I Became a Priest Impostor (3): Some Flowers Prefer the Wild

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

A few of the replies were simply incomprehensible. I figured it was one of those memes unique to a place like the gallery.

A few of them had asked how difficult the work was. And if I was being honest, it wasn't difficult in the slightest — which, in a completely different way from those earlier comments, I found just as hard to understand.

I'm taking it this easy. What exactly is supposed to be hard about it?

Compared to my days climbing the Tower, or even the years I'd spent running my own private clinic, the patient I'd just treated had been a genuinely simple case. No curse clinging to them. No missing limbs. And next to a high-floor climber, a civilian was hardly any trouble to heal.

It was a game-like comparison, but restoring a civilian with 100 HP was always going to be easier than restoring an Awakened with 10,000. There really was nothing hard about this job.

If anything, I was starting to wonder whether I was slacking off too much. I'd even taken to reading the room and going out of my way to find more work.

"If it's all right, I'll go ahead and treat the rest of the patients as well."

"Hah. Don't you ever get tired?"

"I'm still reasonably young."

The old man had the years on him, so tiring early was fair enough.

"...Age has nothing to do with how many times you can use a miracle."

He didn't seem to want to believe it, though. His face just crumpled.

"Anyway, if you've still got strength to spare, I'm hardly going to complain. We never run short of patients around here."

With his permission, I headed back to the waiting room. A few more patients had joined the old man and the young fellow I'd seen earlier. A middle-aged man who couldn't stop coughing. A woman who'd sliced her hand open cooking. A child clutching his stomach, clearly down with a stomachache. None of them were urgent, but a patient was a patient.

A healer's a healer. You pay the fee, you get a Heal — even for a cold.

That said, I wasn't treating just anyone who walked in. The old priest, who had been watching from the side, asked with a puzzled frown.

"What criteria are you using to decide who gets treated?"

"That young man just now would have had to worry about his livelihood if I didn't fix his wrist on the spot. So I treated him."

"And the child?"

"The young woman with the cut on her hand smelled of flour. I asked, and she runs a bakery. Making bread with an injured hand wouldn't do, would it?"

I chose not to mention that I simply didn't want to eat bread made with a wounded hand.

"Then why didn't you treat the patients before them?"

"They didn't have any livelihood at stake. Was I supposed to treat them anyway? It's not as though I have stamina to burn."

Stamina to burn. Right.

"And relying too heavily on Heal — on healing miracles — isn't good for people either. If you just cure them without ever giving them a chance to fight it off themselves, who's supposed to build their immunity?"

"Immunity?"

The word must have been unfamiliar. He echoed it back at me, looking puzzled.

"The strength to overcome illness. Just as someone who's been through something does it better than someone who hasn't, the same holds true for disease."

The old priest thought it over for a moment, then nodded.

"There's sense in that."

He was quick to take a point. He looked like a hard man, but when it came to healing, his mind was apparently more open than it seemed.

Patients kept arriving no matter the hour. The next one I saw was a little girl with round cheeks, clinging tight to her mother's skirt, clearly frightened.

"Nngh... do I have to take medicine?"

"You don't like medicine?"

"Nuh-uh..."

"Let's have a look and see whether you need it or not."

I projected my energy and diagnosed her. Enteritis. She must have eaten something she shouldn't have.

"You snuck snacks behind your mother's back, didn't you? Don't do that again."

Light bloomed from my palm and sank into the child's belly. The face she'd been scrunching up in pain smoothed over almost at once.

"It doesn't hurt anymore!"

She bounced in place twice, delighted — then froze, as if something had just occurred to her, and turned around. Her mother, who had just figured out that the stomachache came from stolen sweets, was wearing a truly terrifying expression.

"Eek!"

Still, I had spared her the medicine, so she probably wouldn't hold it against me. Probably.

The old priest stared at me as if he couldn't believe what he'd just seen.

"I thought you said they needed to build this 'immunity' of yours?"

"She's cute. That ought to be reason enough."

"..."

I was about ninety percent serious.

"You should rest soon. Keep this up and you'll collapse."

He must have decided the healing was getting excessive, because he stepped in and put a stop to it. I still had stamina to spare, honestly, but standing out too much didn't seem wise either, so I nodded as if I were worn out.

"Unless you're a saint, anything more than this is genuinely too much. What you've done today was already remarkable. Get some rest."

The healers in this world are operating at a pretty low level.

I swallowed the thought before it could reach my mouth.

The sky beyond the window had already begun to stain itself red. I really had worked hard enough to warrant the concern.

"It's getting late, and I'm spent, so I'll take my leave."

The old priest's eyes narrowed.

"You're not going to walk out of here and simply not come back tomorrow, are you?"

"You think I'd show up for one day and then run?"

It wasn't as though I had anywhere else to go at the moment. Well — I did, technically, but I wasn't going to find an easier workplace than this one. There was no reason to go hunting for another job.

"Where are you staying, then? I haven't heard anything about a Flower Priest lodging at the church. I was too busy to leave yesterday, I'll grant you that."

