The Hero in the Records
The bureau’s interrogation room was far quieter than the city.
When the door closed, the street noise that had lingered in her ears until moments before cut off all at once.
The Saintess sat at one side of the desk and folded both hands in her lap. The metal edge of the desk pressed coldly near her wrist.
The fluorescent lights on the ceiling lit the room evenly, without a single flicker.
In the clear glass of water set in the middle of the desk, water that no one’s hand had yet touched stood half full.
The female agent seated across from her opened a file folder and pressed a small device at the corner of the desk.
A single red light came on.
“I will confirm your name and origin.”
The Saintess clearly recited the sentence she had learned.
Her pronunciation was not perfect, but the meaning was unmistakable.
The agent recorded her answer, then successively verified the emblem engraved on the breast of her Saintess robes and the faint residual reaction of divine power at her fingertips.
Blank fields opened one after another on the terminal screen.
Name.
Affiliation.
Position.
On the terminal screen, the Saintess’s name appeared in the characters of this world.
In the final field, the words “Saintess of the Order of the Goddess of Love” were entered.
The agent checked the screen and asked,
“You are the Saintess of the Order of the Goddess of Love, correct?”
“Yes.”
“May I regard that as the highest-ranking clergy within the Order?”
The words on the screen shone coldly before the Saintess.
Saintess of the Order of the Goddess of Love.
“Yes. That is correct.”
The agent recorded the words.
The small light on the terminal screen blinked once.
Beside the water glass, the Saintess’s fingertips stiffened on the metal desk.
“What is your purpose in coming to Earth?”
The Saintess’s fingers twitched on her lap.
The question was simple.
Yet three years were contained within it.
The nights she had prayed.
The days she had bestowed blessings with an unperturbed face.
The dawns when she could not speak his name aloud and only called it in her heart.
With her hands still folded on her lap, the Saintess answered.
“I have come to meet the Hero.”
The agent’s fingers descended onto the terminal.
“The title of Hero alone cannot identify a specific individual. We must cross-reference the name he used on Earth or the records of the incident at the time.”
The Saintess’s fingertips pressed against each other on her lap.
She knew he possessed a name on Earth.
But to her he had always been the Hero.
The one the Order had summoned.
The one who had stood at her side and held back the end of the world.
The one who, in the final moment, had smiled and told her it was all right.
Recalling the records he had left in the other world, the Saintess spoke calmly.
“Three years ago, he was the one summoned from Earth by the Order of the Goddess of Love. He accompanied the response to the otherworld crisis. He received divine power of the physical-enhancement and self-healing type, and after the final battle he returned to Earth.”
The agent’s hands moved swiftly over the terminal.
The sound of keys being pressed.
A short electronic tone.
The faint light of the screen changing several times.
The Saintess waited, holding her breath.
The agent’s hands stopped on the terminal.
“Summoning case by the Order of the Goddess of Love three years ago. Male of Earth origin. Possessor of healing-type physical enhancement. Code name ‘Hero’ on the return records.”
The agent raised her head from the screen.
“Is the person you are seeking this individual?”
Something tightened deep inside the Saintess’s chest.
“Yes.”
After the brief answer she spoke again.
“It is him.”
The agent checked the records once more.
“Whether contact is possible will be decided after identity verification, ability examination, and review of the settlement procedures. First, we will confirm the state of your abilities.”
The Saintess moved her hand toward the glass plate.
The agent switched on a small device at one side of the interrogation room.
Something like a round glass plate slid out onto the desk.
“We will confirm a simple manifestation of divine power. It need not be healing. Please attempt whatever is possible among light, warmth, or detection types.”
The Saintess placed her hand upon the glass plate.
She had been taught that divine power weakened on Earth.
The light that gathered at her fingertips was far thinner than expected.
Ordinarily a small blessing sigil would have bloomed above her palm—
the light that had illuminated sickrooms, wrapped the edges of wounds, and gently grasped disordered pulses.
The Saintess closed her eyes.
She thought of the Hero’s name.
She wanted to find him.
Even a single trace.
Even a single presence.
She wanted to feel for the light of him that remained somewhere in this world.
A small warmth gathered at her fingertips.
The light was so thin it barely formed at the tip of her nail.
The Saintess opened her eyes.
A faint white light formed on the glass plate, then soon scattered like a thin breath.
Her fingertips stiffened on the glass.
She concentrated again.
This time she breathed more deeply and recited, very briefly, a detection prayer she had learned at the Order.
Beneath her fingertips the first stroke of a small blessing sigil rose.
Yet the pattern wavered before it could even connect, and the white light on the glass plate melted away beneath the fluorescent lights.
The Saintess’s fingertips grew cold.
“The values have been confirmed.”
Looking at the record that appeared on the device, the agent spoke calmly.
“It is within the expected range. In Earth’s environment, the output and detection range of divine power are extremely restricted.”
