Three Fools
Three Fools
Isabella, the girl who lost her first love the very moment it began.
That must have been a shock as devastating as the world crumbling apart.
But now, her world was shattering all over again.
'...She's eating that cake and enjoying it?'
That chaos—the kind of chaos not even her self-proclaimed most loyal retainer could stomach.
The Saintess and the Hero right before her eyes were eating it with pleasure.
A match made in heaven—truly, there was no other way to describe it.
That disposition that canceled out even their one and only flaw.
The final piece of a broken puzzle had just clicked into place.
An absurd, innate compatibility—one that could even love the parts no one else could ever love.
She was shocked by it.
And then she felt the wall.
She was still so far from being a true loyal retainer.
Thinking this, Isabella struggled to eat the chaos.
But in truth, that was a misunderstanding on Isabella's part.
As for Canaria, she had always been like this.
She had lived her entire life without any illusions about food,
and had spent the very time when her palate should have been developing locked underground, tortured, and forced to swallow demons.
Her tongue's ability to register disgust had been so thoroughly destroyed that she could eat anything without concern, as long as it wasn't outright rotting slop or moldy, putrid blood.
A homemade cake from Rosaria qualified as delicious.
And Zeke's deficiency was an acquired one.
Those born as Heroes had all,
without exception, lived harsh lives following that tradition.
They spent their childhoods in brutal, unforgiving wilderness—then, to prove their strength, were thrown into trials and battlefields. Before reaching adulthood, Zeke had spent his life chewing on trash-tier combat rations, weeds and insects from the hills behind, raw, uncooked meat, and food in varying stages of decay.
So no matter how bizarre the combination, Rosaria's homemade cake was, at the very least, not rotten.
It hadn't been treated with weird-tasting preservatives, and above all, it had actually been cooked, so eating it posed no real problem.
Thus, both of them could eat the cake without the slightest issue.
But very few people in the world knew that.
And the people in this manor knew it even less.
So everyone regarded Zeke and Canaria—both eating that horrifying chaos as if it were nothing—with a strange sense of awe.
Amidst it all, Rosaria alone was picking at her own creation while trying her best to hide her discomfort.
'...Why exactly is Zeke here?'
Rosaria spoke through her granted divine power.
'...I didn't want to bring him either. But when he realized you'd recovered your memories, he became a nuisance, so I brought him along thinking he could deal with it himself. If his presence makes you uncomfortable, I'll send him away immediately. I do have that much power, after all.'
The moment she heard those words, Rosaria understood Zeke's motives.
He had come to apologize.
To apologize for the atrocities he had committed before she lost her memories.
Now that her memories had returned, he had cast everything else aside to do so.
He was a fool.
But that was exactly why he had been chosen as the Hero, she supposed.
And because he was a fool, he had simply followed orders.
And then piled sin upon sin to cover it all up.
A strange sense of sympathy welled up at the thought.
'...I'll be done quickly. Please wait just a moment.'
Of course, the bitterness hadn't vanished.
Still, she would hear him out for now.
Rosaria still didn't know what the world had been like after her death. To understand what impact that empty year-long gap had caused—what it had changed—she needed this conversation.
'...Jik Seikrid.'
She addressed him through divine power.
'Please answer by tapping the table with your finger.'
Once for yes, twice for no.
'...Did you come here to apologize to me?'
Once—Zeke tapped the table.
'...Did you come because Canaria forced you to?'
This time it was twice.
'...So it was of your own volition?'
One tap.
'...You really are a fool.'
Once again.
He did not deny those words.
Because Zeke himself thought so too.
But the deed was already done. He hadn't even known today was the Saintess's birthday when he set out, and Zeke now deeply regretted the past. Yet he had sworn never to flee,
so he had come here to restore the severed oath of his ring finger from that day.
"...Excuse me for a moment."
Rosaria said this as she hastily vacated her seat.
Afterward, Zeke announced that he had an urgent message to deliver and, claiming it would be improper to do so here, stepped outside as well.
'...No matter how I look at this, it's that, isn't it?'
At a glance, it was suspicious.
But everyone was pretending not to notice.
