Why Do You Think I Know You?
"Why do you think I know you?"
The eyes Cecilia turned on Cheon Hwi were cold beyond anything that ought to belong to one called the Saintess.
And yet I'd heard the Saintess was everyone's idol — beloved by all.
If a gaze like that had won her the love of the world, then every last one of those people was a pervert. Ordinary taste, at the very least, they did not have. The reason Cheon Hwi found himself thinking such a thing lay in the morning before he met the Saintess.
Morning, near the Divine Faculty.
Perhaps because it was a place given over to the study of divine power, the sunlight felt warm even though it was not yet noon. At the center of that light stood Cecilia.
So my disciples weren't fretting over nothing.
He had meant to catch her when she was alone, but the people around her never thinned. It was not only students of the Divine Faculty. Magic students were there as well, and a race that resembled humans save for ears far too long, and students from every other faculty besides, all of them circling the Saintess. And she met that whole multitude with a smile, welcoming each of them in turn.
A strong person.
It was the first time Cheon Hwi had passed such a judgment. People who surpassed Cecilia in raw martial strength were a dime a dozen even in the Central Plains. No — measured by force alone, even his own disciples would be stronger than she was. But ask whether those people were stronger than Cecilia as human beings, and the answer could only be no.
The orthodox sects of the Central Plains, the so-called knights-errant — all of them turned ugly the moment they looked death in the face, and even the most righteous put their own gain first. The Saintess before him now smiled at people and treated them kindly even when it brought her nothing at all.
And what was so difficult about talking to people?
"Ridiculous."
There is a world of difference between ordinary folk chatting with a friend and a celebrated figure doing the same. In his previous life, once Cheon Hwi rose to the seat of Number One Under Heaven, people came flocking. Those who begged to be taken as disciples, or asked to be taught a single technique, were the ordinary sort. There were scoundrels as well — wealthy gentry and royalty — who meant to buy, with coin, the road Cheon Hwi had walked.
"Do you know what Master Mencius said?"
"What did he say?"
"Human beings are, by nature, possessed of a good heart. One who is not is surely a beast wearing a human mask."
"What?"
"So a beast that dares bark like that before the Heaven-Breaking Sword Saint may be put down without regret. Wouldn't you say?"
"Aaaagh! You can't! There's royalty in that crowd!"
"Heh. Hyeon. I have never once heard it said that royalty cannot be stabbed."
"That isn't what I meant! Hey — the rest of you, stop him! We're about to become enemies of the whole martial world — no, of the entire Central Plains!"
People were capable of discourtesy even toward the Number One Under Heaven. There was no reason they would spare the Saintess.
And had he killed them for it, you ask? ...There are times when not knowing is the kinder thing.
"In any case, help her, and she might grant me a favor."
And how, you ask, did he mean to help? There was nothing grand about it. Say a few words in her place, and give the ones who wouldn't listen a knock or two. They would all clear off soon enough.
While Cheon Hwi was preparing to put that mad notion into practice—
Cecilia quietly let out a breath and lifted her eyes to the sky.
This is hard.
Before she was a saintess who loved people and brimmed with mercy, she was a human being named Cecilia. At the least, dozens gathered for the chance to speak with her once; at the most, hundreds. Receiving every one of them was no easy thing.
Couldn't she simply refuse?
It isn't as easy as saying so.
The office of Saintess might stand at a height much like that of the other high nobles, but the burden was nothing alike. The Saintess is the proxy of God. Should such a person refuse conversation with anyone for no reason, rumors that God had forsaken them were commonplace. In worse cases, political whispers could take root as well — that the Saintess had discriminated against someone.
I'm grateful for the power to protect people. But sometimes, it's lonely.
They looked at her as the Saintess, a being pure and untainted. Not as Cecilia — a girl their own age who liked love stories and, now and then, wanted to play with friends.
"Saintess, do you have time today?"
"I don't think I can today. I have a prior engagement. I'm sorry."
She refused with practiced ease. She had wanted to make friends her own age at the academy and spend her days with them, but from the moment she enrolled she had not once gone without the mask. Say this much, and they would soon be on their way—
Clamp.
A roughness no one could have believed of the student who had been addressing her so politely a moment before.
"Then when, exactly, will you have time?"
"Ah...?"
"If I court you this fervently, day after day, shouldn't you accept me at least once?"
"Court me...?"
"Still pretending you haven't noticed? Then what must I do before you'll accept—"
He never finished. The strength drained from the hand clutching her sacerdotal vestments, and he collapsed.
"Huh?"
What just happened?
As Cecilia stared in bewilderment at the sudden turn, the one who answered her was the Singularity written of in the prophecy.
"Cecilia said she doesn't want to."
"Sir Cheon Hwi?"
"You seemed to be in a difficult spot, so I helped. Did I intrude?"
"I see..."
She had never expected help from the Singularity she was meant to be watching. No. Wait.
"Sir Cheon Hwi. What did you just call me?"
"Cecilia."
It was the first time. The first time, beyond the Church, that she had been called by her name. High nobles — even royalty — had treated her only as the existence known as the Saintess.
