Red Eyes
Lunch was soup with chunks of meat in it, just as Marjorie had promised.
He didn’t know what kind of meat it was, but it had a rich, savory flavor that made it taste good.
“So, are you getting used to the work yet?”
“I’m just doing it, that’s all... Getting used to it or not. I have to do it, so I do it.”
Marjorie shook her head as if she couldn’t believe that was his answer.
“You don’t look like you’re just doing it. Word is the chapel’s never been cleaner.”
“I used to do work like this before.”
“Work like this?”
“Yeah. Cleaning, wiping things down, laundry. You know.”
He didn’t bother mentioning the inn.
He knew that saying he had “worked” was only a pleasant way of putting it.
“Lucky you. Nothing’s changed for me in a whole year.”
“Lucky? At least you can read really well.”
“That’s useless. All you really need to do is tell the rooms apart. You can do that much too, right?”
“Well... yeah.”
“See? It’s way better to be good at cleaning.”
“Is it?”
He wasn’t sure, since he’d never really thought about it.
“It is. Lawrence, you can be kind of silly sometimes. You were grinning when I came to get you earlier, too.”
“I had a reason for that.”
“I’m sure you did. Must’ve been a lot of old grime to scrub off, huh?”
He couldn’t be bothered to deny it one by one.
Instead, Lawrence tore off a bite of bread.
Maybe because they were the same age, he and Marjorie had become close quickly.
They got along well, and she was the only one in this vast monastery he spoke to casually.
He was still only on greeting terms with the other two employees.
Joan and Edith.
They were both a little older than him, so it was hard to strike up conversation with them.
Still, if someone asked whether things were awkward between them, the answer would have been no.
“Want me to teach you a few tricks sometime?”
“Tricks?”
“Cleaning tricks. Like how to get windows really clean, and how to keep your back and wrists from hurting when you’re scrubbing floors.”
“Really? I’d love that!”
Marjorie’s eyes sparkled.
“Then teach me how to read.”
“You can already read and write.”
“Compared to you, it’s nothing. I can hear prayers in the chapel, but I still can’t understand a single word of what they’re actually saying.”
“Uh... what? Oh, that’s what you meant? Fine. If it’s words the clergy use a lot, I’m basically an expert. Don’t worry—I’ve got you.”
The girl’s smile was dazzling.
Marjorie often complained about how she had been born in an ordinary village and ended up living an ordinary life in an ordinary monastery, but Lawrence thought that perhaps her unspoiled face could only have been born in such an environment.
Yes, he thought. It was the sort of face a boy could never have.
* * *
After he learned how to read, he developed the habit of cleaning in front of the chapel.
It was far more interesting to clean while listening to the prayers than to scrub silently in the usual way.
Praise offered to the Goddess.
Hymns raised to the Goddess.
The wording might differ a little, but the essence never changed.
“You really are stubborn. How did you learn all this in just one month?”
“That’s because I had a good teacher.”
It made sense that he was learning quickly.
The prayers he heard every day were more motivating than anything else, and Lawrence, thirsty for knowledge, absorbed Marjorie’s lessons greedily.
He wrote letters on the ground with twigs and practiced that way.
Sometimes she drew pictures to make things easier to understand.
Sometimes they even used dirt packed into an old flowerpot for tests.
As with his studies, his magical skill had improved a great deal as well.
He could now draw Shadow out from within the shadows.
The problem was that the moment he summoned it, it snapped back to its original form.
What was the difference?
It was not the same as the Shadow he used in dreams.
The bridge he had made over the lake had lasted until he woke, at least.
However much he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out why.
Don’t get impatient.
Lately, he had become greedy.
Internally, it was for magic. Externally, it was because of life in the monastery.
He had begun to fall into the illusion that he was special.
That wasn’t true.
He needed to look at reality coldly and honestly.
He was still the same orphan Lawrence who had nothing.
Learning magic didn’t change that.
He was, after all, a fool who couldn’t even handle his one and only spell properly.
Once he reached that conclusion, he no longer let arrogance take root.
The prayers drifting out from the chapel had, without him quite realizing it, begun to shape the boy’s character.
Before long, spring came to the monastery for the first time since his arrival.
* * *
The daily life of Saint Charmant Monastery did not change much.
Lawrence was now a year older, making him fourteen.
