Will You Hold Me...? (3)

She had not been born a Saintess, but Adrian had grown up in this cathedral and the Moon Tower from her earliest years.

Raised with Berod's help, she had grown bit by bit under the care of the paladins and priests.

Perhaps because of that, the world Adrian knew was a small one. Information gleaned from books read aloud to her, and knowledge drawn up through her divine power—both amounted to precious little, so she had rarely been given the chance to encounter anything she had not already learned.

To be without sight meant mastering everything through her remaining senses. Hearing, smell, touch. Then, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all at once, a sensation against her palm made Adrian's body flinch.

It was harder than any texture she knew... as though something had been compressed and packed tight.

She felt a pulse moving in a steady rhythm, and with it a pleasant scent drifted up into her nose. Too faint to be perfume, yet so lovely she wanted to go on breathing it in.

For a moment Adrian, who had stretched out her hand as if spellbound, parted her lips faintly.

She remembered that Robert had caught her when something caught her foot and she stumbled. Then did that mean this thing her hand had come to rest upon... was Robert's body?

Only then did a faint thread of reason seep back into her head. The moment she understood—that what she had taken for a simply pleasant sensation was in fact Robert's, the body of a grown man—a chill came crawling up her spine.

"...Oh."

She tried to pull her hand away, but her body swayed and she had to set it back down. Heat rising from below began to scorch her cheeks. Clinging to her swimming senses, she lost whatever she had meant to say and could only open and close her lips again and again.

She had never felt anything like this, even with the paladins. In a way, you might call it nothing more than a difference of perspective. She had thought of the paladins not as men, but simply as people she was grateful to—whereas Robert she thought of as something else entirely. A man, truly. Perhaps that was why the mere feel of him against her palm was enough to shame her like this.

But Adrian could not think it through that deeply. The sensation at her fingertips was simply too intense, and for a moment she lost the composure she had always kept.

Her fidgeting fingers wrinkled Robert's clothes. All she had to do was stand up—yet the thought never came to her, and Adrian's cheeks flooded red.

"I-I'm sorry. I— that is. Please, just give me a moment."

"Take your time getting up. It's all right."

Robert had a fair guess as to why Adrian was reacting this way. The situation was hardly an ordinary one, and being thrown by something so sudden was only natural. Her reddened face was proof of it. The way she did not see the paladins as men, and all—perhaps this was the first time she had ever touched a man's body like this.

Robert was every bit as flustered himself, but he tried to calmly separate from Adrian. Carefully, and gently, so as not to startle her, he reached out and took hold of her arm.

Their tangled bodies slowly righted themselves together. The room where the Saintess had once lived was hardly spacious, which made it all the more an embarrassing scene.

The moment Adrian felt her balance slowly return, she hurriedly wiped the heat from her cheeks. What an unseemly display this is. In a situation like this, a Saintess ought to have kept a little more composure.

"Thank you. I was just so flustered."

"I'm only glad you didn't scream. Things could easily have been misread, and the priests might have gotten the wrong idea about me."

"I never screamed. And a situation worth misunderstanding... yes, I suppose it was."

Adrian answered, lightly cupping her own cheeks. She pressed a hand to her chest and took a deep breath, then turned quietly toward Robert, the heat now gone from her face.

The pounding of her heart seemed, for no reason at all, to ring loudly in her ears. Afraid he might hear it, she found herself parting her lips, recalling how Robert had fallen earlier.

"You're not hurt, are you? It looked as though you fell catching me."

"I'm fine. Now, let's get you up."

Suddenly she felt warmth in her hand, and realized the touch belonged to Robert. She always noticed this—his hand was far larger than her own. When he closed one hand around it, hers vanished entirely, small enough to be cradled whole inside that broad palm.

Were all men's hands like this? It would not have been so, before. But ever since meeting Robert, thoughts like these had a way of blooming unbidden. Probably, she thought, ever since she had seen his past.

What she had seen within that vivid afterimage was the relationship between Robert and Mirajen. Both of them were her friends, yet somehow she could not wipe away the uncomfortable feeling.

When Mirajen smiled, Robert would take her hand. Then press his lips to hers, whispering his love. It was the sort of romance that might have stepped out of the fairy tales Sir Berod used to read to her—yet facing it, her chest only grew tight and stifled.

Mirajen looked terribly happy. Whenever she was with Robert, she wore a smile Adrian had never seen on her before—and Robert smiled that same way.

Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding. After all, she had never seen Robert's face, never even touched it. But if Robert carried Mirajen's memories, then those were surely his own memories now.

In that colorless world, the man she saw was smiling at Mirajen. Sometimes promising love, sometimes shedding tears, sometimes smiling gently.

Adrian could not see Robert's expressions in reality. She had never been able to from the start—she could only read his feelings from his voice. And yet the man she met within those memories was smiling.

Every time she saw it, her heart grew complicated. Like a knotted, tangled skein of thread.

The only thing she could face directly was his interior. But even that, when she gazed upon it with the power god had granted her, held nothing but a hollow void. That was the extent of what Adrian could guess at.

"Is something weighing on your mind?"

As she sat down on the bed, Robert asked, his eyes on her ankle.

The Saintess's divine power could not heal herself. It was a blessing bestowed directly by god, and so it could be used only on others, never on her own flesh. However much grander a power than what paladins and priests could work upon their own bodies, in the end it remained a power that could not mend her own wounds.

