The Holy Scar
The archbishop said something utterly absurd. Show him my body?! Even if I were still a man, I’d have suspected him of being a sodomite! And now I was a woman.
Asking a woman to show her body! Was he a pervert?!
I stepped backward in retreat. I fled so far that my back soon pressed against a bookshelf.
“S-s-show you my body?!”
I was so flustered I stammered, and he seemed just as rattled, waving his hands frantically. Watching him break out in a cold sweat was so ridiculous it was almost funny.
“Th-that’s not what I meant! I’m sorry for giving you the wrong idea.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m sensing purity in her holy power right now.”
“Purity?”
“Yes—a purity different from the holy power I possess. The light of the Goddess.”
I could barely understand what the two of them were talking about. I had no idea, yet Master wore the expression of someone who had just realized something.
What on earth is going on that the two of them are enjoying this? Whenever the archbishop took a step closer, I covered myself with my arms.
He’d claimed it wasn’t that kind of meaning, but he still hadn’t explained the reason. That was why I was afraid.
Am I about to get stripped naked right here? Right now I felt shame both as a man and as a woman.
What should I do?! If my sister were here, she would have protected me! Why did she go straight back to her room?!
I looked at him with open disgust.
“Ahem!”
Seeing my expression seemed to snap him back to his senses; he quietly stepped away.
“I’m sorry. I got so worked up that I failed to consider your feelings.”
“Julian, you needn’t be so alarmed. You don’t truly think an archbishop would be a heretic, do you?”
“I-is that so?”
Thinking about it, that made sense… Would a devout believer really be a heretic…? But in novels and games there had been plenty of such traitors. From my past-life memories, there had been plenty of criminals among pastors and priests as well, hadn’t there?
I did not drop my suspicion.
“This conversation will take a while, so let’s go upstairs.”
What kind of conversation would take that long?
“Th-then I’ll lock the door.”
I hurried toward the door of the old bookstore to put distance between myself and the archbishop, then locked it. In the meantime Master led the guest up to the second floor. After locking the door I let out a long, heavy sigh.
“Just what kind of conversation is this going to be?”
More than curiosity, I felt fear. An archbishop of all people asking to see my body—what was his purpose? I’d only just been tormented by a noble, and now an archbishop? Someone of an archbishop’s rank was a person even nobles could not ignore. What had I done wrong?
For the moment Master’s presence kept me safe, but later? If he approached me deliberately, what was I supposed to do?
Why was I so unlucky? I had gained holy power and learned both magic and holy magic. Just when I thought I was finally seeing light in my life, why?
“Haa…”
I trudged up to the second floor. When I arrived, Master, the archbishop, and my sister were already seated at the table.
“Sister?”
“I thought this was something the family should hear together, so I called her.”
I carefully sat down beside my sister. Having her next to me put my mind a little more at ease.
“Where should I begin……”
The old man who was the archbishop slowly closed his eyes and gazed up at the ceiling.
“First, we should clear up the misunderstanding.”
He nodded at Master’s words and began to speak, starting with the reason he had come here.
“I came here to find someone.”
The problem was that it had already been six years since he found that person… nearly seven now.
“The person I am searching for is a Saint.”
A Saint… or a Holy One. Suddenly the scale of the story felt vastly larger. A Saint usually meant someone chosen by a god.
“I heard this story before you became my disciple.”
Master confirmed it was no lie. The archbishop had received a revelation in a dream that if he came near this place he would meet a Saint. According to Master, the dreams of someone of archbishop or cardinal rank were never mere dreams.
“And then I met her.”
Master regarded the archbishop with slightly suspicious eyes.
“Are you absolutely certain?”
“That is why I asked to see her body—to confirm it.”
At the archbishop’s words I instinctively wrapped my arms around myself. Just what reason did he have for wanting to see my body?!
My sister simply sat there blankly listening.
“Ahem. Since you do not seem to know, I shall explain.”
He said that Saints bore a Holy Scar engraved upon them as proof of being chosen by a god. In other words, by examining the Holy Scar on the body, one could be certain whether that person was a Saint.
“That is why I wished to examine your body. There is absolutely no other reason!”
Holy Scar… but I didn’t have anything like that on my body. Naturally nothing on any visible place. Even under my clothes—when I bathed I looked—and there was nothing of the sort. Wasn’t this a misunderstanding?
“I don’t have anything like that…”
“No, that cannot be. There is a possibility it is engraved somewhere you cannot see.”
When asked how he could be so certain, the archbishop answered thus:
“Because the holy power you use is different.”
“Different?”
“I am curious about that part myself.”
Master had already officially recognized that my holy power belonged to the Goddess Metis. Yet he had never mentioned anything more special than that.
