Dispelling the Rumors
"Hey, Thea."
In the end, the hospital director had no choice but to accept her resignation.
Her quiet fury. It was like that hushed instant just before a fireball detonates—when the fiercely burning magical formula vanishes for a heartbeat and the air itself seems to be sucked away with a spine-chilling pull. I felt that sensation wash over me. I could not know what went through his mind as he took it full in the face, but at least I read the terror on his trembling lips.
"..."
Still gripping my hand, she pushed through the crowd, wordlessly batting aside every hand that reached out to speak to her, even roughly shoving past her own kin in their white robes as she made for the hospital’s main doors. I could not stop her.
Even when the whispers rose behind us. Even when my name and hers spilled out from among them, the hand she held so fiercely showed no intention of letting go.
We must have walked a long while. People’s eyes were drawn first to her face, then fixed on mine as I was pulled along in her wake. The hospital interior flared into brief chaos; behind us came the hurried voices of senior priests, officers, and knights trying to calm the corridor and restore order. Still she did not stop. I wanted to see her expression, yet in that moment I had no choice but to follow. The iron grip of her fingers told me exactly how violently her emotions were boiling.
The place where that silence that had seemed eternal finally ended was her home. With a clatter the door opened and I was pushed inside; she locked it in haste, then seized me and drew me deeper into the room.
"...I’m angry."
She exhaled once, sat me firmly on the sofa, and leaned her whole weight against me.
"I keep wondering whether it would have been better if my face were a little more ordinary. Or if I simply weren’t an elf. …You heard them, didn’t you? On the way here. So many people whispering about you and me."
She poured the words out in a rush before I could even gather my thoughts, then buried her face against my chest, mumbling and lightly bumping her head into me. I stroked her hair while I began, piece by piece, to sort through everything that had just happened.
The moment she appeared, so many eyes had lit up and fixed on her—each pair carrying its own emotion. Some were falling for her the way I had; others did not look at her kindly at all.
"And there are people who speak as if they’ve never even seen you… People who invent the most horrific stories about me and go around spitting words that should never leave anyone’s mouth. I’ve heard so many of them. So many."
She pressed closer still and looked up at me with eyes faintly traced by blood vessels.
"Have you heard them? The malicious stories about you and me? Those stories… they aren’t true, are they? Right?"
Her body trembled. I gently took the hand she had raised to me with such effort and asked her in return. I had to. The reason she was resigning seemed to hold some other weight between us that I could not yet measure—the agreement between elves and humans the director had casually mentioned, the strange gazes that followed her, and above all the way she, after only a year together, had come to lean on me so completely. I needed to know since when the “teasing” she once spoke of with a smile had begun to torment her like this.
"Thea, when exactly did this start? When did the patients and the staff—when did people—begin cornering you like this? What are they saying about you that has driven you this far… Don’t tell me all of it is because of me?"
Strangely, my question seemed to startle her.
"Those rumors… you’ve never heard them?"
She drew back a little, her expression serious, and after a brief hesitation asked again.
"Then why did you say you would step down from the priesthood…?"
The conversation was not flowing. Something I did not know sat empty in the middle of it. She was suffering under a heavier burden than I had imagined, and that was why she had taken my decision so gravely.
"I don’t know much, Thea. For one thing, it’s been a while since our wards became different, and the colleagues around me spend every day making and mixing medicines, carefully recording every measure so no one can touch them carelessly—they barely have time to spread gossip. Of course, every time I went to see you I felt… jealous looks, but I never heard the words themselves. And lately… I’m not blaming you, but because I run to you every single day I haven’t even had the leisure to talk with them."
"You really didn’t know? And even without knowing, you still said you’d quit for my sake…"
I held her tightly as her voice broke. Of course the first reason I was leaving the priesthood was that I had already abandoned the duties a priest must carry, and I refused to stain the office any further—but that no longer mattered. Until now I had simply believed she was weary of the advances of strangers and of her own kin; that was why I had made time for her again and again, why I had deliberately linked arms with her in front of everyone. Why, then, was she suffering so deeply?
I warmed honeyed milk, fed it to her, and held her in my arms, stroking her without pause. Slowly she grew calmer, smiling as she nestled against me.
"It was a misunderstanding, wasn’t it. There was never any need to trust anyone but you. When I think of the way you never take your eyes off me for even a moment, there was never any reason at all."
"Can you… tell me now?"
A sweet fragrance rose softly from her lips as she drew closer still, caressing my cheek, studying every part of my face, breathing in the scent of my clothes. The faint tremor of her body rocked me gently, pleasantly.
