Tormenting the Bluffing Beanpole (1)
"Lies."
Phoebe shook her head at the Apostle of the Evil God's words.
There's no reason I should believe a word that man says. He's trying to bewitch me with his silver tongue and devour me whole. It's exactly the kind of filthy, despicable trick you'd expect from someone who serves an evil god.
Even as Phoebe glared at him, the Apostle showed not the slightest trace of alarm. He simply kept that same placid smile on his face.
"I wonder why you're pretending you know nothing."
There's no reason to keep entertaining this man's story any longer. I need to find the instructor patrolling this area and the people from the Church, and have them—
"I see. So you don't remember."
The Apostle of the Evil God suddenly stepped right up in front of Phoebe and reached out his hand.
It was faster than her abilities could track, and she had no choice but to surrender her head to him.
The moment the Apostle's fingers touched Phoebe's forehead, mana came flooding down through them.
"Now you should be able to recall it."
Unable to withstand the headache crashing over her like a wave, Phoebe collapsed to the ground.
The wave was made of memories.
Memories that had lain buried in the distant, deep sea called oblivion — only to come rushing back to her now, riding the crest of that wave.
It began with the smiling face of the orphanage director.
'The children who came in this time are of high quality. The amount of divinity their bodies can hold keeps increasing. I'm very pleased.'
She was wearing the same kindly smile Phoebe remembered, but her eyes were nothing like it.
The director looked over Phoebe and her friends as though appraising merchandise, speaking as she did so.
The various people talking beside her were no different. Not a single one of them looked at the children as anything to be raised or cared for.
Huh? That's strange. The director definitely told us, with a smile, that this was the place where we belonged, didn't she?
Despite Phoebe's confusion, the wave of memories continued on.
The next scene was a room in the basement.
Beyond the candlelight that was the only thing illuminating the lightless room, the director and a man with glasses were deep in conversation.
'Remember — this child has the greatest potential of her entire cohort. Handle her with care.'
'Rest assured. You know my skill well enough by now.'
'Still, be careful. This time, more than ever, our side has to produce something that will please those above us. Damn it all. Do you have any idea how furious I was when I had to watch that wretch Kipl laugh in our faces last time?'
'My own career hangs in the balance as well. I'll give it everything I have.'
By the time the two men finished talking, the bespectacled man had injected something into Phoebe.
Before long, a scream spilled out from between her lips.
It hurt too much. She was going to die like this. Please, please, someone save her. Phoebe screamed without end, but neither of the two men so much as stirred.
The director only gazed at her with an expressionless face and said this:
'Pray. Then the Lord will deliver you. Keep praying until Armadi takes away your pain.'
It was an absurd thing to say, but back then, Phoebe had no room in her mind to spare for it.
She simply prayed, and prayed, and prayed some more — until she fainted.
What is this? Countless other memories flashed past through her mind besides.
Someone being dragged away for failing to memorize a passage of scripture.
Ascetic meals taken in total silence, without a single word exchanged.
The frozen, frost-laced atmosphere of the orphanage. Friends who vanished, one with every passing day.
"Lies."
"You want to believe it's a lie?"
"This can't be real."
"Oh? Who would know better than you yourself?"
He was right. What the Apostle of the Evil God said was true. No one alive could answer Phoebe's questions better than Phoebe herself.
Because in this very moment, she was realizing that her memories of the place she had considered most precious all her life were strangely, impossibly hazy.
And in inverse proportion, the memories now churning through her head were painfully, unbearably vivid.
The wrongness.
A wrongness about so many facts she had never once thought to question was forcing Phoebe to admit the truth.
Right.
Why have I never once gone back to visit the orphanage I grew up in?
Why can't I remember the faces of the friends who were with me there?
Why can't I remember the names of any of the other clergy at the orphanage, besides the director?
Why.
Why.
Why?
Face-to-face with the endless deluge of memories, Phoebe finally broke — doubled over and vomited onto the floor.
Her white hair swayed along with her trembling shoulders, stirring a pang of pity in anyone who might have seen it, but the Apostle of the Evil God cared nothing for such things.
"O manufactured saintess. Are you ready to hear the story now?"
Phoebe could not answer.
Could not answer at all.
Her throat had closed up so tight that no sound would come out.
But the Apostle of the Evil God seemed to take her silence for consent, and let out a satisfied chuckle.
"Then let me tell you the truth."
The Apostle spoke. About the process by which Phoebe had been manufactured, and about the ways she had been used up until now.
The story, traced along the course of Phoebe's own life, was so precise and so detailed that even Phoebe herself — the person it was about — could not deny a word of it.
At first she had rejected her own memories. But as she watched them surface one by one, Phoebe soon found she had no choice but to accept that they were true.
The old memories surfacing in her mind.
The countless wrongnesses lurking between the memories she had believed to be the truth until this very day.
The account of her usefulness, laid out by the Apostle of the Evil God.
It all forced her to accept it.
"I believe that should be a sufficient answer to your questions."
"..."
"You ask why, despite being a saintess, you cannot hear the voice of God? It's obvious. Because Armadi never chose you. Because she has never even laid eyes on you. Your very existence is an insult to Armadi — why would she ever deign to look upon you?"
