Sweet Dreams and the Ticking Clock
The rich aroma of coffee and the savory scent of freshly baked bread tickled my nose. The sky stretched clear and cloudless, and a warm spring breeze gently ruffled my silver hair.
Saintess, I've brought the cake and coffee.
The voice dripped with such warmth that my mood lifted all on its own. I turned my head and found a man standing with sunlight at his back.
Instead of that stiff title like Saintess, I told you to call me Trixie, didn't I? If that's too much... just use my name.
I was sitting on the sunny terrace of a café. The man carefully set down my favorite sweet strawberry tart on the table and took the seat across from me.
Shall I feed you?
“Yeah.”
He speared a small piece with the fork and brought it to my lips. The real me would have snarled, “Are you insane?” and stabbed that hand with the fork, but dream-me was different. As if I’d been waiting for it, I gave a shy little smile, parted my lips, and accepted the tart he offered. The sweetness that flooded my mouth made me smile with pure happiness.
You've got some on your lips.
He reached out and gently wiped the cream from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. It was only a simple touch, yet the spot he brushed burned as if branded.
“Yeah… it tastes better because you fed me.” I answered with another shy smile.
And then—
“Kyaaaaaaaack!”
Thud. I woke up after rolling straight off the bed.
“What the actual fuck. That was some serious bullshit.”
I stared at my bedroom ceiling and gave my honest, unfiltered review of the dream.
It had been about a week since I returned from the expedition into the Demon Realm. Things had been quiet, so I’d let my guard down—only to get smacked in the back of the head like this.
“Goddamn it, what a shitty dream.”
I wasn’t sure if the back of my head hurt from smacking the floor or from the emotional whiplash of the dream itself. Rubbing the throbbing spot, I dragged myself up and flopped back onto the bed with a groan.
That was when an ominous realization ghosted through my mind.
The Saintess’s dreams were prophetic. A power granted only to the Saintess—the ability to glimpse a future that would one day come true.
“Aaaargh… fuck, just stop already!”
Every time I had one of these dreams, that same phrase popped into my head and I couldn’t help but curse while clawing at my hair. It couldn’t be helped. They say if you tell someone not to think of an elephant, all they can picture is an elephant. There was no stopping that sentence from flashing through my brain the instant a prophetic dream hit.
I shook my head hard, trying to fling off both the awful dream and the uncomfortable truth about those visions.
The sticky, obscene dreams I usually had in the Demon Realm already pissed me off, but this new one—whispering sweet nothings with a man—delivered a completely different flavor of pure bullshit.
“Hmm… still, there really is a difference.”
Groaning, I got up and opened the window. The crisp early-morning air rushed in and finally eased my mood a little.
The dreams I sometimes had inside the temple were usually about going on dates with a man or acting all lovey-dovey. If I were an ordinary woman, they would have been perfectly normal dreams—things that could actually happen in the future.
“Ehh, get a grip, Beatrice. ‘If I were an ordinary woman, it would be a future I could dream of’—what kind of brain-dead thought is that?”
I snapped back to reality and slapped both cheeks hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. At least it cleared my head and chased off the weird self-justification.
Anyway, the dreams I had in the Demon Realm and the ones I had elsewhere were noticeably different. The frequency alone was night and day. In the church I only got one a week, but in the Demon Realm even a short nap invited those shitty dreams.
The content was different too. The Demon Realm versions felt far more insidious and obscene.
…Want to know the biggest difference? In the dreams I had inside the Demon Realm, I was barely wearing anything at all.
…Fuck.
“At this rate, someone really is tampering with my dreams.”
It was obvious now—someone was interfering. Following the advice Pope Grandfather had given me last week, I should go ask the Goddess directly. Nothing would be more reliable than that.
With that decided, I threw a robe over my pajamas and dashed for the prayer room. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say. If I didn’t act the moment the thought struck me, I’d end up putting it off for the stupidest reasons.