“This is something ordinary people cannot know. Only those who have directly experienced the Goddess’s power can tell.”
The archbishop explained that because he had received an oracle from the Goddess and personally experienced her power, he could perceive that my holy power was different.
Ordinary believers, mages, or priests of other denominations could not discern the difference, he said.
“Is that so…”
Honestly, I was half-doubting it.
“That is correct. And I was lacking in consideration. It was not something one should say to a woman. I apologize.”
If he put it like that, I had no choice but to accept the apology.
“I-it’s fine.”
It wasn’t as though my clothes had been stripped off; he had only spoken. I had felt a slight danger to my chastity, but that was as far as it went. If it truly was nothing, then it was nothing, and I could not scold someone who had already apologized.
“Ahem. Therefore I would like to check once more.”
“Ch-check?”
“There may be a Holy Scar in a place that is not visible.”
Madness seemed to gleam in the archbishop’s eyes. It was such a regrettable sight that I wondered whether this man was truly a clergyman.
“Then… could you teach me what a Holy Scar looks like?”
It seemed surest and fastest to tell my sister what it looked like and have her check. But had I really been chosen by the Goddess? That would be strange, wouldn’t it?
I had only awakened to holy power recently. According to the archbishop, the oracle had descended roughly seven years ago. If the Goddess had truly chosen me, shouldn’t I have been able to use holy power from then?
That was why I could not believe what the archbishop was saying and remained suspicious.
Still, it seemed he would never acknowledge it unless he confirmed it with his own eyes.
“I only know that some kind of crest appears.”
The shape differed from person to person, and there was almost no commonality. Yet he told me not to worry—one would know it at a glance.
“You’d know it at a glance?”
“It is a Holy Scar. A Holy Scar bestowed directly by the Goddess—you can tell simply by looking.”
I could not drop my suspicion. For the moment I answered that I understood, then went into my room with my sister.
“Juli, are you okay?”
“I’m not okay, but what can I do?”
If I did not prove there was nothing, he would clearly keep clinging with stubborn persistence… To make the archbishop give up, I had to check.
“If it’s a place I can’t see myself, it has to be my back.”
I yanked off my top and, lightly covering my ambiguously sized chest, turned my back to my sister.
“Is there anything?”
Even though she was family, showing my body was embarrassing. More than that, my sister was silent.
“Hurry up and check.”
“J-Juli?”
“There’s nothing, right?”
Why isn’t she saying anything? Don’t tell me there is something?
“Sister?”
My sister suddenly gripped my shoulders. Then she turned my body so that I faced her.
“What’s wrong?”
My sister, who was often spaced out, was looking at me with a serious expression. It felt as though she was about to say something grave, and unease prickled through me.
“Don’t tell me there is something?”
“If you want, I’ll say there isn’t.”
My sister’s words were as good as confessing that there was. And it seemed there was something on my back that she could notice at a single glance.
“Is there really something?”
My sister nodded and falteringly explained. She said there was something like a crest between my waist and hips.
“Th-there’s something like wings on both sides.”
Wings? I twisted my waist and craned my neck, trying to look for myself. The problem was the location—it was not easy to see with my own eyes. It was a truly ambiguous position, half-visible, half-not.
“Damn, I can’t see it.”
Seeing me like that, my sister seemed to feel sorry and roughly sketched a picture on a scrap of memo paper. Looking at the drawing she made, lines stretched outward to both sides centered on the spine, forming a shape similar to wings, and a unique pattern ran along the line of the spine.
It was a completely different shape from the crest the church used. Certainly… just looking at this, it did seem like something. I had thought a Holy Scar would be like the church’s crest being engraved……
But was this a Holy Scar?
“Do you feel something?”
“Yeah.”
According to my sister, looking at it made her feel something hard to put into words. If even my sister, who did not believe in gods, said that, it probably was not fake….
“Ha… Why does this actually exist.”
I hung my head. Should I just say there was nothing? If my sister played along, we might get past it somehow. But recalling those mad eyes, he did not seem like someone who would give up easily.
He would never give up. He would probably bring a nun and demand she check. Then there would be no way out.
Maybe it would be easier not to waste energy and simply give up….
My worries grew larger. Not long ago a noble had made things hard for me, and now the church? Why was I, an ordinary commoner, being given such trials?
I looked at the bracelet on my left wrist.
Goddess, did you choose me because I prayed so diligently? If so, thank you. But a Saint?!
What do you want from me? Is it the knowledge from my past life?
Do you want me to spread that knowledge in this world?
But even in my past life I was an ordinary student and don’t know much.
“Ahh, this is driving me crazy.”
I did not know the Goddess’s will and it was hard to believe, yet being chosen was real, and my head was spinning.
I was so confused that I could not even organize my thoughts.
What should I do?