Surviving in the City
"Alright. Fully revived."
"Did you sleep well?"
When I opened my eyes, I was still stuck in this goddamn medieval world.
And not just any medieval world—a shabby inn's so-called suite. The candles sitting where electric lights should have been made my head spin all over again. Was I still nothing more than a castaway? Someone who didn't even know where this place was or how I'd gotten here, chasing a painfully obvious cause with the name of the person who'd summoned me as my only landmark—a puppet on strings. Or maybe just a hopeless suicide case who couldn't let go of a dream dumped on her by the dead, charging straight back toward ruin with zero capacity to learn.
"Saintess?"
Honestly, at this point I didn't care which one I was. In a world this brutal, dwelling on those messy old stories would get me killed for sure. I couldn't throw away the life Asty had lent me like that.
"I'm going to grab something to eat and head to the library in a bit. If you've got time, want to come with me?"
Which meant Rebecca was coming along whether she liked it or not. From what I'd seen yesterday, the city's security was even more of a dumpster fire than I'd expected. Looking at the state of this neighborhood, a knife flying out of nowhere at any moment wouldn't have surprised me in the least. No need to go looking for trouble with pointless bravado.
I harbored zero illusions about the public safety of this era. Wandering the cramped alleys trusting a bunch of drunk, poverty-rotted vagrants sounded far more dangerous than charging into the middle of a battlefield. Bringing a reliable bodyguard like Rebecca wasn't optional—it was mandatory. Besides, it was about time I started learning a few things from her.
"Ah, um. The library, you mean? If that is your command, I will gladly accompany you."
Hmm.
I fixed her with a pointed stare. It wasn't that I was trying to call out her stiff way of speaking. I'd begged her to treat me casually, yet every time I looked up she was right back to the extreme formalities. Easier just to give up on that one.
I had a different reason for pressing her.
"Don't try to hide it. Answer me honestly."
"Ah—what do you mean?"
"You tailed me yesterday."
It was a simple enough question. The moment we'd set foot in Montpellier, Rebecca must have already realized the city's security was a complete mess. She was a local, born and raised in this hopeless medieval France. While I—still stuck in a modern mindset—had been naively marveling at the city's wretched state, she would have been burning with her duty as the Lantern Bearer, intercepting any suspicious approaches. Of course she'd been watching me from behind the whole time I was wandering around looking for the library. Otherwise yesterday's peaceful little library expedition made no sense at all. Our goddess wasn't about to start handing out blessings now, so this was one hundred percent Rebecca's doing.
Am I right?
"...I'm sorry. I was simply too worried to let you go alone."
Yeah. Nailed it.
Rebecca hung her head, looking thoroughly dejected, but I didn't have the slightest intention of blaming her. She'd basically saved my life—what kind of ungrateful brat would get mad about that? Sure, someone might say I was overreacting after only half a day on my own, but right now I was a glass-cannon with one hit point. A single moment of carelessness could easily mean death. Roaming the city's back alleys alone with no one to watch my back had been a blatantly fatal mistake. Rebecca had covered for that mistake beautifully, so this wasn't something to get angry about—it was something to bow my head and thank her for.
"Thank you. And from now on, it's fine to just say you want to come along."
I eased her worries with a benevolent smile. She seemed to be under some strange misunderstanding. I wasn't some clueless kid who would chafe under a little overprotectiveness and start dreaming of rebellion. If anything, I was the one who ought to be begging her to keep me safe.
"Are you... truly certain? If it makes you uncomfortable in any way—"
"Not at all. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, so don't worry. Honestly, I enjoy having you around."
Of course, Rebecca took that to mean I purely liked her company and lit up with joy. Well, it wasn't entirely wrong, so there was no need to correct her. Still—could she please just treat me casually already? Getting extreme formal speech from a girl nearly half my age was making me dizzy.
"Th-then shall we go together?"
Rebecca shot up from her seat and bolted out the door. She must have been so happy she couldn't hide her smile—the corner of her mouth I glimpsed was turned up as high as it would go.