“Saintess!!! Fix your attire at once!!”
Bartholomew’s thunderous roar exploded behind me as he spotted me sprinting down the hallway in my sleepwear.
“Sorry, old man! I have something urgent to discuss with the Goddess!”
Meeting the Goddess was far more pressing than proper clothing, so I zoomed straight past him and slipped into the prayer room.
“Heh.”
I shut the door a split second before the furious old priest could reach me. A crooked, triumphant smile tugged at my lips.
It’s not good to tease your elders too much, you know.
“I’m not teasing.”
The moment I offered my prayer, the Goddess’s chiding voice rang out. I played innocent.
…I really wasn’t teasing. The old man just took everything way too seriously.
It seems Trixie is giving him quite the headache. He used to offer only devout prayers, but ever since our little one arrived, his prayers have shifted to “Please let the Saintess grow into a modest woman” and “Please keep her from causing trouble.” Lately he’s been lamenting more than praying.
I flinched, conscience stinging, and instinctively shrank in on myself.
…Not to mention I’d heard the cruel truth that his receding hairline couldn’t be fixed even with divine power, which made it worse.
Recently he’s been lamenting rather than praying.
“Y-yes… I’ll try not to cause him too much stress.”
Having nothing else to say, I could only nod obediently.
That aside, what brings you here? Seeing a grown lady run over in her pajamas, it must be something urgent.
“I have a question about the dreams I’ve been having lately.”
Dreams? Prophetic dreams? What was the content that made you rush here like this?
Even the Goddess said she couldn’t know the contents of prophetic dreams. The power didn’t come from the gods but from the world itself, so interference was impossible. She’d given a longer explanation after that, but it was so complicated and headache-inducing that I couldn’t remember any of it.
Anyway…
“Um…”
I tried to speak, but the words stuck in my throat. Tell her I’d dreamed about being affectionate with a man? That the dreams in the Demon Realm were even weirder and far more frequent?
It was genuinely hard to say out loud.
After organizing my thoughts for a long moment, I ended up giving her a vague, watered-down version.
Oh my.
The Goddess stayed silent for a moment after hearing my reluctant words, then let out a soft sound of realization.
Well, our baby is at the age to fall in love now, isn’t she?
“?”
Hehe, don’t worry too much. There are rigid goddesses like Hestia who demand lifelong chastity, but in our church it doesn’t matter if you marry or have children.
Ah, right. Lady Eris was the Goddess of Love. Because I’d chosen my words so carefully, she seemed to think I was here for relationship advice.
“Um, Goddess, that’s not what I… haaa. Fine. I’ll be completely honest.”
If I kept being vague, the conversation would just keep missing the mark. In the end I confessed everything about the dreams.
The Goddess listened in silence while I blushed and stammered through the details.
…When I finally finished, silence fell again.
“…Goddess?”
The heavy quiet was unbearable, so I cautiously called out to her.
Has Trixie ever loved a man?
“Absolutely not! And it won’t happen in the future either!”
The unexpected question made me blurt out the answer before I could stop myself.
“And I won’t fall in love with a woman either!”
I cut off the words I knew were coming next. She was going to say something about being open-minded, that love was what mattered regardless of gender—I could see it coming a mile away.
I planned to stay single for life. I would never like a man, and my female body refused to feel anything beyond “she’s pretty” toward women. My mind rejected men, my body rejected women, so I was tragically doomed to live as a single whether I liked it or not.
Anyway, enough random thoughts. Back to the Goddess.
Have you ever comforted yourself alone?
“Comfort myself with what?”
I tilted my head, genuinely unable to grasp what she meant.
Of course you have no experience with men, let alone women…
“What are you even talking about?”
I tilted my head again. What on earth had she been saying this whole time?
Thinking about it, I had lived over twenty years as a man in my previous life and thirteen years as a woman in this one, so technically I had experienced both sides. Of course, saying that out loud would only make the Goddess sincerely worry that her Saintess had gone insane, so I kept my mouth shut.
