What Sense of Crisis?
I looked up after Heaven, who had gone. Clouds drifted cool and unhurried through the afternoon, and because it was winter, sunset was not far off.
"January second..."
In the original, this was only the hour when Part One had just ended. In this world, it was the date that announced the beginning of the end.
"The burden on him must be immense."
A countless tangle of threads, fixed in a single confirmation. Heaven interfering in a colossal moment of fate—and twisting it, at that, to someone's advantage.
What the price of that would be...
"Has he thought it all through, in his own way?"
He clammed up completely, refused to appear precisely when he was needed, and carried himself with an absurd weight of dignity. Even so, as befitted a god worshipped by so much of humankind, he seemed determined to see his role through to the end.
The role he had been given. The role he himself was able to perform.
"Honestly. There's no reading him."
Live long enough, become something transcendent, and did everyone end up like that?
"He has gone."
Hong Yumin's face was heavy. Heaven's last words, heard before he departed, seemed to have sunk her deep in thought.
"I shall return. I cannot squander what time remains."
She sprang from her feet and cleared the wall.
"Krreung. Krreung."
San-gun followed, a beat too late.
"Ah... I wanted to stay with her a little longer..."
Aurine's shoulders sagged. The friend beside her had her gaze nailed to the place Hong Yumin had left.
"She lives in the house right in front. If you find the time, go and see her. She will not slight you."
"...Would one such as I dare?"
Aurine stole a cautious glance at me. At first she had looked at me as if I were some grotesque monster. Now she was wary, as if receiving a holy presence.
Why does this reaction feel so familiar?
Our maid came to mind.
"Of course you may. She's surprisingly shy, and lonely. Bring her something to eat and you'll be fine."
"Is that so... I understand."
A faint madness kindled in Aurine's eyes. What, exactly, had she just realized?
Still hasn't come down off her Heaven high.
The saintess of the original was a woman society had ground down and ground down again, until every scrap of purity in her heart was scraped away. Give it time, and she would come back to herself.
"It's late. Why not stay the night? The Vatican isn't going to collapse by morning, and the journey must have worn you out, Saintess."
"I thank you for the kindness. And yet... may I lay myself down in a holy place such as this?"
"A god lives in this house anyway. No need to feel burdened."
"Then I shall impose, briefly."
And so our prospective household gained another member.
"Saintess—have you built any faction of your own inside the Vatican?"
"What power I hold personally is negligible. Watched by the Pope in real time, I had no chance to meet anyone. There are, however, clergy who resent the way he conducts himself. I escaped only thanks to them."
"Can they be trusted?"
"I would not dare promise they can be trusted wholly. Worldly men, men of fervent faith, men who bear a grudge against the Pope—they have gathered in every sort."
"Rebels, then, with almost no organization to speak of."
"Shameful as it is, yes."
The Pope was a degenerate and a dictator without precedent, but he was no incompetent fool. Would the cardinals, in conclave, have elected an idiot who coveted nothing but his own glory?
Until then he had been an ambitious man who knew how to hide himself. Outwardly he had played, to perfection, the priest who carried out the Lord's will better than anyone. Only after he became Pope did he lose that first heart, and his true nature spread.
Even so, the ability had not simply vanished. From of old, dictators sniffed out the rebels of a regime with uncanny precision. He had merely refrained from killing them. Their names would already be entered on the death list.
"Can they rally with you at the center, Saintess?"
"If even a little faith remains in their hearts, no one who beholds this light will fail to follow."
Shaaaa—
A cross of light unfurled from Aurine's back like wings. She looked as if an angel of the heavens had descended in the flesh.
"Good. Then cohesion is settled."
"Gathering them remains the difficulty, however..."
"We have a specialist for that, too."
Queen Knight might collapse from overwork, but the Vatican would not survive her.
"From first to last, I do nothing but receive help. I will repay it even if I must offer up my body."
"I didn't do it alone. If you mean to repay anyone, repay the ones who helped you themselves."
Before Aurine could say more, I declined with all due courtesy. I wasn't the one who would be doing the suffering, and being thanked for it sat poorly with me.
And what body. Two of them are already killing me.
For a phantom thief who had been single since the womb, it was far too stimulating a choice of words.
"Kana. Could you prepare a room for the Saintess?"
"It is already prepared. I will show her the way."
Thorough as ever, our maid.
"...What does she like?..."
"...Pardon? Well... she is so far above worldly things..."
