It Was Your Mistake — 7
After I returned to the room, Hieronymus took his leave, and Hyungkesuni, just as I had expected, peeled off her gloves and examined my hands. Then she bent at the waist and looked over my knees as well. Oh? Had she left something on those, too? Just as well that I had restored the body in its entirety. This is precisely why letting your guard down is dangerous.
Two months is a short time in which to open your heart. If we were nothing to each other, it might not matter — but when the other party is a dangerous beast, it matters all the more. Accidents have a way of breaking out the moment you relax, don't they? In that sense, what Hyungkesuni did was genuinely admirable. She is doing well. From my side of it, the side being handled, it is terribly tiring. Still, a person like that has probably only lived this long because she has always been exactly that way.
Once I understood that the Yeongrang Theocracy had some connection to Hieronymus, I went back through the memories of everyone involved, the whole of them. The name Witch of Rapture surfaced here and there. I had only skimmed the records, so I don't know the details, but she appears, sparsely, from at least a hundred years ago. And yet a person who has been marked for purging by the Yeongrang Theocracy since those days is now keeping company with one of that same theocracy's high figures? I still don't have enough information.
Hieronymus seems to have grown careless by now, but given the position he occupies, that may not be entirely so. He would be far more adept at deceiving people than someone like me. And what good is reading emotion off a face, when the information that actually matters won't be read at all? So I behave myself. I will stay quiet, as if I know nothing.
Of course, I don't know everything. Only a very little. I merely know things other people do not.
For instance: a little while ago, in the Kingdom of Cogni, Tisha was fighting the kingdom's soldiers alongside members of the Church of Future Hope when an arrow took him and he fell from a cliff. The mission failed. But every bit of it was Tisha's plan. He was smiling as he dropped from the cliff. It was a height that would have killed an ordinary person on impact, and yet Tisha survived it even with both legs shattered. And the legs mended at once.
I told you, didn't I? Tisha has a remarkable power of regeneration. He has been testing it little by little all this time, and he has never let a single person catch him at it. He did all of it in order to escape this Church of Future Hope. Leading church members out to a place where the thing would be plain to see, taking the hit, and falling — looking at that, he must have meant for the Church of Future Hope to be told that he was dead. He was carried a long way on the current before he climbed up onto dry land. Then he drew the arrows out of his body, looked around, and set off walking without a moment's hesitation.
He is going to become a threat to the Church of Future Hope, because he knows a great deal. This place, for one, which I take to be the heart of the Church. The people who receive the blessings. Me, the one who gives them. And he himself carries a formidable power.
Regeneration.
Regeneration is the sort of thing people are quick to undervalue, but in truth it is an immensely powerful gift. It means you can remain perfectly healthy at all times — no matter how badly you are hurt, no matter how many times you take a wound that ought to kill you. More than anything, the fact that you can do it again is what makes it extraordinary.
Imagine wielding a sword. If your arm is cut off in a fight, the fight is over for you. He can simply do it again. You don't call that extraordinary?
It is the same as a man with plenty of money failing, and then saying he succeeded through effort. If you have no money, getting back up from the place where you failed is hard. One person stumbles, plants their hands, stands, brushes the sand away, and goes on. The other stumbles and rolls all the way to the bottom of the earth, and then chains called debt lock shut around their arms and legs.
Yes. That's right. What Tisha holds is an immense asset: the chance to begin again, and have beginning again still be all right. The only thing more expensive than that is the power of regression. So long as he avoids an instant death, he can manage, one way or another. Which is to say that someone bearing an extremely powerful blessing has fled the Church of Future Hope.
Hehe. I don't know what you'll do now, but do your best, Tisha. I am hoping you will bring me still more warmth.
Thinking that, I got ready to go outside. I ought to exercise now, shouldn't I?
The eighth day since Tisha escaped the Church of Future Hope. I am running with Joanna. This world has no weekends and no holidays — nothing of the kind — so I live the same day over and over. Once the blessings are finished, I return to the room, change my clothes, and go out to exercise. Even calling it exercise, all I do is run for an hour.
And now there are people observing me at it. I don't mean the two warriors already under Joanna's eye. I mean that the number of believers watching me from quite a long way off has grown.
Yes. Run about outside, and more people see me. Sweating as I run is so very human that I worried it would sit badly with the apostle I have been making of myself. But Hieronymus has made no move to restrict it, so it must be acceptable. There is a faint sense, in that neglect, of being looked down on, and it puts me in a good mood. Yes. Please, go on underestimating me like that. It will make the method of summoning me easier to obtain. Of course, the likelier chance is that they simply will not tell me, on the grounds that I am too stupid — but being taught is not the only way I come by information.
