Chapter 15
Yes.
The next day.
A man I had seen exactly once opened the door of my room and came to find me.
"Are you the apostle the Church Leader spoke of?"
His hair was neatly kept, his clothes clean. He didn't wear a tonsure, the crown shaved bare like a monk's, but he did have a bowl cut, and there was a healthy color in his face. Well, of course there was. He had been one of the four standing below when I was summoned.
Only one left now, then?
In any case, I greeted him.
"Hello."
"Yes, hello. My name is Andrew. You're a little different from what I had in mind."
Well, apostle of a god is the sort of title given to someone extraordinary, so it hardly suits me. If anything, I stand on the side far from gods. If the way runs from beast to human and on to god, then I'm the one opposite, with humanity set in the middle?
A faint disappointment had settled over Andrew's face. So I wasn't the person he'd been hoping for?
I couldn't tell what he intended. Joanna happened to be away, and he had come having watched for a gap when no one else would.
I don't ask questions. I leave him to arrive at his own thoughts, and if he has something to ask, I let him ask it. Pose a question, and the depth of your knowledge is exposed in an instant. It'll come out eventually even if I don't, of course!
Someone who has climbed high in a cult ought to read others well. At the very least, judging by the people around him, he is no ordinary man.
So I simply looked at him, and Andrew looked back at me just as blankly.
I know Hieronymus has a device watching me. And yet he walks in this boldly? Does he not know?
Hyungkesuni, at least, had come in while Joanna was here. She carried that staff and calls herself a witch, and from that I'd say there's a strong chance this cult is only a side occupation for her. I've looked at the Future Hope Church through four pairs of eyes, and there was no one with a staff like hers — no one carrying a staff at all. The place where Witga is, I suspect, is where this church trains its armed wing, and even there, though some practice magic, there are no long staffs. In all likelihood Hyungkesuni's work as a witch lies in a different field from the Future Hope Church. Simply making use of them, for instance.
Whether she trusted in that power or not, I took her visit for nothing more than a passing thought that brought her to me. This one is different. He's working to take my measure, and aiming for an empty room must mean he has something else in mind. A question a believer of the Future Hope Church ought not to ask, perhaps?
"Lady Rebecca, are you pleased with where you stand now?"
See? That is how he puts it. He's taking the measure of whether my present place is good or bad. Most would answer that it isn't. So I'll do the same.
"No."
I truly don't like it. The room is fairly large, but it's a sealed room without so much as a window. Not that I feel confined. If anything, I am wide open. Every direction stretches broad and vast, and yet it is empty, and so it is very cold. I'd like to harvest warmth while firing off something like a Rebecca Beam, but no attack function seems to have been built into me. I look at Andrew with my thoughts wandering off that way.
"Oho. Then you mean you bear a grievance against Hieronymus, who confined you here?"
Let me see.
How am I meant to take this? Ordinarily, once someone has said they dislike their place, the next sentence ought to be where they'd rather go, shouldn't it? Or else a question about what sort of place would please them. Did he come to sound me out on whether I hold a grudge?
There are things one may say before a person, and things one may not. All the more when that person holds life and death in his hands — complaints or none, they can't be spoken. But here, a yes or a no isn't a good answer.
"Why would I hold a grievance?"
I don't actually mean to hear a reason. I'm only putting it this way. I do as he tells me. This place doesn't please me, but I have no thoughts about him.
"So Lady Rebecca means that she merely does as Hieronymus instructs. I see. Even so, if this room doesn't suit you, it would have been quite all right to send word asking for another. He is the leader of this Future Hope Church. Nothing he cannot do, so they say."
Well, I know he's the cult's leader. I also know he looks on the Future Hope Church itself with considerable coldness. Ask, and he would grant it — but it's only the lack of a window that irritates me, and the room is livable enough, so I had simply never thought of it.
Four implements steeped in an ominous aura are driven into the corners of the ceiling, there to strike should the need arise. Change rooms, and there would be a great deal to prepare. It isn't time yet.
This is a considerably deep place. When Hieronymus led the children out, only after a long climb did other people begin to appear. Whether he lowers his guard, or comes to think he might make better use of me, he'll have the room moved then.
I know the sort of remark that would sour him here. Say something like "Is that so?", and I wouldn't be able to tell whether he was truly listening to me or simply letting every word wash past.
