The End of Happiness
The End of Happiness
And so, five years passed after Canaria came to this place. Later, she would recall them as the happiest years of her life. After all, she had spent every moment of them at Rosaria's side, living together with her. It was a time of learning what she did not know and correcting what she had wrongly understood.
Over those five years, Canaria had become a part of this place.
The cursed child who, when she first arrived, had resolved to die alone was now a student of theology, on the path to becoming a nun who would save little lambs.
Of course, it was not that faith had blossomed within her. It was simply that Rosaria had declared she would become a nun, and Canaria, wishing to remain at her side, had set her own feet upon the same dream.
She was simply happy with every minute, every second of this moment.
"It's a painting. An absolute painting."
Just then, someone directed a voice of admiration toward Rosaria and Canaria, who had been praying together.
"...Isabella, during prayer, shut—... I told you to be quiet."
The culprit was Isabella, wearing an apron smeared with paint and tilting a monocle she had bought for decoration, a smile on her face.
"Ahh, you're so cold, Canaria. Can't you give me even half of the warmth you give Rosaria? If you keep up this discriminatory coldness toward just me, this genius of fine art is not going to paint you in a flattering light for a work destined for the history books, you know? So if you want even half of that pretty face preserved for posterity, apologize to the Grand Artist Isabella!"
It was not only Canaria who had changed over the five years.
Isabella, who had always possessed a talent for painting and had received offers from all over, had ultimately become the young apprentice of Mikel—a painter counted among the very best in this world—and was assisting him in painting sacred works.
Then, once this grand undertaking that had stretched across several years was finished, she was set to leave the Holy Kingdom for the city, where she would make her talent bloom under Mikel's tutelage.
"...What Grand Artist, when you don't even have a single solo work."
"I'll have one soon, you know? So what, are nuns allowed to swear now?"
Isabella and Canaria, bickering back and forth.
"...Stop it, Isabella, Canaria."
And it was always Rosaria's role to stop the two of them.
"...Isabella interrupted first."
"...Canaria said something mean first."
They blamed each other and immediately tucked their tails between their legs.
Just as Isabella and Canaria had changed, so too had Rosaria.
At the age of ten, an aptitude test had revealed an extraordinarily high affinity for holy power, and from then on, she had lived diligently training her body and spirit to become a nun.
Moreover, her innate nature possessed a vessel suited to that calling, and Rosaria had, before anyone knew it, become a girl who carried herself with a mature grace.
"When friends fight, my heart aches. So please, don't fight, and get along well with each other. First, Canaria, as a nun, you should apologize."
Canaria bowed her head completely. The fact that she had to apologize to Isabella wounded her pride, but she could not disobey Rosaria's words, so she opened her mouth with great difficulty.
"...S...so..."
"Hm? I can't quite hear you?"
Isabella teased Canaria, whose words would not easily leave her lips.
"...Isabella, don't do that."
"Yes, I'll be quiet."
Rosaria restrained her. Isabella immediately bowed her head in apology.
"...I'm sorry, Isabella."
Canaria bit her lip as she apologized.
"...You should do it too, Isabella."
"Sorry, Canaria."
Rosaria extinguished the fire at once. The three had spent an unusually long time together, so even when they bickered, they made up right away.
"She was so cute when she was little, though. Where did little kitten Canaria go, leaving only this wildcat Canaria behind? The Lord God is cruel indeed... to shatter the character of the only angel in this world beautiful enough to rival Rosaria!"
Of course, it was mostly Isabella who did the teasing.
"...Rosaria, would you please tell me it's all right to hit Isabella just once?"
Canaria clenched a fist charged with mana. The moment Isabella saw that, she groveled with her head bowed, saying, "It was a joke, Lady Canaria!" and scratched the back of her head with a laugh as she brushed it off.
"...It's nice to see you two getting along."
That the two of them stayed so close was, in truth, something of a miracle. Canaria had always wanted to remain at Rosaria's side, and Isabella wanted to play with her friend Rosaria, but Canaria clung to her like a leech, so they had fought often in their childhood.
"...I'm not close with Isabella."
"As if I could ever be close with Canaria?"
Unsurprisingly, they answered at nearly the same moment.
"...Then please, just try to get along."
So saying, Rosaria stepped between the two of them.
"We're the only friends here who are the same age. And besides, Isabella, you're leaving for the outside world in three months. So, before you go, even just a little, make more memories with us."
