Going on a Date with the Yandere Saintess
Going on a Date with the Yandere Saintess
The household was bustling from early morning, as if a state of emergency had been declared for the weekend. Naturally, I was the cause.
"The young lady's first outing since the dawn of creation! Handle it flawlessly, without a single imperfection! Adorn her with the family's honor—no, with your very hearts on the line! Understood? If anything is out of place, I'll have it deducted from your wages!"
Handle what flawlessly? And what's all this about hearts on the line over dressing up... Is everyone here like this? Did I just discover that the Saintess is by no means unusual, but simply the medieval average?
I stared into the mirror, wearing an expression that was, to put it mildly, deeply bemused.
As expected, the face looking back at me was a masterpiece—one worth gazing at.
The Saintess, the most perfect of God's creations, was an impossibly beautiful girl, but the Rosaria before me existed in that same absolute realm.
If faces had a hierarchy, both would be monsters beyond any measurable scale. And on top of that innate, effortlessly winning beauty, four maids were following up with delicate brush strokes, staking their lives on it.
One of them even muttered something akin to a self-suggestion under her breath:
"...For me, makeup is murder."
Come to think of it, what kind of leisure existed in this medieval era anyway? For one thing, there was no such thing as idle entertainment. The morning dramas housewives enjoy were, at best, guessed at through scattered rumors. And as for enjoyable games, it was board games like chess or cards.
In other words, their lives held no grand distractions, so the depth of skill they willingly poured into their craft was on an entirely different level.
'Is this... what human hands can do...?'
I'd tried putting on makeup myself once, just for fun. The result was a kabuki performance on Rosaria's face.
But the maids' touch now was showing me a whole different class, layering human will over an already complete divine masterpiece and elevating it to the next stage.
'Wow... so it was possible to become even more beautiful from here.'
I'd lived my whole life as a man, so I never knew. Makeup truly is a god. I thought her natural peak had already pierced the heavens and couldn't go any higher, but as if mocking that thought, it was reaching the heavens beyond the heavens, and the cosmos beyond that.
And with four people on the job, there wasn't a single idle hand.
One for accessories, one for combing, one for makeup, one for styling. Like comrades-in-arms who'd perfected their rhythm over a lifetime, the four makeup maids continued their touches with masterful ease.
"You are too beautiful, my lady."
The styling maid was staring blankly in admiration.
Yeah, even I can see that. No, everyone in the world would see it. It might even convert people with weird tastes.
"With this, the head maid of House Versian can protect her pride... What a relief."
And the combing maid was making the sign of the cross in self-congratulation.
"I feel as if I've become an artist who has created the greatest masterpiece in history..."
The makeup maid was even shedding tears of joy. As for the silent accessories maid, she was just quietly engraving the image of her finished masterpiece into her brain.
It was a medieval era where the absence of anything like a camera was truly a shame.
Farewell, supreme beauty. Just an ordinary soul born in an era without cameras...
I was thinking such things when I glanced at the clock.
There wasn't much time left before my promised meeting with the Saintess. So I hurriedly asked, wanting to just quickly throw on a dress and get going.
"I can go out now, right?"
Sure, I understand spending an hour on makeup. If you think of it as the time needed to reach the heavens beyond the heavens, it's a bargain.
So now I can just quickly put on my outing clothes and leave, yes?
"...No. We are just beginning, my lady."
But that was a major miscalculation. The makeup was literally just the preliminary stage.
The most important part remained: fashion styling.
"No... that... you don't need to go that far..."
It was just hanging out with a friend from the neighborhood, wasn't it? Of course, to them, the Saintess's name carried a different weight.
But to me, she was just a close friend.
Did I really need to go out overdressed?
I heard a *bang* as a hand slammed down on the table. The head maid lowered her head at her own rudeness in striking the table, but still, there were words that needed to be said, so she began to speak, her tone rather heavy.
"You, my lady, are the face of our house."
Right, come to think of it, I was a noble. Thinking of myself as a chaebol heir made her words click.
"Such a young lady must be flawlessly and perfectly beautiful. Even if your appearance is perfect, my lady, it will simply not do for you to go about looking shabby. Do you understand?"
It was a sentiment I could grasp. Like how, when drawing a picture, an artist painstakingly renders even the invisible shading. The obsession of an artist who pours all their effort into shading no one else will ever notice.
I could feel that from the maids' eyes.
Perhaps they were Michelangelos, creating the Creation of Adam right now.
"We shall finish without making you late. So please, I implore you, endure just a little longer, my lady."
I could see their pride and obsession given form.
Fine, do whatever you want. It's not like they're doing it to spite me. I just have to put on a few clothes, right?
But, as they say, where there are a hundred people, there are a hundred mouths. Slightly differing artistic philosophies sparked a fight.
"The young lady suits bright tones, so it's obviously this dress!"
