I Like Nuns
A nun? What was a nun doing here? Had there even been a nun type among the maids? Leyre stared at her, utterly bewildered, and the nun's eyes opened, soft and slow, until she was looking at me.
"Hey. What the hell are you."
Marx went on guard. She drew the pistol from Leyre's arms and leveled it at the nun. The nun looked from Marx to me, and back again.
"I give thanks unto God."
She sank down where she stood and began to pray, just like the maids of the Holy Fire Ritual faction.
Was this nun one of Leyre's people too? He didn't think so. He had never even heard of a nun among them, and even if there had been one, there was no reason for her to be out here alone, this far from anyone.
Besides, she was different from the Holy Fire Ritual faction.
"You... you're an android-maid?"
"I was."
"You... believe in God?"
"Yes. I believe in the gods that humans once followed."
The nun had taken a real god as the object of her faith.
The Holy Fire Ritual faction had gone no further than holding rites in the hope that humans might someday return. They had never taken the next step and believed in a god like this. If anything, they had made a human—Leyre himself—the object of their faith, and stopped there.
A maid who believed in God.
Startled by a case he had never seen before, Leyre still couldn't help wondering why she was here.
"Why... were you here?"
"I have been at prayer without cease. Praying that my master might someday return."
"Hey, you weird nun. Don't even think about wagging your tail at my human. I swear I'll just—"
Before Marx could actually pull the trigger, Leyre stopped her.
"Marx, go to sleep."
"What? Do you even know how she's gonna treat you?"
"If she meant to hurt me, she already would have."
Besides, this maid-nun simply knelt where she was, hands folded in prayer. There was no sign at all that she meant to draw a weapon from anywhere.
She looked demure.
"Tch... Come back early, got it? And don't go letting your eyes wander just 'cause you ran into another pretty face."
With that she kissed my cheek and scurried out in a rush.
Where had that fierce, imposing chairwoman gone, and how had she turned this cute?
Well, anyway... right now it was time to talk to the nun. Leyre sat down as well and deliberately met her eyes.
The nun looked at him and smiled, as if the sight of him delighted her.
Ah, damn it. She's way too pretty.
Leyre thought it as he turned his gaze aside.
A classic beauty. Her breasts were large enough to nurse three babies and still have plenty left, and the gentle swell of her belly curved just enough to drive a man out of his mind. And those hips—a thorough childbearing build, made entirely so a man's hands would have something to hold...
And then one thought led straight into the next.
He started to suspect she might be a pleasure doll by origin, like Karin.
Leyre gathered his courage and spoke to the nun.
"So... you were a maid, and now you're... what, a nun?"
"You could see it that way. For hundreds of years I have done nothing in this place but pray for humanity's return."
"Hundreds of years...? Then ever since humanity was wiped out?"
"...Not quite. There was a time when I, too, despaired, and wandered."
The nun drew gradually closer to Leyre. Then she caught his hand in both of hers and asked him to go on.
"Might I hear who you are, and how you came to stand before my eyes like this?"
"It's going to be a long story."
"That is quite all right. For a human returned after so long... no. For my master, I can endure even a tale that long. I have already endured a far longer time."
Leyre told the nun everything. The cryo-stasis unit, the Holy Fire Ritual faction, the stories of the other maids he had met...
The nun heard him out, nodded, and smiled.
"A fine story. So the rite of the Holy Fire Ritual faction succeeded in the end."
"You know the Holy Fire Ritual faction?"
"From time to time I met maids of that group passing through this place, and we would talk. We were alike in waiting for humans and offering prayer, so the conversation came easily."
So that was how it was.
"Wait. Then do you know Lucia?"
"Lucia... I know her as the head of the ritual faction. I have only heard of her. I have never met her."
"I see..."
Leyre felt a considerable kinship with the nun. They had things in common, and above all, the fact that she believed in God brought humans to mind, and with them a kind of longing. That was what he thought.
Something seemed to occur to the nun all at once, and she bowed her head.
"I ought to have introduced myself first. How rude of me, to do nothing but demand your story of a new master."
"A... new master?"
He hadn't expected to become a new master quite this fast.
Of course, every maid he had met—cases like Marx aside—had declared Leyre her master, on the grounds that he was the only human she had seen in ages.