Rosaria understood. The way Isabella needled them was, in her own way, an expression of affection. And the way Canaria behaved was, in her own way, an expression of affection as well.
In the first place, the reason Isabella could still be here at all was because the cathedral mural work Mikel was painting had stretched on so long. Had she been scouted by anyone other than Mikel, Isabella would have already left the Holy Kingdom.
Even acting the way they did, they were both grateful that the other was still here in the Holy Kingdom. No matter what anyone said, Rosaria, Canaria, and Isabella were the three musketeers—the closest of friends to one another in this place.
"...I'll make sure of it, Rosaria. Still, even when I go outside, I'll come back here often. Master Mikel said he'd give me plenty of vacation time. Said he understands that feeling because he gets terribly homesick himself. I'll bring delicious desserts every time I come, so look forward to it!"
The moment those words ended, Isabella glanced at her watch, gave a start, and began scurrying off in earnest.
It was always like this.
A precious time where the three of them gathered, played noisily, fought, Rosaria mediated; sometimes they laughed, sometimes cried together, and sometimes grew angry together.
It had been an unsparingly happy five years.
That happiness, the first she had ever known, was so dear that Canaria tucked it away into a box inside her heart—an utterly precious stretch of time. And it was a lifeline of a time, one that, even in the tragedy that would arrive not long after, kept her from losing her mind, kept her clinging to her sanity.
The tragedy came not long after Isabella left this place.
It began on the day Rosaria was chosen as the Saintess.
*
Happiness vanished in an instant.
"A servant of God comes to see the Lady Saintess."
The moment the Pope personally arrived here, she felt it viscerally.
-...We'll be together for the rest of our lives.
They had promised it together last winter. Rosaria, Canaria, and Isabella—that they would be together no matter what. That even if they were in different places, they would someday live together. They had linked pinky fingers and made that promise.
-...Rosaria.
It was when Isabella had stepped away for a moment. Canaria had made one more promise with Rosaria.
-...I will be with you, Rosaria, whenever and wherever. If you leave the Holy Kingdom, I'll leave with you. If you stay in the Holy Kingdom, I'll stay with you. If you become a nun and enter a convent, I'll hold that same dream and keep staying at your side. I'll keep clinging to your side so that you'll never be in anguish, Rosaria.
That was the day Rosaria had said she was going to enter the convent. Since they might not see each other once she went in, she had called her closest friends, Isabella and Canaria, as a sort of farewell.
-...Thank you, Canaria. I want to be with you forever too, Canaria. You'll promise me, won't you?
-Of course. From the day you reached out your hand to me, Rosaria, I have belonged to you. When you wake, I'll be the first face to greet you. I'll cling to your side without giving you a single moment to feel lonely. So don't worry too much, Rosaria.
That was how they had promised to spend their whole lives together. It was a day when both Canaria's and Rosaria's cheeks had flushed bright red.
"...I am not such a person."
That terrible curse which had ruined Canaria's life had, cruelly, come calling at her happiest moment.
"No. You are indeed the Saintess. Lady Rosaria."
She would be alive, and yet they would not be allowed to meet. For to stand at the Saintess's side, effort and luck alone were not enough. Only the direct descendants of the Saint—the faithful of the holy bone lineage, and among them, only those who had attained the rank of Cardinal—could remain beside the Saintess.
From that moment, Canaria faced a wall she could never overcome.
Of course, it might have been a mercy if it had ended there.
"...And I have come to seize a filthy demon."
At the same moment, the Holy Knight Order swung golden suppression rods down upon Canaria. In an instant, Canaria was slammed to the floor, pinned down so forcefully that even moving or drawing breath became agonizing.
"Canaria is not such a person!"
Rosaria cried out in alarm. Tragically, Canaria, in the midst of being subdued, was in such pain that she could not even produce a sound. She could barely hold onto consciousness under the suppression technique that crushed her airway and pressed down upon her lungs.
"No, she is indeed a demon, Lady Saintess."
The Pope's eyes shifted to something lurid. And Canaria knew that look all too well. It was the Pope, looking down at her with those contemptuous eyes she had never once felt since coming here—but which she had endured her entire life while living outside.
"I shall explain everything in due course, shortly."
But those words did not reach Rosaria as she was now. The sight of Canaria—one of her irreplaceable friends—pinned down in agony, and that same Canaria being called a demon, had snapped the thread of Rosaria's reason.
