The Beginning of Spring - 3
The dawn chapel was utterly quiet.
The slanting morning light that fell across the corridor looked pale somehow, yet the moment it passed through the stained glass of every color, it was given hue and painted the hallway in beautiful radiance.
A saintess's day always began earlier than anyone else's, and always ended later.
With two Holy Knights trailing behind her, she clicked her way down the long corridor and arrived at the prayer room where morning prayers were offered.
The chapel itself was vast, but within it stood row upon row of countless doors. Just as the game's lore described, there were statues of a goddess in the form of a young girl and a goddess in the form of an adult woman, and the many doors branched out to either side of those statues.
I was briefly flustered, but drawing on the experience of having frequented a large church as a child just to get free bread, I easily recognized that those doors led to private prayer rooms.
I didn't know which of them was the one the Saintess always used, but I left it to instinct, letting the body guide me, and opened one of the doors without hesitation.
The interior was cramped. A small wooden table, a chair, and a cross hanging on the wall were all that met the eye.
To anyone looking it would have seemed thoroughly Catholic, but I remembered the developer's detail that the vertical bar represented the greater goddess and the horizontal bar the lesser one, and I laughed quietly to myself.
Whether they were her personal guards or attendants, the Holy Knights did not intrude on the private prayer room, so I would be free to think as I pleased.
After confirming that the Holy Knights had taken positions on either side of the door like sentries, I carefully shut it, pulled back the chair that creaked somehow, and sat down.
Morning prayer began at dawn, so sleep threatened to claim me. I lightly slapped both cheeks with my palms — chap, chap.
Even that mild stimulus was enough to leave the skin of my palms faintly red on this frail body.
This is bad. My cheeks aren't turning red too, are they?
If the cheeks I had only lightly struck had gone red as well, explaining myself to the Holy Knights outside would be a nuisance, so I hoped the flush would fade within the several dozen minutes of morning prayer.
In this cramped space no one would invade, there was no fear of being overheard, so there was no need to even pretend to pray. I settled into a comfortable posture and began recalling the rest of the game's lore.
In this game, the Hero and the Saintess were, quite literally, the god's proxies. One had been given arms filled with starlight; the other, a body filled with starlight — mythic figures descended to the earth.
This game, realistic in all the wrong places, had the Empire form a front line against the demonkin, train them diligently, and then send the already complete Superhumans — the Hero and the Saintess — to the front.
Someone once said that with great power comes great responsibility. The Hero watched countless Superhumans get crushed on the front lines. He watched the companions he had struggled to gather sacrifice their lives for nothing.
The goddamn storyline of this game, which began in spring and ended in winter, still left a foul taste just from thinking about it.
What kind of game decides to kill every single companion, including the heroines?
This vicious game, which pretended in spring to be a bright, royal-road tale of parental revenge, made it look as if the Hero had reclaimed his happiness just before autumn arrived after summer. And what waited beyond that was despair.
A game that dressed itself in flashy action, that let you pilot a finished Superhuman and smash enemies with satisfying ease, transformed completely once autumn began. The companions he had carefully gathered died before the Hero's eyes, and in the end he was left alone, sword planted in the ground, staring blankly at the headstones in a graveyard as a single flower petal fell across his face — and with that image announcing the beginning of spring, the game ended.
And me? I absolutely despise sad endings.
What if — just maybe — the illness had vanished because the Saintess was already dead?
Then couldn't I guide this world to a happy ending?
If I went back to my original world anyway, all that waited was a life rotting away in a semi-basement flat, cursing my own existence and the parents who made me this way. Did I really have to return from this beautiful yet cruel world where I had spent my childhood?
The desire to go home grew infinitely faint, and whether I had forgotten the resolve I'd made mere hours ago to return alive, I sank into endlessly twisted thoughts.
I'll save everyone.
■ ■ ■ □ □ □ □ □ □ □
Erosion Rate: 25%
The translucent text appeared before my eyes again.
My self, shoved under by waves of countless thoughts and sinking down, regained a grip on reality. How stupid had I been just moments ago?
