A Shame I Won't See His Face
The Saintess was walking through St. Peter's Square. The Vatican Obelisk, rising sheer above the plaza, drew its shadow out long in the track of the sun.
Not a single tourist remained in the square that, every year, had been packed shoulder to shoulder. Only now and then did a laborer pass, mending buildings shattered in the war with Ilshikgyo, or a truck hauling materials and daily necessities.
The quiet saddened her, and yet, paradoxically, it set her at ease. Wandering free like this suited her far better than processing papers in some airless room.
She envied the pigeon perched at the obelisk's peak. That bird flew wherever its heart led. A saintess revered by all the world could not even dream of such a thing.
"...Are you really going to keep on like this?"
A friend whispered at her ear. The Saintess murmured into the empty air, where no one stood.
"I have to go. I've been preparing for a long time."
"There are more eyes around you now. They'll be watching even when you step into the bathroom."
"I know. But they'll fail. That mad old man who calls himself pope, him most of all."
Before that, though—
"I have someone to meet first."
"I like that look in your eyes."
"It's the weather."
She passed the obelisk, walked out from under the shadow covering her head, and set her feet on the sunlit street.
"I've done as I was told for years, haven't I? I deserve at least a little rebellion."
"Damn right. Of course you do."
The friend snickered.
"Let's land one good hit on that old man."
"It's a shame I won't get to see his face."
A faint smile touched the Saintess's lips. She was looking forward to tomorrow.
"Hah... hah..."
"Hoo..."
Having spent himself in one hot rush, Nikolai kneaded the buttocks of the female believer whose face was buried in the pillow. Between them, the white fluid he had poured into her ran down in a slow trickle.
"Are you weary?"
"No... I'm not..."
The woman of the faithful stammered it out as if sobbing. That strengthless voice stirred Nikolai's ardor. The vigor that had been cooling found its snap again and came back around, and the sea cucumber between his legs gave a squirm.
"Heh, if it's hard, then rest. Bearing with an old man must have been tiring."
"I-I'm... fine."
A wrinkled hand struck her buttock. The tender flesh rippled, and the woman shivered all over.
"I am the one who is weary. Be still, and rest."
"Yes... yes..."
Pushed by the command at her back, the female believer closed her eyes and breathed herself softly to sleep. Once Nikolai was sure of it, he drained the water left on the shelf.
"Not what I once was. In the old days I would have gone another round."
He looked down at his precious. Past the firm, muscular abdomen he was vain of, the member he could, in his own way, take pride in twitched at half-mast, not quite committed to rising.
"You can't cheat age. If only I could cast off this loathsome body, I would have nothing left to wish for."
Nikolai dropped onto the sofa. Fine goose down tickled his back.
"What are those American bastards doing? Do they have any idea how much I invested, and not a word?"
They had promised him a body copied from the strongest hero, and after long deliberation he had set his seal to it. Since then, silence.
"Damn it. I knew better than to trust men with no foundation. Did youth blind me and spoil my judgment? I'd be faster praying to a god."
In his heart he wanted to slam through at least one phone call, but some lingering possibility made him swallow the anger. The war with Ilshikgyo had let Nikolai push meaningful influence into several nations, and still the United States alone weighed on him. It was one of the reasons he could not be satisfied even seated on a religious throne built of gold.
"Now that I think of it, it galls me. I clawed my way up to this seat through sheer misery, and there is still someone above me."
He was angry. And where was he to spend that anger?
"Shall I take it out on our little Saintess?"
"Call her here and simply have her?"
On impulse, Nikolai lifted the dial telephone from the table before the sofa. A private line, proof against eavesdroppers, flared to life in the dead of night.
The line clicked open.
"This humble believer is graced to hear Your Holiness's voice."
Nikolai swallowed the order to have the Saintess brought at once.
"Yes. There is no trouble with the watch on the Saintess, I trust?"
"Of course. We are recording her every move. Do you require a report?"
"I will take it at my desk tomorrow. What is she doing now?"
"She has eaten her evening meal, finished her prayers before sleep, and retired. Would you care to hear how she is dressed for bed?"
"......"
Nikolai considered it, then set the pleasure aside for later.
"Send the Saintess to me. I should like to see her with my own two eyes."
"Understood. I will wake her and send her at once."
"See to it."
"Thank you."
