You'll Grant It, Won't You?
The long-awaited day of the examination.
The academy auditorium, pressed into service as the exam hall, lay wrapped in a hush of tension.
Why is this so easy?
The moment Hyeon took the paper in hand, he heard something break inside his head. No—break wasn't quite right. Boil over, perhaps.
He stared down at the sheet in silence.
Which of the following incorrectly describes a primary trait of the Steel Wolf?
A. Its iron-like fur grants a high resistance to physical weapons.
B. It is classified as a Grade 7 monster species and may grow as far as Grade 5.
C. It chiefly inhabits the plains and favors a plant-based diet.
D. The Venomgaze Eagle is the Steel Wolf's natural predator.
With a grim, resolute look, Hyeon marked C.
A plant-based diet? Would a thing that growled like that really be out there chewing on dandelions? Cecilia's "lessons" flickered through his mind like a panorama, and with them still burning behind his eyes he filled in the rest of the answers.
At that same hour Seol was fidgeting with her fingers, working through a calculation.
The Titanoptera, a Grade 6 Insect King species, possesses a total of 900 mana. To reproduce, it must release energy on a regular cycle three times a day, and each release consumes 50 mana. In an environment where only 5 mana can be recovered naturally per day, how many times can the Insect King release its energy?
Seol, who had been tormented more than any of them, wore—astonishingly—the same blank face as always. She moved like a machine, solving the paper one line at a time.
"Mana release… nine hundred… fifty… attack…."
It was as if Cecilia's voice were looping inside her skull. Even the handwriting on the answer sheet had come out neat and orderly. The Seol of before was gone. In her place sat something like a living machine, biologically incapable of failing to memorize whatever the Saintess said.
Every disciple sailed through what might have been the examination of their lives, and a few hours later it was over.
"Is it… over?"
"Cecilia's still right in front of my eyes…."
"That's a hallucination, Seol."
Their eyes were the eyes of warriors who had already surrendered everything.
Cheon Hwi looked at his disciples and spoke without a flicker of expression.
"You worked hard."
They had studied for a week as if it might kill them, then sat an exam that had wrung them dry, and words like those might well have seemed far too small. But Cheon Hwi was a man stingy with praise. Even when they sparred against him, he would grant a "Well done" for the result, and never once for the mere fact of having sparred. That this same man had praised them simply for studying and sitting the test was not enough to fully quiet their exhausted hearts—yet it was comfort of a kind.
"What if we fail?"
Comfort or not, the results still gnawed at them. When the fretting showed no sign of stopping, Cheon Hwi offered a single remedy.
"If you are truly so uneasy, then study with Cecilia once more."
"What?"
"Unease means your effort fell short, does it not? Study further with Cecilia, and that unease shall fade as well."
"I was foolish. Please, forgive me."
"Haha. Hyeon, what frightens you so? Does Cecilia strike you?"
Cecilia never used violence. If it came to blows, Cheon Hwi hit them far more often than she ever would. And yet the disciples feared her, because her words drove straight into the mind.
"She doesn't hit us, but she's terrifying in another way. You're not scared of Cecilia?"
"I'm scared just breathing around her."
At Seol's words Hyeon nodded, forcing down a hand that would not stop shaking, and muttered.
"A spar with Cheon Hwi ends if you pass out. The Saintess, though…."
"It never ends."
Seol said it low.
"I never knew 'Shall we try once more?' could be such a frightening thing to hear."
Miss a single character and she would have them do it again. How could that fail to be terrifying? Hyeon had, in fact, cried from hearing those words. But if that were all, it would not have been so bad.
"The face she makes when she says it is so kind that I cried and felt guilty on top of everything."
Yes. That.
We were clearly the victims, and yet we were the ones left feeling guilty.
"…That's the scariest part."
Even Seol, who could fairly be called the greatest victim of all, quietly agreed.
"I even slip into formal speech without meaning to. 'Ah, no, Saintess! I understand!' just comes out on its own."
Perhaps he was remembering it all over again. Hyeon spoke while his whole body trembled.
"Brainwashing. It's brainwashing, no question."
Seol said it as if there could be no doubt.
"Two thousand eight hundred twenty-third. Three thousand five hundred second."
Cheon Hwi produced the numbers out of nowhere.
"In that order, those are your ranks. Hyeon, Seol."
What is he talking about?
The results would not be posted for three days. Not even a few hours had passed since the exam, which meant the papers had not all been graded. Cheat as one might, there was no learning a rank on the spot. Cheon Hwi dispelled the doubt at once.
"To be precise, those are the marks at which I shall give you a prize—when you surpass them."
And with that came a bewitching word: reward.
"Just for reference, what kind of prize?"
"Yes. What would be fitting? How about this? Within the bounds of what I can grant, I shall grant you one wish."
A wish?
There were not many wishes an ordinary academy student could fulfill, and fewer still if that student had come up a beggar and an orphan. Even so, it was enough. Rest, or some secret art for growing stronger—whatever they asked, Cheon Hwi would give it without much trouble. At the word wish the disciples' eyes went wide and they all but drooled, looking for all the world like mad dogs that had caught the scent of prey.