So I'll ask something else.
"Do you want what Hieronymus calls a blessing?"
Yes. I'm letting him know that I never called it a blessing. Hieronymus is the one who decided that. I know nothing. I only do as I'm told. That is the impression I'm offering.
Something in the way he speaks snags on me. Leader. If he were truly serving with every ounce of his loyalty, ought he not raise the man to Lord Hieronymus? However I turn it over, there is no world in which I stand above Hieronymus, so this isn't him dropping the honorific out of deference to me.
At my words, Andrew closed his mouth.
"Ahaha. Hieronymus will see to that himself. If speaking to him directly feels awkward, I'll convey the request for a change of room myself. It would hardly do for God's apostle to be uncomfortable where she stays, now would it?"
Andrew had turned the talk aside, and refused. An art still unknown — is he afraid to have it used on himself?
Even I, who use it, don't really understand it. I set myself inside, and the light was dyed black, and a peculiar ability appeared. Isla gained nothing but an overall rise in bodily performance, while Wide, along with greater physical ability, wields violet flame. Tisha obtained regeneration. Tisha's physical ability, though, doesn't seem to have improved in any particular way. Each of them is different.
Wide advertised me so spectacularly that Hieronymus will send still more people fit to become harvesters. And one thing more. I've roughly caught the sense of how much I need to put in. Keep practicing like this, and even if I later fall back to the bottom, I might be able to give of myself without bursting them.
So there is only one thing to say here.
"Yes. Do as you like."
I know nothing. I'm only an animal shut in a pen. Keep me and raise me there, or set me behind glass and put me on display — give me warmth, and I am satisfied.
Yes.
And so I close my eyes to the malice that faintly gathered on Andrew's face and then was gone, and to the chance of discord between him and Hieronymus. I hope it catches fire. That is how I obtain warmth.
For a harvester to work in earnest, an age of chaos is required. Isn't that how it goes in a work like Romance of the Three Kingdoms? People who would have been forgotten in a peaceful world become heroes once chaos comes, and step out to the front of history. And in their wake runs the blood of dozens, of hundreds, of thousands. Only then does the harvester take warmth from others.
No warmth came from those Isla subdued. So they have to be killed. Wide showed me as much. Even if they only kill, warmth flows into me.
"Yes. I understand, Lady Rebecca. Please look forward to good news."
Andrew seemed to judge that he had gotten all the words he could get. He bowed to me and left the room.
Ah, what a waste. I want to steep myself into him as well.
But another seed remains. The one I put myself into — Tisha. The boy who is even now waking to his ability, rolling hard under an instructor as he learns how to fight. His regeneration has grown, and he pays his body no mind, concentrating wholly on learning. A revolutionary sort of boy, who finds the flaw in the logic that rules the present and searches out the correct answer. He'll certainly make things interesting.
It is interesting already. Because, surprisingly enough, Wide is taking Tisha's side. In his eyes, it seems, the boy trains so desperately because he was not the one chosen, and the more that happens, the clearer the difference between Wide and Tisha becomes. However hard he tries, the gap can be seen widening, and that fills Wide's self-regard to the brim. It even amplifies it, for his fellow trainees and the instructor who taught him look at him with eyes full of envy and awe.
Among those people, words like these come out.
"If only I had received the blessing too."
"How admirable."
"That's Wide for you."
People who want to become harvesters of their own accord are multiplying by the day.
No — from now on, let's not say that I put myself in. Something simpler.
Blessing.
That's better. Said aloud, it sounds as though they received something good. In truth I only set myself inside that vessel, and the me contained there doesn't split away.
To put it simply: say there is a great basin, full of water. That water is me. Setting me inside someone isn't a matter of scooping water and pouring it into a cup. It is turning the cup upside down and pressing it into the water. An air pocket forms then — oh my, goodness — and if they accept the contract, that air slips out.
It's a little different in practice, but that's more or less how it is. The water that is me is all connected. How many cups I can press in, I'll leave as homework for later.
Because from far off I heard footsteps, thudding.
The sound stopped all at once before the door. Hieronymus, his face arranged into a blankness, opened it and came in. He looked at me with an expression drawn very tight, glanced about the room, and set his eyes on me again.
Something special had happened. He doesn't seem to know what it was, though. So I decided to do what I always do.
"Hello. Hieronymus."