The Weight of Guilt
The nun arranged the tools before her with the detached precision of a seasoned physician laying out surgical instruments: a branding iron heated in the flames of guilt, and several bottles of low-grade holy water. Marianne, the apprentice sister, spoke to her with concern in her voice. "Sister, must you truly go this far?"
There was no mistaking the sorrow and worry woven into that plaintive question. The owner of those blue eyes, now fixed on the branding iron glowing red like a ripe maple leaf, was preparing to carve an unhealing scar onto her own face. After searing the skin once with the iron, she would treat it with the inferior holy water to force it closed. Repeating this process, she could etch burn scars that looked decades old onto her body in a single session. When the nun had first explained this, the words slipping from her small lips, Marianne had been so shocked she took to her bed for days.
"If it's only to hide your face, a mask would suffice... Besides, we still don't know for certain whether the Hero will visit. Even so, if you insist on disfiguring yourself, one time... even once should be enough. As you well know, Sister, prayer and holy water can only heal wounds that have not yet closed. Scars from wounds already healed... there is no way to—"
Marianne stopped. The nun had gently pulled her into an embrace, softly soothing the torrent of emotions that had spilled out with her words.
"Leaving a wound that could easily be healed at the highest levels of the clergy would only invite suspicion. The people I must deceive from now on are veteran heroes who have seen every kind of scar and every method of treating them. A clumsy disguise would be seen through immediately."
"B-but...!"
"I'll be fine, Sister Marianne."
She would not be fine. How could she be? Even if she had sworn her purity to God, for a woman to live the rest of her life with an indelible scar carved into her face was no different from vowing to carry pain and regret that might ignite at any moment until the day she died.
"Hic... Sister!"
Marianne struggled to steady her blurring vision, thick with unsightly tears. This might be her last chance to see that beautiful smile. Though the nun must be suffering more than anyone, she stroked Marianne's hair with gentle affection, looking down at her with a compassion like the Holy Mother's. Marianne nearly broke and spilled everything inside her, but she clenched her fists, swallowed her sobs, and managed a strained smile.
"May God smile upon you."
Marianne left after offering that single blessing, her tears finally quelled. The nun bowed her head in quiet reply and saw her off.
Beyond the firmly closed door, not a single human sound—neither scream nor groan—could be heard. Only the intermittent hiss of heated metal pressing into flesh.
What was the surest way to bind a person's heart? Those with a sentimental bent would say friendship, or love. Those with a practical bent might claim that without material compensation, there was no way to secure someone's loyalty. But the nun, who had faced countless people in the cramped, dim confessional who called themselves sinners, had long since found her own unshakable answer one distant evening.
Guilt. It was the name of the largest and heaviest chain that could be fastened to the lock of reason, the weight of the cross that tested those walking the righteous path at every moment. No existence was more unstable than a human struggling under the burden of guilt. They lived their lives constantly doubting whether the ground beneath their feet, the path they walked, and every action they took was truly justified.
The graver the sin committed, the heavier the shackles biting at their ankles, the more the sinner's clouded eyes could not even dare to hold the light, always turning shamefully toward the floor. Yes. Just like now.
"Does this satisfy you?"
No one in the room could easily open their mouths in response to the nun's calm question. How could they, wearing human faces? The nun had been forced to bare a shame she never wanted anyone to see, all to prove her innocence against the arrows of suspicion they had fired at her. Their doubts had been unjust, and because of them an innocent person might have been wounded in the heart. Even for those with ordinary ways of thinking, the situation was enough to make the heart heavy. And these people were part of the Hero's party, bearing the adoration of the entire nation. In that moment, the wave of guilt that crashed over their thoughts must have been unimaginably vast.
"That... wound..."
"I'm sorry for showing you such an unsightly sight. In truth, I have a shameful past from my childhood, when I was captured by slave traders..."
The Hero struggled to speak, and sensing from the tremor in her voice that her plan had worked, the nun continued spinning her lies without hesitation. Standing in the shadow of the audience chamber, which was like the very presence of God, the nun believed she deserved to fall into hell for lying so brazenly. Yet this was the only wretched means a mere human like herself had to resist the transcendent beings before her. The nun, too, was pressing down a guilt no smaller than theirs as she continued speaking with difficulty.
"Well? Did the shameless nun the Hero was looking for also bear such hideous scars?"
The silence stretched long. After the nun had removed her mask, the positions of interrogator and interrogated had completely reversed. How much time passed like that? The Hero, struck dumb. Dawna, flustered and unable to find words of apology. Victim, still dozing. Finally, as the eldest member of the party, Apis slowly parted her heavy lips to speak in place of her confused comrades.
"S-sorry... It seems we misunderstood..."
"That can't be true—!"
A clear, ringing voice tore through the silence and echoed through the room.
"The scent! There was definitely a scent! There's no way I wouldn't recognize the priest's scent. I couldn't tell where it came from because of another smell mixed in halfway, but the fact that the priest was with this person for a long time—that much is certain!"
"H-Hero! Calm down!"
Apis hurriedly restrained the Hero, who was shouting with rare intensity, her voice thick with desperation. The nun could easily guess the identity of the "other scent" the Hero kept mentioning—the contact with Lady Rosevelt. The brief time spent with the woman who always wore perfume so strong it seemed it might twist one's nose had likely played a decisive role in obscuring the priest Regis's whereabouts.
A stroke of luck. If this was not the result of someone's calculation, it was nothing short of a miracle sent by God. Sensing that now was the moment to drive the wedge in, the nun squeezed out every last drop of courage she did not possess and spoke.
"I'm sorry... Still, if I may offer a thought out of sympathy... Since this monastery houses the Saintess's audience chamber, it is like the heart of the papal see, where priests from every nation come and go. It is possible that the priest the Hero speaks of and I happened to come into contact by chance, and the scent lingered..."
It was at that moment.
"Hero!"
"No, Hero!"
Without even a moment's grace to sense the change, without time to realize what was happening, the nun could not fully comprehend the identity of the sharp metal that suddenly appeared in her field of vision. Her joints and the nodes of her mind had gone rigid, as if pierced by needles through her entire skin or infiltrated by a piercing chill.
"Hnn...! Hnn...!"
She saw a single tear. She heard ragged breathing. It was only afterward that the nun realized the Hero was pointing a sword at her. Though neither Apis's bow nor Dawna's magic could keep up with the Hero's swift strike, a strong hand that shot out from outside her vision caught the blade in time, preventing the tragedy of the sword's edge touching the nun's body.
"Sister. Calm down."
Victim, who had been nodding off just moments ago, had opened his eyes—eyes that seemed they would never open again—and was blocking the Hero.
"Give... it... back...! Give... it... back...! Give it... back...!"
The blade could not reach anywhere, blocked by the obstacle. But there was nothing to block the fragments of the Hero's broken words, which scattered as if to take its place.