Hehehe… You really don’t understand at all. How innocent.
“…That laugh feels weirdly unpleasant.”
The Goddess ignored my question and went off on a tangent again. The faintly lewd chuckle mixed into her voice was strangely irritating.
Ahem. Let’s return to the main topic. The content of the dreams you have in the Demon Realm, and the fact that they occur at an abnormally high frequency. From that, it certainly seems something is intervening.
“Yes, that’s why I came straight to you.”
She cleared her throat and spoke seriously, all playfulness gone. I nodded in agreement.
Coming directly to me was a wise choice. Could you tell me about your physical condition lately?
“Hmm… nothing particularly strange, but sometimes I feel a bit lethargic or spaced out.”
Lately I’d been hit with sudden chronic fatigue. Getting out of bed in the morning had become surprisingly difficult, and I kept catching myself staring blankly into space. Ever since becoming the church’s Saintess, my body had been constantly overflowing with divine power like clear spring water, so I’d lived completely free of illness or exhaustion. Of course, after staying up for a week or fighting high-ranking monsters and demons in the Demon Realm I did get tired, but feeling this level of fatigue during normal life inside the church was clearly abnormal.
The Goddess fell silent again at my answer. She seemed to be thinking, so I waited quietly.
It’s a little early, but you need to take a bath.
“…A bath? I already washed this morning?”
After a long pause, the Goddess’s words were strangely hard to understand.
Did I smell? I grabbed a lock of hair and sniffed it, then sniffed my forearm, but I couldn’t detect anything. Well, they do say you can’t smell your own scent…
Tell Bartholomew or Silvester. They will prepare everything.
“You want me to ask the old man or Pope Grandfather to attend my bath right now? The Pope might be fine, but the old man will probably clutch his chest and collapse.”
......
“Goddess?”
......
“…Goddess?”
The conversation had been cut off.
…What was that? She had never ended a conversation so abruptly before. Had something urgent come up in the divine realm?
No matter how many times I called, she didn’t answer, so I scratched the back of my head and left the prayer room.
Gods apparently loved throwing cryptic riddles at humans. Or, more accurately, they took twisted pleasure in watching humans rack their brains trying to decipher them. Goddess Eris was no exception, so she occasionally said things that were hard to understand.
But today’s words were especially incomprehensible. The stuff about self-comfort and experience seemed like pointless teasing, so for now I’d just tell Bartholomew or Pope Grandfather, “The Goddess said I need to take a bath.” Surely that would produce some kind of answer.
“Beatrice Saintess.”
And just like they say, speak of the tiger and it appears—as soon as I opened the prayer room door, I came face to face with Bartholomew.
…This was bad.
I hadn’t expected him to still be waiting. The old man was usually so busy that I thought he would have gone back to work by now, but I’d been completely caught off guard.
He stared at me in heavy silence. I tried to close the prayer room door again without a word, but he caught it with his hand.
“Old man, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Hoo. That is a line typically spoken by someone who has, in fact, done something wrong.”
“……”
The old man was a master at rendering people speechless. Fortunately, I was a master at dealing with him.
“But since I’m the Saintess, you shouldn’t judge me by ordinary standards, right?”
“……”
Ahem. Got you there, old man? I straightened my back with a confident expression.
The old man simply stared at me. It wasn’t that he was at a loss for words—he was clearly holding back his anger.
Time to run.
I began inching backward, looking for an opening, when the old man let out a long sigh, shook his head, and spoke.
“I have a great many things I wish to say, but since there is urgent news, I will refrain for now.”
“Urgent news? What is it?”
“The hero candidate has arrived.”
Those words sent an icy chill racing through my entire body, as if all my blood had frozen at once.
Finally, you’ve come, Cassian.
You son of a bitch.
Tick—
It felt as if I could hear the clock hand moving, signaling the beginning of the original story, right beside my ear.