Cute.
But where was she going by herself? We hadn't even eaten breakfast yet. I'd been planning to split the bread we'd bought yesterday.
"Rebecca! Wait for me!"
We could eat on the way.
I grabbed the chunk of bread I'd left on the table and hurried after her.
"Hello, Grandpa."
"Well now. Is that your big sister next to you?"
"Yes. One month's pass, please."
After polishing off an entire loaf of bread on the street and carefully brushing the crumbs from our clothes, we entered the library. Then we promptly purchased a one-month free-access pass from the librarian—paying full price, not freeloading. Honestly, asking him to let Rebecca in for free on top of everything would have been shameless. I wasn't some destitute beggar with no money to live on, and I still had plenty left from what Rebecca had given me. Pinching twenty florins and freeloading off someone else's hard work just felt wrong. If the library went bankrupt and shut down because of that, where was I supposed to read books? The whole "just one person won't hurt" mindset is exactly how the world falls apart. My face wasn't thick enough to brazenly demand free service from a business that was already struggling.
Besides, a library in this era must have cost a fortune just to establish. This old man would at least need to recoup his investment, right...?
Wait a second.
Could an ordinary self-employed person even open a library? A single book cost at least a hundred florins. Even if I shook out every last coin from the pouch Rebecca had given me, I couldn't buy one of those bookshelves over there. How had he gathered this many books? Was he not a struggling shopkeeper at all, but some corporate chairman running the place as a retirement hobby?
"Um, what did you do before you opened the library...?"
Of course, my suspicions might have been overblown. Maybe he simply had connections with a printing house, or patronage from a wealthy noble, or the library itself was jointly owned by several people. But... what if it wasn't? What if there was no special reason at all? What if every book in this library belonged to the old librarian? What if some actual noble had retired and was enjoying a hobby?
I couldn't contain my curiosity.
"Hmm? Why do you ask? An old man's stories from the past aren't going to be very interesting..."
"I'm just so curious. Could you tell me, just once?"
"Well, I suppose there's no harm. When this old man was young, you see, I was a priest serving the Goddess Vesta—"
The truth was far more shocking than anything I'd imagined. He had been a high-ranking cleric on track for promotion to bishop, but when the goddess fled and the order collapsed, the promotion was naturally canceled and his job evaporated. While the higher-ups flailed in chaos, he had secured the abandoned archives of the order and worked to preserve them—and the result was this very library.
"I see."
The sudden appearance of a colleague from the same industry smacked me clean across the back of my fragile head. Why was a priest from an order that had already collapsed ages ago running a library here of all places? Granted, in an era where nine-tenths of the population was illiterate, anyone educated enough to operate a library was almost guaranteed to be either a scholar or a former cleric—but of all things, he had to be from our order. It made me flinch and left my head spinning for no good reason. Not that I had any knowledge or responsibility to claim; I'd been dragged here forty years after the order fell.
"Thank you. That answers my question."
I clenched my teeth and bowed my head, pretending to know nothing. Once again: I had no intention of revealing that I was the Saintess. Right now I truly had nothing. And pulling out the lantern here would be far too dangerous. If this old man had really been a priest, he would have handled divine power before. If he recognized the lantern as a sacred relic, he'd also realize I couldn't use divine power myself—and proving I was the Saintess would become that much harder. Even if, by some miracle, he accepted that I was the Saintess, whether I could trust this old man was an entirely separate question. The Vesta Order had collapsed because of corruption severe enough to disappoint the goddess herself. Trusting someone who had climbed to a high position in that organization would be stupidly naive. He claimed he'd preserved the abandoned archives, but for all I knew he'd simply seized the order's assets amid the chaos right after the collapse.
Therefore, this old man could not be trusted. And there was no particular need to trust him. I was still a half-baked Saintess who couldn't even use any superpowers yet—why risk exposing my identity and inviting danger for no reason—
"Wait—just a moment. You there. Yes, you. Could you show me that lantern for a second?"
I'm screwed.