The Heart-Fluttering Age Difference
It was half a year ago that I fell for her.
The time it took to think about love, to wrestle with it, to change my faith—and the time it took to decide I would be brave so I would not miss my chance.
The story of how twenty-three years of beliefs I had built were overturned by a single elf and one of her smiles.
Even so, half a year could not be called a short time. Of course, compared to a hundred years it was certainly brief, and if I dared to guess at the years she had lived, my change might look like childish folly to her—but when I thought of the lives I had saved and the villages I had restored in those six months, I could say it had not been all that short.
And now, above all, with nearly a year having passed since I confessed my love to her… I believed even more changes had taken place between us.
I could walk at her side, where once I could only watch from afar. I could see what she did, how she thought about her patients and the illnesses they suffered, what she did when the work was done—all from a distance closer than anyone else’s. It was a great joy to me, and all the more so when I considered that this time was granted to no one but me.
"Evan, would you come here for a moment?"
Being called by name by the one I loved, freed from the title of Brother, was a truly precious experience.
What was held in that beautiful face as she looked straight at me, waiting for me to come to her side? Did she understand how precious it was that this sight—her brushing aside golden threads of hair with her hand, offering me a fresh smile—was permitted to no one but me?
"There's a part here I don't quite understand. The patient continues to show rashes and high fever, yet it seems no proper prescription has been made."
Thea always spent a great deal of time reviewing and analyzing even after work was done.
It's fine to make a mistake, but you must never repeat it.
She had never broken her own maxim. And because I knew how grueling and difficult it was to keep to one's convictions, even though one corner of my heart was full of the desire to throw the work aside and share tea and snacks and conversation with her, I propped myself up with my hands and began reading through her notebook instead.
"…Would you take a look at the patient's special notes section?"
"It says 'Healmore.' But I'm not sure what that means. Is that… explaining the measure of offering only a brief prayer for the fever and rash?"
Explaining the diversity of humans to her every time was truly hard. Even though we served the same, existing God, the human fickleness, selfishness, and foolishness of splitting a single word into dozens of interpretations… There were those judged heretics, and those who stood on the border of heresy. But I held my tongue about them. Even I sometimes doubted whether I was properly interpreting His words—would they be any different?
"The Healmore Order is an extreme faction that refuses any medical treatment whatsoever. They believe only faith can save them, and if they die, that too is His will."
"…They might lose their lives, you know? Considering the symptoms of this disease, and as written here, they might even have been poisoned by Corpse Poison from the battlefield. If the wound isn't disinfected and medicine isn't given—"
A rational, logical judgment. Her diagnosis was accurate. That warrior, claiming he would walk the path of austerity, had gone to the battlefield again and again, facing unholy enemies without even properly bandaging his wounds. Of course that was the result of charging at corpses controlled by evil will and abominations of rotting flesh without proper protective gear. Even my past self, steeped in fanaticism, had not looked kindly on that faction.
But because I knew how precious faith was—even if I believed something, I knew well from long years as a priest that they might not—I respected it. Even if the result was death.
"…People have freedom. The freedom to follow what they believe. You know, and I know, that He watches over us from above, that He filled you with blessings and sent you down here, that He answers directly when we ask questions, that He proves it through the miracles and power we perform—yet some choose to oppose Him, walk the path of darkness, and lead themselves to ruin—just as He seems to respect that choice. I think we too must accept such people."
But she did not seem to accept my words easily.
"…Accepting is one thing, but must we just leave this foolishness alone? Even if it means dying and leaving their own life, their own family behind, must we simply stand by and watch them die in agony?"
Frowning, her expression growing more serious as she scanned the notes, her face was full of doubt. Whether she really had to leave such a choice alone, or whether she should step in herself to help this person—she would be thinking that.
"At the very least, He is respecting what that man believes. Because he joined that order, because he mercilessly slaughtered the enemy, because in that process he didn't stop even when his body was hurt and torn—someone was able to live. God must have permitted his faith for that purpose."
All I could do for her was convey my thoughts.
"Is that… what you believe?"
Looking back at me slightly, gazing at me with pitiful eyes, a touch of sadness even lingered about her. In this place where lives were cut short and continued, she who was called the Golden Saintess would probably try to save this life too. Could I dare stop her? Did I have the right to stop her?
"…I'd like you to follow your own faith."
If it was what she chose, I had no right to stop her. No matter how strongly one rebuked or condemned someone, I did not think it could change that person. In the end, everything was learned by walking the path of life, and one matured further through what one experienced—that was what I believed.
"It would be rude to ask your age, but—"
"Of course."
She glared at me with a very firm voice. …Having started dating a short-lived race, she said she had been getting teased lately.
"It's quite upsetting that I keep having to give you hints like this, but today my colleagues teased me again."
"Eh, what did they—"
"That I'm a pervert who seduces little children and does lewd things."
Her face turned red as a beet. She fluttered her pointed ears a little, and in the end she could not even face me fully, turning her head away and closing the book.
"I'm not a child—"
"You know perfectly well that twenty-three years isn't that long a time for us. Even ten years pass in a flash… twenty-three years old. When I think about it now, really…"
Even as she covered her face with her slender hands, she parted them a little to turn her eyes toward me, and my heart startled violently once more. Even as my eyes trembled at the pain that drew a faint groan, even knowing that meeting her gaze again would hurt more, I once more took in her figure with my eyes.
"Huu…"
The way she could not tear her gaze from me, her pale skin flushed with heat, was even more lethal. Even though I was only meeting one of her eyes from behind her covered face, even though I was only facing the tiniest fragment of her emotions, my whole body trembled like this.
"I-I'll just… go get some tea… Peach tea…"
The moment she fled her seat as if running away, trying to escape to her kitchen—her hand caught mine.
"Ah,"
Her hand was truly soft. I had thought it must have been rough from wrapping so many people's wounds, from removing so many abominations on harsh battlefields. Looking at the scars on the back of her hand, I had thought it would be rough from all the hardship—but it was like the surface of a blanket thoroughly dried under a clear, blazing sun on a dry, cool day, or the sensation of stroking a puppy's soft cheek with the back of my hand, or when I had caressed a newborn's smiling face while bestowing a blessing, the feeling from that time when I had stroked the child's face a little more with a bit of selfishness—that feeling was flowing through my palm now.
Another of her hands layered over the one she held. How much warmth was she filled with, that just holding my hand could make my whole body so warm?
"…What a foolish expression."
She glanced at my face and let out a soft laugh. Feeling the corners of my mouth had risen so high it almost hurt, I tried somehow to cover them with my other hand. But her right hand, which had been holding one of mine well, stretched out and caught my left hand too.
"Ah, that won't do."
Even with the flickering candlelight behind her, her golden eyes shone as they met mine precisely. Every time those peach-colored lips, prettily closed, parted slightly, every time my eyes took in the surface of that skin stretching and closing, for some reason I felt a sense of sin. All the imaginings in my head were so ugly one after another that I thought I might need to repent. And she was looking at me the whole time.
"I called you today to see your cute self, so it's a little cheeky of you to only say stiff things."
What happened next was truly in an instant. Something that happened in such a flash that it was hard for my mind to catch up with what she had done. A red mark was left on the back of my hand. Because of her lips.
"Show me an even more foolish face."
…Probably enough to meet her expectations, my face was burning so painfully hot.