The Biggest Mistake in Playing House
There is a saying that the greatest mistake anyone playing house can make is not even realizing what they did wrong. No one knows who first spread it, but since someone said it, the words have been passed around. Tracking down the wicked culprit who birthed that phrase and beating them senseless is one of humanity’s tasks if we want a better life than we have now. At least, that’s what I believe.
“Oppa. Don’t you know what you did wrong? Sorry. I’m a little weak on subjective questions.”
With no proper target to unload my frustrations on, I turned to the only conversation partner I had left and asked the Saintess for a confession outright. By now I had been confined to the Audience Chamber by the nuns for several hours over some reason I couldn’t begin to guess. Had they somehow found out I secretly asked the chef to add dessert after the meal? Or was she still holding a grudge because I had accidentally spoiled the novel she was reading?
They say nothing is more unproductive than trying to figure out why a woman is angry with a man, but it felt wrong to simply let my idle brain loaf around any longer, so I decided to think it over. After long deliberation, the conclusion I reached was this:
I have no idea.
Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here asking the Saintess herself for advice. Against that underhanded trick of erasing the cause of her anger from the laws of the world and leaving only the outcome—“I’m angry”—the only weapon available to an ordinary man like me was this pathetic method of begging someone else for guidance.
“Hmm?”
The Saintess, perched on my lap and staring up at me, tilted her head languidly. She looked as if she didn’t even understand what I was saying. Yeah, of course she wouldn’t. Honestly, I hadn’t expected her to know in the first place. No expectations, no betrayal. So that’s what the saying means. I felt like I had taken another step toward the truth today.
“Here, eat this.”
She pressed an empty bowl with nothing in it to my lips and urged me to consume the void. I’d rather not recount the countless trials and errors it took before I realized this bizarre behavior was a form of “playing house.” Just know that over the past few days I have learned exactly what a plate tastes like and what shape the inside of my mouth takes afterward.
“Ahem! Wow! It’s so delicious! Welna’s cooking really is the best after all!”
My performance, delivered with every ounce of my soul, must have been satisfactory. Still sitting on my lap, the Saintess bounced with joy. Her expression showed almost no emotional movement, but the corners of her mouth had risen roughly five millimeters, so I could vaguely tell she was quite pleased.
Playing house at my age is fairly—no, extremely—hazardous to one’s self-esteem, yet I chose to surrender willingly to the Saintess’s deranged habit of shoving an empty plate at me until I played along. Fortunately, the version of house she directed required no complicated setting and only a handful of characters: oppa, little sister, and big sister. I was oppa, the Saintess was the little sister, and whatever random object she grabbed at the moment was assigned the role of big sister.
I’m not an expert on children’s games, but I had heard the usual lineup is mom, dad, child, and dog. A faint doubt flickered through my mind, but at this point I simply accepted it. Honestly, I wasn’t even married yet; the idea of having virtual children—even pretend ones—didn’t appeal to me. And as someone who grew up in an orphanage, nothing seemed more ridiculous than me commenting on normal family structures, so I decided to respect the diversity of households.
Still, I had once asked her indirectly. “Saintess, did you have an older sister?” No answer worthy of the name ever came back. Whenever I posed the question, the Saintess would only blink slowly and tilt her head, just as she always did. Sadly, even she herself seemed unaware of the identity of the “big sister” who appeared without fail in her games.
It was right then, while I was lost in those thoughts, that it happened.
“Chu.”
“Hey now.”
I was a split second faster. The Saintess hurled her upper body forward, trying once again to press her lips to mine. I stopped her with an iron claw to the face before it was too late. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It was pure reflex—the same instinct that makes you catch a ball flying at your face. I knew full well how disrespectful it was; any other believer who saw it would probably faint from the blasphemy. But if I didn’t do this, an uncomfortable rendezvous between our lips would clearly occur again, so I had no other choice.
“Saintess. Haven’t I told you again and again, last time and the time before, that ‘chu’ on the lips is not allowed?”
“····”
This is exactly why I can’t let my guard down. Not even for a moment. The demonic beasts in the dungeon gave me more breathing room than this.
“I’m going to do it.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I’m going to do it.”
“No.”
Here we go again. After blocking her several times as she swung her arms wildly to close the distance, I slipped my hands under her armpits, lifted her like a cat, and raised her body high into the air. She dangled there like a swing on a playground. The sight was hilarious, but laughing now would ruin everything, so I swallowed the laugh that nearly escaped and gathered a stern expression.
“Welna. You promised oppa, remember? How many ‘chus’ per day?”
“····”
“How many per day?”
“····Three times.”
I don’t know how many times I had fallen for that plaintive voice that tugs at primitive human sympathy. But I won’t be fooled anymore.
“Welna. Look at this.”
I set the dangling Saintess gently on the floor, then hooked my index finger into the collar of my priestly robe and pulled it down.
“What are all these?”
I spoke with just enough force in my throat to show I was somewhat angry, but not enough to frighten her. Her red eyes snapped toward my collarbone like headlights slicing through midnight. It was only natural. My neck was covered in a dense tapestry of sinister marks perfectly designed to draw attention.
Because of them I could no longer take off my high-collared indoor clothes even inside my own room. “I don’t know.”
What do you mean you don’t know? The countless marks the Saintess had personally planted around my neck were hickeys—those embarrassing things commonly called kiss marks.
Limiting the number of kisses and gradually reducing them had seemed like a good way to correct her bad habit. In response, however, the Saintess simply made each individual kiss last as long as possible to compensate for the reduced quantity. The tragedy born from that sad story was what now decorated my skin.
“I let it slide earlier because you said it was really the last time. Just how many times have you broken your promise with oppa today, Welna?”
“····”
Rare question marks floated across the Saintess’s face, whose facial muscles were famous for neglecting their duties. Furrowed brows. Distant gaze. Slightly parted lips. It was obvious she was pondering something that refused to yield an answer. Of course she wouldn’t know. There was no way she could. Even I had stopped counting after it passed thirty. Just since the nun had spat out that outrageous lie about me sleeping in the Audience Chamber, the Saintess had already pressed her lips to me at least ten times.
“Look at this, too.”
This time I rolled up my sleeve. From palm to wrist, suspicious patterns were stamped as densely as the seals given to elementary students who finish a marathon. They were the same symbols the Saintess had engraved on me when I once asked her for a way to save the light-novel priest.
A person’s body is not a sketchbook. She might have done it with the lighthearted feeling of a child doodling on her father’s face, but I lacked both the fortitude and the shamelessness to brush it all off. At least the kiss marks would fade if left alone or treated with cold compresses. These unknown patterns showed no sign of disappearing no matter how hard I scrubbed them with soap.
Realizing they appeared every time she kissed me was at least some small mercy, yet as long as I couldn’t stop her kisses, the fact that my body would soon resemble a refrigerator covered in delivery coupons remained unchanged. It didn’t exactly put my mind at ease.
“What do you think when you see this, Welna?”
“····Pretty.”
My opinion differs somewhat.
How much time had passed like that?
Thud.
The wooden fork the Saintess used for meals suddenly rolled across the floor with a faint clatter. It was only an object falling. Under normal circumstances it would have been trivial, the sort of thing you wouldn’t even notice if the room hadn’t been so quiet—a happening so minor it was almost meaningless.
But the value of an object is always relative.
“Big… sis… ter…”
“Saintess…?”
That insignificant object now lying pathetically on the floor had, until mere moments ago, been an actor assigned the role of “big sister” in our little plays. At that instant, the Saintess’s gaze slid for the first time toward the firmly closed door.