A Night with the Rampaging Saintess
A Night with the Rampaging Saintess
Mountains are mountains, water is water.
A magical mantra to rein in a chaotic mind.
But the mental contamination I was experiencing now couldn't be dispelled by something like that.
"Would you like to come in too, Rosaria?"
The sound of splashing water, then her voice echoing like a bell. The Saintess was in Rosaria's private bathroom right next to me. I was desperately trying to cultivate my inner peace while ignoring the images that kept forcing their way into my mind.
'I will not entertain any impure thoughts, Lord God.'
I really didn't want to go to hell. I swore on the two balls I no longer had that I would never, ever commit such blasphemy against the Saintess. Even if You were testing me, trying to drag this wretched soul down to hell, I would overcome it and make it to heaven.
I prayed earnestly in this vein, battling the demons trying to dominate my mind.
"...I'm fine. I've already washed up."
And so, I deliberately ignored the Saintess's dangerous joke and replied as seriously as I could manage.
"That's a shame. Then, next time, let's definitely do it together."
I sincerely hoped that next time would never come. Because I didn't want to die from a massive hemorrhage or a sudden heart attack. Then again, now that I think about it, even if I did die, she'd probably just use her divine power to bring me back to life.
If that day ever came, wouldn't I become the first person in world history recorded in scripture as having died and resurrected about twelve times in a single short span?
It felt like a shame even greater than winning a Darwin Award. If I were to be recorded in history, I wanted it to be as a great person who led civilization forward, not as some weirdo who died twelve times while taking a bath and kept getting brought back to life.
'...Prime numbers. Let's count prime numbers.'
I took courage from a certain groom who once counted the lonely prime numbers and diligently counted them myself, pushing back the flesh-colored fantasies that tried to surface as much as possible to delay my trip to hell.
By the time I had fervently counted lonely numbers up to about 2031, the Saintess finished her bath. She came out after changing into the pajamas Rosaria usually wore.
Perhaps because I was used to seeing her in her neat monastic habit, the destructive power of the Saintess in a fluttering, light negligee increased by approximately a factor of 2.5.
"How do I look, Rosaria? Does it suit me?"
She gracefully lifted the hem of her skirt as if dancing, spinning around softly once as she asked.
I felt as though I was witnessing the most beautiful performance art right before my eyes. So much so that I couldn't describe the scene without stringing together long adjectives expressing positivity and beauty.
Without realizing it, I was staring at the Saintess, utterly spellbound.
"I feel like Rosaria is embracing me."
The Saintess smiled happily. Soon, she began smelling the collar and sleeves of the clothes, searching for any lingering traces of Rosaria's scent.
"D-Don't do that!"
In an instant, my soul, which had briefly left my body, came crashing back through the window. I was embarrassed and mortified, wanting her to stop.
"If you say so, I'll stop."
Surprisingly, the Saintess complied obediently. But the sly smile curling her lips hinted at other impure intentions. After she finished speaking, she approached me naturally. Before I knew it, she had reached the edge of the bed where I was sitting and simply sat down.
"If clothes won't do, I'll just have to fill myself with the real thing."
She suddenly ambushed me with a hug. A different scent from usual tickled the tip of Rosaria's nose. It was the gentle fragrance of soap and the warm scent of flushed skin. It was an unfamiliar sensation.
And that made it even harder to keep my wits about me.
The slight moistness of her skin, the texture of her hair, the strangeness of smelling the familiar soap on someone else's skin, and the fact that this person was the lover who had just French-kissed me moments before—an encounter I had never experienced before.
This room was now filled with nothing but unfamiliar sensations.
"What could you possibly be thinking about to get this heated?"
The Saintess teased Rosaria, whose face had turned red all the way to her ears. Soon, she playfully nibbled gently on Rosaria's earlobe, now as red as a strawberry. I felt a shiver run down my spine.
"Hgh—...!"
I let out an involuntary moan.
"...You're trying to seduce me right now, aren't you?"
The action seemed to have flipped a switch in the Saintess. She licked her lips, her face increasingly contorting with love. Then, she started touching places she normally didn't.