He could now talk comfortably not only with Marjorie, but also with Joan and Edith.
It was fair to say that he had fully adapted to life in the monastery.
Perhaps thinking it was a good time, Abeline called for him.
“It seems you’ve adjusted well.”
“It’s thanks to your consideration, Sister.”
“I appreciate the thought, but offer your thanks to the Goddess.”
There was no need for Abeline to remind him.
Lawrence knew well how deeply the clergy believed.
A life of frugality and restraint.
Meals were basically the same as the employees’ by default.
Attendance at prayer was mandatory.
Once mass ended, they devoted themselves to studying doctrine.
Day after day, it repeated like a squirrel running on its wheel.
And yet not one of them complained.
Marjorie said she couldn’t understand the life of a cleric.
But Lawrence thought differently.
It was precisely because the clergy of the Order lived like this that they were held in such reverence and awe by the outside world.
“Starting today, the area you’re responsible for cleaning will be expanded.”
“Leave it to me. The second floor?”
Lawrence hardly ever went upstairs.
The spaces where the clergy lived were usually handled by Joan and Edith.
“The chapel.”
“You don’t mean the ceiling, do you?”
“The statue of the Goddess and the stained glass.”
Lawrence turned around before he even realized he was in the middle of a conversation.
The Goddess’s statue, gazing down kindly over the entire chapel.
The stained glass depicting Goddess Belche’s ascension was just as beautiful as ever.
“May I clean it?”
“Of course.”
Abeline gave a silent nod.
“Remember this well. Just as you are watching over us, we are watching over you too.”
There was an edge to the words.
It wasn’t merely praise.
The implication was closer to a warning that if he ever did something wrong, the punishment would be proportionate.
“The area you’ve been in charge of has earned an excellent reputation. I trust you won’t disappoint us this time either.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Good. I leave the Goddess in your care, Lawrence.”
The statue and the stained glass required different tools from ordinary cleaning.
Not a common rag, but a clean cloth.
And in the bottle was a transparent liquid so clear he could see straight through it.
He started with the stained glass.
He had thought the same thing for a long time: sunlight passed through it, pouring down in gorgeous colors.
But because the stained glass was dirty, that beauty had been fading.
Lawrence had been right.
He hadn’t even started on the statue yet, but after cleaning the stained glass, the chapel already felt much brighter.
Next was the statue.
First of all, the material was clearly different from ordinary stone.
He was sure Joan had said it was marble.
How long had it been since he began cleaning the statue?
Lawrence discovered something glittering behind it.
Between the statue and the stained glass lay a fragment.
A piece that shone with a pure white hue.
It had to be a shard that had broken off the statue.
His heart lurched.
Had he made a mistake?
Had he cleaned it wrong and caused a piece to fall off?
A wave of terror washed over him at the thought that he had dared make such a mistake with the Goddess’s statue.
But then Lawrence realized something was odd.
Looking more closely, the shard seemed to have fallen a very long time ago.
Comparing it to the missing part of the statue, he could tell for sure.
It was so old its shape barely matched at all.
He decided to pick up the fragment and tell Abeline about it tomorrow.
That night, his dream led the boy into a landscape he had never seen before.
* * *
At first, he thought it might not be the usual dream.
The scenery was simply too different for him to think otherwise.
An dark sky.
A sun he could not see.
And everywhere he looked, there was nothing but a vast, dreadful forest.
Not a single fantastical sight stretched beyond it.
He didn’t understand it at all.
To clear his thoughts, Lawrence sat down.
Then, while he sat quietly turning things over in his head, he cast Shadow.
The now fully mastered Shadow climbed the tree.
It didn’t matter that his sight couldn’t reach it.
He didn’t even feel as though the power he was wielding had weakened.
Rather, because he couldn’t see it, his senses had become sharper.
The Shadow that had gone around the tree came back to his fingertips.
Not bad for an improvised exercise.
He really liked the fact that he could control it even when it was beyond his line of sight.
Because to him, it felt as if his Shadow had feet of its own, and he could sense what the world above the tree looked like and how it moved.
Maybe because he had moved more than usual?
A pain began in the area around his chest, stabbing at him in small, repeated jabs.
But come to think of it, that was strange.
This was the world of dreams.
Even if he pushed his magic a little, it had never been exhausting before.
