The Saintess's Bite
Hihi. No way. It had to be an auditory hallucination. Anxiety often swells up and turns the smallest sounds into delusions. It was the same principle as timid people occasionally mistaking the drip of a faucet for someone's footsteps. The fact that the Saintess's small lips hadn't moved at all, combined with the eerie, ominous chill carried by the words that had pierced my heart—words too sinister to have come from a living person—lent considerable weight to that hypothesis.
“Saintess…?”
I tried to check her expression, but my attempt failed thanks to her swift movement as she buried her face into the crook of my neck in that brief moment. And right after that—
Crunch.
“Ugh!”
She bit my collarbone. My facial muscles stiffened as if I’d been injected with a lethal dose of poison. It wasn’t my head that remembered this was what the Saintess did when she was truly furious—it was my body.
Suddenly, déjà vu washed over me. What came to mind was the memory of the first time I’d ever been stabbed with a blade. The cold metal that had felt like ice when it tore through flesh and bone had grown unbearably hot, as if someone were tempering it. Then came that horrifying sensation of my internal organs being sucked toward the source of that heat. How many times had I tried to erase that memory from my mind?
Strength drained from my toes to my knees, then my lower abdomen and waist. As the surrounding sounds grew muffled like I was underwater and my thoughts began to paralyze, I felt an inviting drowsiness weighing down my eyelids amid the violent agony. That was when the pathetic thought surfaced: Ah, I’m not going to make it out of this alive.
The intensity of the force was different, but the feeling was eerily similar to back then. The Saintess’s pure white teeth, pressing into my skin and trying to reach my bones, were digging up the horrific nightmare buried deep inside me piece by piece.
“Liar… Liar…”
The true nature of the words that had struck my heart was revealed. It didn’t seem to be an auditory hallucination, but it wasn’t a voice either. It was more like a wave. A disturbing resonance that transmitted meaning directly without sound kept echoing endlessly inside my head.
“I hate lies. Lies are bad. Don’t go. Stay here. Stay with me. Let’s be together.”
Before one sentence could even finish, the next overlapped it, so there weren’t many words I could fully understand.
“W-what lie?! No, that’s not it! Saintess! I really—ugh!”
I won’t listen to your pathetic excuses.
The white current that had crawled from my fingertips and toes, from the extremities of my body straight to my heart in the blink of an eye, seemed to be saying exactly that. This sensation—like every trace of blood in my body was being repeatedly cooled and then brought to a boil—was something I had experienced before.
Saintess’s Grace. The supreme authority said to have been entrusted by the gods only to a handful of devout girls. It was also presumed to be the origin of the power the Saintess had used to reduce that light novel priest to such a wretched state.
A shudder ran through my body at the terror of those murky suspicions, which had been like thick fog, gradually taking on a concrete shape.
Saintess… You wouldn’t…
“You can’t go…”
The shabby figure of that light novel priest flashed through my mind. A human who had lost his soul. He had looked like nothing more than a doll that couldn’t even walk on its own without someone pulling its strings. That image accelerated my thoughts in a very bad direction.
And then I remembered it. The way a child I had once seen throwing a tantrum, stubbornly begging his parents to buy him a toy, looked remarkably similar to the Saintess right now.
“Forever… Stay here forever…”
The slurred words seemed to stem from distorted emotions. I realized that all sensation below my waist had completely vanished right after hearing those words.
“Khk!”
Thud.
My legs gave out and I collapsed to the floor. Even so, the Saintess’s entire body remained pressed tightly against mine without the slightest change. The sinister heat transmitted through our touching skin. The dizzying scent of her body brushing against my nose. Even the way her delicate eyelashes fluttered gently along the rhythm of my ragged breaths.
Even in this urgent situation where my life might very well be on the line, my pathetically irrepressible self-awareness refused to overlook any of it. That was how beautiful, noble, and sacred she was. To the point that I thought being stabbed by that ugly piece of metal would have been better. At least that thing could be knocked away, pulled out, or smashed to pieces.
Was this the end?
Just as the fading consciousness I was desperately trying to hold onto—and perhaps the last remaining shred of longing I possessed—began to dim like a candle flame in the wind—
‘Father!’
Along with the familiar voice ringing inside my thoughts, a trivial supposition suddenly crossed my mind: What would ‘she’ have done in a situation like this?
She had been excessively positive about everything, aggressive, and never tolerated injustice. She was like the very embodiment of the word “justice,” walking around in human form. If someone like her had faced insurmountable hardship and adversity, would she have acted as pathetically and disgracefully as I was now—ready to let go of everything and just give up?
Pfft.
