Water and Rubidium
Water and rubidium. “Uung!” The Saintess’s pure voice prodded my consciousness, yanking my vision—which had been idly drifting through the past—back to the present with a violent twist.
“S-Saintess?”
“Uuuung!”
Thump. Thump. Her cotton-soft fists rained down on my frozen body, still stuck in the exact posture I’d held while feeding her. The impacts themselves were so pitiful they probably couldn’t even crush tofu, yet the fact that the usually indifferent Saintess was reacting this dramatically could only mean one thing: her mood had turned extremely sour. I hurriedly woke my dulled senses and straightened up.
“I’m sorry, Saintess. I was lost in thought for a moment…”
“Hmph!”
Fortunately, her lips were only slightly pursed, and the fact that she was answering me properly suggested she wasn’t truly furious. Still, letting my guard down would be foolish. Relaxing in front of an angry woman was as stupid as closing your eyes at the edge of a cliff with no bottom in sight.
People sometimes compared the relationship between men and women to water and oil. That was only half the truth. The relationship between men and women was far closer to water and rubidium. Water and oil simply refused to mix; they caused no real harm. But what happened when water met rubidium? Even if I’d slept through science class, anyone would know that the moment those two touched, a massive explosion would erupt and sweep away everything around them.
For the record, the man was the water and the woman was the rubidium. At least, that was how it felt to me.
“Sorry, Welna. Your big brother messed up.”
Before I knew it, I had slipped into my practiced older-brother act and gently stroked the Saintess’s hair. The self-loathing I once felt for fawning over a woman a full generation younger like some parasite was gone. Now I felt neither shame nor the slightest discomfort. Humans might be creatures of adaptation, but if someone could adapt even to a situation this embarrassing, maybe it was fair to just call them an animal.
My own pathetic state was so ridiculous that I kept having to bite back the dry laughter that threatened to slip out.
That was when the Saintess grabbed the hand stroking her head.
“W-Welna…?”
My heart plummeted. Is it starting again? Even though I had gotten somewhat better at calming her down, the process always left me exhausted. On top of that, the unexpected encounter and the rust of the past it had dredged up had left no empty space in my mind.
I was tired. I wanted to rest. I wanted to lie in bed, close my eyes, and sink into quiet sleep. The heavy, sticky thoughts clinging to my brain made my hollow stomach churn with nausea.
But in that moment—
“Ouch… ouch…?”
The Saintess moved my right hand from her head to her own cheek and spoke to me in a hazy voice.
“Welna…?”
“Ouch?”
Ouch. It wasn’t hard to guess that meant Does it hurt? I hadn’t wasted the time I’d spent with her.
A gentle voice lightly laced with worry. Crimson eyes where concern faintly flickered. If someone asked whether I could take responsibility for those words, I would have said not quite. But it looked like the Saintess was worried about me. At least, that was what my intuition and experience told me.
“What are you talking about, Welna? Why would I be in pain…”
I answered her in a slightly tired voice. There was a hint of awkwardness, but I tried to dismantle her worry with a bright smile.
However.
“Hng!”
“Ugh!”
My half-hearted smile must have displeased her, because the Saintess suddenly rammed her head into my stomach. Right after, a pure white power I somehow recognized surged violently from both arms as she fiercely hugged my waist.
“W-wait, Welna!”
Thud. Strength left my legs. Fortunately, the loss of sensation was limited to everything below the knees, and her sudden action hadn’t exceeded what I’d anticipated. Even while staggering, it wasn’t difficult to keep the Saintess wrapped around my waist from getting hurt. All I had to do was use my own body as a bed to catch her.
“W-Welna… I’ve told you multiple times not to do ‘that’ because it’s dangerous…”
I had sternly warned her just the day before yesterday that abusing divine power like this was wrong. Deciding a harsher warning and sharper scolding were necessary, I furrowed my brow and prepared to reprimand her—
Swipe.
Before I could finish speaking, without the slightest hesitation, the Saintess pulled my face close and quietly embraced me.
“S-Saintess…?”
The holiness that naturally flowed from her movements was so profound it made me unconsciously speak formally. It felt completely detached from reality. Like I was dreaming. A dreamy haze as if body and soul were drifting apart. I had experienced it before, but this time was different. If the previous sensation had been something ferocious born of lust and obsession, this was something gentle born of concern and worry. Like a newborn who had burst into tears suddenly growing quiet as it was moved into its mother’s arms inside a small cradle. It was a comfort everyone carried in their memories, yet its true form was a vague, indescribable peace that soothed and calmed the mind.
