Body Search
The pushback was probably inevitable. They all hated me. They all hated Selenia.
It put me in a foul mood, sure. I could still see how they'd gotten there. This was a body that had been suspected of trafficking drugs, after all. A back-alley upbringing wasn't the sort of origin that earned anyone a welcome—not in my previous world, and not in this one. Places like that were called back alleys for a reason.
The things people usually mean when they say crime. Not always murder. Violence, theft, drugs, and the rest of it, carried out where the police, the guards, and anyone else charged with enforcing the law weren't looking. I'd heard that once upon a time, people put a romantic gloss on hillside shantytowns—scrap-wood houses thrown up a little outside the city proper, where those without means gathered to live. Slapping romance over a place doesn't make the people who live there any gentler.
A back alley might have its own bonds, its own idea of justice. Outsiders still have a hard time swallowing either. I'd lived it myself, so if anyone wanted to argue, they were welcome to try a slum for a month. Not even a year. A month. So I understood the hostility in their eyes.
Understanding and tolerating, though, were two different things. I was the one in a bad mood right now. If they wanted to be understood, they could stand to show me a little consideration first.
"We're wasting time. Shall we all just strip and get started? The glaring is getting a little pathetic."
Reading a boss's mood. Law, morality, all of that. The version of me who had lived tangled up in those things would never have said it. But so what. I was already branded a delinquent. I was already being held responsible for things I hadn't done. If I was going to be wronged anyway, I might as well go in hard, so long as I didn't cross the line. If they were going to hate me regardless, I could always hand them a reason. Or so I'd heard.
"S-strip?! Sister Selenia, isn't that going too far?"
"And in what lifetime am I supposed to put my hands on every one of you and check whether you've hidden something? From the looks of it, you hate the thought of my hands on you just as much, so let's keep it simple and take the clothes off. If that doesn't suit you, the one who stabbed Sister Victoria and stole the gun can turn herself in. Who told you to go around stabbing people and taking their things?"
"I-it's unfair that all of us should be put in this position because of that one person!"
"Oh, so Sister Victoria getting a knife in her was fair? From this moment on, anyone who talks back is an accomplice of the one who stabbed her."
"What is that supposed to—!"
Honestly, I had no intention of actually stripping them. They'd picked a fight without sparing a thought for my position, and it rankled, so I'd decided to be difficult. That was all.
Then Hamil cut in out of nowhere.
"Hm. A most rational method of deduction. Brothers, why don't you do as Sister Selenia suggests."
"Ahem. Time to show off the muscle I've been cultivating!"
"I concur. We'll strip as well, so perhaps the sisters might undress in the name of fairness!"
Hamil, the male priests, and the monks all chimed in, and none of it had been part of the plan. If it went on like that, the nuns and priestesses would have no choice but to take their clothes off. Not removed from their posts. Not defrocked in the religious sense. Literally undressed.
The men didn't seem burdened by the prospect, maybe because they were confident in their own naked bodies. Or maybe they just liked the idea that stripping themselves came with a chance to see the women naked. What kind of religion was this, anyway? A religious order was supposed to be devout and sincere—something like Sister Victoria, at the very least. It was the moment my faith in this place's god, which had never existed to begin with, sank even lower.
"S-Sister Selenia, we won't say a word no matter how you touch us, so please, can't we just do it the way you said at the start?"
"We were wrong. We want the one who hurt Sister Victoria caught too. We'll cooperate, so please..."
And faced with genuine madness, the priestesses and nuns dropped to their knees and begged me.
I wasn't going to feel any better for actually stripping them bare, so I sidled over to Hamil.
"Brother Hamil. Let's leave it here. I'll handle the rest..."
"Yes. I'll leave the remainder to Sister Selenia."
Maybe he'd never meant to make anyone strip in the first place. He said it flatly, then set about running businesslike hands over the men's bodies, and I found myself thinking he might have spoken up only to help me. Thanks to that, searching the nuns and priestesses became simple enough. For the ones being searched, it had to be better than standing naked in front of everyone else.