A laugh escaped me unbidden. Even after saying it myself, I realized how absurd the thought was. No way. There was no way that could happen. Even if the sky split in two, even if the entire world were swallowed by darkness so thick you couldn’t see an inch ahead—
She, and only she, would never abandon that foolish act of walking toward the light.
“Welna… Let go…”
“…No.”
I bit down hard on the inside of my mouth to forcibly awaken my blurring consciousness. It was a choice I would never have made under normal circumstances, because it felt exhausting and undignified. In other words, a final desperate struggle. It wasn’t because I had any lingering attachments left undone. And it certainly wasn’t like those protagonists in other stories who suddenly gain mysterious power and courage right before a crisis.
It was simply an impulsive act born from a pathetic sense of admiration—an urge to imitate the dignity she had occasionally shown me.
“Oppa told you to let go…”
“N-no…”
“Let go while I’m asking nicely.”
“H-huh…?”
I, Reygis Rowbill. Age twenty-nine. For the first time in this life, I am about to scold a child.
In a quiet provincial city where every view was filled with idyllic scenery, few things stirred a child’s heart as much as a hero’s procession and the citizens’ cheers that followed it. The resounding blast of trumpets and the colorful flower petals fluttering like sleet brought color and vitality to the shaded gray streets. They even granted a warmth like the morning sun to hearts that might have grown cold. Even the common citizens, who struggled just to get by day to day, could not scold the children for abandoning their chores and rushing out to watch the parade at a moment like this.
But excessive support and fervor sometimes invited unexpected disaster.
“Kyaaaak!”
A loud crash and scream tore through the citizens’ roaring cheers like wildfire. A half-destroyed carriage with one wheel derailed. And right in its diagonal path, a little girl crouched down—by her size, she looked like she had only just learned to walk. Even a casual glance made it easy to guess that the carriage had swerved to avoid the child who had suddenly appeared.
“You damn brat!”
Starting with the shout of a soldier who had been directing the procession, the faces of the spectators darkened rapidly. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they went deathly pale. The soldier raised a gleaming blade toward the little girl, who was trembling like a rabbit before a predator.
It was a pitiful sight that would stir pity in any human with warm blood flowing through their veins. Yet not a single person present dared to summon the courage to defend the poor child in distress.
“Not only did you obstruct the Hero’s sacred march! You even dared to damage the carriage carrying the Hero’s statue! For such a heinous crime, you must be prepared to atone with your life!”
“H-hic!”
The louder the soldier’s voice grew, the more the child’s expression darkened, as if faint ink had been spilled across her face. For a child whose mind had not yet fully matured, all she could feel was a vague anxiety that something was going terribly wrong. She instinctively curled up against the fear that pricked her skin like needles. But everyone present except the child herself knew the tragic truth—that such a feeble defense could never stop that massive blade.
“Mia!”
It was then that a boy, presumably the girl’s older brother, stepped in front of the soldier.
“I-I’m sorry! Sir Soldier! My little sister’s rudeness—I sincerely apologize! I’ll work my entire life to repay the damage my family has caused! P-please! Please show mercy!”
His shabby clothes and dirty face. The soldier, having instantly guessed the boy’s impoverished status from his utterly submissive posture as he flattened himself against the ground without hesitation, raised his voice once more, as if he no longer had any reservations.
“Hah! Repay it over a lifetime? Sure! If the only thing broken was the carriage, that might have been enough! But the statue your sister damaged was a special commission made directly by the royal family to honor the Hero’s great achievements! A commoner like you couldn’t possibly compensate for it even if you worked ten lifetimes—not even enough to replace a single toe!”
“Kuhk! I-I’m sorry… I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
The desperate apologies the boy choked out while being grabbed by the collar only fueled the soldier’s anger further. The pleas of someone with nothing to offer and nothing to their name were truly pathetic. Yet the boy could only repeat himself. Because he believed it was the only way to protect his one and only little sister—by clinging to that faint hope that maybe, just maybe, he would be forgiven. That maybe someone would reach out a hand.
The boy kept repeating his ugly, unheard prayer over and over.
“All of this! Every single bit of it is my fault for failing to properly watch over my blood relative! I will atone for the sin of tarnishing the Hero’s dignity with my own life! So please! At least spare my sister—!”
“Shut up! How dare a mere commoner presume to offer me his opinion!”
As if to completely brush off the boy’s desperate plea, the soldier raised his sword high into the air.
“Execution!”
“Kgh!”
Because the boy had squeezed his eyes shut, cutting off all visual information, what rang in his ears was someone’s brave and beautiful battle cry.
“Hero Punch—!!!”