There Was Light
"This is the place. I can tell at a glance."
The saintess looked up at a single house standing by itself.
"In all my life, I've never felt an aura more chilling than Ilshikgyo's. Do people actually live here?"
Faint currents seeped from the house. She occupied a rank among the superpowered that few could claim, and she knew exactly how outrageous those currents were. It went past gooseflesh. The pressure seemed to bear down and crush her; her breath came short, and her whole body locked rigid.
She had not felt this even standing before an Ilshikgyo cardinal. Which meant that every one of those dreg-thin wisps outstripped a cardinal's full strength.
"I told you. It's a den of monsters." Her friend said it in a trembling voice.
"I doubt there's a single person in there weaker than you."
"I can't believe power on this scale is sitting in a little country like Korea..."
One such figure to a nation would have been plausible enough. Britain's Round Knights, America's Earth Company, China's Five Star Heroes, Russia's Red Army, and the rest. The world was wide, and masters hidden from the age had always existed.
Cramming them into a single country was another matter. And if those masters sat far outside any ordinary measure, the problem only deepened.
"Hoo."
The saintess wiped her damp palms on her trousers and pressed the doorbell.
Ding-dong.
"Coming~."
The door banged open.
"Huh?"
A woman stepped out in an outfit that could not decide whether it was a shrine maiden's robes or a maid's uniform. It was too lived-in to pass as cosplay. An apron hung from her neck, and dust clung to her throat and brow.
A housekeeper, then... probably.
Since when did a housekeeper leak divine energy?
It was not the holy power the saintess carried, but a peculiar divinity of the sun. The godly force running through that housekeeper's body rivaled a cardinal's in sheer volume.
"Who have you come to see?"
The housekeeper asked it with a smile. The saintess cleared her throat and used the Korean she had been picking up, in whatever spare moments she could find, for months.
"I've come looking for someone. Could you call them out for a moment?"
"And who would that be?"
"A person who wears a mask."
"......"
The housekeeper's face went stiff. Fear settled in her eyes, and then it was gone.
"You're a guest of his? One moment. I'll just go and—"
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Footsteps came pounding down the hall. Past the housekeeper, in the corridor behind her, the saintess saw a red-haired woman running toward them.
"......!"
She reeled. From that woman rose an aura kin to her own, and yet incomparably denser — a presence of an entirely different order, one it would not have been strange to call born of Heaven itself. Before a bearing like holy devotion made flesh, the saintess barely kept herself from sinking to her knees.
Only then did she truly feel that she had come to the right place.
"You..."
As the red-haired woman drew near, the saintess lowered her hood.
"So I haven't come to the wrong door."
She spoke her own name.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I am Aurine."
When Aurine introduced herself, a brief silence fell.
"Aurine? The Vatican's saintess?"
The housekeeper's eyes went wide.
"Are you truly the saintess?"
"Yes. I'm ashamed to say that's what the world calls me."
Aurine offered the bright smile she kept for the public, a clean smile that brought the sun to mind. The housekeeper turned to the red-haired woman.
"Do you know her? The saintess came looking for him."
"It is no affair of mine."
"Then shall I bring him?"
The red-haired woman's gaze slid past Aurine.
"No. He is already here."
A chill of foreboding crawled over Aurine, and she turned her head, just slightly.
"A precious place, and a precious guest we never thought to expect. How very uninvited of you."
A man in a suit, the Smiling Mask on his face, tilted his head from Aurine's own shoulder. His voice was full of mischief.
"......"
Aurine clamped down on the scream trying to tear its way out.
What...?
A human shape warped and came apart. It stretched — into three — and each piece floated free of the others. The mask bobbed. The torso bobbed. The suit bobbed. It was plainly a single being, and yet what she saw was three.
Could a person be like this? Could anything be so grotesque? She wanted to pluck out her eyes and put in new ones. She wanted to believe it was a dream.
When her friend had told her of this, she had let it pass for exaggeration, because by any common sense it was impossible. She was a saintess. She had seen what ought to be seen and what ought not, and still she could never have pictured a sight like this.
"Fate truly is impossible to read. To think I'd see a face from Hawaii again, here of all places. The air about you is different, so you aren't quite the same person — but still."
"I thought I had seen that face somewhere... Is she not the woman from Ilshikgyo?"
The red-haired woman asked the mask as if nothing at all were amiss. The mask answered in a human shape again, as though he had never been anything else.
"Strictly speaking, the older twin."
"A twin..."
