The Heretic and the Miracle
The heretic—!
Miracles have always belonged exclusively to the unfortunate. Those who do not live in misfortune rarely seek miracles. After all, they already dwell within a life that is itself miraculous. It was a simple, obvious truth. Hearing that someone already basking in abundance suddenly craved a miracle was exceedingly rare. On the other hand, in slums teeming with beggars, one could find countless souls who hungered for miracles as if they were air, water, or sunlight. And what they sought from those miracles was always the same.
God. They always yearned for a god. A god who would bestow miracles upon them. Few would disagree with this observation. Especially not a nun being dragged away by bandits.
—Thud!
The carriage lurched violently with a rattling jolt. The unpaved dirt road must have sent a stone flying beneath the wheels. The nun flinched, her body trembling, but she refused to lift her face from where it was buried against her knees. It was as if she could not bear to look ahead. The view hidden beneath her nun’s habit was pitch black. It felt like a reflection of her future, and she bit down hard on her lip. A single tear slipped from her eye.
‘Damn those old fossils in the Senate…’
Under normal circumstances, such crude language would be unthinkable coming from someone who held the vocation of a nun. Yet her curses did not stop there.
‘His Holiness the Pope’s condition is worsening, and instead of tending to him, they…! They sit around drinking themselves senseless and openly speculating about who will be the next pope…!!’
And that had been her mistake. Her sharp tongue had not remained merely in her thoughts. Deeply impressed by her candid rebuke, the Senate had decided to send her to the western frontier as a missionary. The reason given was that her wise counsel should be shared with the people living in that remote wasteland where it would be difficult to hear.
‘We hereby appoint you as a missionary to the western frontier.’
The nun had concluded that the elders’ advanced age must have addled their vocabulary. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption. Therefore, she had taken it upon herself to correct a few parts of the decree.
‘We hereby exile you to the western frontier.’
Naturally, there were no paladins or escorts assigned to guard her. They had simply dropped her off at the start of the mountain path near the frontier and promptly returned. And it was only natural that bandits would welcome a lone, unguarded nun with open arms.
“We’re almost there!”
A rough voice from the front dragged the nun out of her gloomy thoughts. Yet she remained motionless, face still pressed to her knees. One of the bandits riding beside the carriage grinned wickedly and scraped his sword along the iron bars of the window with a grating screech. The rusted bars and steel blade produced a sound that made her skin crawl. The bandit caught the nun’s golden eyes glaring at him and grinned even wider, clearly pleased.
“Hey, Sister! Time to wake up! We’re nearly there! You’d better start getting ready to greet everyone! My brothers are going to love seeing you! Don’t worry too much, Sister! Not only is your face pretty, but your name is too! Even if you mess up a little, Big Brother won’t get too angry! Uh, what was it again? Shelline?”
The mangled pronunciation of her name was so far off that the nun didn’t even feel disbelief. She had no desire to answer, but unfortunately she had no choice.
—Clang!
Once again the unpleasant scrape of metal on metal raked across her ears. When she looked over, the same bandit was grinning with yellow teeth bared. More precisely, what the nun saw was not the bandit but his sword. The tip of the blade had slipped between the bars.
“Listen here, Sister. When someone asks you a question, you should answer. Isn’t that basic courtesy between people?”
The bandit’s smile stretched so wide that his gums showed, revealing teeth that had rotted and turned black in places. The nun’s lips moved.
She simply didn’t want to look at his face or his sword any longer. If she gave him her name, he would consider his goal accomplished.
“……Celine.”
“Ah, that’s right! That was it! Celine!”
The bandit clapped his hands in delight at hearing her name and cackled with laughter.
“It is an honor to meet the holy Sister Celine.”
Sister Celine had to fight the urge to sigh. The way he bowed, the way he extended his arm—it was clearly an attempt to mimic the etiquette of paladins. But the sloppy bend of his waist, the completely wrong height and angle of his arms, and the inexplicable way he thrust his buttocks backward made it look less like an imitation of proper manners and more like some bizarre, grotesque dance.
—Whistle!
Apparently, she was the only one who thought so. Whistles immediately erupted from all around.
“Hey, hey, Polcott! You actually look like a proper knight now!”
“Right?! Look at him, doesn’t he just ooze nobility?!”
“Nobility my ass! More like he’s oozing grease!”
“Hah, how’d you know? I may look like a knight, but from the waist down I’m a complete barbarian!”
The sight of the bandits shaking their hips wildly while exchanging crude, unfunny jokes finally made Celine bury her face back into her knees. Seeing that was far worse than contemplating her bleak future. Sadly, while her vision could escape into darkness, her hearing could not.
“Listen, Sister. Once Big Brother’s done having his fun with you, just wait and see. Don’t worry too much! Unlike him, I’m a real gentleman. Of course, my waist has a mind of its own, though!”
The sound of his giggling drifted over from the side. The nun wanted to cover her ears. But she couldn’t. Her wrists were tightly bound with rope. All she could do was stare into her grim future and try to wash away the darkness with her tears.
“Get down!”
The moment the iron-barred door opened, the bandit called Polcott grabbed her and dragged her out. With both her wrists and ankles bound, Sister Celine was literally hauled along the ground.