It was the sight of the Saint's divine authority beginning to run wild. At that spectacle, everyone faltered, terrified of that destructive power that might descend upon them at any moment.
"...Restrain her."
The Pope snapped his fingers. At the same time, a man in a black cloak placed something upon the rampaging Rosaria's head.
A cursed relic that seals the Saint, the Crown of Thorns.
That cursed relic, used to kill the First Saint and widely believed to have been discarded, was now being forced onto Rosaria's head.
At the same moment, Rosaria writhed in terrible agony.
"Ro...Rosa...ria."
I wanted to scream hard enough to tear the sky apart. Right then and there, I wanted to break free of this damned restraint and help the suffering Rosaria. But she couldn't do anything.
All she could do was let out a ragged breath. Far from breaking free of the restraint, all that happened was her consciousness slowly fading away.
Watching Rosaria in pain was so agonizing I wanted to close my eyes. But I felt that if I did, I might never be able to capture her image again. In the end, until she fainted with her eyes open, Canaria merely wept tears of blood as she watched the suffering Rosaria.
And for the first time in a long while, she cursed her own fate.
This curse of misfortune that extended even to her beloved Rosaria.
*
The Pope of the Holy Kingdom thought.
'We can no longer hold back other nations with the Saint alone.'
In truth, the Holy Kingdom was maintained by a deformed structure. It used the power of the Saint, the reincarnation of God, as its weapon and asset, competing with other nations, expanding its size, and engaging in psychological and diplomatic warfare.
But even the Saint was not omnipotent.
Kings and Heroes—those two types of beings—were variables that even the Saint could not easily handle. And as the ambiguous era of peace dragged on, their numbers grew exponentially.
And of course it did. A king's child becomes a king, and that child bears more children. It was the same for heroes. Unfortunately, because great wars worthy of history books were infrequent in this ambiguous era of peace, their numbers were saturated.
Eventually, even though the Holy Kingdom had the Saint,
it was in a situation where it was repeatedly threatened.
Therefore, they had to find a way to break the deadlock.
Then, five years ago, he heard that a child bearing the mark of a demon had arrived at an orphanage.
Normally he would have let it pass, but a strange intuition filled the Pope's mind. He secretly dispatched people to investigate her. Using the investigation as a pretext, he had priests draw her blood, and secretly swapped the cross she used or the scripture she read to track the traces.
Sometime later, the Pope discovered that she was a newly born 73rd demon, unrecorded in the scriptures.
Thinking back on it now, wasn't it strange?
How on earth did that young child survive such harsh, torture-like abuse? It wasn't something that could be done simply by having strong willpower or good stamina. Canaria had suffered abuse that would have killed an ordinary child long ago.
But she was no ordinary child.
She wasn't just an unlucky child with the mark of an ill omen. She was merely a small demon truly born with that curse, that was all.
That curse of misfortune had led her to the Holy Kingdom.
Would she have been less miserable if she had never tasted happiness?
Or is living without knowing happiness itself a misfortune?
It was impossible to say for certain.
But what was certain was that Canaria was a demon.
And the Authority of Demons works against Heroes and Kings.
A demon, a being that could only be killed by a Saint or a chosen Hero.
And this place was the Holy Kingdom, where the Saint existed.
Various bits of information, messy and unconnected like a sketch, began to gather in the Pope's mind.
The Pope's organized mind map, drawn out in this way, produced a result that could rightly be called blasphemy.
Create the King of Demons, a Demon King.
Then, leash it and turn it into a hunting dog. The man called the Pope had devised a plan to create a Demon King within the Saint's own nation.
Fortunately, there was no need to worry about the Demon King running wild. Already, the Holy Kingdom possessed many leashes to bind the Saint, and the girl who was to become the Saint's vessel was on inseparable terms with that demon.
By merely binding the Saint, they could bind the Demon King as well. Furthermore, as the times changed and the Holy Kingdom's technology advanced, he realized it might just be possible to create an artificial Demon King using the materials underground.
...It took a long time to complete the plan and prepare for its execution.
And today was the day to execute that plan.
It was the day Canaria and Rosaria's tragedy began.
*
It was a dark, damp underground cell. Beneath the prison for unrepentant sinners lay a secret room created by the Holy Kingdom's founder, the 2nd Saint, Solomon. Commonly known as the Tomb of Demons.