"...A being like a god. Human tastes would be difficult, wouldn't they?..."
"...She does like being paid attention to, though..."
"...Oh..."
A deeply unsettling murmur drifted in from the hall. I was imagining it. Surely.
"Sssk."
"Miss Sipsado? Is there really a need to announce yourself out loud?"
"Forgive the intrusion."
Sipsado came gliding over the floor as if she were sliding.
"What is it?"
"Well. I felt a kind of crisis, you see. The moment our elder departed, I came."
"...What kind of crisis?"
"Even a girl met for the first time staked her body to repay a kindness. And I, whose mother you saved, whose very life you delivered—if I simply stand here and do nothing, I feel myself becoming no better than a beast."
"And the point is...?"
"If you wish it, I too can offer this body whenever you like."
Sipsado set a finger to the tie of her jeogori. Little by little the cord drew taut, as if the two sealed dragon pearls might be freed at any moment.
"Did someone glaze me in honey? I didn't do it alone, so why repay the favor to me? The others will be hurt."
"I bear a deep gratitude toward everyone who helped me. Should they ask for aid, I would drop whatever I was doing and come running, gladly. But please do not forget that, even among them, I always place you first, Phantom."
She lifted her satgat, the wide conical hat, and revealed eyes that called black pearls to mind.
"Everyone knows. That things turned toward the good because of you, Phantom. Watching from behind, I could see it."
Her hand slipped in beneath the suit and found the dress shirt. One scrap of cloth, thin as a breath, could not bear the purposeful touch of a woman.
"The present exists because you are here. So is it not only natural that I should put you first?"
Tok. Tok.
Deftly, with her fingers, Sipsado undid the buttons. Slowly, from the collar, as if peeling the husk from a butterfly.
Bare skin spread. I wanted to tell her to stop, but those clear, gentle eyes—like the moon lying on a lake—made me falter.
Slkk.
By the time the buttons were nearly undone, the jeogori had slipped free of its own accord. The sealed dragon pearls stirred and stretched. The bandages that had served as a bra began, little by little, to swell.
"You have gone about bestowing grace. Please think of this as the repayment. Do not concern yourself with me. Treat me as a tool... as a servant for a single night..."
The satgat's veil swept aside like a curtain drawn back, and lips red as apples parted. The allure was stronger than I had expected. For a man with no resistance to women, it was fatal enough to tempt.
"Even so, what's wrong is wrong."
"Hup—!"
I covered Sipsado's face with my palm. A deep regret flickered through her eyes.
"You're no dragon. You're a fox. You must have bewitched plenty of men in your younger days."
"I have never so much as glanced at any man but you, Phantom. I ask only that you know my sincerity."
She did not cling any further. Covering her mouth with her sleeve, she drew back—and even then, the subtle sway of her hips, the way she set off her chest, was enough to drive a man mad.
"Nice work. If you'd given in, I would've been really sad."
A voice cold as a sheet of ice drove straight through my ear.
I turned a creaking neck.
Kana stood there with a rigid face, tablet in hand.
On the screen, joined by video call, Pele had a spear resting on her shoulder.
I was well and truly screwed. Balls included, by the feel of it.
"Pele— no, Lady Pele? You know that wasn't what I meant, right?"
"...Hmph. If you were gonna do it, couldn't you have been a little faster?"
"It's just— this sort of thing is a first for me, so when I saw it..."
"Because it's your first time. You let her bare herself to the chest, looked at her bare breasts, and then turned her down?"
She was a goddess of volcanoes. Why did she feel like a goddess of ice?
I dropped to my knees at once.
"Lady Pele. I was wrong."
"It's fine. If a woman swishes her tail at you, these things happen. I'm a goddess. I can understand."
Then why don't you react like that when I'm the one doing it?
"I'll beg you like this! Please forgive me!"
"Aren't you acting a little too guilty? Anyone watching would think I was scolding you."
Beg harder.
"You know how much I love you, don't you?"
"Do I? I wouldn't know... Oh. Break's over. I have to train with the kids, so I'm hanging up. Have a nice time."
Come to me this instant, or I'll kill you.
Crash!
Before the tablet could sink back to a black screen, I ran for Pele's room.
The door opened, and a lush jungle greeted me.
The jungle was not particularly glad to see me.
Thorned vines and leaves breathed out weapons.
I swallowed hard and threw myself in.
If I meant to live.
I had to get there even a second sooner...!