The Cross of Memories #4
The Cross of Memories #4
The next morning, I went looking for Rebecca the moment I opened my eyes.
I couldn't leave with a clear conscience until I'd laid out the whole quest situation for her.
Rebecca, still in her room, listened to my explanation and looked surprised.
"You're doing a quest with that 'blonde'? Just the two of you?"
"Yeah. Church orders, apparently — she can't get out of it. I won't be able to bring you along this time. I know we're a fixed party, so... sorry."
"Th-there's nothing to be sorry about. Being a fixed party doesn't mean we have to move together every single time. You don't need to explain stuff like that to me. But... a blonde, huh."
"Does it bother you?"
Rebecca had always kept her guard up around Kate. Enough that whenever she ran into Kate, she'd launch into a sudden silent war of glares. Oil and water, you could say — they just didn't mix. I half-wondered if Rebecca might actually try to stop me from going.
"...It doesn't bother me, okay? Do I look that petty to you? Honestly, if this were before we were together, maybe it would've. But..."
Rebecca mulled it over and added,
"The blonde gave us free theater tickets, after all. No need to be too guarded around her. It's not like you're meeting her privately — you're just doing a quest together. Right?"
"It's not a private meeting."
"Then it's fine! You can go! You said it'd be wrapped up in a day. When you get back, let's go grab a meal together. And make sure you tell me exactly what you two got up to."
Fortunately, Rebecca didn't try to stop me. The theater tickets seemed to have considerably loosened her wariness toward Kate.
I didn't tell Rebecca that Kate might actually be a fellow orphan from my childhood. Not yet — it was still just a hunch. It could wait until after the quest was over.
"Come back safe!"
After saying goodbye to Rebecca, I returned to my room and packed my gear for exploring the underground waterway. A lantern, raincoat, boots — that sort of thing. I also made sure not to forget the special herbs for repelling monsters.
Once I'd stuffed the exploration gear into my pack,
I arrived at the Adventurer's Guild in the afternoon.
'She's already here?'
I'd thought I was pretty early.
There, in front of the guild building, Kate was already waiting for me.
The blonde nun who might have grown up in the same orphanage as me.
Hadn't she asked me if I'd ever seen her cross before?
I was ready to give Kate my answer.
"You're here~."
Kate, sitting on a bench in front of the building, looked up at me as I approached and greeted me.
Something was different — her usual high energy had settled, and she was looking at me with tense eyes. Her fingers fidgeted with the cross hanging from her neck.
"So, have you remembered? About the cross, I mean."
"I remembered, yeah."
I let out a sigh and opened my mouth. If my hunch was right, it wasn't just an answer about the cross that Kate wanted. This wasn't something I could wrap up with a simple "yes, I've seen it."
"Why don't you just be straight with me? You wanted to know if I'd figure out we're from the same orphanage. The place that handed out those toy crosses — that was Evergreen Orphanage."
"......."
"There were three blonde girls among my cohort. Were you one of those three or what? Come on, answer me."
Kate took a deep breath at my words.
Then she opened her mouth with an utterly satisfied expression.
"Correct~ Evergreen Orphanage! You finally remembered!"
As she spoke, Kate flipped over the cross she'd been holding. On the back, the initial E was carved in, faint and worn. The same initial that had been stamped into the handmade toys they gave out at Evergreen Orphanage. The moment my eyes confirmed it, I was certain — Kate really was from the same orphanage.
"Fufu, what a relief! It would've been a little sad if I'd had to explain it all myself."
"Sad?"
"I recognized Mongma-nim, but Mongma-nim kept not recognizing me. That's just unfair, you know. Even after I gave you all those hints."
I could only stare at her, baffled.
So she'd tormented me with all those loaded questions simply because it felt unfair? Thanks to that, I'd lost sleep and worn myself out. Kate glanced at the dark shadows under my eyes and giggled.
"It's only natural you wouldn't recognize me! I've changed a ton since back then! I'm not that gloomy little runt anymore."
"Isn't 'changed' kind of an understatement? All the blonde girls at the orphanage were scrawny as hell."
At an orphanage where food was never plentiful, all the kids had been thin. Except for me, of course — Gold-Tanned as I was, with muscles bulging in all the wrong places, I'd been the one who stood out.
Kate, on the other hand, had grown into a busty, fertile-bodied woman. Calling it a complete metamorphosis would be putting it lightly.
"A lot of things changed after I was adopted into the church. I could eat as much as I wanted, I started sleeping properly, and my skin got better. I even received a lovely new name — Kate!"
"You even changed your name?"
"Yes, incredible, right? My whole life transformed in an instant. From a shabby orphan to a noble nun overnight — even I can hardly believe it!"
"What was your original name?"
"Jenny."
Jenny.
My memory was fuzzy, but there had definitely been a girl with that name among the other kids.
A tiny little blonde thing who barely ever spoke, wasn't it?
At some point she'd just vanished from sight.
To think she'd been adopted into the church.
"Ah, Jenny."
"Do you remember me? Mongma-nim."
"No, not really?"
"Ah."
"I only know the name. I don't remember what kind of kid she was. I was always on my own at the orphanage. Hardly ever talked to the others. As you know, I'm an incubus."
When I pointed a finger at my horns, Kate nodded like she knew all too well.
"Of course you wouldn't remember me. But I know Mongma-nim very well. I mean, the Mongma-nim from back then."
Kate looked at me with a deep smile.
"I always watched you from afar, after all. Watched Mongma-nim."
"Y-you watched me?"
I couldn't help but be thrown off by Kate's words.
This girl had been watching me as a child? What possible reason could there be to watch a loner incubus like me? The question rose up, but I wasn't going to get an answer right away.
Because Kate just closed her mouth and gazed at me for a long while.
As if she were reminiscing about the old days.