The first was the other earlobe she hadn't bitten.
"Hahh... ngh..."
The tickling was hard to bear. But regrettably, that merciful touch was only the beginning.
She brushed my hair back behind my ear. The fleeting sensation of her fingers grazing my skin seemed to spread across my entire scalp.
Then, her fingers glided along my jawline toward my cheek. My body started trembling at the strange ticklish sensation, as if being touched by a feather.
Soon, her fingers brushed my upper lip before descending to my lower lip. Like Pavlov's dog reacting to a bell, Rosaria's memories began responding to the feel of the Saintess's skin touching my mouth.
The memory of our kiss flashed back in an instant. My heart began pounding like crazy, pumping blood through my system at an alarming rate.
"Hah... hah..."
Breathing became difficult. And so, my elongated exhale touched the Saintess's fingers. As soon as my breath brushed against her skin, her fingers trembled faintly.
"C... Canaria?"
Canaria didn't answer.
Without a word, she merely slid the finger that had been slightly warmed by Rosaria's breath from the corner of my lips down to my chin. Then, she applied a little force and turned Rosaria's head toward her.
"...Rosaria. Should we just do it today?"
It was the direct eye contact I had been trying so hard to avoid. Both of our faces, flushed with shared embarrassment, bloomed with an inviting blush.
Rosaria was afraid.
Was I going to be devoured by Canaria like this?
And Canaria was also afraid.
That she wouldn't be able to control herself and would pounce on the girl.
"...I think it's still too early."
I managed to scrape together my remaining reason and utter a single line.
"...Then, Rosaria, when would be a good time for you?"
Canaria stroked the inside of Rosaria's lower lip with her thumb and then used that now slightly moistened finger to gently caress Rosaria's cheek.
My cheek was scorching hot. The sensation was so gentle yet so intense that I nearly let out another moan. I suppressed it as best I could, but I couldn't stop my body from trembling.
"W-Well... at any rate... later..."
Right now, I didn't have enough sanity left to decide on a precise timeline. No, even if I'd been perfectly sane, how could I decide such a thing? The person in question was the Saintess. She wasn't a being you could make that kind of promise with.
"...That wasn't the kind of answer I wanted."
And Canaria knew it too. She knew it. Yes, she knew it all too well. But even knowing it, holding back was nearly impossible. Just as the first humans couldn't resist temptation and ate the fruit of good and evil, Canaria found it hard to resist the Rosaria in front of her.
"...So please, decide something concrete."
Right now, she just needed a trigger to stop herself immediately. Canaria was just trying, somewhat forcibly, to turn those words into a binding vow to restrain her rampaging self.
And Rosaria, filled with survival instinct, miraculously deciphered that need from Canaria's strangely twisted expression. I realized that the important thing wasn't the specific timing, but the milestone itself.
And so, with trembling lips, stammering, I instinctively pushed back against Canaria, who was clinging to me like a magnet, braved my shame, and barely opened my mouth so as not to become a sinner overcome by lust.
"W-Well... I mean... i-it would be... proper to... do it after we're... married... right?"
I felt like a boiling kettle. I was so embarrassed I had the illusion that steam might actually burst out of my head. Rosaria was burning up to the point she felt she might turn into the sun if this went on any longer.
"As expected... that's how it should be, right?"
Canaria slowly began to come back to herself. She successfully used the enormous restraint of a saint—far beyond that of an ordinary person—to forge a binding chain out of Rosaria's previous words and bring herself to a halt.
Canaria returned to being the Saintess.
"...Then, I'll postpone the fire-play for later."
She displayed such control that I wondered if she might actually have two separate personalities. In an instant, she drew a clear line.
"Instead, please tell me how Rosaria has been while I was away. I'll be satisfied with just that for tonight."
Rosaria also began to cool down.
Because my heart, which had been racing at 180 beats per minute, had now dropped to about 120. Of course, that was still fast, but it was a huge improvement. I finally reclaimed the rationality and intelligence I thought had vanished.
And it was the same for the Saintess.
