If You Want to Leave, Put Some Clothes On
I had cursed God down to my last breath and spent that same breath resenting the world, but I still considered myself a modern person with a perfectly ordinary sense of ethics.
Which was why the thought of having to run my hands over a woman I didn't know filled me with a vicious guilt.
I like pretty women. Someone might call that perverted, and as for touching them... well. If you were told it was legal, is there a man alive who would refuse? And yet, when the chance is actually set in front of you, saying yes is a great deal harder than it sounds. If she wanted it, and if she wanted me, that would be one thing. Selenia's reputation among the other nuns, however, was already scraping the floor. They would hate it. Obviously.
For someone who had never dated even once, having to grope a person who despised me was a mission with the difficulty set far too high.
I was still stewing in that conflict alone when Hamil pressed me.
"There is no time. The longer we delay, the more chance the culprit who harmed Sister Victoria and stole the gun will have to spirit it away. Sister Selenia, you know better than anyone that a gun can take a life in an instant."
"I know. I know. I'll do it. If I say I'll do it, I'll do it."
In the end, not searching the nuns and the female priests was never an option. Better that I touch them than Hamil, wasn't it?
I was just about to climb off the bed. My hand went to the blanket — and stopped. This was not the moment to be worrying about anyone else. I was naked. They had said I'd been shot all over. For the sake of treatment, and so they could lay me in the infirmary bed, they seemed to have stripped off the blood-soaked clothes.
The problem was that I could not walk outside like this. If this had been some Garden of Eden where everyone wandered around naked, I might have blushed and done the same. It wasn't. The nuns in front of me were dressed, revealing as those clothes were.
The one small mercy was the black garment laid on the table beside the bed. Like the clothes of the other nuns, and like Hamil's, it bore a mark just beneath the opening for the head — the number 7, worked into something that looked like a religious symbol.
When I reached for it, Hamil turned his back, as if he at least meant to give me time to dress.
"You can't look behind you."
"Of course."
Suspicious of me or not, he apparently had no intention of trampling a person's dignity. I was grateful he wasn't looking at my naked body. A hurdle just as high was still waiting for me, though. Could I even look at this body and make it move?
I was no child, and I was certainly no innocent. I had studied the female form through plenty of videos and pictures until I knew it. All of that, however, had been on the far side of a screen. I had never seen one in person. I had never had a girlfriend, and I had never gone looking for someone who made a living at... that. The curiosity had been there. What I hadn't had was the time, or the money.
And now that first experience was about to happen in the first person — without even a moment to explore a woman's body, because I had to get dressed and walk out.
I swallowed hard and carefully lowered the blanket. Even with nothing on, the full, firm breasts hid everything beneath them from sight. Snow-white, smooth skin — and, thanks to those large breasts, the part that ought to have sat at their tips was covered as well. Not seeing it was already enough to set my face burning, as if a nosebleed were a breath away. If I had to look at what lay below with my own eyes, and touch it...
"Sister Selenia. Are you not finished?"
"Ah — yes, I'm getting dressed. It was just... surprising. The gunshot wounds healing without a trace, I mean. That's all."
"That is thanks to the other brothers and sisters, who devoted themselves to healing you."
I had been so lost in my own body that I had forgotten to put the clothes on, and Hamil, finding the silence suspicious, had prodded me. The excuse I scraped together actually landed. Small mercies. I had nearly said the body itself was fascinating and drawn his suspicion, but his faith in the religion and in the other believers was solid enough that he let it pass.
Right. Looking this body over is something I can do alone later.
Right now I had to catch the bastard who had hurt Sister Victoria — or the bitch; it might be a woman — and wring the truth out of them. You could call it a scrap of justice. You could call it hypocrisy. But I had an Inquisitor at my back, and the power that came with him. Whoever had hurt a good person like Sister Victoria, Hamil would punish them the moment I found them. I would only be tagging along.
I made that resolute vow, unfolded the clothes, and my nerve gave out.
The folded black garment had felt thin, and sure enough it covered about as little as what the nuns passing by had been wearing. I didn't even need to wonder why the skirt was split in two. This was no cheongsam with a slit around the thigh. It gaped open on both sides from above the hips. Did this even qualify as a skirt? At least the upper body was thoroughly covered. I supposed I should be grateful for that.