"Nnh—!"
Whether she was ashamed of being touched, or whether the delinquent nun was still every bit as distasteful to her as before, the nun at the front of the line squeezed her eyes shut and covered her chest with both hands. Well, I was the one who had suggested they strip. Of course she'd react like that. It still wasn't my problem. I was only doing the job I'd been given.
The habit left a great deal of skin bare, and the bodice clung tight, which turned out to be convenient. A body search didn't offer many places to hide anything. No angular bulge in sight, and you could fairly assume nothing was concealed. Even so, someone might have stuffed in padding, buried a pistol under it, and passed the lump off as flesh, so whatever was covered still had to be felt. That much didn't change.
Still better than Hamil's job. He had to feel the men all over. They were wrapped up tighter than the women, so he had to check everything, right down between the legs. Taking hold of it to confirm whether or not it was a gun—compared with that, getting by with a little groping put me well ahead. The same was true for them, of course. Better a woman touching you than a man. Unless, I supposed, you happened to have feelings for Hamil.
"Ahn—aah!"
"I barely touched you. Kindly stop making strange noises."
All I'd done was press a little, checking whether the chest might be some kind of prosthetic with a pistol hidden underneath, and the first nun I'd started on twisted and let out a moan. The women waiting behind her stared at me as if I were an insect.
As if I were doing this because I enjoyed it. Maybe this religion had gathered only the pretty ones, or maybe believing in Nals did something for your looks. I couldn't say. Touching beautiful women wasn't a bad thing in itself. I just didn't have a hobby of feeling good while putting my hands on people who openly hated me. I wanted nothing to do with them either, for that matter.
The plush give that came up through my palms was addictive, I'll grant that. But that was all it was. Touching my own chest would probably be just as springy, just as firm— No. What am I thinking?
"Aside from a place like this, there isn't anywhere else worth hiding something. A pistol isn't exactly going to fit in there."
"S-such shameless talk...! Don't tell me it's true what they say, that in the back alleys you smuggle drugs by stuffing them in front and back!"
"No—fuck. I've never touched drugs, so how would I know that? And how do you know, Sister?"
"W-well, that's..."
"I'll count it as a rumor going around. If it stings, turn yourself in. Drug crimes get hammered hard wherever you go."
Once I'd gotten through the first one without incident, the rest went quickly. The priestesses wore a little more cloth over their bodies, but in the end that was the only real difference from a habit. Their robes carried more lace, and white, red, or yellow had been added in place of plain black. Same story as the habits: hide a pistol, and it would still show. All I had to do was knead at chests and backsides and confirm whether a gun was tucked away.
A woman's secret places did include two more besides the cleft of the chest, just as that nun had said. The pistol Sister Victoria had shown me wasn't small enough to fit in either of them.
"Next."
"Next, please."
Hamil and I both kept at the searches in that same clerical, businesslike way. The faithful still waiting seemed to recognize, at least, that we had no private interest in it. Bit by bit, fewer nuns and priestesses were giving me those strange looks. A few still let out oddly heated breaths, or moans. A body could be sensitive. Better for everyone if we pretended not to notice and moved on.
"Ahh... more..."
"Excuse me?"
"N-no. It's nothing."
We were about halfway through when I noticed one nun who couldn't keep still, eyes darting around the room. The others might not have seen it. For some reason it was perfectly clear to me, as if someone had shoved her into close-up. Maybe it was because Selenia had grown up in the back alleys, and signs like that were easy for her to catch. I still couldn't make full use of this body's abilities, but instincts of that sort seemed to have stayed with it. A good tool was a tool worth using.
With that in mind, I kept an eye on her and worked steadily through the other nuns and priestesses until I stood in front of her.
The moment I reached for her chest, the suspect slid a hand in through the skirt—the side slit left the insides of her thighs barely covered—and yanked out a pistol.
"D-don't come any closer!"
Was this what you called turning herself in? Or an arrest?