Possessiveness (3)
It was the third day since Seria had arrived.
Ariel found her presence unbearable.
Seria clung to Lowen at every opportunity, as if every minute and second were too precious to waste. And whenever Ariel tried to approach him, Seria would steer him away somewhere else, as though she were on guard against her.
It was truly childish. Like a greedy child clutching a toy, terrified someone else might snatch it away.
"I'm not taking him... I'm not taking him..."
Ariel muttered to herself as she gazed out the window. Outside, Lowen and Seria stood side by side, strolling around the cathedral grounds—the same path Ariel had walked with him every day after lunch.
"Haa..."
A heavy sigh escaped her. It wasn't only Seria's behavior that unsettled her. An unidentifiable, oppressive emotion sat heavy on her chest, crushing down.
She didn't know. No matter how hard she thought about it, she couldn't put a name to this feeling. She wished someone would tell her what it was—this emotion she was experiencing for the first time, a feeling whose name she had never been taught.
It had started after Seria arrived. Every time she saw Seria clinging to Lowen, the weight of that emotion grew heavier.
The delicious meals Lowen used to make for her. The rambling stories he used to tell. The gentle smile he used to show her.
And...
The everyday life they shared—sometimes quiet, sometimes joyful, sometimes embarrassingly intimate. The moment Seria inserted herself into all of it, the time Ariel had spent with Lowen began to feel like nothing more than a brief, sweet dream.
Right. It had all been a lie. Lowen had always carried false feelings. Maybe everything looked like a lie simply because it had all been a dream.
"That's a stupid thought..."
No. Or maybe everything she had believed was false had actually been real all along. Maybe she had misunderstood her power, and so she had been seeing the real as fake and the fake as real.
Ariel shook her head hard, as if to scatter the thoughts. Nonsense. The voices whispering and swirling through her mind were all absurd. Nothing had been a dream, and she hadn't misunderstood her power. These mutterings were nothing more than delusions—her refusal to accept an uncomfortable reality.
Still, amid all these unknowns, there was one thing Ariel could feel with absolute certainty.
Desire.
Just as going several days without masturbating left her body itching with lust, Lowen's neglect over the past few days left her body prickling with the same irritable restlessness she felt when she was aroused.
"Is this what they call Lowen deficiency?"
Ariel snorted at her own ridiculous idea and laughed under her breath.
Thinking back to the last time he had seen her, Seria had grown considerably.
In a different sense from Ariel, Seria had once been a deficient Saintess. Her confidence had been severely lacking. She hadn't trusted people. She had felt a crushing oppression simply from being a Saintess.
But now? A confident, self-assured presence. A smile that went beyond trusting others—one that inspired trust in them. She accepted being a Saintess as a matter of course and carried the responsibility that came with it. As a result, the world now recognized her as the Saintess closest to becoming a Grand Saintess.
And if there was one more area in which she had grown, it was her independence. The Seria who once relied on others for everything could now handle anything on her own. From cleaning, laundry, and cooking—tasks a Saintess would never be expected to touch—to leading the prayers that a Cardinal had always conducted: all of it marked significant growth.
And yet some things remained the same. In front of others she was a benevolent Saintess, but the moment they were alone, she tried to act spoiled.
In that respect, she's just like our Saintess.
Ariel was the same. Before others she became a mysterious Saintess so radiant a halo might as well have shone behind her—but in front of Lowen she was a lazybones, a spoiled brat, a masturbation addict, and a bitch in heat who kept slyly tempting him for lewd acts.
Remembering Ariel—whom he had once thought of as not merely airheaded but outright stupid—Lowen found a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth without meaning to.
"You look like you're thinking about something pleasant."
Seria, walking beside him, suddenly leaned in and peered up at his face.
"Yes. I was thinking about a cute little puppy."
A question mark practically floated above Seria's head.
"Did you like dogs?"
The Lowen she knew had never been particularly fond of dogs—or animals in general. He would walk right past a kitten sleeping on a wall without a second glance. Even when puppies barked and played among themselves, it was the same.
"Well..."
The answer that came back was noncommittal.
"By the way, Lowen—do you remember this?"
Seria pulled a white handkerchief from her pocket, stained with dark blotches.
"Of course. That's the handkerchief you used to wipe the blood that splattered on me during a monster subjugation, isn't it?"
"That's right. The monster's blood stained it like this."
She fluttered the handkerchief and asked again.
"There was something else, too. Do you remember?"
Lowen thought for a moment, then answered as if it had come back to him.
"I do. It's the handkerchief I offered you the first time we met—when you were crying, Lady Seria."
"Exactly!"
Seria was delighted that she wasn't the only one who treasured the stories tied to that handkerchief. But at the same time, a question rose in her mind.
He remembered even these small, almost trivial things. He thought of her enough to remember them. So why had he never written back?
The letter she had fretted over day and night, writing each character as prettily as she could. A letter filled to the brim with sincere feeling.
Seria quieted the darkness surging deep in her heart and asked Lowen with a gentle face.
"Lowen, did you read the letter I sent you?"
He hesitated before answering.
"I'm sorry. I haven't read it yet."
At that answer, the darkness in her heart swelled into a great wave. A sense of rejection. A sensation almost identical to what she had felt when she confessed, asking him to stay by her side as a lifelong companion, and was turned down. The feeling of the world cracking.
Seria put on a mask of manufactured emotion and smiled.
