Chapter 4. Flight and Service (8)
Chapter 4. Flight and Service (8)
"Hypothetically. Really, just hypothetically."
Ria spoke up, a little cautiously.
"Even if your life were truly in danger, you still wouldn't consider using that Holy Power?"
"......."
I sank into thought.
To be honest, I couldn't be completely certain either. Because I'd probably never been in a situation where my life was in danger like that.
Hadn't I?
According to 'my memories,' in my Past Life I'd sent that kind of support to the author and then been possessed into that novel, but...... well.
Thinking about it now, I don't really know.
A novel only ever shows the surface. No matter how meticulously an author lays out the setting, they can't write settings for every single thing in the world, one by one, can they?
Even the extras whose names never once appear in the novel are, in reality, each the protagonist of their own story. People who like someone, get their heart broken, and live through joyful things and sad things.
People who each look different, each carrying a life whose weight isn't much different from the weight of the 'protagonist's' life.
How had I looked in the author's eyes in my Past Life? Hadn't I just looked like one of those nameless extras?
So why had someone like me become a character in this novel? For people who write novels—or rather, for people who read possession stories—I think there are plenty who wish for possession.
But I'd never particularly wished for it. In the first place, I hadn't even known possession was possible.
If it really was sent to screw me over, if it really was meant to put me in the position of a Saintess—
It wasn't as though I hadn't agonized over it during all the years I'd lived in this world. Would a God with that nasty a personality, a God who thought of human lives as toys, be willing to lend me the power I used toward dying people?
If you think about it, wouldn't it be more efficient to possess an extra who gets sliced apart by a monster than to put me in as a major character in a novel like this? If I went before the Saintess with my limbs torn off and my guts spilling out, I might seek God in that agony.
This position I'm in is inefficient in all sorts of ways.
Maybe there were more memories from my Past Life that I couldn't remember? Had God really just dropped me here without any conversation with me at all?
"......."
"Anna?"
"Ah, yes. Um...... what were we talking about?"
"I asked if you had any intention of using your power if things got dangerous."
I sorted out my thoughts one last time and spoke.
"That, honestly, I don't really know. Not until I'm actually in that moment."
"Is that so......."
"You're not going to laugh at me?"
"Laugh at you?"
"Until just recently, I was saying I'd absolutely never use my power on myself, and now my words have changed like this."
"Why would I laugh at that?"
Ria let out a baffled little snort of laughter, then drank a few sips of water.
"The person I'm supposed to protect says she'll protect herself. Obviously, that's something to be happy about."
"Well, if you're next to me at that point, I'm planning to just relax and leave it all to you."
I said that partly to tease her, but Ria just shrugged her shoulders and grinned.
"I may not look it, but I'm a Hero Candidate. It's called Hero, but in practice it's basically a professional position, isn't it? I do my assigned work properly, you know."
"Well, aren't you impressive."
Just as Ria would sometimes pat my head like I was a troublesome child, I lightly patted hers in return. Ria pulled her head back, looking a little awkward.
Oh, this works.
Of course, I had no intention of using it often. If I used it often, she'd eventually get used to it and become indifferent. Just like I was getting used to Ria and slowly becoming indifferent.
"An Atheist only has one life, you know. Though if I could get down on my knees and beg for a second chance, I do think it might be better to do that."
"Huh? What do you mean, an Atheist only has one life?"
"For an Atheist, there's no afterlife."
Maybe I'm not one to talk. I'm clearly a person living out that afterlife, aren't I?
But still, strangely enough, I know nothing about that God. There's no status window or anything, and I've never even heard a voice answering mine.
Isn't that strange? Does it want me to prove something?
Is it simply trying to make me prove God's existence?
Or does it have some deeper thought than that?
"Since I don't believe in God, there's no heaven or hell after death. This life ends with that. So there's no next chance."
"......."
"I do hope for an afterlife. Because I don't want to die. Because I don't want my thoughts to stop. You know what? For a few days after I became an Atheist, I couldn't even sleep properly. Afraid that when I woke up, I wouldn't actually be me anymore."
"When you wake up, you won't be you anymore?"
"If a person is just a collection of cells, then one consciousness switching off is no different from death, isn't it? Because the consciousness after continuity is broken once might just be newly created electrical signals, chemical signals....... Well, that was something I only felt when I was young, anyway."