And there is one person more. Hyungkesuni. There is a strong chance she, too, knows the art that summoned me. She has lived more than a hundred years, she is tied to the Yeongrang Theocracy, and she bears the name of a witch; if anything, the chance that she does not know is the small one. But her wariness is far too sharp, so I have nudged her gently aside for now. If I keep watching her in that way, I have the feeling I will be caught.
And on the eighth day, the trouble of exercising outside paid for itself. Someone came to find me.
A man of ordinary build, blond, with blue eyes. I have met him exactly once, and he was an enormous help to me. He is the person who gave me the chance to be moved from the basement into a room on the first floor. He introduced himself as Andrew.
"It has been some time, Lady Rebecca."
Near the end of my exercise, on the road I always run, where the stone pillars rise in numbers — a place difficult for anyone watching me from elsewhere to find — he was standing.
"Hello, Andrew."
"I am truly glad you remembered my name. Does life outside agree with you?"
He wears a bright, easy smile, but I know the expression is a made one. Even so, he isn't particularly tense, is he? Saying life outside the moment we meet is his way of telling me to believe I was able to come out because of him, and buried under it is the wish that I be grateful. So I gave him what he wanted.
"Yes. I like it."
At that, Andrew smiled with satisfaction. I stared straight at him, wanting to hear whatever he would say next.
"I am glad to hear you say so. Then, is there anything else that inconveniences you? You are running a road this thick with dust. If someone is forcing you to it, I will see that something is done."
Oh? Ah. I see. I am not even a warrior, and yet here I am running — it must look as though there is some intention behind it. So I shook my head from side to side.
"A person's body grows weak if it doesn't run. If I am to keep this body, I have to run."
Something seemed to dawn on him at my words. A thin, sharp killing intent gathered at the corners of his eyes, and then it was gone. What is he thinking? Whether he could kill me, for instance?
"Would it be a problem, if the body grew weak?"
"When a person's body grows weak, doesn't it die?"
It felt as though he meant to ask whether it would be dangerous if I weakened, so I twisted that a little further toward the extreme and handed it back. This man was there as well, in that place, when I was summoned into this world. So he ought to know that I am a beast wearing a human hide.
"Is that so."
A short silence.
I can die the way a person dies. How do you take that?
"I came because I was concerned that you might be living in some discomfort, Lady Rebecca. Is there anything in particular that inconveniences you?"
He turned the talk aside. I have been deliberately offering him quite childish answers, one after another, so I would like him to come down to the person he is speaking with and lay it out in a way that is easy to understand. Don't circle your intentions around so slyly. Say it straight. That is how I learn what you desire. Whether you are Hieronymus's man, for instance, or whether you are not.
I would put it at about eight in ten that he is Hieronymus's enemy, but they may be on the same side where no one can see, so I mean to move carefully here. I have to treat this Church of Future Hope as a thing that moves entirely on a single mind, if I am to keep from some mistake I cannot foresee. So for now I hand over facts, and nothing beyond them. If he is laying plans, the information I give him will help. If he is not, then I have only passed along what is true, and there should be no harm in it. So I will sow the seeds little by little, and watch.
"No."
When I answered while staring straight at him, he covered a look of boredom with a smile.
"You seem to have rather few desires, Lady Rebecca. I wish I could do something more for you, but since I cannot, it is a pity."
Hehe. Yes. This is bait. The very bait that once fished me up out of the cold sea.
I know. I know perfectly well. I understand well enough that this bait is extremely dangerous if you handle it wrong. But I have no need to hold back. Because I am not thinking about anything at all, I can explain what I want simply, and properly.
"If you are going to do something for me, what I want is warmth. I need more of it than I have now. Three people a day is far too few. If the warmth were the same every day, that would be one thing, but some days all three together do not even surpass a single person from the day before. Without warmth, I am cold. So if you can, please give me more warmth."
I laid the desire out in its pure form. So that he would not happen to mistake the word warmth, I made it plain that what I need are Sacrifices. Three a day. Anyone standing where he stands ought, at the very least, to know that even on the days blessings are given through devotion rather than Sacrifices, three people still disappear.
Well, then. I have taken the bait. How will you answer, Andrew?
And Andrew asked me this.
"If you were able to obtain more warmth, could you bestow more blessings?"
Drawing the line in, is he?
"Until now it has been three, but if I try a little harder, I think I could manage four. In return, I want more warmth. Not one more. More than that."
Until now the ratio has been one to one, but I told him that if I was to receive, I would rather receive more. A pure desire. A want with no seam anyone can pry at.
"Yes. I understand. Thank you for answering, Lady Rebecca."
Andrew bowed his head. And when he lifted it again, his face was one from which desire was spilling.
Hehe. Yes. He has taken the bait. I look forward to seeing how things change.