Even so, hearing a nun call a human master left him with a strangely unsettled feeling.
"My foundation is that of a maid. I do not step outside of being a maid. If I have met a new master after so long... then it is only right that I serve him as master."
"...Right."
Hell yeah!! I just bagged a nun-maid—a huge, voluptuous sack of faith so goddamn hot I can't stand it!
Leyre cheered in silence. The maids he had met so far were all exceptional to look at, of course, but aside from Marx he had never found one with a style this different, and that thrilled him no end.
A different kind of maid. A different kind of experience.
Thinking of all the things he might get up to, Leyre grew giddy with excitement.
"Then allow me to begin my story..."
The nun-maid opened her mouth and began.
"My name is Marie..."
Marie drew something from within her habit. It was a white plastic name tag, corroded and wearing away across the centuries.
Leyre's eyes went perfectly round at the sight of it. He was so startled he even clapped a hand over his mouth.
"I was an assistant maid to the researchers who handled a small nuclear reactor at the university nearby."
The maid he had needed.
A maid armed with both the knowledge and the skill.
And she had appeared right in front of him.
"...I was a maid who assisted the researchers. I carried the experimental materials, helped them conduct their research properly, and sometimes took part in experiments too difficult for a human, aiding the researchers that way."
"W-w-wait, hold on... a nuclear reactor? You actually handled one?"
An item he had absolutely had to bring back to the group and install. Before any smooth supply of power could be established, it was the thing that would come into its own as a basic machine for generating electricity. And she had handled one.
He had to take her at once. This very moment, Leyre needed to bring this nun called Marie along and get that reactor out of there.
"Yes. Being nuclear, there was much a human body could not endure, so I, an android, laid hands on it myself, and moved it as well."
Leyre let out another whoop of triumph. The problem was solving itself. It could not possibly be going this smoothly.
"I need your help."
Voice full of excitement, Leyre took Marie's hand.
Marie startled at the feel of human skin, a sensation she had not known in a very long time.
"Yes?"
"That nuclear reactor you mentioned—we saw it earlier today. But we didn't know how to handle it, so we just left it. We have to take it back and install it at the Holy Fire Ritual faction's stronghold, so it can supply power."
And Leyre bowed to Marie, pressing his head down before her.
"I'm begging you, tell me how to move it! And help me!"
"Ah..."
The nun considered it a moment, then nodded.
"I do not know whether the old memories still remain... but I cannot refuse a request from a master I have only just met..."
Marie raised the bowing Leyre back to his feet.
"I will help you."
Leyre cheered again. That was it. The plan was on the verge of succeeding. If they only had a supply of power, he could do all sorts of things he hadn't been able to do before.
Watching him light up with joy, Marie smiled.
"Is there something you want? Whatever it is, I'll do it!"
Leyre was that happy.
If the promise proved unreasonable, his body was in no state to actually follow through—and yet he still wanted to do something for this maid and her absurdly incredible specs.
"Ah, then..."
Marie drew a little closer. Then she spread her arms wide.
"Might I... hold you, just for a moment?"
She pulled Leyre into a tight embrace.
The soft, yielding give of her chest pressed against him, and it felt wonderful.
"Uh, uh... sure..."
Still holding him fast, Marie went on.
"I... was a body that followed science, and so I held no belief in faith... But when every human vanished, I lost my direction... and wandered here and there. I was on the very brink of becoming a Scrapped Unit. I thought I was going mad. But after I read the scriptures of the faith... and came to know the being called God, I recovered the direction of my life, and its meaning..."
Marie's arms tightened. Leyre began to have trouble breathing, but it was a pleasant suffocation, and so he liked it all the more.
"Waiting for humans, praying to God that they would come again..."
"I-I see..."
"And at the end of that long prayer, to meet a new master like this—I give thanks to God, and yet I am also this..."
Marie looked Leyre full in the face and kissed him.
"...happy. My beloved master."
"Oh..."
A kiss at first meeting.
Nuns are wild, Leyre thought.
"Please, remain at my side for a long, long time."
Marie embraced him once more.
It meant she had no intention of ever letting go.
"...Something feels off."
And Leyre was left with the feeling that something was, indeed, off.