"Would you rather I called you Saintess?"
"Please do as you find comfortable."
"Then I shall call you Cecilia."
She had never thought to hear those words from a Singularity under watch — neither a commoner nor a high noble, but a subject of surveillance. To Cecilia, who was simply glad to be called by her name, Cheon Hwi added one thing more.
"Being bound to that mask of the Saintess didn't look like something that made you happy."
At words that pierced her present state in a single stroke, Cecilia closed her eyes, then slowly opened them. The warm smile that until a moment ago had offered nothing but thank you and I'm sorry was gone. In its place were eyes far too cold to belong to anyone called the Saintess.
Had she ever worn an expression like this since the day she was born? Perhaps, when she was very small. But never once after she received the office of Saintess. And now she had shown that face not to a Hero, nor to a Demon King, but to a Singularity who was still nothing more than a possibility.
I made a mistake.
A Singularity was nothing yet, but in time might become a Hero or a Demon King. The more uncertain the variable, the more firmly she ought to keep the mask of the Saintess in place — and for the first time, she had let a cold expression show.
"Do I seem that way to you?"
At once Cecilia put on the Saintess's smile and spoke.
"Did you think it didn't show?"
"...Because no one but you noticed, Sir Cheon Hwi."
"Then the rest of them must be wearing their eyes for decoration."
Cheon Hwi shrugged, indifferent. He already knew Cecilia wore the mask of the Saintess. If that was so, there was no reason left to hide it. The Saintess stepped toward him with the mask off and her face bare, and asked in a voice a little lower than before.
"Then how do you see me, Sir Cheon Hwi?"
"I don't know."
"What?"
Deep down, Cecilia had probably been expecting something. She had shown him a side of herself no one had ever seen, and she thought that even if the comfort did not fit her perfectly, he would at least tell her what he thought.
"Let me ask you the opposite. Why do you think I know you?"
"Well..."
When her words trailed off, Cheon Hwi went on.
"You took off the Saintess's mask, and I saw it. That isn't proof I know you."
"..."
"If showing your face for a moment meant someone knew all of you, then you'd be a tool. A person isn't some object you can understand from a few words of conversation."
Cecilia drew a small breath. She had wanted to be acknowledged as Cecilia, not as the Saintess — and yet she herself had been treating that self as the existence called the Saintess.
He got me.
"Even so, you were the only one who noticed."
"Noticing and knowing aren't the same."
With that, Cheon Hwi took one step closer.
"If I'm ever to say I know you, I'll have to see more of you from here on. You of me, and I of you. If that doesn't suit you, put the mask back on and live as you have."
Cheon Hwi did not smile. He said it plainly, as if it were nothing much at all. As if the words he had just spoken were the most obvious thing in the world.
Cecilia closed her mouth and quietly looked at that face. There was no comfort dressed up as the right answer, and no sympathy either. Instead, there was a person trying to understand Cecilia. And strangely, that understanding felt warmer than anything else.
"Setting that aside, I have a request. Will you hear it?"
"What kind of request?"
Had it been anyone else's, she would have refused. But Cheon Hwi's, she wanted to grant. He was the first person who had made her realize she was a human being named Cecilia, and not a tool called the Saintess — the first to look at her that way.
This is only to win the Singularity's goodwill. There is absolutely no other feeling involved.
Private feeling filled her to the brim, yet Cecilia, who had never quite managed to shed her air of innocence, did not know what that feeling was. She could only pile up the convenient excuse of a Singularity's goodwill.
"Nothing much. Could you teach me a little?"
"What?"
"Has the youngster gone deaf already? I asked you to teach me my studies."
And the favor he asks of the Saintess is only that?
Cheon Hwi had spoken as if the mask of the Saintess were a shabby thing, but if it had truly been shabby, it would have been seen through long ago. With an eye that keen, there was no chance he failed to grasp how great a grace he had done her. Even if he had asked for a blessing, or the cure of an incurable illness, she would have accepted. And with a grace of that magnitude, the favor he asked was studying?
"Um... I could grant you a different request, you know. A blessing, for instance."
"I don't need anything like that. Studying is all I need."
Hand him the chance, and he still can't take it.
There's no talking sense into him.
"Hahaha."
She ought to have told him it was a foolish choice, that he would regret it — and yet, somehow, only laughter came. She could be certain of it. This man wanted her as she was, and not the Saintess.
"Then I'll keep that promise."
In that moment, for the first time, what formed between them was not the relation of Singularity and Saintess, but a relation of one human being to another — Cheon Hwi and Cecilia. The promise would become a great turning point in all that followed between them, though that was something they would learn only in a distant future.
"Am I to teach only you, Sir Cheon Hwi?"
"No. My disciples as well."
"Might I hear their grades, at least?"
"5,647th and 7,004th."
...A blessing really might have been easier.
And fair was fair. How was anyone supposed to drag grades like those up in a short span of time?
"Um... any thought of changing the request?"
At Cecilia's suggestion, Cheon Hwi answered with a laugh.
"Hahaha. What are you saying? I've no mind to change it."
No matter how she looked at it, she had been swindled.