A Misunderstanding
“...So that’s how it all happened.”
Explaining the tangled sequence of complicated events in a concise, easy-to-follow way is one of the few specialties I can count on one hand, and it might just be the one I’m most confident in. Back when the party’s reputation had only reached the level of “promising newcomers,” writing the mission completion reports always fell to me. Truth be told, there was no one else suited for the job. Anything the Hero wrote inevitably began with “Today I” and ended with “It was so much fun,” like some inescapable curse. Apis’s prose wasn’t half bad, but because she had learned the common tongue from fairy tales, she tended to describe situations in a rather vague, fairy-tale haze. Dawna’s reports were so packed with esoteric, labyrinthine phrasing that the average citizen of the Capital couldn’t make heads or tails of them. One of her documents was once mistaken for a fragment of an unidentified forbidden tome, creating an incident that was anything but funny. And Victim, who could barely speak properly because he was so shy—well, writing was out of the question.
That’s why, for the first time in a while, I dusted off an old skill and laid everything out for Apis in chronological order, as simply as possible, with a touch of humor sprinkled in. I told her how I had suddenly been selected as the Saintess’s personal escort priest, how she was showing me an inexplicable degree of favor, and even the strange new habit she had developed of engraving mysterious patterns onto my body ever since I unintentionally resurrected a dead priest. I left nothing out.
Her answer came immediately.
Yeah. Honestly, I’d half expected this reaction even while I was speaking.
Choosing the underground tavern nearby as the place to talk had been an excellent decision. The place was always packed with adventurers itching to brag about their heroic exploits, so it stayed rowdy even in broad daylight. As long as we didn’t start smashing furniture or shouting at the top of our lungs, hiding a conversation between two people would be simple enough.
“I told you to speak plainly!”
BANG!
Apis kicked the table with a furious shout, immediately causing the exact kind of major disturbance we’d hoped to avoid.
“Apis… Could you please lower your voice…? People are staring…”
The moment Apis raised her voice and started grilling me, a strange murmur rippled through the tavern. I felt the heavy pressure of every gaze in the place converging on us.
It was all true, damn it.
Even I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. The story I had told Apis might have been seasoned with a little wit, but there wasn’t a single grain of falsehood in it. If a lie gets exposed, you can still salvage things by telling the truth afterward. But when the truth you reveal gets dismissed as nothing but lies, what the hell are you supposed to do?
As my thoughts spun uselessly in circles, Apis planted her foot on the broken table leg and snarled.
“…Pardon?”
For a second, the universe seemed to short-circuit. It felt like my brain couldn’t process the information my ears had just received. The old knowledge and the new data refused to mesh, creating nothing but static.
“My name isn’t in the register? No, more importantly—how did you even find out about that, Apis…?”
The question had barely left my lips before Apis seized my shoulders in a crushing grip.
“W-wait! Just wait a second, Apis!”
She shook me violently. The raw emotion bleeding through that brutal strength was painfully obvious.
Then the surrounding noise exploded.
“So he was bragging to his wife about having a respectable job while he was actually out fooling around with another woman… And claiming to be the Saintess’s personal priest, of all things—if you’re going to lie, at least make it somewhat believable… What a pathetic excuse for a man…”
“From the sound of it, that young man even has a child… Tsk tsk. Poor thing. My goodness… What did those kids ever do to deserve this…”
“Sigh… He looks decent enough on the outside, too…”
These ridiculous accusations drilled into the back of my skull. Apis was wrapped in a thick hood and a magical item that interfered with recognition, so it was inevitable that all the attention would fall on me. Still, this was going too far.
“Wait—what?! A male prostitute? Did he just say male prostitute?!”
“Apis!!!”
I tried to clamp a hand over her mouth, but my half-hearted strength was nowhere near enough.
“Oh my! A male prostitute! He called himself a male prostitute! He’s lost his mind! Completely lost it!”
“Ugh… That animal…”
“Which shop was it? Do they take male customers?”
The tavern that had been buzzing with the adventurers’ lively chatter fell deathly quiet after Apis’s outburst, like a theater at dawn. The customers watched us with gleaming eyes, exactly like aunties in a sauna huddled around a big TV to devour a trashy drama. Their stares pricked my skin like needles. Even the owner and the waiters kept pretending to work while clearly leaning in our direction. They were just as invested as everyone else.
I was surrounded by enemies.
“Apis! Let’s at least change seats first! We can talk after we move!”
“Apis!!!”
Her hand clamped around my arm like iron shackles. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like the chains were real.
“Apis! I was wrong! I was completely wrong! So please, let’s just go outside! We can finish this conversation outside!”
“You rotten… rotten bastard…”
Apis grabbed my collar. Her voice, already rough as sandpaper, began to tremble with barely contained rage. The gazes of the people around us darkened with wet, sticky disgust and hostility.
“Wow… A father with a kid who ran away in the middle of the night…”
“Trash.”
“Human garbage.”
It’s a misunderstanding, everyone. I had clearly chosen the wrong place at the worst possible time.
What kind of day was this? First the nun suddenly fell ill and I ended up running errands I never asked for. Then helping a person in trouble got my clothes torn to shreds. Then I ran into an old comrade I’d rather avoid and got slapped with the ridiculous label of male prostitute. And now I was being treated like a worthless scumbag who had destroyed an entire family.
This was too much. If I didn’t get a drink, I wasn’t going to survive this.
Drink?
At that exact moment, a brilliant idea struck me like lightning—an ingenious way to cut through this chaotic mess.
“Waiter! Excuse me, but does this establishment serve the monastery’s grape wine?!”
“Huh? Ah! Yes! W-will you be ordering some?”
“Hey! Don’t try to change the subject!”
I urgently flagged down the waiter and quickly confirmed the one crucial detail my plan required. If this tavern carried the wine produced by our monastery—the so-called “Virgin Wine”—then the odds were excellent that they would also have “that item” every such establishment kept on hand.
“Excuse me, manager! I’m sorry to trouble you, but could I borrow the Horn of Purity for a moment?”
The Horn of Purity. A magical tool painstakingly carved from a unicorn’s horn by a master artisan, created to verify a person’s chastity. Only priests like me used its proper name. Most citizens of the Capital, known for their rough speech, preferred a certain catchy slang term that rolled right off the tongue.
“Uh… Why do you suddenly need the virgin detector…?”
Because I need to use it right now.