Tonight, though, it felt as if the strain were real—as if this were not a dream at all.
Was it only his imagination?
If not, then why?
As he thought carefully about what was different from his usual dreams, two things came to mind: the place itself, and the fact that everything around him was silent.
The fairy friends who had always been with him were nowhere to be seen.
Could it be that the reason his usual dreams had always been fine was because of the fairies?
Lawrence got to his feet and started walking.
He didn’t know where to go.
Still, if he stayed where he was, he would never get out of the forest.
It was worth trying.
He quickly realized how fragile that idea had been.
The scenery changed.
The already gloomy forest lost its light all at once.
The trees turned funereal, and dark night spread across branches stripped bare of leaves.
The ground that had held a blue tint transformed into wasteland.
It was the sort of barren land commonly seen around Hilton Village—a place that rejected not only human touch, but even the touch of animals. The worst kind of ground there was.
His chest kept fluttering uneasily.
Thorn thickets replaced the brush.
The path, narrowing by the second, felt almost like a warning.
And if it wasn’t his imagination, he could even feel someone watching him.
He must have taken a wrong turn.
But he couldn’t go back the way he’d come.
In the end, he had no choice but to keep going.
How much time had passed after that?
After four pauses to rest and practice Shadow along the way, Lawrence realized he was not wandering the forest alone.
He had met the forest’s inhabitants.
At least, they weren’t like his fairy friends.
The silhouette he had glimpsed looked like a mass of fur with two legs sticking out of it.
A spinning bundle of fur that scurried off the moment he looked at it closely—there was something almost ridiculous about it.
Not all the residents looked cute, either.
There was a bat with a single eye, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he had also seen a rabbit with two heads.
Meeting the forest’s grotesque inhabitants only deepened his unease.
Was it really safe just because this was a dream?
The pain and strain he felt when using Shadow were real.
What if getting hurt here caused problems in the waking world too?
He didn’t know.
And because he didn’t know, it was even scarier.
It was then, while Lawrence was struggling against the fear tightening around him from moment to moment, that the change came suddenly.
Visible breath.
His body began to shiver.
The surroundings had grown cold beyond words.
Someone was approaching.
Not just making their presence known, either—the trees and thorn bushes were parting left and right as though they had legs, clearing a path.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound of hoofbeats drew closer.
A headache like a current of electricity shot through him.
Lawrence grimaced at the sudden pain and looked up to meet it.
Four legs gliding forward, eight hooves striking the ground.
A swaying mane and tail—its coat shone with a luster far beyond any horse that pulled a merchant’s cart.
For a horse, it was almost offensively handsome.
His baffled sense of defeat didn’t last long.
There was an unidentified being seated sideways on its back, where there was no saddle at all.
He knew it the instant he saw it.
It wasn’t human.
It had taken a human shape, but it was not human.
The clothing was impossible to describe.
From head to toe, the being was wrapped in dark red cloth, and it radiated an ominous aura.
It felt as if insects had begun to crawl through his skull.
The pain was beyond comparison to anything he felt when pushing Shadow to its limit.
Just when he couldn’t stand it anymore and raised a hand to his temple, red eyes appeared through the cloth where its face should have been.
One. Two. Three...
At a glance, there were five.
Lawrence barely managed to swallow his scream.
The snake-like eyes looked at the boy, and then their color deepened with interest.
“The path ■■s ■■y, but ■■ were ■■ken by ■■■■■■, and yet you came.”
He couldn’t understand what it was saying.
The voice, soft and creeping, called up cold sweat.
“Do you ■■ the path?”
He couldn’t make a sound.
Just standing before it was enough to make his head pound.
And when he heard its voice as well, the world began to spin.
“■■, ■■■■. The path ■■■ been ■■■■■■ by the ■■■■■, but to stand here ■■r■■s ■■■■ ■■?”
The tone was foul with menace.
“A soul’s ■■■. Even now, you stand ■■ the threshold ■■ the Goddess’s realm. If you can offer ■■■■■■ ■■■■ and ■■■■ your path from here, then perhaps it would be all right.”
What meaning had been hidden in those words?
A breeze stirred.
The red-eyed voice became hard to hear.
The wind that had wrapped itself around the boy quickly sank away as if dropping into the earth.
