Bad Memories Come Flapping Back
The Saintess.
Roughly speaking, she's the one chosen by the Goddess.
As the very word "Saintess" implies, the Goddess only shares her power with women.
Of course, anyone with enough faith can wield holy power — but tapping into the Goddess's power itself is another matter entirely.
Playing favorites with women, is she.
And so, on that morning, I came to the realization that the Goddess was a discriminatory old fossil stuck a few eras behind the times.
"I'll be off, then."
[Mm-hm. Take care, Rucia.]
And Rucia departed for her examination hall.
Can't exactly skip the exam just because she's off playing hide-and-seek with the Saintess, now can she.
Still, that gives me a few hours of free time.
With that thought, I pushed open the window and slipped outside.
A faint trace of holy power wrapped itself around my body.
…The Saintess. Well, I suppose I do have to find her.
There had never been an episode in the original story where she went missing.
Which meant this was most likely an incident born from the butterfly effect of my own meddling.
If she were just an extra, I'd ignore her.
Unfortunately, the Saintess carried a great deal of weight in the story.
There were even events that were flat-out impossible to clear without her.
Best to find her quickly and head home.
I am, after all, a renowned scout of the skies.
-Shuuuuung!
I tore across the forest at high speed. Tracking someone by their holy power turned out to be surprisingly easy.
She'll turn up in no time.
Or so I thought — the Saintess's holy power was so potent that I'd assumed this would be a breeze, but the deeper I flew into the woods, the stranger things got.
…Why is there SO much holy power?
The stuff was jumbled together everywhere, all over the place.
Even the density of the energy differed from spot to spot.
It was an odd state of affairs for something that had supposedly sprung up overnight.
Did she really only run away yesterday?
Half suspecting the Saintess of being a chronic runaway, I spent about ten minutes weaving through the forest before I finally spotted her — a girl in a priestess's habit.
"Hoooh…"
A golden-haired girl, utterly drained of strength, trudging along one shuffling step at a time.
She's come deep, hasn't she.
I'd found her at the end of a good four-kilometer stretch of wilderness.
"How strange… I should have arrived ages agooo…"
The Saintess forced her fluttering eyelids open again and again as she pressed forward.
…The Cathedral is in the complete opposite direction.
I had no idea what brand of confidence had driven her out here alone, but one thing was certain — if it weren't for me, she'd be camping out in this forest tonight.
Time to get her out of the woods, then.
Send the Saintess back to the Cathedral, job done.
Except that's where the problem arose.
If I were a person, fine. But guiding someone to safety while I'm a sparrow?
How exactly am I supposed to pull that off?
By now I was widely known as Rucia's familiar.
Not quite an Academy superstar, admittedly — but famous enough as the pet sparrow belonging to the school's second-ranked new admit.
Therefore:
I can't show myself.
I scanned the surroundings for anyone else. If there was somebody nearby, I could simply use them.
Granted, no lunatic would wander into the deep woods at this hour of the morning, but—
"…Uwah!"
A woman's voice carried from the distance.
Several hundred meters away from the Saintess, I spotted a woman with a short golden bob.
She was busily digging up herbs.
Oh right, her.
She was the lunatic who dragged herself out at the crack of dawn to forage for herbs.
And judging by the fact that she never actually brewed any potions with them, she belonged to that special breed of person who just, genuinely, loved herbs.
If I leave it to her, she'll guide the Saintess back just fine.
With that in mind, I cast wind magic.
-Fweee!
The herbs the herb-lover had gathered went swirling up into the air.
"Wh-what?! A sudden wind…?"
The herbs soared high into the sky, dragging the herb-lover along in the Saintess's direction.
That should do it.
And I flew back to the dormitory.
The fact that the Saintess's rescuer happened to be, of all people, an herb-obsessed weirdo bugged me a little, but…
Shouldn't matter.
What could possibly go wrong?
I whiled away the hours rolling around the dormitory.
I flung my body onto Rucia's pillow. I performed vertical drops from the ceiling down to the blanket.
-Fwooomph.
Maybe it was because I was a sparrow, but even the sound of falling was pitifully underwhelming.
And so the hours slipped away.
Early afternoon — just a little past lunchtime.
The theory exam would be wrapping up around now.
At last!
Rucia, returning triumphant from her exam.
Just imagining it was delightful.
Brimming with anticipation, I perched on the windowsill.
Holding my breath until Rucia gets here.
Befitting a Grand-Magic-Sparrow of the Sword Saint lineage, I could stop my breathing for a good five hours or so.
Huuup.
I held that pose for several minutes, and soon people began passing by the dormitory one or two at a time.
And then—
At long last, the Academy's peerless silver-haired, amber-eyed beauty, Rucia, made her appearance.
Yahoo.
Overjoyed, I launched into an aerial somersault, aiming to land on the bed — but just then, someone called out to Rucia.
What manner of irreverent—!
I sharpened my eyes with mana and prepared to comb through the miscreant's person from head to toe, when—
"Lady Rucia. Did your exam go well?"
There stood the herb-lover, and beside her—
"Oh, now that you mention it, today was the exam, wasn't it…! I'm at the Cathedral so often that I honestly don't keep track of the academic calendar."
The Saintess, Celiel.
…Why are you HERE?
And I hadn't gotten a proper look just now, but hadn't she just popped out from behind the flower bed?
The Saintess's habit was smeared with flower petals and dirt.
As for the herb-lover's clothes… she basically treated the forest like her own backyard, so there was no comparison to be made there.
So she really WAS hiding in there, huh.
Wondering what on earth had driven the Saintess to spring out of a flower bed, I decided to eavesdrop on their conversation a little longer.
The herb-lover spoke up with a smile.
"She was going to head back at first, actually. But I figured, what's the point of going back early? You'd just get scolded anyway. So I told her to stay out a little longer with me."
