The Monkey's Paw
It made perfect sense why astronauts returning from space would collapse the moment their feet touched solid ground again. The nausea was like the disorienting lurch you feel after bouncing on a trampoline and then trying to jump on flat earth, except magnified thousands of times over. I couldn’t summon any strength in my legs. The satisfaction of having fulfilled my duty mingled with a hazy, gray exhaustion that slowly seeped into my body once the tension finally broke. My consciousness seemed to drift somewhere in the middle of it all, and the fatigue was so crushing, so bone-deep, that I doubted it could ever be replicated unless someone ran a full marathon while nursing a brutal hangover.
“Priest!”
The first greeting I received after barely escaping the dimensional rift known as the Audience Chamber was the plush sensation of something far softer than even the finest wool blanket, paired with the faint, worried voice of a sister drifting down from above.
“Are you all right? Priest! Please, come back to us!”
Even though my body and mind were shredded to rags, some stubborn masculine part of me still desperately tried to savor the soft pressure against my face. It felt almost pathetic. But I had zero strength left to resist this seductive comfort, so I surrendered myself to it without protest.
“...S-Sister?”
“Haa... Thank goodness. Your mind seems intact, at least...”
She looks deceptively slim when dressed. I was still marveling at this unexpected discovery when I noticed the sister—who was usually the very picture of composure—acting in a flustered way I had never seen before. It finally hit me that I hadn’t given my after-action report yet, and I hurriedly moved my parched lips.
“Ah... The matter of persuading the Saint... It wrapped up successfully, more or less...”
With tremendous effort I raised an arm that felt heavier than rebar and gave a shaky thumbs-up, quietly signaling that the bomb had been successfully defused.
“Haa... Yes, I’m sure it did.”
Her sigh was thick with disgust, her tone heavy with reproach. Worried I had messed up again, I forced my rusty neck upward and studied her expression.
“You really never change, Priest...”
A sorrowful melancholy lingered in her eyes, as though she were recalling something painful. We had maintained a long, if tenuous, connection since my apprentice priest days. We were little more than distant acquaintances who barely knew each other’s names and faces. I wondered whether there had ever been any memory between us poignant enough to warrant such a heartfelt look, but given the current crisis, it was a question that would clearly take too long to unravel. I set it aside.
“Sister... My body isn’t listening to me at all right now. Could you help me reach Priest Lobel?”
“Yes... Of course.”
I showed her my left hand, which could do little more than twitch at the fingertips, and asked for her aid. She lifted my dead weight off the floor as easily as pulling a radish from a field, then draped my arm around her neck without the slightest effort. My male pride took a small hit at how effortlessly she managed it, but years of second and third booster shots against feeling inferior to stronger women kept the bruise from settling permanently in my chest.
“What exactly happened in there... It looks like you even used the Miracle of Healing on yourself.”
“I’ll explain everything on the way...”
What was supposed to be support felt more like I had handed my entire body over to her and was simply being dragged along. It reminded me of that animal documentary about the clever crab that carries a coral on its back. The crab serves as the coral’s legs, protecting it from every threat in exchange for a hiding place and nutrient mucus—a symbiotic relationship. Given that I offered neither shelter nor mucus, merely riding along shamelessly, it felt less like symbiosis and more like parasitism. First time in my life I’ve ever felt inferior to a coral.
That was when it happened. Maybe the shock to my mind still hadn’t healed, because my brain kept spinning useless thoughts and wasting what little capacity it had left.
“Hyaung!”
The moment I heard an adorable scream from an unidentified source, the body that had been traveling so smoothly tumbled to the floor.
“Ah.”
My senses were still returning, so the pain wasn’t that bad. But the sudden 180-degree flip in my vision made me wonder for a split second if the world itself had turned upside down.
“I-I’m sorry! Priest! A-are you all right?!”
The sister rushed toward me, visibly flustered—an expression I rarely saw from her. She clutched the front of her robes, especially around her chest, her face flushed as red as a ripe tomato. The frantic way she checked me for injuries was more than enough to send ominous waves crashing through my thoughts.
And from the very tip of my left middle finger came the faintest lingering trace of that soft, delicate sensation. The spark it threw into those dark waves was unmistakable.
“Um... Sister... Did I by any chance...”
“Don’t say it! I know you didn’t do it on purpose! More importantly—wounds! I need to check your wounds! You’ve already used today’s Miracle of Healing, so if you’ve suffered another serious injury while your body is already in this state...”
“Sister... Did my hand perhaps...”
“I said don’t say it! Nothing seems broken, thank goodness! Still, just to be safe, the moment your duties are finished I’ll call your attending physician or any other available priest...”
“...touch your chest...”
“I told you not to say it—!!!”
She ripped off her hood in an instant and hurled it at my face, then unleashed a fierce shout as though venting every pent-up emotion at once. Her breathing came in sharp hisses while she tried to regain control. The sky-blue hair that framed her flushed face was so translucent it looked like it might melt away under direct sunlight. The sharp blue eyes glaring at me and the single tear clinging to their corner were so beautifully pitiful they seemed like an artistic device meant to highlight the fragility hidden beneath her usual cold composure.
If I ever mentioned the sight of her in this disheveled state at a drinking party with the other priests, I would undoubtedly become the main attraction that night. But doing so would risk sending my hard-earned life plunging back into a bottomless abyss, so I bit down hard on my indiscreet lower lip.
“Enough! Stop the nonsense and give me your hand again, Guardian Priest Regis!”
“Yes...”
The glare that promised to rip my mouth open if I uttered one more stupid remark left me with nothing to say. As we continued toward Priest Ranobel with the sister’s noble assistance, my still-numb, sinful hand seemed to commit the same crime against her chest two more times.
“Hngh! Hng! Hnguu...”
“......”
She must have thought I wouldn’t notice if she didn’t show it. Pretending not to hear the moans she kept desperately swallowing while trying to walk normally was genuine torture. Only moments ago this left hand had saved me from disaster. Was it now trying to claim its reward in such a twisted way?
I’d heard the story of the Monkey’s Paw that grants its owner’s wishes in the most distorted fashion. But I had never heard of a monkey-brat hand that completely ignored its master’s will and seized whatever it desired. Even the manga I once read about an alien species that parasitized human hands had been better than this—at least there, some form of communication had been possible.
Shinichi. Wanna touch some breasts?
Don’t.
The hallway I walked down every single day, familiar enough that I could navigate it with my eyes closed, somehow felt dozens of times longer than usual. It wasn’t just the exhaustion in my body. That thought flickered through my mind as we continued forward.