping incident, lending me her strength. And now, for the first time, she stood before me wavering.
'Then...'
It was my turn to hold her up.
"Erzena. You have already been through so very much."
This time, it was I who took her hand. 'With or without that golden light, you've already given me so much.'
She had become Elaine's second pillar of understanding, letting the girl sleep soundly in her lap. She had kept Mnassil company through his loneliness. It was hard to imagine any of us without her now.
"All of us... we've been through a great deal, haven't we."
The moonlight paled her face. And yet it couldn't hide the flush burning in her cheeks—if anything, the contrast only made the color more beautiful, and I refuse to believe that was just my mood talking.
I looked straight into that face and spoke softly.
"Put another way—you still have a whole month to think it over."
"A month... to think?"
"You may stay here. If you do, I will move heaven and earth to help you remain in the Crossline Kingdom."
There were plenty of ways. She could apply for citizenship, remain as a formally registered refugee, or—even at the least—found a new church here. One way or another, a path would open.
"Or you may leave. Your power was never meant to be spent on the Immigration Office alone. It may be that the Lord returned your holy power to you for some greater purpose."
Given her nature, even if she tried to callously ignore it, the weight would stay on her heart. And that was fine—it didn't have to be duty. If she felt responsibility, she could simply walk forward as she was. That would be the only path she'd never regret.
"Whether it becomes a tragedy or a comedy—let's agonize over it together, thoroughly, and then see it through to the end. So that neither of us looks back with regret."
I passed along, word for word, what the being in my dream had told me.
"So that I don't... regret it."
Erzena wiped her tears, turning my final words over in her mouth.
"How very like you. Optimistic, unwavering... and foolish. That last one especially."
"I'll take everything except that last part as a compliment."
Then, as if she had made up her mind about something, she suddenly spoke to me in a voice gone calm.
"Then... will you grant me just one favor?"
"As long as it isn't borrowing money, asking me to co-sign a loan, putting your name on my house deed, or urging me to violate immigration regulations with you, I'd be happy to oblige."
"Pfft. What on earth are you saying?"
Ah, I made her laugh.
Golden eyes sparkling with small delight, Erzena opened her mouth carefully.
"Just... close your eyes for me."
"My eyes?"
"Hurry."
She nodded her head, almost impatiently. A request that small? Easy enough.
I slowly closed my eyes.
Tilting my head slightly, I asked, "So what's the reason I need to close my—"
In that instant—
before I could stop her, with no room to pull away, without the slightest warning—
her lips touched mine.
The deep hours of dawn, when everyone slept soundly. A mere three seconds, perhaps. In the chill night air, two bodies' warmth met, defying the cold. And beneath a moonlight that was no blazing sun, but faint and pale as it quietly lifted the dark—
"I love you, Nathan. Truly."
And the line I had drawn in my heart—she stepped across it.