Pious Hyde and the Crazy Women #2
“That Rust appeared again? Hyde, that blasphemous wretch possessed your body…!? Are you hurt? That was truly dangerous!”
Psyche.
She was horrified when she heard what had happened in Fierenzo.
Apparently the idea of Rust showing up, ruining the wedding, and setting the grand cathedral ablaze was utterly dreadful to her.
I thought it was dreadful too.
See? Psyche and I really are of one heart.
“Psyche, were you all right?”
How had Psyche been spending her time?
I lit up with suspicion, wondering whether some worthless freeloader of a man might have approached her in the past month.
Fortunately she said she had spent the entire time here at the Grande Nunnery. The Grande Nunnery was a place forbidden to men; males were not even allowed to set foot inside except under special circumstances like mine.
“He’s a man!”
“Chattering away so loudly with a man—”
Indeed, my very presence was drawing the nuns’ attention.
Psyche noticed as well. In a small voice she said, “We’ll have to be careful about speaking openly,” and gave me a shy little smile.
Even though Psyche and I were husband and wife.
What was so wrong about a married couple wanting to talk after so long apart?
Had we been having sex out in the open? Kissing?
Couldn’t we just hold a conversation?
I was starting to dislike this place.
Swish—.
Psyche now led Milione to a cramped little cell that looked like a solitary confinement room.
“Miss Milione, this is the room you’ll be living in for the next year. There’s a bed, a window… and even a rat.”
—Woof woof!
Did that rat just bark?
Moments like this reminded me that this world really was different from the one I used to live in.
Anyway.
Like dumping a useless file into the recycle bin, I neatly deposited Milione into the cell.
“Milli, get in already.”
“Ah, please. You’re telling me to spend a whole year in a place like this? Hyde, have a little pity on me. Abandoned by my father, cut off completely… I really couldn’t last a single day here! Hmm? I’ll be good!”
Swish—.
Milione tugged at my arm.
Her eyes brimmed with tears, sparkling so beautifully that anyone might have been moved—yet I knew full well this was the devil’s temptation.
“Trying to sweet-talk me? Behave yourself.”
“Ah, come on!”
If you stay here, there’s no chance of Las popping up back on the mainland. If you’d just stay in this room for the rest of your life, that would be perfect—
While I was thinking that, Psyche spoke.
“Hyde, you and Lady Milione seem to have grown quite close while I wasn’t looking.”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Is that so? From where I’m standing…”
Psyche’s lips parted as if she were debating whether to say more. Just then someone came racing down the corridor from far away with rapid footsteps.
“Ah! You must be the new friend! I heard a new nun was coming from the mainland!”
She was a woman who radiated the scent of peaches.
Clearly a nun staying here, yet she wore no headscarf; her pink hair fluttered freely in every direction, giving her an utterly unrestrained air.
About the same height as Psyche, maybe?
Her face was beautiful, though her chest was a bit smaller than Psyche’s or Milli’s.
Still, her hips and legs were quite lovely.
Now that I looked, she wasn’t wearing shoes or socks either—just padding around barefoot, slap-slap against the floor.
“Nice to meet you! I’m Lucy! More importantly, I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before?”
Whoosh—.
The pink-haired woman, still dripping wet, introduced herself as Lucy and threw her arms around Milione Archibold’s neck in a fierce hug.
“Gweh—”
Milione looked more flustered than I had ever seen her. Unable to endure the embrace any longer, she shoved Lucy away hard.
“…Get off me, you crazy bitch!”
Crazy bitch, she said.
How could she spit out such vulgar curses?
If I’d been the one on the receiving end, my heart would have been truly wounded.
Fortunately the woman who called herself Lucy didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Milione! You’re Milione! I’m so happy you came back to the nunnery! Hehehe—. Shall I do a happy dance? Oh yeah!”
Swish-swish, swish-swish—
Hands on her hips, she began swaying her pelvis left and right, dancing.
A woman with tension so intense that even Milione Archibold looked disgusted.
While I watched the scene through narrowed eyes, Psyche clapped her hands together.
“Hyde, this is my new friend Miss Lucy. And Lucy, this is the husband I told you about—Hyde.”
“Oh! Hyde! Psyche told me! She said Psyche’s husband is incredibly amazing and devout! Now that I’ve met you in person—I have no idea! But nice to meet you!”
Swish-swish—.
Lucy grabbed my hand and pumped it vigorously up and down.
Psyche let out a startled cry toward her.
“Lucy! You mustn’t grab another man’s hand so freely!”
“Ah! Right! That’s right!”
How should I put it?
She was a type of woman I had never seen before in my life.
Of course Psyche and Milione had also been types I’d never seen before, so that made three of them.
—Sister Lucy! Where did you go in the middle of washing your hair! Come back this instant!
Someone shouted noisily from beyond the corridor.
Pink-haired Lucy trembled all over. “Eek! I have to go! I’m gonna get scolded!” Then she vanished back the way she had come.
Watching her go, Milione Archibold let out a long sigh.
“You saw that just now? She’s a complete lunatic!”
Well, even so, she still seemed less of a lunatic than you.
Naturally I kept that thought to myself.
“She seemed quite cheerful. Psyche, is that the possessed person you mentioned earlier? She didn’t look like it at all.”
“Lucy is a kind woman. But sometimes something inside her bursts out. Hyde, have you ever heard the term dual personality?”
Dual personality?
The concept of dual personality only began to be studied in the nineteenth century.
In this medieval world that still hadn’t even developed gunpowder weapons, the term felt far too progressive.
“It’s a word used when one person seems to possess two different personalities. My teacher taught it to me…. Isn’t it truly mysterious and strange?”