The Saintess’s lips parted, then closed.
The numbers on the data lay quietly on the paper.
The light at her fingertips had vanished before she could even feel for a single trace of the Hero.
With those hands she had wrapped countless wounds.
She had grasped fading breaths and bestowed blessings upon the hands of those about to marry.
Yet on the glass plate of this world, before the presence of the one person she most wanted to find, her fingertips had grown cold.
The Saintess’s hand fell from the glass plate.
“Finding him myself would be… difficult, I see.”
The agent’s hand paused over the records, then the answer came.
“With the current output, that is so. Instead, we will confirm through the Management Bureau’s records.”
Records.
That word lay coldly upon the metal desk.
The agent turned a page of the documents.
“Once registration and examination are complete, we move on to settlement education.”
The sound of paper turning brushed briefly across the desk.
“During the education period, external activities are restricted.”
The Saintess raised her head.
“How long… will it take?”
The agent checked the documents.
“In principle, one must complete settlement education and the stage-by-stage examinations. External life is permitted on a limited basis only after that.”
The Saintess’s fingers pressed against each other on her lap.
The agent read the final line.
“Typically, we estimate about one year.”
The Saintess’s lips parted, then closed without sound.
One year.
That number lay coldly on the metal desk.
“One more year…?”
Her voice was small.
Even the polite sentences, even the expressions she had learned, lost their strength in that moment.
The agent’s hand rested on the documents.
“It is the average period. Until the procedures are complete, you will receive the bureau’s management and education.”
The agent turned the papers, and the edge of a sheet scraped briefly across the metal desk.
With each page that turned, the path to the Hero seemed to be pushed one sheet farther beyond the desk.
The Saintess clasped both hands tightly on her lap.
Her fingertips turned white.
The corners of her eyes grew hot.
She tried not to lower her head, gazing instead at the water glass set in the middle of the desk.
Fluorescent light trembled thinly on the still surface of the water.
“I…”
Her voice trembled thinly.
“I have already waited three years.”
The agent’s hand remained on the documents.
That span of time was written nowhere in these thin papers.
The Saintess wrapped the water glass with both hands.
The name she had swallowed at the end of every prayer still remained inside her throat.
The agent checked the terminal again.
The sound of keys being pressed.
A short electronic tone.
The faint light of the screen changing.
The Saintess held her breath.
Her fingertips pressed white on her lap.
The agent’s hands stopped on the terminal.
“I have confirmed the returnee record registered under the code name ‘Hero’.”
The Saintess’s heart sank.
The agent checked the screen once more, then looked at her.
“He remains in the domestic settler records.”
The Saintess’s breath entered her throat belatedly.
“Domestic… does that mean he is in this country?”
“Yes. Survival records are also confirmed.”
The Saintess’s fingertips trembled.
The same world.
Only a moment ago, even grasping that single word had made her fingertips tremble.
Yet he was within the same country.
The Saintess put strength back into the hands holding the water glass.
“Then… can you also tell me where he is?”
The agent was silent for a moment, then answered without closing the terminal.
“The exact location and contact information cannot be disclosed at this stage. Identity verification and contact-approval procedures are required.”
At those words the Saintess’s fingertips pressed the rim of the water glass.
This time the hands holding it did not loosen.
“But still… he is alive and well, and he is in this country, right?”
“Yes. That part has been confirmed.”
The Saintess lowered her head.
A single tear fell.
She wrapped the water glass with both hands.
“Then that’s enough.”
On the cold screen there was a record that he remained in this world.
The Saintess grasped that single record and steadied her breath.
That night the Saintess was guided to temporary lodgings within the bureau.
The room was small and quiet.
A folded blanket lay on the bed; on the desk stood a bottle of water and a single sheet of guidance.
It was a place prepared so that she might stay for a while.
The blanket was neat, the water bottle on the desk as if new. No warmth of anyone having passed through remained.
Outside the window the city’s lights spread faintly.
Colder than the candles of the temple, farther than the lamps of the prayer room.
Colder than the lamps of the prayer room, farther than the halo of the goddess statue.
Yet somewhere beyond those lights, he was.
The Saintess sat on the edge of the bed and rested her fingertips on her lap.
The hands that had passed through the pillar of light.
The hands that had lost their strength on the glass plate.
The hands that, only a moment ago, had wrapped the water glass to the end.
On those fingertips the cold of the interrogation room still lingered.
Even so, on the screen his trace remained.
The Saintess’s eyelids quietly lowered.
“Hero.”
This time she spoke the name aloud.
No one answered.
But now that name did not scatter only into empty air.
He was not a person in a place as distant as an unreachable star.
He was under the same sky, within the night of the same country.
The Saintess folded her hands on her lap a little more firmly.
That night the Saintess could not sleep for a long time.
But she did not collapse either.