“Fuck, just look at that glossy hair. Smells damn good too. What did you put in it? Camellia oil?”
Celine sucked in a sharp breath. The bandit’s careless hands roughly tousled her neatly arranged golden hair. She bit her lip hard. Right now she didn’t even want to breathe the same air as him. When she remained silent, Polcott chuckled and muttered.
“Yeah, yeah. Save your strength. You’ll be screaming your lungs out soon enough anyway.”
Once the bandit’s hands left her, Celine could finally breathe again. As she did, she stole a glance around to see where she was. It appeared to be somewhere on a low mountain. More precisely, it was a log cabin built on a forested slope midway up the mountain.
—Bang!
The bandit in front kicked the door open. Inside, half-eaten food, scattered bottles, and a filthy table and floor came into view. The stench of alcohol was overpowering—clearly they had drunk a great deal. The interior could not possibly be described as pleasant, even as a lie. Sister Celine had to bite her lip again. Otherwise the tears would have poured out uncontrollably.
—Whoosh!
Polcott dragged her roughly inside and began tying the rope around her wrists to a nail hammered haphazardly into the wall.
“Hah, fuck. When’s Big Brother getting here?” one of the bandits grumbled as he dropped heavily into a chair and slammed his feet onto the table. His hand moved without hesitation to grab a half-full bottle.
“Heard he’d be back around evening,” Polcott muttered after finishing securing the rope.
“Fuck… He needs to hurry up so I can have a turn touching her…”
The bandit licked his lips slowly as he stared at her. The sight made Celine’s skin crawl, and she lowered her head. The words that followed were even worse.
“Seriously, how long has it been since we had a woman?”
“And one with a body like that, no less!”
“Hah, fuck… Something that fine—won’t Big Brother just keep her for himself?”
“What? No way! We’re the ones who caught her. He’ll at least let us have a go!”
“You idiots dragged in a beauty and all you can do is whine?”
The last bandit to speak slammed a large bottle onto the table with a heavy thud. The effect was immediate. The gloomy atmosphere among the bandits flipped completely. Sister Celine’s mood, however, remained unchanged. As soon as the liquor appeared, someone reflexively brought out meat. The distinctive smell of mutton sizzled in the air. Celine swallowed hard. It had been a full day and half a day since the bandits had taken her. Naturally, they had stripped her of all belongings, so she had not had a single drop of water the entire time.
“Hm?”
While chewing on the mutton, Polcott noticed her gaze and turned his head. Seeing the nun, he grinned and shook his cup.
“What, Sister? You want some too? Should I give you a little?”
“Are you crazy? Don’t you remember the last girl we brought? You fed her, Big Brother fucked her, and she puked everything up when he shoved it in?”
“Ah, fuck… That’s right… Cleaning that shit up was a nightmare. Sorry about that, Sister! But don’t worry too much! I’ll let you eat a little before I take my turn! You know, right? I look like a real gentleman, don’t I?”
As Polcott turned away with another burst of giggling laughter, Sister Celine bit her lip. She buried her face in her knees once more. It felt far better to sink back into gloomy thoughts than to listen to any more of this.
Among those appointed as missionaries to the western frontier, very few had taken the title literally. In fact, it was safer to say none had. Most had humbly declared, “My faith is not yet deep enough to preach to others,” and declined. Those who had accepted the mission, like her, had been “martyred” on their way west. The reasons varied. Some may have been captured by bandits, just as she had been. Most had likely been dragged off by wolves or bears. A few had slipped and fallen to their deaths while crossing the treacherous mountains of the frontier.
For that reason, as far as Celine could remember, the last person to receive a western missionary appointment before her had been a single paladin several years ago. She had no idea what had become of that nameless paladin. He had probably met the same fate as all the previous appointees.
“……! ………!!!”
Suddenly the front of the cabin grew noisy. Sister Celine lifted her head with a somewhat dazed expression. Had the “Big Brother” the bandits had mentioned finally arrived? The door to the log cabin stood open. Celine had to squint. The setting sun was sinking outside. Because of the backlighting, she couldn’t make out the exact features of the person standing in the doorway. But one thing was painfully clear: the figure was enormous. Even as a black silhouette, it was obvious the man stood well over two meters tall. His shoulders looked wide enough for two women her size to sit on comfortably.
The nun smiled bitterly. At that size, she could understand why the rough bandits called him “Big Brother.” Celine lowered her head. She had no desire to see the face of the man who would soon violate her.
“……You fucking bastard…!”
“What the…! Who the hell are you…!”
“…Do you even know who we—!!”
But the sudden string of curses made her raise her head again.
‘Curses…?’
Big Brother had returned, and yet they were cursing at him? Or did these crude bandits simply sprinkle profanity into their greetings?
“You—!”
It was then.
“Heretic—!”
Sister Celine’s mouth fell open in pure shock. She couldn’t tell whether she was more stunned by the fact that a human head could be completely crushed like overripe fruit, or by the fact that the object responsible was a fifteen-centimeter-thick complete collection of scriptures. Even she herself had no way of knowing.