Feeling the sensation of losing myself, I trembled with fear in thin fingers that no longer felt like my own. As I stared at those trembling fingers, a sudden searing agony tore through my esophagus.
"Kehk, kek."
Even after drawing a lungful of air through my nose, it felt as if I couldn't breathe. Black, dead blood trickled from my mouth.
I had been mistaken. It wasn't that there had been no pain — I simply hadn't felt it because the boundary between myself and the body had still been clear. If my soul continued to be reshaped and devoured by the body going forward, I would have to live with this kind of pain every single day.
That was unacceptable.
Once eroded, there was no going back. The sudden spike past twenty percent erosion was simply delivering a penalty; it wouldn't mean continuous blood-coughing forever.
Stay calm. Think. What's the fastest way a mute Saintess can call for help?
I couldn't breathe, and my thoughts grew dull. My body, collapsing downward little by little, pushed forward on the will to live. A hand clenched tight grabbed the wooden board.
Because this was a space the Saintess used alone, it seemed poorly maintained; fine splinters drove into my fingers.
It stings. It hurts.
"Cough, kehk, kuhk."
Cursing a mouth that produced no words, I crawled wretchedly toward the door. From a mouth stretched wide to draw breath came only dry coughs mixed with black, dead blood. The endless coughing refused to let me breathe, continuing without pause.
The clean floor was fouled with black blood that had spattered and settled. From the edges of my vision, black blind spots began to assert their presence and spread. As if I had swallowed blood in prayer, I still couldn't breathe.
A Saintess, beloved by the stars, could perform all manner of miracles if she wished. But right now, when I couldn't even think properly, it was impossible.
I lifted my waist as high as I could and brought my hand near the doorknob. I touched it several times only to slip off again and again. With blood trickling down, blackening my clothes and the prayer room, the white parts of the nun's habit growing harder to find as I swept it across the floor, I kept fumbling at the doorknob.
At last my hand closed around it, and I succeeded in opening the door.
The two Holy Knights standing outside stared at me with thoroughly startled faces.
I'm saved.
With that relief, my vision went completely black.
This morning at dawn, prayer time having arrived, I went to the Saintess's bedchamber to escort her.
Following the same routine, the same familiar corridor at the same hour, I arrived at the end of the hall, before the door to her room.
"May I enter?"
A few seconds later, I spoke again.
"I am coming in."
To others it might have looked like an unmannerly announcement rather than a request, but because the Saintess always rose diligently at this hour to prepare for prayer, I opened the door expecting her to be awake.
What met my eyes when I opened the door was the color of a nun's habit that had turned brown, as if long hours had passed since she coughed blood, and the Saintess's face, which looked as if she had been startled.
Behind the Saintess, whose round white eyes — looking almost blind at a glance — were wide open, the sun that had just crossed the horizon revealed a shy face and cast its light. That sight was so like a halo from mythology that I found myself filled with reverence unbidden, but recalling the blood on her habit, I hurriedly asked the Saintess:
"Saintess, your clothes...?"
The Saintess had been born carrying a blessing and starlight so great her body could barely endure them, and so she had been born with a constitutionally frail body. For that reason she had lived with pain and blood since childhood, but she had never coughed blood this severely before.
The Saintess wiped the fluster from her face and offered me a smile as warm as sunlight, as if to say she was fine.
Thinking first that I should bring her a change of clothes, I hurriedly left the room, asking the Saintess's pardon.
"Please wait a moment."
Figuring it would be better for another woman to carry the clothes, I went to the quarters where my younger sister, who had joined the order with me, was staying.
My sister, who looked as if she had just put on her uniform and was getting ready to leave, said to me:
"What's going on?"
"The Saintess coughed blood. She needs a change of clothes."
"What?"
My sister looked startled, but quickly became cooperative, grabbed a fresh nun's habit, and followed me.
Arriving at the door, my sister asked the Saintess:
"Could you pass the bloodstained clothes through the gap in the door?"
When she asked that against the door, it wasn't long before the door opened a crack and the nun's habit came through, folded. My sister then handed over the new habit from the side.
We waited outside the door after that, and the Saintess emerged dressed in her new clothes.