Isn't there a saying that the best defense is a good offense? She too had been feeling a heart-bursting embarrassment at some point. An immoral, passionate feeling mixed with desire had dominated her mind.
But the more she felt that way, the more aggressively and proactively she had acted.
She hadn't wanted to show her weak side,
so she had forcibly bared her fangs.
It was the sensation of having stood at the edge of a cliff together and barely made it back. We somehow pushed away the floating, euphoric feeling of being on a cloud and returned to the ground, taking hold of stability.
"...I really lived without much incident, so I'm not sure what to say."
In truth, the Saintess knew this already. She had already seen and heard through her eyes and ears. She simply wanted to hear it directly from Rosaria's lips. Because she hadn't known the sorrows and joys Rosaria might have felt.
She wanted to share those emotions together by watching my expressions.
"Tell me softly, as if you were singing a lullaby."
The Saintess shifted her position to lie down right next to Rosaria.
"Conveniently, I also have the perfect pillow to hug while I sleep."
And then she immediately wrapped her arms around Rosaria's waist.
"...I'll try my best."
I felt a soft sensation on my arm. But I deliberately ignored it and began recounting what had happened right after the Saintess had departed for the battlefield. Even though the Saintess already knew it all, she listened intently to my story.
The first thing I started with was, of course, Rosaria's venture into the yard (feat. Isabella).
*
After that, until dawn broke, Rosaria couldn't fall asleep. With the Saintess hugging my waist tightly and refusing to let go, I was too tense to drift off.
Unlike the Saintess, who was breathing softly in a deep sleep, her breath and the beat of her heart against my back echoed inside my head, and I lay awake with my eyes open throughout the night.
And in the meantime, I was left alone with my thoughts.
'How am I supposed to live from now on?'
Wouldn't the moment to decide have to come at some point? Whether to live as Rosaria, or to live as my old self. But I knew nothing about Rosaria's past.
'...If I ask her, will she answer?'
Because of the time we had spent together and my efforts to find out, I had come to learn quite a few things compared to the beginning.
One of those things was that Rosaria had lost her memories due to some kind of incident.
In other words, the Saintess had known this from the start, and even though I was acting like a different person, she continued to endlessly love this person called Rosaria.
'......I don't know.'
It was a tragedy. The fact that she kept on loving me endlessly even though the person she loved had become someone different from the one she knew. On top of that, that person might be in a state where she could never return.
Weren't I the one who had ruined their love?
Whether I intended it or not.
'...I don't know anything.'
Neither who I should live as,
nor what I should do with my life going forward.
Was it because the night was deep that I was thinking such thoughts? Or was it because my cowardly conscience had finally reached its limit? Why was I such a foolish person, only looking into the mirror that held my reflection after being driven to the edge of an inescapable cliff?
Perhaps I should have thought about this much sooner,
and I hated how selfish I was to only be doing it now.
My eyes began to heat up.
The cause was probably guilt and a sense of shame.
Tears hotter than a ball of fire began streaming down the bridge of my nose. Deep and gloomy emotions started blooming from within my chest, so intensely that they cast the immense happiness I had felt just moments ago into insignificance.
"...I'm sorry."
I was just scared.
I lacked the courage to apologize to her directly, face to face.
And so, cowardly, I was only speaking these words with my back turned.
"......I'm really, truly sorry."
And so I began to cry silently. But I couldn't stop my body from trembling. My shoulders shook slightly, and ragged breaths inevitably escaped me.
"......Don't cry, Rosaria."
Just then, I heard the Saintess's worried voice.
In that instant, I was sure she had woken up. But luckily, she was still asleep, just talking in her dreams. Did it just happen that the Rosaria in her dream was crying too?
It was a dreadful story.
Rosaria couldn't even laugh in her dreams.
And disgustingly,
I felt relief at that fact.
Relief that the Saintess hadn't seen me in this state.
'...I'll be able to ask her someday, right?'
What kind of person the original Rosaria was. The story of the real Rosaria that the Saintess knew. I was sure it would be painful and hard for her to recall, but someday, I wanted to hear that story I needed to know too.
Even so, I still just made the excuse to myself that it wasn't the time yet.