Wow, she really just said it straight to the girl's face — not her problem.
…But why were you hiding in the flower bed?
Before my questions had any hope of being answered, the Saintess spoke up.
"I didn't agree with you from the start, Ray… but the more I listened, the more sense you seemed to make. So I decided to go along with it, just a little."
The Saintess offered Rucia a soft smile.
Rucia did nothing at all. She simply stared at the herb-lover.
I stared at the girl with much the same expression.
YOU! Herb-lover, you fiend!
You've gone and infected the SAINT with your laziness!
She's precious personnel who's supposed to be burning through a packed schedule every day — how dare anyone waste her time like this.
[Rucia.]
I fired off a telepathic message at once.
[It's about the Saintess. I think you should send her back now, while you still can.]
"…"
Rucia blinked twice in my direction, as if to answer me, then opened her mouth.
"I think it would be best if you went back. Running away doesn't change anything. If anything, it'll only make things worse for you."
For reference, the Saintess was a second-year student.
Rucia's honorifics law applied exclusively to elders — and thus not even a Saintess could escape her casual speech.
The ever-consistent Confucian maiden, Rucia.
I was so proud of her.
Anyway.
Hearing Rucia's words, the Saintess snapped back to her senses at once.
"You're right, of course… Everyone must be out searching for me because of this. Lately I've been so absorbed in other things that I haven't stopped to think about the obvious. I'm so sorry."
The Saintess bowed her head and turned to leave, when—
"Saintess!"
Holy Knights came sprinting from the distance.
The Saintess looked flustered, but honestly, it was only natural.
Other cadets were passing by all around them.
Someone had surely reported seeing the Saintess.
Though them showing up within mere minutes IS a surprise.
Anyway.
The herb-lover, who took no interest whatsoever in society, wouldn't have had the faintest idea that a massive search for the Saintess was underway. And the Saintess herself — the very target of that search — had been off in the forest.
It's not as though she could have predicted she'd be carted off just for showing her face…
…Wait, no, could she really not have predicted that?
I found myself wondering how on earth she hadn't seen it coming.
But whatever. The Saintess was escorted away by the Holy Knights.
More time passed, and evening arrived.
I lay on the bed, sunk deep in thought.
So WHY was the Saintess here at the crack of dawn?
I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Granted, the Saintess-related incidents of the day had already maxed out my brain's storage capacity — but there was one more important matter I had to deal with tonight.
The elf living in our closet.
Just how am I supposed to handle an elf?
What I needed right now was an Elf Handling Manual.
Last time, I'd accidentally walled her into confinement. Before that, I'd washed her lungs out with water.
Keep this up, and the elf is going to die.
Everything so far had ended as harmless little mishaps, but one day I really might go and kill the poor thing by accident.
Which is why, at dinner tonight, I planned to sit down with the elf and compile the definitive Elf Handling Manual.
Of course, the elf had no idea any of this was coming.
[Ah, there you are.]
Around the time the food on the table was nearly ready, the elf emerged from the bedroom.
-Creeeak.
She carefully pulled out a chair at the table and eased herself onto it.
[Coming out right when dinner's almost done, huh?]
"…"
Hearing my words, she went silent, staring fixedly at the table. Then—
"…I'm sorry. From now on, I'll come out early and help. I promise."
[No, no, that's not what I meant at all. I was just saying your timing was actually good.]
Great. She takes everything I say that seriously, and now I don't know what to tell her.
Has she gone senile or something?
The elf did tend toward a rather acute case of paranoia.
"So… what did you call me here for…?"
[Ah, nothing big.]
I gulped down a single grain of rice and sent the telepathy.
[What do you think the problem is with the current situation? And… what is it that you actually want?]
What was uncomfortable for her. And what she wanted us to do about it.
A simple question, really.
"…"
Her expression turned complicated as she mulled it over.
Did I phrase it too all over the place?
Just as I resolved to build up some proper context and ask again—
-Knock, knock.
Someone rapped on the door.
[Rucia. Could you get the door?]
"Yes."
With telekinesis, I gently lifted the elf, my own body, and everything on the table into the air — leaving only Rucia's portion behind.
[Protocol, remember.]
Rucia slipped into the bedroom and quietly shut the door behind her.
The elf I simply dropped unceremoniously onto the floor, while the food stayed suspended in telekinetic hold.
Now then, who could it be?
I'd already confirmed our visitor with clairvoyance magic.
The Saintess Celiel, and a whole battalion of Holy Knights.
Hmm.
Why would the girl who was supposed to have been hauled back to the Cathedral be standing at our door?
Apparently I wasn't the only one puzzled, because Rucia voiced almost exactly the same question.
"You. Why are you here?"
Rucia glared at the Saintess as she closed the door behind her.
"Oh — no need to worry! As you just saw in the hallway, this time I came with proper permission, and with the Holy Knights escorting me."
The Saintess beamed brightly and clasped both of Rucia's hands in her own.
Ordinarily, Rucia would have shaken her off instantly —
"…But it really was you, wasn't it, Lady Rucia?"
The Saintess said something strange.
"I felt it faintly, even when we met briefly this afternoon."
"…?"
"You've been chosen by the Goddess too, haven't you, Lady Rucia?"
She had arrived at a very peculiar misunderstanding.
This is getting a bit hard to keep up with.
There are limits to how much shock a person can absorb in one day. My tension drained away in an instant, and I glanced over at the elf—
"Uwaa… ah, uwaAAA…"
Cowering further and further into the corner, she wailed:
"The Incarnation, the Incarnation is here again…! There are too, too many of them. I should have run away long agooo… uwaa, aaaa…!"
She'd spiraled into a PTSD episode all on her own.
…What is even happening anymore?