"What nonsense is that? She's already so bright, didn't you hear the imperial designer say that a slightly darker tone makes her look even prettier?"
"No, you're both wrong about the color from the start. White dresses went out of style ages ago, and you're still on about white? Black dresses are the trend!"
"A black dress on a girl who hasn't even had her coming-of-age ceremony? Are you insane? That kind of erotic look is for adult parties, you idiot. For a young lady like her, pink is the answer!"
They hadn't thrown any punches yet, but it was practically a brawl. Quoting technical terms and expert opinions, I witnessed a great war unfolding before my eyes with not an inch of compromise.
But as they say, seniority rules in any organization. The moment the head maid opened her mouth and gave her opinion, the balance tipped entirely in her favor.
"...Thank you, Head Maid."
I expressed my gratitude to the head maid who ended this war.
"Not at all. It is we who are sorry for this disgraceful display."
The head maid bowed her head in apology as well. And so, the chosen dress code for the outing was soft pink and red. True to the name Rosaria, which means rose, the winning dress evoked two roses layered atop one another.
It was a morning tinged with a slight sense of fatigue. Still, professionals are professionals, aren't they? We were not late at all for the promised time; in fact, we finished ten minutes early, leaving even contingency situations perfectly prepared for.
"You are perfection, my lady."
A cool, refreshing breeze. And a sky clear to an almost excessive degree. What followed were the maids, white as ash from exhaustion after finishing their battle.
"As it happens, I see a carriage approaching over there."
At those words, I could just make something out.
A white carriage drawn by a white horse. It blatantly belonged to the Holy Kingdom, and it was the Saintess's carriage, the one I'd seen practically every day, to the point where I'd have memorized the license plate if they had such things.
The carriage arrived right in front of the house. Strangely, it had no coachman. Of course, being the carriage that served the Saintess, they couldn't exactly hire some medieval coachman of ambiguous background.
It was a carriage driven by a Divine Horse, born with God's blessing.
And the door opened automatically. Not fully automatic, of course; the Saintess had opened it using mana.
Just like that, I said my goodbyes, and with the maids' help, I climbed aboard the carriage.
As expected, the Saintess's carriage was different. In car terms, this was a Rolls-Royce certified by the Pope. Even inside, it felt like a small palace.
"Ah... w-welcome..."
And the owner of this carriage had her eyes closed, face flushed, as if waiting for a surprise.
"Lady Saintess... is something the matter?"
I knew it was just her usual drama, but I asked anyway, just in case. And as expected, there was nothing to worry about—just her usual antics. The Saintess muttered to herself, "Calm down, Canaria," trying to calm herself down.
Soon enough, the moment the Saintess opened her eyes and saw Rosaria, she froze for a moment, wearing an expression as if she'd been smacked in the back of the head. Then, after that three-second silence, the Saintess came to her senses.
"...Shall we simply get married today?"
As expected, the very first words out of her mouth were a gem.
"Ah... ugh... nng..."
The Saintess was even showing signs of having lost the ability to form words.
"Ahh... Rosaria... truly, the way you look right now is cheating. You are a flower brushed by God, already making my heart ache ceaselessly even without adornment, so why must you go further and dress up on top of it? Have you finally decided to send me straight to heaven and make me an angel in the sky?"
The Saintess even began to pray, tears spilling over. A 100-proof reaction, as always, difficult to adjust to. The way she trembled, as if unable to bear it, was reassuringly perverted, just like the Saintess I always saw.
"...How could I possibly do such a thing? You are an indispensable presence in my life, Lady Saintess."
I can't cure this illness without you. I want to get better quickly and live healthily. I want to live free of petty ailments and die around 120.
...I left out those parts and just conveyed the rest.
No matter what, if I spoke like a total T, wouldn't it hurt her feelings?
But as expected, the Saintess's mind was already long gone. Having adopted her own peculiar Rosarian formula, she seemed to have finished some strange calculation of her own.
"...So you're saying let's get married today, right now?"
She spouted nonsense with a dazed expression.
"Don't worry, Rosaria. As long as you agree, I'll use my divine power like I did before to revise the perception of the entire Holy Kingdom. And then we'll get married, with you just as beautiful as you are now. We don't need guests. Just you and me alone, that will be enough. The world's greatest blessing will fill that wedding hall."
I had no idea just how far divine power could go. At first, I thought it was an automatic defibrillator, but could it start with transformation tricks and go all the way to revising people's very perceptions? And she's done it once before?
"Oh, no. I'll invite just one of the world's greatest painters. To leave your appearance in this moment as eternal art, a work for this world. Even if I am the Saintess, if I commit the luxury of hoarding a beauty that should be passed down to future generations born in an era without you, the gates of heaven surely won't open for me, you see."
At this point, I was beginning to wonder what the hell the Main God was doing. Was there truly not a single other candidate for Saintess besides her? Even Isabella, who cleans our house, would be more sane if we gave her the job.