"…Even though I check like this every day, I feel like a fool for ever doubting. There was no reason to fret. It was certain without even asking."
After a short silence she looked at me and began to speak.
"We short-lived races… we often hear that we are never sincere in love. That is the ‘advice’ my colleagues give me—snide remarks dressed as concern, I suppose. At first it was only a joking laugh about my strange tastes. Then it grew more serious. Do you know how much short-lived races cheat? How many brief affairs they start and discard in their brief lives? Once they take one woman they take another. Once they lean on one man they bad-mouth him to the next—that is what short-lived races are, they said. That you were drawn to me only because of my face, that I must never trust you—I heard it every day, without rest. Even when I told them I did not want to hear it, even when I begged them to leave me alone, they kept meddling until I was sick of my own kin. Some of them looked at me as if I were the strange one. When I avoided the trash who came with flowers and greasy words under the pretext of ‘enlightening’ or ‘comforting’ me, other humans began… well, you already know that part. I told you every day. But when I kept refusing them by speaking your name, those stories started to spread. That you were threatening me. That you held some weakness over me and were violating me…"
She sighed deeply, tightened her hold on my hand, and pressed her body against mine, bringing her face closer and closer.
"So I decided to leave my kin and this hateful place. Rather than endure every insult and every blatant stare, I would simply go. I once dreamed of living among my people as an exchange officer or a priest, but that dream now seems worthless. Better to stand beside the one person who truly worries for me than to remain among those who cannot even handle me alone and so tear you down instead."
This time I gently pushed her back, sat her properly on the sofa, and gripped both her arms. With strength in my hands and my eyes locked on hers, I spoke firmly.
"What are you saying, Thea? Leave your kin? Give up your dream? There must have been a clear reason you came all this way. Think of the days you stayed in a place where you cannot even freely eat the peaches you love, receiving fracture patients, treating them, stitching wounds, purifying slime and writhing flesh with your own hands. Has one year with me truly been enough to erase all that hardship?"
I felt my brows draw together. My thoughts were turning to chaos. When I remembered how we had first met, her decision felt extreme beyond measure. The reason she had endured work she hated and sights that sickened her was surely so that she might one day take those very posts she had just named. Yet now she was ready to cast them all aside for me alone. The weight of it pressed too heavily on me.
But the woman looking at me wore a smile so wide it was almost frightening. With an ecstatic face from which every trace of earlier sorrow had melted away, she slowly took hold of my arms and toppled me back onto the sofa.
"Pfft. There you go making that foolish face again. But do you know how thrilling it is when you say words that shake my heart while wearing that expression? It’s only been a year and you already remember everything I like and everything I hate. You come running every time I call. Even though you must be exhausted from work…"
The sweet scent of the drink she had finished settled softly on the bridge of my nose. She licked the white milk still clinging to her lips, then stopped with her face hovering just above mine.
"So—do you hate this me? Do you hate the me who is ready to give up her dream for you…?"
Her smile faded. She lifted her eyes a fraction and fixed me with a look that made my body give a small involuntary shiver. Yet the answer I had to give was clear. I needed only to bare the wrong emotion I had long felt inside myself—the heart of a man already too faithless to be called a priest, a man who could no longer guide anyone onto the proper path.
"…If I say I rather like it, does that make me a bad person?"
The answer must have pleased her greatly. She laughed aloud and hugged me tightly.
"Not at all. Not at all. Aww, you’re so cute I could die… Evan. Why are you so adorable? Hmm?"
She rocked me in her arms, cooing, then leaned to my ear and whispered.
"I still haven’t heard the real answer. As you yourself said, if giving up a dream is so serious… if it isn’t that you meant to quit the priesthood after hearing those rumors just to prove something to me—then why, Evan? I’m very curious."
The soft murmur tickled my ear. While she nuzzled her nose against me waiting, I could only murmur back.
"…Because the time you want with me is long, yet the duties given to me as a priest are far too great. It is also so that I will not further stain the duties of the other priests—but Thea, as a man who loves you, I want to fulfill that duty and offer glory to God… I suppose."
Her face stiffened for an instant, and I feared I had misspoken. What washed the fear away completely was the sensation that came next. My lips were crushed roughly; her fingers forced my teeth apart. Soft milk filled my mouth. Even though she had clearly not added much honey, the sweetness was so thick it made my head spin. Those things were steadily filling every empty space that had stood between us.