Her ankle, twisted in the fall, had swollen slightly; each time she moved it, a dull ache throbbed through. But pain like this was familiar to Adrian. She fell often enough—she could bear this much easily.

The reason Robert's gaze stayed fixed on Adrian was a different one. The embarrassment had lasted only a moment; soon after, a shadow had settled over her face, and that was what troubled him.

What could she be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thinking, for the mood to shift so abruptly? For now, he had little to guess from.

At his question, Adrian let out a long, slow breath, then opened her mouth with her bright smile restored.

"It's nothing like a worry. Something just came to mind all of a sudden."

"If it's urgent business, I will take you there myself."

"No, it's nothing I must do this very moment. I can move now, so—shall we be on our way?"

Staying in this room makes my thoughts tangle. With that feeling she had spoken, and Robert took Adrian's hand once more.

The cathedral's interior was vast, yet the time spent explaining it slipped by astonishingly fast. As though she had blinked and opened her eyes again—dawn had arrived before she knew it, and Adrian let out a wry laugh.

All they had done was walk around together while she described the places she passed through every day. And yet she had never imagined time would vanish like this.

Robert had returned to his room, so Adrian, left alone, ought to have headed for the Moon Tower. But she did not. The path she walked now led somewhere she could manage on her own, even without anyone's help.

There was a place only the Saintess could enter and leave. A place no one could so much as approach unless chosen by god.

The moment she stepped over the silver line drawn across the floor, divine power began to drain out of her body. Without her, she supposed, one could enter only by wielding the power of a relic.

The power the relics held and her own power were exactly the same—and so this mystery-shrouded strength was the very root of Adrian herself.

The divine power she had gained at the price of her sight was the only key that could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠open this place. And so Adrian carried her steps onward, down into the cathedral's underground.

A chill cold bored into her. If Robert were here at a time like this, wouldn't he drape a cloak over my shoulders? It was a kindness she had known only two or three times at most, yet its absence felt, for no reason, immense.

Whenever the cold wind blew, she could see the faint light mirrored in her closed eyes scatter and fade. She was not afraid. Hadn't she come here often enough, whenever she wished to be alone with her thoughts?

One more step with her hand braced against the wall—and at last, feeling divine power flow back into her body, Adrian brought her steps to a halt.

"So this is the place."

She reached out ahead of her, and her fingers found the great rosary hanging on the wall. This, too, was a kind of relic. A relic that only the Saintess could wield.

The reason she had come here today. To put it simply, it concerned a man she had recently come to know.

"...Robert."

It had been less than half a year since they met. They had met at the Imperial Palace, met in the streets. After that, all they had shared was a handful of exchanges, voices passed back and forth.

Perhaps the meeting at the Moon Tower had been their longest. From the very beginning, she had thought him a little strange—because the heart she had glimpsed by chance was utterly empty, and she had come face to face with a void that could feel no emotion at all.

Her interest was stirred. When they met again, his manner toward her was unchanged. That gentle tone—just hearing that voice, she might well have taken him for the warmest of men.

But his heart remained hollow. However many times she looked, it was the same. He seemed like someone trying to die then and there, someone about to vanish before her eyes, and it left her anxious.

So she had left him with a promise to meet again—and then he had all but died in the North, hadn't he?

Adrian gave a small laugh, then exhaled a heavy breath. When she had first heard that news, she could not help but be shaken. A man she had exchanged words with only days before was dying—and beneath the Grand Duchess's voice as it pressed quietly down upon her, she had even begun to grow frantic herself.

What lay within the Grand Duchess's level voice was rage. It was, if anything, more chilling than open fury—yet Adrian felt she understood that heart, dimly. If someone who unsettled her even while at her side were hurt like that, she would have acted just as the Grand Duchess had.

But she had not been able to step forward. Because of the name Saintess. If she were to vanish suddenly from the Moon Tower, confusion might follow—recalling Sir Berod's face as he earnestly pleaded with her to stay, she had slowly sunk to her knees on the floor.

A cold touch met her knees. Hard and rough. With her hands clasped around the rosary hanging at her neck, she lifted her head toward the wall.

An emotion called regret had been born. If only she were not the Saintess, she could have gone to the North. She could have healed him herself, then watched over him for however long it took, free of that gnawing dread.

What those feelings had created was something subtle toward the man called Robert. That emotion had bloomed as she turned Robert's memories over in her mind.

Watching Mirajen smile at Robert. Watching Robert die wretchedly at his own sister's hands. Standing alone in the empty northern snowfield, watching Robert clutch a masterless sword—that was where the feeling had taken root.

Woooom—

The rosary on the wall resonated with Adrian's divine power, and pure white light welled up from her clasped hands. She did not know the name of this emotion that had grown within her. That was why she had come here. To dig into the fragments of memory Robert had shown her—memories of which she had only ever glimpsed scattered, broken scenes.

"If I could see that... then surely I could understand your heart, even a little."

Within Robert's interior, emotions were blooming once more. In place of the hollow void that had always stood empty, there was now something unmistakable—an emotion tilting its head, making itself known.

Remembering how he had once brushed it aside with some excuse, Adrian smiled faintly.

Sadness. Loneliness. Desolation. She wanted to understand, even a little, that interior so cold and dark, where only negative emotions ever bloomed.

What will I be able to see within your memories?

In the cathedral's underground, Adrian slowly surrendered herself to the blossoming divine power. All to face the memories that Robert Taylor held.