Unforeseen Reunion (3)
"**Rigel Belheim**. I didn't think you would recognize me."
The words slipped from Clotila's lips. The name Rigel Belheim.
The moment I heard it, my head felt momentarily dizzy. I blinked rapidly, doing my best to hide any signs of confusion.
With my lips twitching from the shock, I answered in a hurried, flustered voice.
"R, Rigel-ssi? No, I'm Lir Ostrin."
It was a reply that anyone would clearly see as the exact center of the target being hit. In the depths of my own guilt over it, she pulled her cigarette from her lips and tapped it lightly while letting the moment stretch.
But that delay only dug the knife deeper into my heart with what came next.
"...Then that setting is correct?"
The yellow in her eyes looked as if they were boring straight through me.
She knew everything, so there was no point lying. She said it while looking at me as Lir, not Rigel.
By then, I had no choice but to stop pretending.
After all, the person standing before me was the Saintess. By capability alone, she was probably the strongest being in all of humanity.
She lacked combat ability, but her ability to see magi or mana was overwhelming.
On top of that, along with her healing power, she had a curse immunity zone that let her dispel every curse in one go.
The Saintess saw straight through me in just a few seconds and came all the way here to demand answers from me.
I couldn't call it coincidence. The way Clotila was looking at me right now went beyond certainty; it was an expression that said it was only natural.
"Since when have you known?"
"From the very moment I first saw you. I was suspicious, but the way you lit my cigarette back then on the battlefield matched you perfectly?"
**Click.**
I clicked my tongue.
She pointed at it with her finger.
"Clicking your tongue and all... Yeah, it's definitely you. I thought you wouldn't be able to recognize me."
"...Hmph, you shouldn't have gone into the royal palace, should you?"
Between the buildings, moonlight filtered through the gaps.
In front of the girl and the Saintess, they leaned against the wall and chatted. I had warned the surroundings, but no one would be watching this deep inside.
"Huuu... If I went back to the royal palace now, I couldn't enjoy this. I slipped out just right. And I've slipped out only once or twice, right?"
She let out a decadent smile and looked at me.
It still felt uncomfortable. Her words, which could be those of a saint or a cold one, combined with her blunt personality that was unusually crude for a woman, and that piercing gaze.
I had met her for a long time, but I still couldn't face her eyes comfortably.
"It's cold. Let's go in. This is your house, right?"
Clotila kicked the wall of the white-painted house at the end of her shoe.
A shoe print was left on the previously clean wall, and I couldn't help but make a face.
***
The inside of the house was luckily clean, as I had tidied it up yesterday.
Normally, houses get messy, and I clean up when it exceeds a certain line I set. Luckily, I had exceeded that line yesterday and cleaned.
Other than a few books stacked on the table, it was the cleanest it could be.
"I remember you like coffee more than tea, don't I?"
"Couldn't you tell how much I poured for the kids?"
"How many times did I pull you out of the fire when your lives were sinking? You can't even do that much?"
*Sigh.* Let's just not say it. You don't fight a losing opponent in the first place.
I leaned back on the sofa, put my arm behind my head, and half-reclined like the villain Clotila was. I brought her the coffee I had poured in front of her.
I sat in the seat opposite her and finally sipped the coffee I hadn't had for a while.
"Rigel Belheim, who made such a name for himself, has become such a frail little girl. How do you feel? About the differences between men and women?"
"Wouldn't it be nice?"
The moment I felt a slight grabbing force on my chest, I quickly swatted it away.
**Crazy woman, crazy woman, crazy woman.**
"The Lord might have an abnormal libido. Just look at you and you'll go crazy, huh? Maybe he can't stop licking his lips."
"Is it because the Saintess is crazy that she believes in the crazy God?"
"Hey, be careful with your words. The Lord is one of the few things I can curse too. I don't want you cursing because you have no faith."
"Then act with dignity."
My head hurt. I thought the stress would finally be gone after the exam, but now my head was throbbing.
"Your wrist is less than half the thickness it used to be. Your height is about a head taller than mine, but now you're shorter. Look at your collarbone... it's all so thin."
"Don't look at me with such lecherous eyes."
"No, it's basic human curiosity how such a body became like this, right?"
When I heard that, I looked at my own hands and body, turning them over.
I touched my skin and even tried speaking again. Clotila the Saintess looked at me and asked while I was doing that.
"What are you doing?"
"Because of the curse immunity zone. I wondered if my body might be returning to normal."