Nikolai set the receiver down.
"Heh heh. Lovely."
The corner of his mouth twisted up with a damp, secret hunger.
"Since it has come to this, this time I truly must see the great work through. I wonder how that blunt gaze will look once it is steeped in pleasure..."
He had imagined it thousands of times and more, and still the thrill was the same as the first.
"I have made my resolve, and I will not be able to take it back as I have before... I will, without fail..."
The telephone rang.
"Hm?"
Nikolai cocked his head at the bell, then clicked the receiver up.
"What is it?"
"Your Holiness. Forgive me. A problem has arisen."
"What problem. Did the Saintess refuse, and stubbornly? If that is all..."
"No. The Saintess is gone."
"What...?"
Nikolai's mind went blank.
"Wh-what kind of nonsense is that?! Did you doze off on watch?! Is the camera a decoration?!"
"I have no words to offer. She is clearly on the camera, but when we looked with our own eyes, she was not in the bed."
Nikolai ground his teeth. The Saintess who had asked, that afternoon, to be sent abroad rose easily to mind.
Did she draw every eye on purpose, just so she could run?!
"Turn the city of Rome inside out! She can't have gotten far!"
"Understood."
"Have her before me before noon, whatever it takes!"
He hurled the telephone down. Then he threw on the bathrobe hanging from the rack and kicked the door open.
As he strode the corridor, the skin of his face was twisted into something hideous.
"Sorry. They caught on sooner than I thought. I didn't know that old man would call in the middle of the night."
"It's fine. Noticing now doesn't mean anything."
The Saintess rested her chin on her hand and looked out the window. A blue sky and a sea bluer still spread open with the clouds between them. The curving white wingtip, and the engines bracing that wing, were what held her up in this sky.
"Beef or chicken?"
A flight attendant rolled a cart up and asked.
"Chicken. And could I have a soda as well?"
"Of course."
Onto the Saintess's tray table came a piece of seasoned chicken and a plastic cup of soda.
She worked at the cheap chicken with a disposable fork, munching away.
"Economy class, I suppose. It's worse than what I usually eat."
"Listen to this child, spoiled rotten. There's a ghost right beside you who can't eat at all."
"I'm just saying."
The complaint about the taste was one thing; she still scraped the in-flight meal clean. The attendant who came for the trash was faintly startled.
"Were you starving? You ate well."
"Once I started eating, I remembered the old days."
"..."
The friend, so talkative a moment ago, went quiet as a dead mouse. At that restless fidgeting, the Saintess let out a small laugh.
"You already know all of it, so why act like this? Now, of all times."
"S-still, they can't have been good memories."
A life of pushing on through back alleys, rooting through trash bins like a stray cat, treating other people's leftovers as treasure and scraping by one day at a time. Set beside the meal she had just eaten it was almost an insult to the memory, but living as the Saintess had trained her tongue into something precious, and the cheap taste of airplane food alone had called those days up before she meant it to.
"I don't know... Set that time beside this one, and I don't see much difference."
A life in the shadows, never knowing when you might die, or a life stared at every day by a perverted old man... Either way, what she wanted was to escape.
"That's..."
The friend seemed to feel guilty for no good reason. The Saintess shook her head at a nature the friend could not abandon even in death.
"I told you to drop that sense of responsibility. When are you ever going to fix a habit that only does other people good?"
"Even so... you ended up like this because of me."
"If you hadn't saved me back then, I never would have gotten a chance like this. A life at the bottom usually has its ending already written."
Become a whore, or a bottom-rung gangster, or a drug addict, or die with a bullet in you.
"Next to that, this is much better. Well. Now I'm a fugitive, but."
"If we succeed, you can go back."
The friend clenched both fists and shook them furiously.
"The people I saw are beings the entire Vatican could throw itself at and still not handle. Absolute monsters."
"I don't particularly want to bring the Vatican down..."
"Look at you, throwing the chance away. You didn't believe a word I said, did you?"
"I believe you. That there are gods, and that there are humans who are like gods."
"Hmm..."
The friend burst out of AVOD and stared straight into her eyes.
"You don't look like you believe me..."
"I said I do. Just sit down."
She had gone to the expense of buying the seat beside her, too.
The Saintess peeled the friend off her face and checked the destination on the screen.
Destination: Incheon International Airport
Two hours still to go.