"Hahaha. Those marks are hardly ones a person reaches with ease."
A single sentence from Cheon Hwi hauled them back to earth. To clear the target ranks they would have to climb at least twice as far as they stood now, and a single week of study was nowhere near enough to raise them so high. It was not merely difficult. It would hardly be an exaggeration to call it impossible. Cheon Hwi had only meant to change the subject—for the disciples who feared Cecilia, and for Cecilia, who was on the receiving end of that fear.
The disciples settled for hoping they might at least break into the top five thousand, and waited on nothing but the results.
Three days later, on the day the results were posted, a miracle occurred. From their own point of view—and all the more from Cheon Hwi's, since he was the one who had set the terms—it was a result that could be called nothing else.
"This… is supposed to be a possible result?"
It was not a possible result. Every one of them had not only broken into the top five thousand of the entire academy, but had met Cheon Hwi's conditions besides.
"Hyeon, two thousand seven hundred sixth. Seol, two thousand nine hundred seventy-third…?"
The people in question doubted their own eyes on the spot. Cheon Hwi and his disciples alike felt as though something had gone wrong in their heads. That the disciples had cleared their targets was astonishing enough, but the truly shocking thing was that they had surpassed conditions Cheon Hwi himself had thought absurd. Faced with the results posted in the auditorium, they looked at him without a word.
We've been had.
Even they wore bewildered faces—and behind those faces, smiles were already forming. All of that was well and good. But how, exactly, had they done it?
At the time he had taken it for granted that they would never clear the mark. However well Cecilia taught, a week was nowhere near enough to study the entire scope of the exam. That was why he had set the conditions in the first place. Even the ones who had to meet them had thought them impossible.
Still, I am proud.
Having to grant wishes because they had succeeded was a pity, and yet his disciples' growth pleased him far more.
I wonder what wishes they will ask. I hope they are not too difficult.
Just as Cheon Hwi was turning that question over, Cecilia came up quietly and smiled.
"All of you worked so very hard. A miracle, you know, always comes at the end of effort."
They wanted to say it had been a crystallization of terror, not effort. Not one of them could make their mouth open.
"Cecilia."
While the disciples held their tongues, Cheon Hwi called her name.
"Yes."
"Truly. Thank you."
The words were like sunlight breaking through cloud. A single line, tossed out as if it meant nothing, and yet it carried a great many feelings: care for his disciples, gratitude for the help given them, an affirmation of Cecilia herself as she was.
Before she could answer him, other voices came rushing in.
"I'm grateful too, Cecilia!"
"Thank you."
These people see me.
Not the office of Saintess. The name Cecilia. Cheon Hwi alone would have been comfort enough, and still his companions had comforted her as well.
"It's only because all of you followed along so well."
"Truly…?"
"Of course."
"…Thank you. Again."
It was the moment Cecilia gained true friends inside the academy.
"So I've made friends. May I ask just one thing?"
"Hm? Ask anything!"
"What bet are you talking about?"
I haven't heard a word of this.
What Cheon Hwi had asked of her was only that she raise his disciples into the top five thousand. That was the whole of it. Listening now, though, there seemed to be some further wager besides. To that puzzlement Hyeon answered as if it were nothing at all.
"Ah. You didn't hear, Cecilia. Cheon Hwi set individual target ranks, and if we beat them, a wish—"
He never finished. The face of Cecilia, listening right in front of him, was darkening by the moment.
It's the Saintess's ordinary face. So why is it this frightening…?
Hyeon's private thought never reached her. Cecilia turned her words on Cheon Hwi instead.
"Hmm. A wish. Cheon Hwi. You'll grant a wish to me as well, won't you? I did help these people with their studies."
"No, you—"
"You'll grant it, won't you?"
"There was clearly no price—"
"You'll grant it, won't you?"
"…I will."
"Oh my. I'm quite all right either way, but if you grant it, I'll receive it with thanks."
Under that pressure Cheon Hwi had no choice but to hand over a wish of her own, and the instant Cecilia had it she was the Saintess again, bright as ever.
"…I'm a crazy bastard for thinking, even for a second, that she was normal. Sure enough, there's not a sane one among the pious."
It was a thoroughly irreverent thing to say of a Saintess. Somehow, not a single person could refute it.
That night Cecilia prayed alone in the dormitory, quietly.
"Thank you for this day. And… I never knew it would make me so happy, to have someone call me by my name. May I go on living by that name?"
Whether the prayer reached the ear of God, the candle that had been burning so calmly swayed as if it were dancing, and for Cecilia that was answer enough.
"Thank you. More than that… where ought I to spend the wish I received from Cheon Hwi…."
Cheon Hwi was the Singularity of the prophecy. A question about his true nature, and that alone, might be enough to infer the course the Singularity would walk. The trouble that snagged at her was something else.
"I want to use it for myself, just once."
A desire that belonged to Cecilia the human being, and not to the instrument called the Saintess, made her hesitate to speak the wish aloud.
"What would be best?"
She prayed to God once more. This time there was no flicker at all—only the candle, burning on, perfectly still.