Lawrence woke from the dream almost immediately after that.
The faint headache that lingered told him the dream had not been a lie.
“......”
He shouldn’t have felt cold at all, and yet...
The boy wrapped both arms around himself and shivered.
It had been an unusual dream.
This was not the first time he had faced fear in a dream.
But those had been dreams called nightmares.
This was something else entirely—the kind of terror he had met inside the dream world itself.
Something had changed.
Why had he dreamed this instead of the usual dream?
There was only one thing he could think of.
Lawrence reached for the thing he had placed beside his pillow.
The fragment that had broken off the Goddess’s statue.
The pure white stone gleaming in the moonlight looked somehow eerie.
For some reason, it even felt similar to the cloth wrapped around the red-eyed figure.
Though morning was still far away, he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes again.
He got out of bed and practiced Shadow.
Maybe because he had thrown himself at it as though fleeing from fear, that day Shadow succeeded in leaving the shadow and walking forward like a person.
* * *
“You look tired.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why? Did something happen?”
“Nothing much.”
At Marjorie’s worried question, Lawrence answered halfheartedly.
He knew he shouldn’t, but he simply didn’t feel like explaining.
His mind was a mess with thoughts of meeting Sister Abeline.
How was he supposed to show her the fragment from the Goddess’s statue?
If he just handed it over, she might thunder at him for it.
Most likely she would think he had broken the statue while cleaning.
And of course she would assume Lawrence was the one responsible for showing up with the proof in his hand.
Would telling the truth solve anything?
He wasn’t sure. Honestly, he was anxious.
He knew very well how the Sister and the clergy living at the monastery treated the Goddess’s statue.
It would have been stranger if he didn’t know.
If it were anything else, she might judge the matter coolly.
But because it involved the statue, his unease kept rising.
Even after thinking about it all morning, he found no answer.
In the end, mass in the chapel began, and Lawrence faced Abeline without any plan at all.
“Sister. Um... while I was cleaning the statue, I found this.”
As expected, Abeline’s expression changed instantly.
“Was it you?”
“No, it wasn’t. It’s just that... when I compared the broken piece to the missing part, it looked like it had fallen a long time ago.”
Only after checking the fragment and the damaged area several times did her expression finally soften.
“Thank you for telling me the truth. If you had lied, there would have been an appropriate punishment.”
He was glad he’d told the truth.
Frankly speaking, he hadn’t done anything, but he’d still been nervously sweating as though he were the culprit.
“I’m relieved. If I’d been thrown out like that, I wouldn’t even have been able to go down to the village.”
“You thought that was a possibility?”
“Yes. I mean... wasn’t it?”
Abeline shook her head.
“Mercy and love are the foundations of our faith. Mercy also contains forgiveness.”
At the very least, he wouldn’t be expelled from the monastery.
Relieved by her words that he would instead receive some other punishment, Lawrence felt his tension ease.
“Keep doing as you have been. If there’s anything inconvenient, don’t hide it—speak plainly. Especially when it concerns your work, be honest like you were today. Unless you want to go to the confessional, that is.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Sister.”
But after saying that, Abeline turned away.
“Aren’t you going to take this?”
“That is a sacred relic bestowed upon you by the Goddess. Continue to devote yourself, Lawrence.”
The fragment of the statue remained in Lawrence’s hand.
He had assumed she would take it back, so he hadn’t expected to be given something so precious.
No. Was it even right to call it precious?
The important thing was the statue itself, not a fragment broken from it.
Still, he couldn’t throw it away.
Abeline’s words lingered in his ears.
A sacred relic bestowed upon you by the Goddess.
It was obvious she believed there must be some meaning in the fact that Lawrence had discovered the shard of the statue.
His face darkened as he turned the fragment over in his hand.
The problem was the dream.
Would he end up facing those red eyes again?
He couldn’t deny that his skill with Shadow had improved after that night.
But he also couldn’t honestly call that a good thing.
It had been far too frightening an experience.
The dream world, which had once been nothing but a source of enjoyment, had been swallowed by terror.
And the more frightening truth was that people couldn’t simply choose not to sleep.
He could flee reality into dreams.
But in dreams, there was nowhere to run.
For a moment, Lawrence was tormented by anxiety and dread.
Then, as he lay down to sleep, his eyelids grew heavy.