“……”
“……”
Without a word, the Saintess began stroking my head. Like a kind mother who pats the back of a child unable to sleep because of nightmares, sings lullabies, and watches over them through a peaceful night.
Perhaps my body and mind had both frozen from this absurd situation where our usual roles were completely reversed. No words came out. Normally I would have pushed her away. I should have—and I always had. Yet the reason my lazy body couldn’t easily shove her aside was simple.
It was warm. When both body and mind were exhausted, I wasn’t strong enough to coldly shake off someone’s warm hand embracing me. That cozy warmth.
“S-Saintess. Please stop. It’s enough now. I’m not hurting at all, okay? So please let go…”
Squeeze. The words I had barely strung together with gathered reason were too easily unraveled by that beautiful power. The thoughts stuck in my throat surged upward, struggling to escape, but I kept pursing and relaxing my trembling lips, ultimately biting back that sob.
It was bad enough that I was being gently held by a young girl; making this ugly appearance of mine any more unsightly was unacceptable.
How much time passed like that?
“Ouch…. Don’t do it…. Don’t do iiit….”
The Saintess rubbed her cheek against my face and scattered a plea filled with earnest emotion. The usual reckless habit of pressing her lips against mine the moment our faces drew close had vanished. Instead, like carefully stitching up a torn rag doll, she pressed our bodies together, overlapped our hands, and tried to share her warmth with me. In that merciful figure, the image of the Holy Mother flickered.
I hurriedly buried my face in her embrace. I couldn’t show her my pathetic face, which looked ready to crumple into tears at any moment in front of that sacred light.
Even though sensation had long since returned to my legs, I still couldn’t execute the simple solution of standing up and remained trapped there.
Thump thump. Using the beautiful heartbeat in my ear as a lullaby, I quietly closed my eyes. Maybe because I had lived the past several years only thinking about being useful to others, the existence of another person’s skin and body temperature soothing me felt slightly awkward. Yet perhaps it was simply because having someone to lean on as my eyes slowly closed was comfortable and cozy.
“Sleep well…. Zzz….”
Forgetting everything, I was able to fall into a peaceful sleep. The role, responsibility, and mission given to me. The faults, stigmas, and sins engraved on my soul. Yes, at least for this moment, I could forget them all.
“I must be crazy…. Totally crazy….”
The whole way down the corridor, both my hands stayed planted on my face, refusing to move. Even this was a considerable compromise with reality. In my heart, I wanted to slam my head into the hardest wall nearby.
“No matter how exhausted I was from being chased by all sorts of things the entire day…. To fall asleep sprawled out in the audience chamber while held in the Saintess’s arms until sunrise…. There’s a limit to how reckless you can be….”
Strictly speaking, this wasn’t the first time I had slept and woken up in the audience chamber. But that time had been an accident—my mind had shut down against my will because it couldn’t endure the Saintess’s protection. Force majeure, in other words. Yesterday, however, there had been plenty of ways and opportunities to avoid it, yet I had willingly surrendered my body to the Saintess’s embrace.
“You worthless piece of shit. Perverted bastard. Trash. Disgusting degenerate. Disgrace to the clergy.”
Even after squatting down and endlessly hurling self-reproach at myself, the hatred I felt for my foolish choice yesterday refused to fade. Because I had willingly savored that ecstatic sensation—as if the guilt in my thoughts was melting away—while staying in the Saintess’s arms without showing any sign of resistance.
A twenty-nine-year-old middle-aged man who had sinisterly fallen asleep in the arms of a girl who had just turned sixteen. Could the world really let such a vile criminal roam free? I didn’t think so. The nun’s urgent summons was surely to deliver proper punishment for the ugly sin I had committed. Only now did I understand why the underling in that gangster movie I once saw had been so desperate to cut off his own finger after making a mistake.
“Let’s die…. Just die….”
Once I steeled my resolve, both my mind and steps felt lighter.
“Huu….”
With the heart of a prisoner entering the execution ground, I threw open the door to the reception room where the nun had called me.
Creak.
What appeared was—
“Sister?”
“O-oh, you’ve a-arrived…. G-Guardian Priest Lazis….”
The nun sat with both hands politely on her knees, trembling nonstop like a mouse before a cat. And right beside her, arm slung casually around the nun’s shoulder, was a very familiar figure glaring at me like she wanted to kill me.
“Hey. Why the hell are you only showing up now?”
“Uh… Apis? What are you doing here…?”
What the hell is this.