But there were no changes in my body. While I was discouraged, she brushed my skin and traced my body's lines and gave her verdict.
"Obviously, you're completely a woman. If it was a curse, you would have returned to normal when you lit the cigarette earlier. You became a woman because you wanted to, right? I thought you had that kind of taste. That genre is fine too."
"I don't have a depraved taste like the Saintess. Well, no one follows the Saintess's taste more secularly than anyone else. The world needs to know more about the Saintess."
"Among all these books, is there no book that contains your desires? When I come to your room, I can lend you a few good books."
There weren't many books that revealed desires.
Books on difficult martial arts or spear techniques, or theories about monsters or demons.
Also, books about the mysteries of this world and novels to pass time.
I can say this plainly.
There will not be a book like Clotila in my bookcase, one that is depraved and can't be shown to others, dealing with lust.
"Are you really saying there aren't any? Wow, you still have that side and it's boring. The Lord also finds you boring and went to watch a bloody battlefield?"
"Isn't that a blasphemy of the Lord just now?"
"The Lord who made this world fall apart and people bleeding rivers is a Lord who doesn't say anything, so cursing him is valid. Of course, I can curse too, but you can't."
I clicked my tongue again. I just silently put the warm coffee in my mouth.
"So, how is living the second life? Satisfied?"
"...Better than when I was losing my hair in the Knight Order and processing documents even on the battlefield. No loud mages shouting either."
"Are you eating this? Clotila the Saintess picked up the nuts nearby.
She opened the lid and put the peanuts I had peeled into her mouth and started eating them up.
"If you're happy, that's fine. The battlefield has gotten even bloodier since you disappeared."
"I have nothing to say. Call me selfish."
"Luke, even he is... No, he was in pain too. You're not even thirty yet, right? A year or two younger than me."
The people of the battlefield have a way of speaking that treats everyone like they're playing with them, but Clotila's age isn't that many.
She was in her late twenties. But because my body looked so young, she looked like an older sister now.
"So, you're suffering while only Ivan is around. Are you going to end up beside the Lord at this rate?"
"Ah, now that I think about it, I didn't see Ivan today."
"He's still unconscious. He took a big wound, and even though I healed him, he hasn't woken up."
My heart sank a little. I had expected it, but hearing it directly wasn't pleasant.
It was about Ivan, whom I somehow acknowledged, falling.
"To me, it looks like overwork. Overwork is a realm where healing can't reach, right? You should let him rest. That's why Luke returned to the battlefield."
"Him?"
"He was reluctant to return, his hands shaking and on the verge of tears, but what could he do? Who else is there besides himself? The Lord isn't so compassionate either."
Then the only Hero sustaining the frontline is Luke.
In skill, he was better than Ivan, but... would that guy really be able to do it?
"By chance, there are only two Heroes. Back then, there were three Heroes for a long time?"
"That's one of the world's mysteries too. It's someone who says the God's power has decreased, that the God is ignoring us. Does the Saintess still have nothing?"
"I don't know anything. I'm not the God. Looking at how even the few hope, the Heroes, are being taken away, I don't know if I should call it the God or a sadist."
The God doesn't give any answers to humanity.
He only gives us Heroes and Saintesses.
But lately, even those are hard to see.
Clearly, the third Hero should have appeared, but it has been nearly twenty years without him.
"When I heard you had gone missing, I wasn't sure if you had gone to the Lord's side or if you had hidden because you felt sick of the world. You could have stayed hidden."
"How can I go out in this state? My strength is less than half, and I can't even reach the tips of my toes, let alone catching a single demon."
"Still, if it were you, you would easily beat most knights. I can't say I won't let you return to the battlefield. You've lived in the battlefield all your life, and now you're finally living a good life."
Clotila the Saintess spoke with a mix of sympathy.
"You don't have to look at it so pitifully. Back then I didn't think it was bad, and even now, even if there are bad points, it's not just flaws."
"Right now you're acting tough and pretending to be strong. Back then I didn't know you were really crumpled like a paper balloon and making the kids suffer."
"So I didn't make the kids do coffee errands like the Saintess."
Back then, that era.
Honestly, it was a terrible era and always crappy, but looking back now, the stories weren't things I couldn't use as comfort.
I recalled that era with a light joke.
"Then, you still hate Roengrill?"
Clotila the Saintess looked at Lir and said.
The moment I heard that name, my face crumpled.