It was a charnel house for demons, where the vengeful spirits of the 72 demons he had captured with the Hero were sealed.
"...Rosaria!"
There, Canaria regained her senses, calling out Rosaria's name. Of course, Rosaria wasn't there. Only after confirming that fact did Canaria check her own body. Both arms were bound to an old cross.
Iron shackles bound even her legs, her clothes had at some point become a prisoner's uniform, and the chains binding her were sacred silver chains inscribed with scripture verses, used to bind heretics.
Canaria calmly assessed the situation. Since yelling for help showed no signs of improving things, she tried moving her body around, wondering if she might loosen the restraints.
'...They've bound me tightly.'
Only the sound of clashing metal rang out, and she felt no sensation of it smoothly unravelling. Then, in a spirit of resignation, she stared blankly at the place she was trapped in.
'...Demons?'
Having studied while preparing to be a nun, she recognized the ominous-looking stone statues scattered before her eyes. They were statues modeled after the 72 demons captured by King Solomon.
'...It seems it'll be hard to keep our promise, Rosaria.'
No matter how she thought about it, she couldn't envision a way to escape this place. As she thought that, tears began to stream from Canaria's eyes. They were tears shed at the realization that she was indeed a cursed child.
That curse had turned Rosaria into that state.
That curse had locked her away here.
And it was because of that curse that she knew happiness, so these tears flowed from the agony born of that very knowledge.
'...I wonder if Isabella is alright.'
Damn it all, even the face of that irritating Isabella began to surface. At the same time, the faces of everyone she remembered flashed by. Isabella's twin siblings, Ian and Ivan, the orphanage children whose names she merely knew, even the novice nuns whose faces she only faintly recalled.
But even if all of them disappeared, the one who remained until the very end was, as expected.
"...Rosaria."
It was Rosaria, her love and her everything.
"...I'm sorry."
She knew it was an apology that would never be heard. But if she didn't voice it, she felt as if her heart would tear apart and she would die.
"...Truly, I'm sorry. Because of me... Again, I..."
Tears continued to fall. They were the first truly primal tears she had shed, overcome by emotion, since childhood. It was while she was continuously offering these unheard apologies to Rosaria.
The door of the Tomb of Demons opened. The one who revealed himself was the Pope, the mastermind behind all of this. Entering alongside him was the Commander of the Holy Knights, and behind them followed the Inquisitors.
'...I'll go on ahead, Rosaria.'
She was terribly sorry for breaking the promise. In that case, she intended to offer even this wretched life and spend an eternity atoning in hell. Without hesitation, she tried to bite her tongue and end her life.
"...A precious vessel, dead, is of no use."
As he spoke, the Pope healed Canaria with holy power.
'...I can't even die as I please.'
It was a disaster. And at the same time, she wondered what was about to happen.
"Bring out Andromalius."
The Pope spoke the name of the 72nd demon. The Inquisitors held out the essence containing that ominous ill omen, the demon called the Count of Justice, before the Pope.
Canaria did not want to swallow that horrific essence, which began to emit black smoke. But even as she resisted keeping her mouth shut, the Pope pressed down on her jaw, forcing her mouth open and making her swallow the essence.
It tasted more disgusting than swallowing vomit.
She wanted to spit it out, but the Pope covered Canaria's mouth, forcing her to swallow.
And the moment she swallowed, a level of pain she had never experienced in her life began to spread through Canaria's body. As a pain like her entire body was on fire consumed her, Canaria screamed.
"My ears hurt."
At the Pope's single remark, the Inquisitors moved with practiced precision and gagged Canaria's mouth.
"Holy Knight Commander, prepare yourself."
His role, called in as a contingency,
was the summary execution of Canaria should she run wild.
Of course, Canaria did not die that day.
But human experimentation worse than death began.
On the first day, Canaria's black hair became slightly lighter.
...And she still had to swallow 71 more demons.
"...I'll endure it, somehow."
Canaria could barely hold onto her consciousness. At the edge of her senses, the name she called out was, unsurprisingly, Rosaria.
"...Rosaria. We promised to stay by each other's side, didn't we?"
That moment she could never forget. Murmuring the meaning of the promise Rosaria had taught her on the day she reached out her hand and gave her a name, she created a reason to endure the present.
"...Because a promise is... a word you must keep, no matter what."
And that statement became a self-imposed, forced binding upon Canaria.
It became a reason she must not die, a cruel binding that forced Canaria to keep breathing.