"......."
"You're not laughing."
"It's not funny."
At my question, Ria answered with a serious face.
"It's not funny? Everyone who's heard this story laughed like it was ridiculous."
"......Fine. Since you're being honest, I'll be honest about one thing too. When I first met you and saw you saying God doesn't exist, I thought, there's another weird kid."
"Well, everyone thinks that."
"Just without much thought, you know. There are kids like that sometimes. Guys who go around shouting that God needs to be killed. I've even seen ones who said they'd get stronger and kill God themselves."
"......."
"Well, most of them are just going through a phase. A side effect of knowing that a being called God really exists, I guess."
Sure, that could be.
At an age when the ego is inflated, well.
After all, even in a world where such a being doesn't actually exist, people talk about killing God and whatnot, so in a world where a similar being really does exist—
I don't know its limits, but if it exists, it could have limits too. Maybe the fact that it can't give everyone as much power as it gives me is also a limit of that being.
"Guys like that are usually just kids drunk on their own power. Actually, as they grow up, they give up easily. Most of the ones who said they'd climb all the way up to God were like that. Without any serious thought, it's just talk to show off, right?"
"Everyone has that kind of phase. The way they express it just differs."
"Yeah. So what I'm saying is, I thought you were still thinking like that at your age. And then you just crossed over to the denial side."
"......To someone who doesn't know me, it could look that way."
I admitted it readily.
In this world, Atheism was already a claim comparable to flat-earth theory.
Until the Being Above came out directly and said of itself, 'I am not God,' people would keep believing that way.
"But you actually thought it through in your own way, didn’t you? You chose what you believed, and even though it scared you, you still held to it to the very end. Isn’t that right?"
"......."
"How could I laugh at that? Well, there might be kids who would. But I'm not one of them."
The character Lee Chae-eun was someone who had once genuinely resented God. And she probably still had some resentment in her heart now.
With that much mighty power, why couldn't it protect good people?
Why did people like that always die first?
Anyone who had lost someone precious would inevitably think that way.
The mood sank a little heavily.
To lighten the atmosphere a bit, I decided to tell a story from when I'd been going through my own 'phase.'
"But still, the reason I started helping people wasn't only because of that. When I was young, I actually thought only about myself even more because of it."
When I was very, very young—after I'd decided to abandon the faith from a time I couldn't even remember—I was like that.
I'd thought I'd just throw away all the doctrine that had bound me and live freely.
"And then?"
"Someone said to me, 'Then go fall into hell for all I care.'"
"......."
"That a person without faith is no different from a beast, and so no matter what they do, they're a being without a Soul. That even if they have one, since they don't love God, they'll fall into hell. That no matter how virtuously they think they live, it's all wrong."
I giggled.
Hugging my knees, I let out a small sigh.
Well, the person who said that was probably sincerely heartbroken. Because their one and only son had said he wouldn't follow the faith that had saved them.
But since there was no way to persuade me, they must have resorted to threats like that.
"So, in my childishness, I thought: Fine, then I'll really live virtuously!"
"......."
"I'd live truly virtuously, become someone who could stand proud before anyone, and then someday really meet that being called God—ah, of course I think it absolutely doesn't exist, but still, if it does exist, I'd meet such a being and say it. That the only wrong I've done is the sin of not believing in you."
Maybe I'd actually wanted to believe, sincerely.
I was always afraid of dying.
So afraid that I'd rather hell existed.
If there really was a God of the sort that punished people, that God would have chosen to simply annihilate my existence. Because that was the most terrifying thing to me.
......Though the Being Above didn't seem to be that kind of being.
At first, it had only been a childish idea. With that one goal in mind, I'd gone around signing up for volunteer work on my own, donated blood diligently, and generally kept at things like that.
Still, maybe that work suited me somewhat in the end, because I lived like that until I came here.
If even one person said thank you, that alone made me happy, and well, later on it wasn't just endless free volunteering—it became my job.
"......."
"Well, it's not much of a story. And it's a little awkward to talk about in front of others."
Hmm, for some reason Ria wasn't reacting at all, so the mood absolutely wouldn't lighten.
"Funny, right?"
When I looked toward Ria and asked that, Ria gazed at me quietly.
"Not at all."
That was all Ria said in reply.
In the end, the mood never lightened.