Divine Punk Sister: Infiltration Action
I hadn't really felt it while I was inside, or on the way out. Coming back, though, I saw that the cathedral grounds were quite large.
The churches I'd visited in my past life, as I remembered them, usually had a main sanctuary with one or two other buildings attached for whatever else needed doing. I'd only been a handful of times as a child, trailing after the adults, and around the time I started middle school—studies and all the rest—I stopped going on weekends and the whole thing faded. Even so, I remembered those spaces had been there.
This place was probably much the same. Or perhaps it was larger still because some people had given themselves wholly to the church—because so many of them solved food, clothing, and shelter right here. The land was broad, so the buildings were many, and the household grew to match. If not everyone slept in the same space, it only followed that the rooms would multiply in proportion.
Which was how I ended up having to find my own room among all those many rooms.
One or two, and I might still have gotten away with a wrong door and a sheepish sorry, I mistook the room. With this many, wandering into the wrong one once or twice was the limit. Slipping in and out of every door, muttering is it this one, is it that one, would look far too suspicious. I was already hated by the other nuns—and probably by the priests and monks as well. Pull a stunt like that and I might end up burned at the stake.
…Was that too extreme? Ethics here probably weren't all that different from my previous world. Nobody likes an uninvited intruder. I might get locked in that punishment room, or whatever they called it. I didn't know the details, but remembering how the other nuns trembled and did everything they could to avoid being sent there, it was literally a place of punishment. Not somewhere that left pleasant memories.
If I'd known it would come to this, I should have asked to be shown to my room. …Then again, expecting a male Inquisitor to know every nun's quarters by heart was a little strange in itself. Still, if it was Hamil, I had a feeling he might know something.
Well. That ship had already sailed. Regretting it now wouldn't do any good. It wasn't as if this world had cell phones, so you could reach someone far away in an instant. …Crystal orbs and the like did turn up in most fantasy novels as something similar. Those probably weren't easy to carry around, either.
"Haa. Still, if they'd at least written something on the doors, would that have killed them…"
Standing here forever was worse than moving, so I made up my mind to move. It was a small mercy that the other nuns had gone out to work the fields. If I was lucky, I could find my room before they came back.
Objective: Reach my room without being spotted.
The room closest to the building's entrance was full of cleaning tools. Brooms, snow-white burlap sacks, hand rags. …Did they even clean? Why was every last tool pure white?
Ah. Something like Purification magic, keeping them that clean. But if Purification existed, why did they need cleaning tools at all? Had these things never been used—just left out for show?
And the ropes visible between the tools. Maybe this wasn't a cleaning closet at all, but a plain supply storeroom. They kept the farm tools here too; everyone had taken those out to work the fields, which was why I didn't see them. Then what were the ropes for… When harvest drew near, the plants bowed under the weight of their fruit, so maybe they tied them up to keep them from collapsing. I thought I'd heard they did something like that when growing rice.
Even a delinquent nun wasn't going to sleep in a storeroom, so I passed it by.
The room after that was, this time, a proper dormitory. Bunk beds along both walls, and between them lockers and a shared table. Probably a room made for four. I glanced left and right, and the moment I confirmed there was no sign of anyone nearby, I slipped inside.
If I wanted to know whether this was my room, I needed to see whether any names were written anywhere. The easiest way was something like a duty roster. In group living, it was common to write names so you could tell whose spot was whose, or whose belongings were whose. …Or maybe that was only the military. The fact that the names of the people using this room weren't even written beside the door already made me uneasy.
I came in, looked the lockers over, and—sorry to the other nuns—opened drawers to check what was inside. Nowhere was there anything like a name.
"Seriously, if somebody steals something, how are they supposed to catch them? Just because it's a religious order, you think nobody steals? From what I saw earlier, they were swiping guns and everything…"
No real clues. They weren't living in total asceticism, either; among the personal belongings I spotted jewels, and letters received from lovers. Not that I was rotten enough to steal any of that. …There were also a few rods whose purpose I could more or less guess, but that was private, so I'd leave it alone. How bored must you get in a place men aren't allowed.
"Guess I'd better look in another room."
I put everything back as it was and started to poke my head into the corridor, then stopped. If someone was out there when I stuck my head out, they'd see me just the same. Was there any point in advertising that I was sneaking around? Move with confidence. Back straight, chest out, perfectly ordinary.
I stepped out that way, and the moment I stood before the next door to go in, I had no choice but to freeze. A priest was lying inside.
"Ah, Sister Selenia. You're finally here. I heard you'd been discharged from the infirmary, so I came straight to your quarters to wait. Where did you go, coming back only now?"
For a second my heart lurched—had I barged into someone else's room and been caught? Then the part about waiting in my room let me breathe again. At least I hadn't been caught sneaking into a room that wasn't mine. That much was a relief. The next problem was that she'd been waiting for me.
If she knew I'd left the infirmary, she probably knew me well. And given that I was already known as a delinquent nun, I couldn't expect this to be a good connection. Was it the virtuous do not come; those who come are not virtuous? I wasn't sure this was the moment for that saying, but whoever came looking for a delinquent nun certainly wasn't coming with good intentions. An old grudge. Or some other purpose. Especially with a smile that sultry, suspicion was unavoidable.
"May I ask what this is about?"
So I kept ready to draw the pistol at my belt at any moment, and watched the priest lying on the bed. A pure-white clerical robe with a deep side slit below the hips. Like the habit I wore, the upper body was well covered, but the legs were dressed to show a great deal. At least she wasn't wearing a veil, so I could tell she was a priest and not a nun. Beyond that, I could make out neither purpose nor identity.
"Hehe. You don't need to be so on guard. Brother Hamil didn't tell you anything, I see."
A sultry smile unsuited to her short, slender frame settled on her face. Eyes curving into a sly arc, cheeks lifting just so—the look of someone wearing that expression on purpose. Still, Hamil's name had come up, and some of the tension eased. Not just anything: she'd mentioned that Hamil had given me notice. Only then did I realize this woman was the Inquisitor assigned as my senior. Well—less a senior, since she hadn't said she'd teach me anything, and closer to a partner.
"Ah. Hello. I never imagined you'd come today of all days, so I didn't recognize you."
"Oh, of course. You didn't know I was coming, which is why you came after rummaging through the room next door. Isn't that right?"
"…"
A priest who said chilling things with a smiling face. Apparently the sound of me frantically digging through lockers in a hurry had carried all the way here. I'd torched the first impression spectacularly. Should I make an excuse, or brazen it out? Hamil knew who I really was. If I was honest, maybe she'd understand a little.
I was inwardly calculating what to do about being caught at what I'd done when the Inquisitor beamed at me and spoke.
"I've heard plenty about what a thoroughly hopeless nun Sister Selenia is, so it's fine. Just see that it doesn't interfere with the work. Understood? Haa. To think a foreign god's blessing would take root in someone like you."
Her treatment of me was harsher than I'd expected. It wasn't even the notion that I'd done wrong and therefore deserved to be punished. Those words were simply do whatever you like, just don't get caught, weren't they? It stung. It meant she'd given up on me entirely.
Well. No expectations, no disappointment. If the relationship was already twisted, maybe I just needed to let it go. Do the work, and do it well. If we'd been tied together by the job, then so long as we didn't have reason to go red in the face at each other, that was enough.