Once It Passes, It Becomes a Memory
"Wow. This is actually spot on."
It was both hilarious and astonishing how it didn't deviate even slightly from Karena's prediction. The hilarious part was that we had all somewhat agreed with her prediction, and the astonishing part was that Laverre hadn't missed the mark by a single inch.
Laverre's vocabulary was never particularly varied to begin with, so she always greeted people with more or less the same words. Just like how conversations between Jian and me always started with either "Henry" or "Jian." But I never expected even such a trivial little phrase to match exactly, without a single character out of place.
Who would have thought Karena's prediction and Laverre's limited vocabulary would line up so perfectly?
"Yeah, Karena, how the hell did you know that?"
"It's obvious." Karena grinned. It looked like even she hadn't expected it to match letter for letter.
"What were you all talking about?"
"Nothing. It's nothing."
Karena dodged the question and turned it back on Laverre. "So why were you demoted from saint candidate?"
"I truly feel so wronged, Miss Karena..."
"Ugh... Stop clinging and just spit it out already."
"Well, you see... They said I wasn't frugal enough, that my greed for material possessions was excessive, and demoted me from the saint candidate position?"
At that, we couldn't help but marvel at the terrifyingly sharp insight of the church's higher-ups.
"Those old church farts have eyes that are creepily accurate."
"Well. If that's the reason, you've got no room to complain about being demoted."
Jian said.
"True."
I chimed in as well.
The three of us saying this in unison wasn't simple badmouthing. We weren't making up nonexistent faults just to insult Laverre, either. It was simply that our honest assessment inevitably carried a bit of insult with it.
Based on everything we'd seen of her during our journey, labeling Laverre as "frugal" would have been a serious violation of our consciences. Likewise, rejecting the term "materialistic" made our consciences ache.
"What? What's wrong with me?"
"You're still screwed, you money-grubbing bitch."
There are largely two forms of falsehood. The first is stating something untrue as if it were true. The second is remaining silent even while knowing the first is false. So, to avoid falsehood, we wholeheartedly agreed with the words "you money-grubbing bitch."
However, unlike Karena, Laverre possessed one clear and genuinely useful trait. (Of course Karena has strengths too. But not many come to mind right now, and none of them are particularly useful, so I'll leave it at that.)
Whether priests all develop the same characteristic in seminary or whether Laverre became a priest because she was already like this, I don't know, but her mind was incredibly resilient.
Yet when this calm, peaceful, water-like mentality collided with Karena's boiling-oil personality, it produced a rather difficult-to-witness synergistic effect.
"What do you mean, what? Just off the top of my head I can already fill all ten fingers and still have more. You can't think of even one thing?"
"At least not right this moment, no?"
"Do you actually want me to carve a cross into your throat?"
Just as water quietly erupts oil from beneath boiling oil, Karena would explode in rage while Laverre remained inexplicably relaxed.
But we knew the truth. Karena wasn't nearly as angry as the venom flying out of her mouth suggested. She had simply found a perfect punching bag to satisfy her sadistic streak and was cursing with everything she had. There wasn't any deeper reason behind it.
"Hey, hey. Take it easy."
This kind of conversation had happened countless times during our journey, so we were used to it. (Not that we ever wanted to hear it. We were simply familiar with it; it didn't leave any fond nostalgia. If anything, we were on the side that wanted it to stop.)
For the same reason, we also knew that if we didn't intervene, the two of them could easily keep this up for a solid thirty minutes.
That's why Jian stepped in to stop the pair who were just beginning to really heat up.
"No! You guys think about it too. All the crap this bitch pulled during our requests."
As I'd mentioned before, Karena doesn't do behind-the-back talk. She simply says to your face what she could just as easily say behind your back. Looked at negatively, though, it also meant she had no qualms about saying things that should only be said behind someone's back right to their face.
"True. There were plenty of pretty bad incidents. Like diluting the holy water before using it."