"...There's no need for you to go that far."
"As expected, Rosaria, you're so kind. To even worry about the Holy Kingdom that stands in the way of our love!"
Now that I thought about it, yeah. Aren't you the one who should be doing that, as the Saintess? She's going to alter the perception of the entire Holy Kingdom with magic?
"But please don't worry. I'm the Saintess, so even without such an act, changing the laws of the Holy Kingdom before you come of age should be possible. Ah, and don't worry about the baptism of our child to be born. When that day comes, I'll personally ask the Pope to baptize them. And if a single hair on their head is harmed, I'll simply change that person's afterlife to hell, so rest assured."
At this rate, I couldn't even begin to guess the extent of the Saintess's divine power. And what on earth had the original Rosaria been doing, never leaving her room, yet managing to seduce a Saintess like this?
But figuring that out was a task for later.
Today was the day set for a date with this excessively talkative Saintess. One slip-up, and I could end up in hell right alongside the Pope.
*
Honestly, in reincarnation stories, you often see people use knowledge from their past life to transform a place with a lower level of civilization than the modern world.
But that's only possible if you're a specialist in that field.
You have to grasp its entire structure and function to the point where you could draw up blueprints from scratch, completely from zero base knowledge. And regrettably, I wasn't that kind of human. If I'd been an engineer, I'd probably be recorded in history books as Rosaria the Queen of Invention. Unable to do that, this soul was destined to be recorded as Rosaria, the lover of the Menhera Saintess.
Still, the world was more livable than I thought, and just because they were medieval people didn't make them stupid. What they lacked was a shift in thinking—an opportunity. They couldn't make things because it was impossible to conceive of a milestone that hadn't yet been reached, but if you pointed out that milestone, they were capable of making it.
"This thing called a wheelchair is quite a convenient tool."
And thus, what was born was the medieval wheelchair. A collaborative work: idea by Rosaria Versian, made by Hometown Blacksmith.
Egypt built the pyramids using only people, without heavy equipment. In other words, in most ancient civilizations, people took on the role of machines, and people could serve as wheelchairs.
Not by literally riding on a person, of course.
They'd stay by your side and lift you onto a horse, or link arms with you and walk alongside while you hobbled with a cane, providing physical assistance with their bodies and time.
So what about lower-body paralysis?
...Hell if I know.
They probably just died without treatment because it was the Middle Ages, or some wealthy family paid a fortune for clergy members to fix it with miracles.
Anyway, against that medieval backdrop, the wheelchair was an instant revolution for the sick!
Thanks to that, when I heard yesterday that the wheelchair was completed, I thought all that remained was to land on a pile of money. Even as the child of a noble family who can eat and live without working, wouldn't it be unfilial to truly do nothing?
Even if this was just prototype number one, it would soon spread all across the world.
Seated atop that first invention, the future Rosaria Revolution, I strutted through the city streets with the Saintess.
To be honest, I had been genuinely scared since they said it was a medieval city. The medieval streets I'd learned about from books were far from clean beauty. From a modern person's perspective, it was an era filled with the raw, unrefined savagery of true madness.
But this place was different.
First of all, it was clean. There were even people cleaning the streets. They didn't throw filth or garbage everywhere! No one was selling fly-blown meat or getting into fistfights by the scruff of the neck!
It was a modern medieval fantasy street, with all the grim realities neatly sliced out.
That's what I was thinking as I looked around the streets, my eyes sparkling.
"...Oh dear, your scarf has come a little undone, Rosaria."
Just then, the Saintess, who was pulling my wheelchair, smiled a sickly sweet smile and began to refasten the slightly loosened scarf.
"...There are many eyes watching right now."
"...It doesn't matter, because right now, I am not the Saintess."
The Saintess whispered softly in my ear.
Then, pretending to fix the scarf, the Saintess left a surprise kiss mark on the nape of my neck. Rosaria's nape was already covered in the Saintess's kiss marks.
'Let's not recall it. Yes, thinking is poison. Namuami... ah, if I chant that here, will I go to hell? Then Amen... is correct, right?'
There had been a bit of an incident inside the carriage. A terrible event that was difficult to even speak of. I had suffered an indiscriminate bombardment on the nape of my neck.
The victim was me, the perpetrator was the Saintess.
And the satisfied party was also the Saintess.
The Lady Saintess had recharged her Rosalium to full capacity on the way here.
"You must be hungry, yes? I know a restaurant. Let's go there."
What is this? Is she trying to take me to a vegan restaurant? I'm a pro-level picky eater who can't digest anything without meat.
Having momentarily diverted my thoughts like that, I obediently followed the Saintess's lead, knowing she'd put in the effort for today. Hoping, wishing, that Rosaria's record of past-life zero incidents wouldn't be broken today.