When Phoebe refused to lift her head, the Apostle seized her by the hair and yanked it up forcibly.
Phoebe's face, pale even on the best of days, had gone deathly white — enough to bring to mind a corpse laid out in a coffin.
"Don't you want revenge? Against the people who stole your childhood, who have treated you as nothing more than a convenient tool to this very day? If that is what you desire—"
"O Light."
A flash of radiance erupted with no warning whatsoever, and the Apostle of the Evil God staggered backward.
Freed from his grip, Phoebe scrambled away and looked frantically around her.
Something's wrong. A commotion like this broke out in the middle of Academy Street — there's no way no one would have intervened by now.
Only then did Phoebe come face to face with the darkness surrounding her.
A sky dyed pitch black. A silent street with not a single person in sight.
This was not Academy Street.
Where on earth is this? When did I end up in a place like this?
"Bold of you."
It was uncanny. The voice of the Apostle of the Evil God, who had been behind Phoebe mere moments ago, was now sounding from in front of her.
Phoebe stopped dead in her tracks, blocked by a massive male silhouette standing in her path.
"Your grudge against our god outweighs even your desire for revenge, then?"
Phoebe, who had been looking around in bewilderment, turned her head at the Apostle's voice.
"No. It's not that."
"Hm?"
"I have no intention of taking revenge."
It was true that Phoebe had taken a tremendous shock, with everything she had believed to be true being called into question.
Even now, truth and falsehood were tangled hopelessly in her mind, tormenting her.
But that was not reason enough to choose revenge.
"Because Armadi would not want it."
Wrong things must be set right.
But personal feelings have no place in that.
Only what is done rightly for the sake of rightness can truly be right.
Rightness accomplished through crooked means can never be right at all.
That was what Phoebe had been taught, and that was what she believed.
"...Do you truly mean that?"
"Yes."
Looking into Phoebe's resolute eyes and confirming that she meant every word, the Apostle of the Evil God let out a hollow laugh.
"A manufactured saintess who has never heard Armadi's voice — and never will?"
"Is that what this is about? Then allow me to thank you. For telling me the truth."
What Phoebe had always agonized over was whether she was truly worthy of being a saintess.
Could someone like her — who envied others, who hated, who found herself doubting God — really deserve the title of saintess?
To that question, the Apostle of the Evil God had given her an answer.
Phoebe was not a saintess.
Given the title by human hands, she was, in the eyes of God, nothing more than one believer among countless others.
Coming from anyone else, it would have been a devastating revelation. But for Phoebe alone, it was different.
After a long, exhausting storm of doubt, having finally admitted her own wretchedness to herself, the news that she was not God's saintess was no deprivation of a title.
It was an absolution.
Of course Phoebe fell short of being a saintess — she was only human. It was only natural that she would be wanting in so many ways.
Which meant, in other words—
"The reason Armadi doesn't look at me is simply because I'm lacking, isn't it?"
And if so, the answer was a simple one.
From this moment on, all she had to do was walk forward, one step at a time, toward becoming someone worthy of Armadi.
Just as Lucy, Armadi's apostle, had done — she only had to become someone Armadi couldn't help but love.
Hearing that answer, the Apostle of the Evil God stared blankly at Phoebe's face for a long moment before letting out another hollow laugh.
"You're properly insane, aren't you. Years of brainwashing under the name of saintess — and you've come to believe yourself a true one?"
"Perhaps I have."
"That is the finest answer a believer could give."
As the Apostle took a single step toward Phoebe, the considerable distance between them shrank in an instant.
Standing before her, he looked down at her and floated several orbs into the air around himself.
"An answer that couldn't be further from what I want."
Phoebe caught the word lurking behind his remark.
Change your answer, unless you'd like to suffer for it.
A thoroughly predictable, thoroughly boring threat.
Did you really expect me to give you the answer you wanted?
Looking at the smug gleam in the Apostle's eyes, Phoebe felt a flash of irritation.
Then, in the next instant, she wondered why she was feeling this way — before remembering that she was not a saintess after all, and shaking her head.
She wasn't a saintess, so what was wrong with acting unlike one?
How can I make this man angry?
What would it take to shake the composure of someone so confident in his own superiority?
How do I land a hit on him?
Oh — come to think of it, I have the perfect textbook for this.
The very method the Apostle of Armadi taught me.
"Could that be because you're a pathetic excuse for an apostle of an evil god?"
As Phoebe's lips moved, imagining what answer Lucy, Apostle of Armadi, would have given, the smug expression on the Apostle of the Evil God's face froze solid.
"...You damned bitch."
"Pfffha. That's the best answer I've ever heard. Pathetic little saintess!"
The moment the Apostle ground his teeth, another voice came drifting down from above.
A voice so vivid it felt like it was being driven straight into her ears.
Turning her head at the sound of armor touching down, Phoebe was met with the most reassuringly insufferable grin she had ever seen — and answered it with one of her own.
"Hello♡ Bluffing Beanpole♡ Still think you're so cool, huh?♡ When are you planning to grow out of your edgy teenager phase?♡ Pathetic♡ Useless♡"