I said.
"The support funds disappeared the moment we received them, too. In the end, almost none of the support money actually made it to our party."
Jian smoothly picked up the thread.
Laverre answered with a laugh.
"Haha. Was it really like that?"
In truth, being calm all the time isn't necessarily a good thing. It also means the person can never truly empathize with anger. Of course, a calmly detestable person is still better than someone constantly seething with rage, but even so...
"But the holy water was at least half successful, wasn't it?"
"Is this girl seriously asking me to slit her throat?"
...We realized that any such discussion was completely meaningless when the two of them were together.
"Just where did you spend all the support funds the church gave you back then? There weren't even that many places to spend it during the journey."
Jian asked.
"Huh? Oh. Well... Um... Yeah. There were things like that."
Laverre answered by dodging the question entirely.
Jian and I were so fed up we didn't even respond. Bringing up the money issue we'd already missed the timing to discuss long ago, now that the party had disbanded, was just bothersome and pointless.
"Still, you know. This time I feel a little wronged too."
"Spit it out."
Karena opened with a blunt curse.
"It's obvious. You bought some expensive thing to resell, got caught, and got demoted. What was it? Huh? Wine again? Or maybe jewelry this time? If not that..."
"No! This time I simply bought one house. Honestly, isn't that something I can afford?"
"One house? You really only bought that?"
Jian asked.
"Yes. I only bought a single house."
"No matter what she says..."
Karena kept raging, but Laverre cut her off.
"That's right! Why don't we continue this conversation at my house? I wanted to invite all of you anyway. Since we've gathered like this."
Karena threw a fit. A serious one that turned the quiet café rowdy enough to draw every eye in the place. We were embarrassed by those stares, and to borrow a stronger expression, so ashamed we could barely stand it. Unfortunately, the two responsible for the commotion were the exact type of people who didn't care about such things at all, creating a vicious cycle.
"Sigh... Fine. Let's just go. Instead of doing this here."
Jian, unable to endure the shame any longer, stood up from his chair.
The rest of us, including me, all rose from our seats as well.
"Where are we headed?"
"I'll lead the way!"
Laverre took the lead and started walking. We all followed after her.
"Still, I did heal almost 100% of the time, didn't I? Even in critical moments I succeeded most of the time."
"If the holy water hadn't had a 25% success rate, wouldn't there have been fewer critical moments?"
"I didn't expect it even when we were fighting the undead."
Perhaps even life-and-death crises become memories once they pass. We spoke openly about the old days.
"Haha. At that time, it just so happened that we'd run out of pure holy water."
"Did you carry the undiluted stuff with you?"
"I did for the first year. But since you all managed fine even with the diluted holy water, I stopped carrying it after a while."
Listening to it made it impossible to stay open, so we quickly dropped the subject.
In that way, while recalling a bittersweet nostalgia, we walked toward Laverre's house. The road's slope gradually, but not excessively, grew steeper.
"Didn't you buy a house pretty far out?"
"There weren't any suitable properties except around here."
A short while later, we arrived at what Laverre called her house... No. For now... a 'property.' We had arrived at the property.
"Wow. How is this only grounds for demotion?"
The moment the property came into view, Jian spoke.
"Seriously. How could they stop at demotion after seeing this? If it were me, I would've excommunicated her on the spot."
It didn't have the slightest trace of coziness or simplicity that the word "house" would imply, and above all, its size was overwhelmingly large. Sunlight-filled glass windows sparkled white. Magnificent carvings covered the straight-lined structure with its wide-spread arms, so the moment you stepped through the entrance, grandeur overwhelmed any sense of comfort.
In my opinion, the word "mansion" suited this building far better than "house."
"Come on. Hurry and come inside everyone!"
Laverre said as she opened the iron gate at the mansion's entrance.
"See? I told you that bitch could never become a saint candidate."
Jian and I nodded in agreement as we stepped inside.