Even so, the cloth was a size too small. Stretch or no stretch, it was going to cling to my body. I couldn't miss that. Right — my body. I was the one who had to wear this. And my chest was already large. Once I put it on, the fabric over my breasts would stretch, and then they would jiggle, wouldn't they?
I had no time to dwell on it. Hamil could turn around at any moment, demand to know what I was doing, and march me straight to the stake. Unhappy as I was with the habit, I put it on. I should have paid attention back when the other nuns were walking around in things like this. It wouldn't have changed anything, but I might at least have prepared myself.
So I put it on. Whether the body remembered how to wear a habit, or whether the thing was simply easy to get into, it took only a few seconds. And once it was actually on, it swayed a little with every movement, but it didn't bounce so wildly that it was uncomfortable. Which was to say, it probably wouldn't look as indecent as I had feared.
Relieved, I spoke to Hamil.
"I'm dressed."
"You are not putting on the stockings? Displaying your bare legs in that manner strikes me as rather obscene."
"St-stockings?"
Just as he said, there were pantyhose beneath the habit. Black ones. The habit probably left the hips bare because wearing those was the default. Why stockings existed in a medieval fantasy world, I had no idea.
Good lord. Of all the things I thought I would live to do, pulling on stockings was not among them. Now that I thought about it, the other nuns had all been wearing them too.
For a moment I hesitated. I had already been branded a delinquent nun; I didn't strictly need to cling to their dress code. But if the direction I broke it in was the obscene one, I would rather pass.
Fine. Eyes shut. Just put them on. I'm not putting them on a man's body anyway.
Selenia must have worn them every day, so refusing would make for a stranger picture than complying. In the end I pressed the man in me down hard and started threading my legs into the stockings.
The cool, smooth sensation climbing from my feet, over my calves, and up my thighs was unfamiliar. I worked my hands in so nothing was pinched or bunched too tightly, smoothing the stockings until they lay even. Then, slipping on the heels beside the bed and standing, I drew the pantyhose all the way up to my waist. That had to be how you wore them.
The moment the gusset pressed firmly between my legs, I understood. I was lucky I at least had panties on. If I hadn't, I would have been treated to an even more embarrassing situation.
"I'm really dressed now."
"I see. ...Where did you put the veil?"
"I-I don't know. It wasn't here. Should I borrow Sister Victoria's?"
"No. That will do. The other brothers and sisters are accustomed to Sister Selenia going about without a veil, so no one will pay it any mind. Follow me."
So the delinquent-nun label had its uses. A bad reputation meant no one expected anything of you.
The hem whispering between my legs, the chill seeping in against the stockings, the business of keeping my balance in the heels — all of it was awkward. Even so, the act of walking seemed to have been properly installed in this body, and I was able to follow Hamil as if it were natural.
We arrived at a place packed with nuns in the same clothes as mine, female priests whose style differed but whose degree of exposure did not, and male priests bundled up from head to toe. A cathedral. Or should I call it a church? I didn't know the difference either. As someone had said earlier, I would just call it the nave.
Deep inside, an aisle ran straight to the dais, with long pews ranked along either side, men and women seated apart. As I followed Hamil between them, silence began to spread from the back rows, where people gradually noticed us.
The looks pouring over me were not pleasant. Every one of them was either scowling without bothering to hide the irritation, or — if you could call it a kinder gaze — staring at me with pity. Whatever Selenia had done with her life, she had been living under a great deal of hatred.
As the silence crept forward from the rear, the front rows caught the change and turned. Before we had even reached the dais, the nave had fallen still.
We crossed that quiet, came to the very front, and stood before the platform. Hamil spoke.
"Yes, Brother."
They bowed their heads to Hamil without a trace of complaint. Or rather, they were bowing, so I couldn't even see their faces. That was probably the fairer way to put it.
"I will search the brothers myself. The sisters will be searched by Sister Selenia."
"What? Sister Selenia? But...!"
The moment Hamil spoke my name, complaints burst from the pews where the nuns and the female priests sat gathered.