One person with two personalities.
One body, yet speaking with two voices, doing things they normally never would—something like that?
I’d heard of it, but seeing it in person would probably be astonishing.
Really weird.
“I’ve heard of dual personality before, but I’ve never witnessed it myself. Whether Miss Lucy is possessed by a spirit or suffering from a disorder of identity, we shall have to examine her carefully.”
“A disorder of identity—Hyde, you really do say the most wonderful things. The fact that you’re my husband fills me with such emotion!”
I also think I say wonderful things.
Milione, listening in, merely grumbled, “I can’t stand watching this.”
Abbess Midnar.
I had heard that twenty years ago she was called the Sword Virgin and had distinguished herself in war.
She had overturned countless disadvantages in battles against the royal house, or so the stories went.
If a true saintess truly existed, rumor claimed Midnar Embushia came closest to that name.
Even I, during my nightmare days as Rust of the Great Sin Seat of the Blood Crusade, had heard of her often enough.
Rumors of a “saintess” living on some island who prophesied doom.
When the Blood Crusade seized the capital Royal Road, she might have become a variable of some kind—
Yet the saintess who lived on the island never set foot outside it.
And only a fool believed every rumor at face value.
If the word saintess could be applied to any person, who else but Psyche would deserve it?
“So you’re Hyde, the husband of my disciple Psyche?”
Sister Midnar, whom I met in the abbess’s office, was extremely tall.
Even I had to look up slightly.
My own 183 centimeters was by no means short in this world, yet the Sword Virgin Midnar stood a full handspan taller than me.
Because of that, the abbess’s office itself felt cramped.
Her eyes were ash-gray.
Her hair was wrapped in a towel and could not be seen.
The face visible beneath the habit looked to be in her mid-fifties.
Yet she also appeared strangely young, and at the same time aged—an oddly fascinating countenance.
“Psyche bragged about you so much I wondered what sort of man you were. Turns out you’re just a fine-looking empty husk with nothing inside.”
What the fuck?
Anger flared instantly.
Then Psyche spoke.
“Master! Please don’t say such things! Hyde is such a devout and kind person!”
At Psyche’s words the anger in my heart melted away like snow.
Yes—this was a wife’s love.
“No. From where I’m standing, this one’s a rotten human being.”
This fucking—
Then Milione cut in.
“Midnar, was it? I heard you’ve only been here about three years, yet you seem to have a good eye. I am Milione Archibold.”
“I know. The Archibold family’s delinquent daughter. I’ll speak with you separately later, so set that aside—. Priest Hyde, what business do you have at this nunnery?”
“Ah, nothing else—I have come bearing a papal decree from His Holiness. I was instructed to make contact with you here at the nunnery and discuss matters. I suspect it concerns the ‘possessed one.’”
“Then you’ve wasted your trip. There is no such thing as a possessed person in this convent. We have nothing more to discuss, so get the hell out.”
What?
What kind of nonsense was this?
I held out the scroll I had received from the Pope.
“But I clearly received a scroll from His Holiness instructing me to make contact with you.”
“The Pope, you say. What a joke. Since when did that snot-nosed Gregory become such a big shot? Go tell him clearly! The only ones who can give me orders are the Almighty Elohim and the king He has anointed—Unizer!”
“You mean to defy the king’s command?”
“The king, is it—. Young priest Hyde, I have one question for you. Why should I obey the Pope’s orders when they are not even the Lord’s?”
Because you’ll suffer disadvantages if you don’t?
While I was thinking that, Abbess Midnar clicked her tongue.
“See? You can’t even answer properly. The reason one must obey a king’s command is because that authority is given by Elohim. But is Pope Gregory a king appointed by God? No. He is merely a king set up by men.”
It was a rather radical speech.
I was beginning to understand why a saintess who had once stood at the vanguard of the Church during the war was now stuck as abbess of this shabby “stone island” nunnery.
Just then someone urgently knocked on the abbess’s door.
“Abbess! You must come at once! Miss Lucy! Miss Lucy is at it again!”
Miss Lucy?
Whoosh—Abbess Midnar sprinted off on those long legs like the wind. Watching her, Milione murmured in admiration, “Ooh? Pretty good for an old lady—” while I ran after them as well.
We arrived at an outdoor well.
There, soaked with cold water and trembling violently, Lucy was shouting at the top of her lungs.
“Auuororrsuuburikkasuo—. Sex! Sex! Dick! Hnn, ahh, I-I don’t want to say these things, sex! Heehee! N-no—. I don’t want to say this! Sex!”
What on earth was this—
Faced with the thoroughly bewildering spectacle, my mouth simply hung open. Midnar flew into a rage.
“Why are you learning such words and speaking blasphemy! What are you all standing around for! Seize Lucy Emma’s arms and give her a cold-water baptism! Until she comes to her senses! And Psyche! Search Lucy’s room!”
When Psyche rummaged through Lucy’s room—
she brought back something astonishing.
“This is the Gwichukdo! I-I have no idea why such a blasphemous book was under Miss Lucy’s bed!”
“Huuuhhhh!!! Where in the world did she get this? Reading such a blasphemous book is why she spews such blasphemous words! Burn the book! And bring the whip! She must atone!!!!”
Swish—.
Abbess Midnar picked up a whip used for striking horses.
Did she intend to beat Lucy with it?
My vision swam for various reasons, and before I knew it I had stepped forward.
“What! You’re offering to take the whip in her place? Move!”
“This is not a symptom that will improve by being whipped. Clearly there is no possessed person in this nunnery. There is only a sick patient.”
I could grasp the symptoms poor Lucy was suffering from.
Probably tics, wasn’t it?