Eyes tempered across a thousand years fixed on Aurine, and she felt her whole body being taken apart, piece by piece.
"I do not know how you found us. I believe I know why."
The red-haired woman turned her back.
"Come in. We will speak of the details inside."
"An honor to meet you, Saintess. Please, make yourself at home."
The mask and the woman turned and went down the hall.
"......"
Cold sweat ran down Aurine. Her feet would not move.
"...It's all right. They won't hurt you."
Her friend wrapped a gentle warmth around her back, and a little of the fear eased. Aurine loosened her locked muscles with holy power and offered the housekeeper a small bow.
"Excuse my intrusion."
"You are most welcome."
Under the housekeeper's welcome, Aurine set her foot in the hall.
Three teacups were set on the living-room table, steam curling thinly from each.
"Well then, Saintess. Might I ask what brought your honored steps all the way here?"
The masked man rubbed his hands together.
Aurine feigned ease, touched the tea once to her lips, and set the cup down.
"...I came because I want to find my younger sister."
"Your sister — Aurone, I take it? Ilshikgyo's saintess, and its clown?"
"Yes."
"I'm afraid I don't know where she is."
The mask bent itself into a question mark.
"All I know is the past of Aurine and Aurone, and the whereabouts of the previous saintess, Aurine Menia."
"......"
"......"
The mask's gaze drifted to the friend floating at Aurine's side.
"You've had a hard time of it, Miss Aurine Menia. If I'd known you were in the audience that day, I would have shown you to a box seat myself."
"I'll pass..."
Her friend shuddered and hid behind the sofa.
"What is over there?"
"Something like a ghost is floating there. Even I would miss it if I didn't look closely."
"...Hm."
The red-haired woman's eyes flashed.
"There is something there made of Heaven's energy. How curious. It is not clinging to this world by obsession and grievance. A clear anchor is holding the spirit here."
She nodded as if she understood.
"I see. You shared an identity in concept, and so a miracle of this kind could occur."
"......"
The same name, and faces close enough to pass for doubles. Even the talent for serving a god did not fall short of the other. That sameness — near enough that one might have been looking at another self from a parallel world — meshed with holy power and worked a small miracle.
The world treated Aurine and Aurine Menia as the same person. The body had died, but the soul did not depart for the afterlife. It remained at her side.
Aurine, whose life had been saved, took up Menia's role as the Vatican's saintess — for her friend, and to find the sister who had been taken. Because Menia kept assisting her even in death, they could hide the dissonance of a saintess being replaced.
"A secret even the pope of the Vatican does not know. You saw through it at a glance."
The secret she had hidden from the world was exposed, and Aurine did not mind. Even if they had not seen it, she had already resolved to lay it bare herself. For her sister, what was so small a thing?
"You seem to know my circumstances well enough. I won't waste words on the rest."
Aurine rose. She bowed deeply to the two of them.
"Please help me find my sister. I ask this of you."
The masked man stroked his chin.
"Miss Aurine. As I said, I don't know where your sister is. Frankly, I don't understand why you would ask us for help. We only clashed with Ilshikgyo once."
"I know. But the person closest to my sister isn't me. It's you. You cast down Ilshikgyo's saintess and left a wound in their authority. I chose this place because it has a better chance than a Vatican with a rotten pope in it."
"To see more promise in a handful of people on this tucked-away peninsula than in a kingdom of two billion faithful — if it were anyone but you, Miss Aurine, I would have turned you from the door on the spot. I can't help suspecting an ulterior motive. Anyone who knows anything knows the pope and the saintess are on bad terms, and that is precisely why I cannot take your side so lightly. One wrong step, and we would be dragged into their struggle for power."
"Now that I've said it aloud, it does sound entertaining. I'll help you."
"...What?"
Aurine's mind could not keep up.
"...Truly?"
"Yes. We're already sworn enemies of Ilshikgyo. We'll have to fight them regardless."
In return—
"It will not be without a price."
The face drawn on the Smiling Mask turned sly.
Aurine swallowed.
"Miss Aurine."
"You."
"From this moment on, you will have to become a true saintess."
"A true saintess...?"
"You won't understand it from words alone. Better to call the person here."
The man looked up at the ceiling and shouted.
"I know you're watching. I'll give you one second. Get down here. Now."
Haa...
A small sigh spread through the living room.
And then—
Omnipotent light filled the room.
"Ah...?"
The light flooded Aurine's eyes, almighty and absolute, and she lost consciousness.