And under normal circumstances, she too should have done the same.
Yet somehow, it was hard to hold back.
She was dying to know what exactly the relationship between the two of them was.
It seemed her head had already gone completely mad.
They said love turned everyone into a fool.
Her sluggish brain and burning cheeks proved it. Rational judgment had genuinely become difficult.
"I— I'm suddenly feeling a little lightheaded, so I'll go get some fresh air!"
Isabella complained of a headache.
But it was a headache with a fair amount of plausibility.
Isabella had been diligently eating Rosaria's special cake. Everyone seemed to accept that the dizziness and nausea were the aftereffects of eating so much of something that could make you sick from a single bite—and so the mood in the room was one of understanding.
I was lucky, she thought as she stepped outside.
Her racing heart was unfamiliar.
She dismissed it as simply because she was running.
The heat in her face was unfamiliar too.
She dismissed it as a fever from coming down with a cold.
Isabella subjected herself to an endless cycle of self-suggestion.
And yet the blazing heat refused to subside.
Winter had already nearly blanketed the world outside.
But Isabella felt hotter than summer.
*
In the back of the garden, Rosaria and Zeke stood together.
It was a scene out of a painting,
but the reality was not nearly so beautiful.
"...A child of sinners begs the honor of meeting Your Holiness, the Saintess."
For this was the moment he humbly pleaded for her to forgive his sins.
Rosaria's expression was far from pleasant.
Her resentment had not faded, after all.
That day, it was the Pope and the Empire who had killed Rosaria, but it was Zeke who had thrown Longinus at her feet and provided the opportunity.
"...First of all, don't call me the Saintess."
It was a title no one else was permitted to overhear.
Zeke, accepting his fault, corrected the way he addressed her.
"...Understood, Lady Rosaria."
"...And how long do you intend to stay on your knees?"
"...Until you tell me to rise."
It was stubborn obstinacy.
Stiflingly so.
But Rosaria said nothing.
A person like him had lived this way his whole life, she thought.
The ill-fated Saint gazed upon the ill-fated Hero.
"...Then stay as you like. I'll consider your apology once my questions are finished."
At those words, Zeke nodded and, in the knightly manner prescribed by etiquette, remained on his knees, ready to answer her.
"...How has the Holy Empire changed over the past year?"
She already knew that Zeke had become the Emperor.
But the details behind it had been impossible to ascertain.
Canaria had erased that truth with her divine power. Rosaria knew the past must have been a brutal one, but she wanted Zeke to tell her the story with his own mouth.
She needed to know the punishment this stubborn Hero before her had received, so she could gauge the weight his words truly carried.
"...It became paradise."
With those words as a catalyst, the truths hidden beyond the veil that had been erased from this world began to spill from Zeke's lips.
The royal family of the Holy Empire was destroyed—as atonement, as apology, as an oath. Zeke himself drew that holy sword and cut down his own royal bloodline with his own hands.
Those who were not cut survived.
But everyone who was cut died.
Among those cut down was the Emperor himself.
And that blood purge did not end with the royal family.
Starting with those who had accepted the Holy Kingdom's bargain and turned the Pope into a traitor, he beheaded every noble that the holy sword deemed wicked.
More filthy blood flowed through the Empire than at any other time in its existence.
And Zeke honestly and bitterly recognized just how many wicked people had been in the Empire.
Even through all this, the Demon King did not stop.
While Zeke tested the royal family and the nobility, Canaria had placed the very people of the Holy Empire upon that same testing ground.
Half died, and half lived.
Compared to the corrupt upper class, more than eighty percent of whom had perished, it was a favorable rate. And so, on that day, the Holy Empire became a nation that was paradise for the very first time—and upon that blood-drenched seat sat a puppet king by the name of Jik Seikrid.
Even so, he did not refuse the throne.
It wasn't a lust for power.
It was a heart bent on atonement.
A vow never to repeat what had happened that day.
A king missing his ring finger ascended the throne that day.
Then he became the Demon King's knight and awaited her command.
"...I know it is a scar that no apology can erase."
Zeke bowed his head and continued to apologize.
"...Therefore, I will spend my entire life atoning."