He asked whether I'd arrived yesterday. I shook my head. I had entered the city yesterday, that much was true, but I hadn't gone to the church in the first place, so there was nothing to confirm.

"I'm staying at an inn for now."

The old priest's brow twitched.

"An inn?"

"Yes."

"If you asked the church for a spare room, they'd give you one without a second thought. Why are you paying for an inn? Just come stay with us."

Free lodging. It wasn't a bad offer, I had to admit. But walking into a church when I hadn't even properly memorized the doctrine or the scripture was a risk. At the very least, setting foot in a church was something I would do only after I could recite both in my sleep.

"Some flowers would rather grow wild."

I couldn't exactly tell him the real reason, so I offered an appropriately priestly excuse instead. I'd done this a few times now, and the pious-sounding deflections were starting to come out smoothly.

The old priest's eyes widened a fraction.

"So ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what does that make the people of the church? Flowers in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a garden bed? Enough nonsense — just come stay with us."

It hadn't landed.

"I'll give it some thought."

"Good grief. Stubborn as they come."

He grumbled, but he didn't press the lodging issue any further.

"Be here first thing after sunrise tomorrow. If you run, I'll send soldiers after you. Consider yourself warned."

"Understood."

"I'll say it again. Don't run."

"I'm not going to run."

I found myself wondering whether the invitation to stay at the church had been a way of keeping me legally under watch.

By the time I left the clinic, the streets had grown fairly dark. I nearly took a wrong turn more than once through the tangle of alleys, but I'd walked the route once already, and I managed not to get lost.

The first thing that met me inside the inn was the smell of warm food. I'd arrived in time, it seemed — they were serving dinner.

"Father!"

The innkeeper's daughter spotted me and came over carrying a platter larger than my head in both hands. She set the food down the moment I sat, as if she'd been waiting for me.

"Careful now."

"Yes!"

I took the platter from her and settled into my seat. But the deliveries didn't stop there. She ferried the plates over one by one in that small frame of hers, and before long more than three of them had piled up in front of me.

Roast chicken, cream stew... and this would be bread.

Whatever it was, it was not the standard meal they served ordinary lodgers.

This is a bit much.

The innkeeper chose that moment to step out of the kitchen.

"I don't know if it'll be to your taste."

"Is this repayment for treating your daughter?"

The innkeeper gave an awkward smile, as if he'd been caught.

"I just thought I'd feel better if I did at least this much."

Turning away food that had already been laid out would have been rude, so I offered my thanks and picked up a spoon.

"I'll eat gratefully. But you don't need to do this again."

"Even so..."

"As I told you this morning, I didn't do it expecting anything in return."

I had, in fact, been expecting something in return. I was even hoping they'd keep bringing me generous meals like this. But I buried that particular thought and played the priest to the hilt.

"And if I grow greedy for material things, the Goddess will be disappointed in me. If not for my sake, then please refrain from such excessive repayment."

As I said it, I sat the innkeeper's daughter down beside me and pressed a roast chicken drumstick into her hand.

"You have some too, Sean."

"Eek! I'm fine, Father! Gulp."

Even as she said it, she swallowed hard — so I popped the drumstick into her mouth. Contrary to the part of me that wanted a lavish meal all to myself, I was giving away the meat as if I simply couldn't eat much of it.

"My digestion isn't what it used to be, you see."

"But you're young, Father? You look like you're barely in your early twenties."

"I'm in my thirties."

And in this medieval world, the thirties were an age at which having grown children wouldn't have been strange at all.

"What?!"

I filled up on stew and soft bread, then went upstairs to my room. I locked the door, sat down on the bed, and did the obvious first thing: I opened the gallery.

Most of what was being posted amounted to so-called junk threads. Every so often, though, one of them mentioned me.

There were posts from people curious about me, too. On those, I left a brief reply.

A full explanation would have run long, but that was enough for the broad strokes.

I pulled up a post I'd bookmarked earlier.

It was a compilation of each religion's doctrine and scripture.

I'm working in a den of priests now, more or less. I should memorize this quickly.

Fortunately, the gallery screen stayed sharp regardless of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠light around me, so reading wasn't a problem. Not having to waste candles in the evening was more than enough to please the heart of a penniless priest impostor.

I was working my way through the doctrine, the scripture, and the prayers when a short scrap of trivia caught my eye.

A photograph of an actual brooch was even attached below the post.

If I'd kept going without knowing this, it could have gotten ugly.

I enlarged the photograph and studied it carefully. The symbol was a round wooden disc with a dandelion flower carved into it. Compared to the symbols of other religions, it was crude, and the construction itself wasn't complicated.

I could probably make this myself.

The problem was that I couldn't judge from visual reference alone. But what I didn't know, I could ask. It was late, but from what I'd gathered so far, the people who lived on the gallery didn't distinguish between day and night. Maybe some of them are in distant regions, and there's a time difference.

The replies came quickly, as expected. I skipped the ones I didn't need.

I read the comments through to the end, then closed the gallery. The conclusion came easily.

If that's the situation, I should be fine making one myself.