*
A long silence flowed between me and Kate.
I sat down next to her on the bench and waited for her answer. While I waited, all sorts of delusions swirled through my head.
A girl who always watched a boy — wasn't that the kind of thing that carried a certain... tender meaning?
Could this be a green light from Kate?
But I already had Rebecca, didn't I?
Still, no matter how long I waited, she showed no sign of giving me an answer. Unable to hold back any longer, I opened my mouth toward Kate. If I was going to agonize over it this much, I might as well ask directly.
"Don't tell me... you liked me?"
"Nope."
"Ack."
Absolute denial!
At my question, Kate crossed both arms to form an X. In that instant, my face went red and I couldn't lift my head. Hearing her say no was humiliating as hell. I wanted to crawl into a mouse hole and hide.
Would it have killed her to say she liked me a little?
"Back in those days, Mongma-nim... to me, you were something like a clown!"
"A clown!"
"Every time I looked at you, I just burst out laughing — what was I supposed to do?! Mongma-nim was such a bizarre kid when you were little. When you were alone, you'd do all kinds of weird things and mutter strange things to yourself! Watching you, I thought I'd die laughing!"
So I'd been something like a human laugh button for Kate?
Well, sure — little me had been the type to pull all manner of ridiculous stunts.
There was no way a kid carrying memories of a past life would act like the other children. I'd thought it was an ironclad rule of the universe: reincarnate in another world, and a special bonus perk was supposed to come with the package. I'd committed all kinds of absurd antics trying to discover that perk.
Whenever I had a spare moment, I'd chant cringey, edgelord incantations.
In the dead of night, I'd stand on my head trying to commune with a guardian angel.
I'd grab a shovel and dig holes in the ground searching for a smartphone that had to be somewhere.
I'm pretty sure I tested every possible thing that could serve as a bonus perk in an isekai reincarnation story. The sad truth was that not a single one of them ever panned out.
Not even that clichéd Status Window ever appeared to me.
"Kee, keekee. Even now, thinking about Mongma-nim back then makes me laugh."
Kate kept sneaking glances at me and cackling.
She was laughing so hard it was genuinely pissing me off.
"Ahahahahaha."
This was the first time in my life I'd ever seriously wanted to hit a woman.
I genuinely wanted to plant a fist right in Kate's gut.
"Funny? You think that's funny?!"
"No, but seriously, Mongma-nim! What in the world is a 'Status Window'? I still remember it, you know! Mongma-nim, shouting it out at all hours of the day — 'Status Window!' All the kids at the orphanage were dying of curiosity! What does Status Window even mean?!"
"......It's a magic incantation. Saying it puts my mind at ease."
"Is it some kind of Dream Demon clan language?"
"Something like that, you could say."
I let out a sigh and nodded.
I'd never imagined that the cringefest of my childhood would come back to choke me like this. "Status Window" had been my verbal tic, the thing I always muttered under my breath. I'd wandered around shouting it constantly, clinging to a threadbare hope for a past-life bonus perk.
Which, of course, amounted to jack shit.
I stared quietly at Kate, still laughing away.
There was something I wanted to ask her.
"Then what was all that wariness about when we first met? Back during the caravan escort quest. You started splashing Holy Water at me the second you saw me. And you kept avoiding me after that, too."
"It's not like I recognized Mongma-nim from the very beginning. It had been so long ago that I didn't remember. I only realized it after the caravan escort ended and I returned to Yoen-su. That Mongma-nim was my fellow orphan."
"After the escort quest ended?"
Something clicked in my head at Kate's words.
That business when I'd visited the church to get Holy Water.
After we met again, Kate had suddenly stopped keeping her distance from me.
She'd even stepped in to stop me when I was about to get into a fight with the churchgoers.
What had Kate said to those churchgoers back then?
- This person is someone I know well!
- He is absolutely not the sort of wicked incubus who would threaten a young nun.
- As a nun, I can personally vouch for him.
"Foreshadowing for days."
So all of that... wasn't just bullshit? She'd meant it?
She'd said it because she really did know me?
I was so stunned I couldn't close my mouth.
"Then why the hell have you been pretending not to know me all this time? You could've just come out and said we were from the same orphanage. I feel like you let me stew in misunderstandings for nothing."
"I wanted Mongma-nim to figure it out on your own. Well, in the end, I was the one who brought it up first. Keeping it all to myself was getting stifling."
Kate rose from the bench and stretched with a refreshed expression.
"...Getting it all off my chest feels so much lighter!"
It seemed that was all she'd wanted to say.
"Honestly, I'd love to keep chatting with Mongma-nim about the old days, but it's about time we got moving! If we're going to smash that totem in the underground waterway and get back within the day, that is."
She had a point.
As glad as I was to have reunited with an old childhood acquaintance, the quest took priority now. We needed to set out if we were going to explore that maze-like underground waterway. We still had to stop by a general store on the way to get Kate outfitted with exploration gear, too.
It was just as I quietly rose from the bench.
Kate turned back toward me and spoke.
"Ah, before we go, there's something I'd like to ask of Mongma-nim."
"What is it?"
"It's a request, so... would you call me by my name from now on? Kate!"
Call her by her name?
Now that she mentioned it... had I never once actually called her Kate?
I stood there with my mouth open, hesitating for a moment.
Kate suddenly leaned her face toward me.
She thrust her face close, right up to the tip of my nose, and gazed steadily at me.
A distance where we could feel each other's breath.
Our lips felt like they might touch if I slipped up, and I couldn't help but be flustered.
"...Kate."
The moment I spoke her name, Kate answered with a soft smile.
"You finally said it. My name."
But even after her name had been called,
Kate made no move to pull away from me.
She just stayed there, quietly gazing at my lips.
As if she were waiting for something more.