Meeting — 1
Knock, knock—
After several minutes of lying curled on the bed like a fetus, the sound of knocking pulled me abruptly from sleep. It was already noon.
I rustled upright, straightened my clothes, slipped into the white shoes I'd left neatly arranged at the foot of the bed, and made my way to the door.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before the door creaked open.
The Saintess's chambers were lavish, and yet for some reason the hinges alone looked rusted enough that the door might not even lock properly.
A familiar Holy Knight stepped into view — the same one I'd been running into constantly since the day I possessed this body.
He looked at me with a complicated, unreadable expression, then quickly averted his gaze.
No matter how hard I searched the scraps of memory I couldn't quite grasp, I couldn't find a reason for it.
"Your meal."
As if trying to hide his face, he kept his head turned aside while he handed over the tray, then shut the door at once and left.
Right up until the moment he disappeared, he maintained that flat, indifferent manner, making no effort to conceal how badly he wanted to finish the job and flee. Watching him, I felt a sudden flare of irritation.
There had been a time when he'd treated me kindly. Seeing him turn cold like this now genuinely soured my mood.
Still, I hadn't been expecting much.
Inside the Holy Kingdom, there was almost no one I could truly trust as an ally — and even if there were, the odds of them being high-ranking were slim.
These were the same people who'd pulled every dirty trick in the book to push me out of politics in the first place, weren't they?
Expecting nothing would be better for my mental health.
Not that I had much mental health left to protect.
A dry laugh slipped out inside me.
Cracking jokes to yourself and then laughing at them was the sort of thing people with serious problems did — but what choice did I have?
I reined my feelings back in, carried the tray to the table, and set it down.
This time the meal looked surprisingly well-balanced, which pleased me more than a little.
The important part was that there was meat.
It had been so long since I'd had any that my expectations soared.
Back in the real world, I'd been so tight with money that I only splurged on cheap American or Australian beef maybe once every two weeks, if that. The thought of tasting the kind of tender cut they served to the upper crust had me genuinely excited.
Anyway — back to the matter at hand. Keeping anyone inside the Holy Kingdom from discovering I wasn't the real Saintess had been surprisingly easy.
I'd been summoned before the Pope, but given that I couldn't remember any of it, it must not have been anything too serious.
Maybe the exhaustion piled up in this body was to blame, but whenever I tried to recall that moment, all that came back was the sense that I'd been half-dazed the entire time.
Surviving two weeks in the Holy Kingdom was one thing. Not getting found out afterward was just as critical — because that was when I'd have to live with the Hero around the clock.
I'd clung to a thin hope that the game and reality might differ, that the inn system might put us in separate rooms. The odds of that were vanishingly small.
I'll deal with that when the time comes.
It was painfully obvious that no amount of thinking would produce an answer right now, so I dropped the subject and focused on the food.
A metal knife with a satisfying weight to it. Wait — a metal knife?
I should hide this.
At present, the only way I had to control my erosion rate was still to hurt myself. This was a real find.
Having my flesh sawed open would hurt, sure — but I'd confirmed that morning that my sense of pain was still dulled, probably because I was still below fifty-five percent.
A penalty every fifteen percent. Next one's at fifty-five.
The fact that the baseline started at ten percent felt newly significant.
I filed the thought away, then slowly lifted the knife and sank it into the meat.
The way the flesh parted so smoothly seemed to guarantee the quality of the cut.
The sight of red juices welling from the cross-section was magnificent.
If I'd been able to sing, I would absolutely have been singing right then.
Side: A Holy Knight's Tale.
The Holy Knight caught the scent of blood drifting from beyond the Saintess's door.
And on the day he smelled it, the Saintess met with the Pope — and was canonized.
After she was officially recognized as the next Saintess, she did not return to her chambers until the following day.
Blood ran from her eyes and mouth, staining the white of her vestments crimson as she staggered toward her room.
And he alone witnessed it.
Titia had shut herself away inside her own quarters. The high priests had all scattered the moment the Saintess entered the central cathedral. He was the only one who saw.
In the pale hour before dawn, as the sun crested the ridgeline, he ran toward her.
Was it worry? Pity? Some misplaced compassion for a person he was merely assigned to guard?
The reason didn't matter to him.
He simply moved his legs and ran.
When he reached her, the Saintess's eyes held nothing at all. Expressionless, she ignored him and kept walking.
Those hollow eyes showed him nothing but a field of white snow.
He couldn't have said what he saw in them — only that it changed him.
Why did I become a Holy Knight?
He put the question to himself.
As a small child, he had wanted to become a Star.
And he had wanted to protect people.
But reality had given him neither opportunity nor talent, so he had stopped trying.
Watching the Saintess walk back to her room covered in blood, he picked up a dull wooden practice sword for the first time in a very long while.
At last, he had a goal.
He would follow the Saintess into the Hero's party, and he would save the lives he had always been too weak to keep from slipping away.
He raised the sword and brought it down in a simple cut, over and over.
Dawn passed into morning.
Drenched in sweat, he looked up at the sunlight.
He washed quickly, then carried a meal to the Saintess's door.
Knock, knock—
After knocking, he was about to speak the usual request for permission when the scent of blood touched his nose again.
He shoved the door open at once. The Saintess lay on the bed with her eyes closed, still as the dead.
Half-afraid, he held a hand beneath her nose.
The faint warmth of her breath brought a rush of relief.
For reasons he couldn't name, he picked up the fork from the table, quietly set down the breakfast tray, and left the room.
About an hour later he returned to check on the meal — and found the dishes empty, unlike the day before.
Confirming that she was well enough to finish everything, the Holy Knight let out a quiet breath of relief.
A faint trace of blood still lingered in the air, but it was clearly weaker than before. As he collected the tray, he asked, "Are you all right, Saintess?"
She took up a fountain pen and paper — he had no idea when either had appeared in the room — and wrote with focused care.
I'm fine.
When the person concerned so firmly denied his concern, he left the room wearing a complicated expression.
Exactly twenty-four hours after the Hero's appearance at noon the day before, it was lunchtime again.
Over the past two days, most of the Saintess's schedule had been cancelled due to other matters, which meant delivering her meals while she remained confined to her chambers had fallen to him.
Halfway down the long corridor, the smell of blood rose once more.
Why?
She'd been fine through the morning, hadn't she?
A dozen thoughts crashed through him at once, but his body kept striding toward the room without pause.
He knocked — and the Saintess was right there in front of him.
"Your meal."
He said it flatly and wrenched his head aside with desperate force.
He couldn't let her see the way his face had twisted at the smell of blood.
He didn't even manage to ask why the scent was so thick. Afraid he wouldn't be able to hide his expression, he thrust the tray at her and fled the room in a rush.
Of course it would look strange to her — but showing her that contorted face would have been worse, and that was why he chose it.
Ever since she had coughed up blood in the prayer hall, the smell of it had never fully left her chambers.
It had only been two days, but he couldn't help suspecting that something was seriously wrong with her health.
Today's meal had been steak as usual, but he was starting to think they ought to switch her back to something lighter.
Back in his own room, he began to wrestle with how he might manage to follow the Saintess.
It might have been meddling. The thought struck him unbidden — if a man couldn't even protect the girl at his side, what right did he have to protect anyone on the front lines? — but still.
If he wanted to stay with the Saintess, building his strength came first.
He started turning over how he might persuade the Hero to let him join the party.
One way or another, it felt as though he had finally set a goal for himself again.
For the sake of chasing that goal, he would do anything.
With that resolve settled in his chest, he rested.
Word that the Hero had already set out for the Holy Kingdom reached him a few hours later.