"Why?"
"I completely forgot."
"For an entire month?"
"Each day was so busy that it slipped my mind."
Was there really that much to do in a countryside place like this?
"Was something going on?"
"Managing a cathedral for the first time kept me quite occupied, and there was also helping with village affairs. Above all, simply protecting the Saintess leaves me without a moment to spare."
She understood immediately that the Saintess he meant was Ariel.
"Does Saintess Violet make things difficult for you, Lowen?"
Lowen elevated Ariel as a Saintess as much as he could and answered Seria.
"Protecting someone is always difficult. All the more so when the one you must protect is a special existence like a Saintess—there is no end to the things that require attention."
The mental strain outweighed the physical. Following the voice of God that commanded one to love all things in the world, the Saintess who tried to embrace even the world's evils had given him no small number of headaches. There were also times he had to stay on high alert because she vanished the moment he looked away, or because her airheaded clumsiness left him constantly on edge.
And more than anything, what tormented Lowen was—
Skin soft and fair as a baby's. A body plump and full enough to stir carnal desire. And the sensual figure that bloomed every time she slyly tempted him. All of it made things hard for him.
Even now, the image of those plump buttocks he had seen in the kitchen remained vivid. That coquettishly swaying rear. Anyone could see it was saying, Please grab my ass and devour me ♡—and Lowen had barely held himself back. Had his self-control been any weaker, he might have spread Ariel's cheeks right then and there and planted his seed deep inside her.
At this rate he felt he might transcend priesthood and become a sage.
In any case, Ariel was a frail, dimwitted, and lewd Saintess who kept Lowen busy and exhausted in more ways than one.
"Then how about protecting me the way you used to?"
"You mean you, Lady Seria?"
Seria put force into her voice, as if trying to draw Lowen—whose life had become so centered on Ariel—back toward her.
"Become my official escort knight. A knight who protects only me, who looks only at me. I believe you would at least live more comfortably than you do now. Living at the Grand Cathedral would offer a far better quality of life than staying in a place like this countryside."
She wasn't wrong—but Lowen hadn't come here seeking that kind of life.
"Becoming Lady Seria's escort knight is a proposal I would truly love to accept, but—"
"Then accept it!"
Seria seized his sleeve and cried out before he could say anything else.
Lowen paused for a moment, then continued.
"—but I am someone better suited to the shadows, like this place, than to the sunlight of a Grand Cathedral."
"No! Lowen is someone who should be standing in the light more than anyone!"
He shook his head.
"You may not know this, Lady Seria, but I am not as good a person as you believe me to be. By nature, I am not someone who should stand beside a Saintess."
He was trying to soothe her carefully.
"I heard from the Cardinal that you've been living in hiding."
The gentle smile on Lowen's face hardened for an instant.
"How much did you hear?"
"No matter how many times I asked, he sealed his lips about the details, so I don't know either."
She had asked persistently. She had kept pressing Demian about Lowen's whereabouts until she learned he had gone into hiding. That was why she had sent him a rosary imbued with her blessing, and why she had been shielding him from the world from behind the scenes as best she could—like a devoted wife supporting her husband.
"It must mean you committed a sin grave enough to force you into hiding. But I am a Saintess. I rebuke those who have sinned, yes—but I am also one who soothes them and cradles them so they may be reborn. Whatever sin you committed, as a Saintess I will give you the chance to repent, and I will help you become a new person. So come to me. Become my escort knight once more and make a fresh start."
It was a sweet proposal. Becoming a Saintess's holy knight and living at the Grand Cathedral—anyone would envy that.
But Lowen bowed his head and declined with courtesy.
"I will gratefully accept only the kindness of your concern for me."
His resolve, however, was already set in stone. He would live like moss clinging to a rock. He would live like an empty skeleton. He would live in the shadows of the world.
"Why?"
If Lowen became Seria's escort knight, the knight order searching for him would approach immediately. Even if Seria protected him, they would stop at nothing to drag him back. Losing a talent as capable as Lowen was a great loss to them—and the fact that he knew the Empire's dark side was a problem for them as well.
In the end, Lowen...
"Because I'm selfish."
He wanted to live free and easy, far from that terrible, wretched past.
"That's..."
Just as Seria was about to keep persuading him, the noisy chatter of children rang out.
"Bishop!"
Lowen waved to the village children who were greeting him.
"The children are here. Let's leave this conversation here and return to the cathedral."
He left Seria behind and went to the children. She stood still, watching his receding back.
"Selfish, he says... I'm a terribly selfish person myself..."
That same evening.
Having given his bedroom to Seria, Lowen was writing in his diary in the parlor.
"Hmm..."
It was Ariel's childcare diary, which he wrote diligently every day—yet for the past several days he hadn't managed more than three lines. And today's entry still had not a single line written.
"She stayed in her room all day today..."
She hadn't even eaten the food she liked, and the only time she showed her face was briefly at prayer time.
"Is she unwell?"
Just as that worry crossed his mind, someone knocked on the parlor door. Lowen closed the diary he had been writing in and answered.
"Yes?"
The moment the word left his mouth, the door slowly opened and Ariel, dressed in her nightclothes, crept hesitantly inside.
"Saintess, what brings you here at this late hour?"
Clutching a large pillow to her chest, Ariel looked up at him with upturned eyes.
"Bishop Lowen... could you spare a moment?"