Chapter 8
Chapter 8
“You’ve Finally Arrived”
The rich scent of coffee and the savory aroma of freshly baked bread tickled the tip of my nose.
The sky was clear without a single cloud, and a warm spring breeze lightly scattered my silver hair.
[Saintess, I brought your cake and coffee.]
That gentle voice instantly lifted my mood.
When I turned my head, a man was standing there with the sunlight at his back.
[You keep telling me not to call you by stiff titles like ‘Saintess.’ You said to call you Trixie instead. Or… at least call me by my name.]
I was sitting at a café terrace bathed in sunlight.
The man carefully placed my favorite sweet strawberry tart on the table before sitting across from me.
[Shall I feed you?]
[Mm.]
He cut off a small piece with a fork and brought it to my lips.
Normally, I would have snapped, “Are you insane?” and stabbed the fork straight through his fingers.
But the me inside the dream was different.
As if I had been waiting for it, I shyly smiled and slightly parted my lips to accept the tart he offered me. The sweetness spreading through my mouth made me beam happily.
[You got cream all over your mouth.]
He reached out and wiped the cream from the corner of my lips with his thumb.
It was only a simple touch, but the place he touched burned hot like I had been branded.
[Mm, it tastes better because you fed me.]
I answered with a bashful smile.
And then—
“Gyaaaaaah!”
Thud—
I woke up after rolling off the bed.
“Holy shit, this is seriously getting out of hand.”
I stared up at the ceiling of my room and voiced my simple, honest thoughts about the dream.
Had it been about a week since returning from the demonic realm expedition?
Things had been quiet, so I had finally let my guard down, only to get blindsided like this.
“Goddammit, what a shitty dream.”
Rubbing the back of my throbbing head—whether it hurt because I smacked it on the floor or because the dream itself hit me like a truck—I sat heavily on the bed and grumbled.
And then, like a ghost, a dreadful fact flashed through my mind.
A Saintess’s dreams are prophetic dreams.
A power granted only to Saintesses that foretells the future.
“Ahhh… fuck, just stop already!”
Every time I had one of those prophetic dreams, that sentence surfaced in my mind whether I wanted it to or not, and I clawed at my hair in irritation.
But honestly, it couldn’t be helped.
You know how if someone tells you not to think about an elephant, you immediately think about an elephant?
The moment I had a prophetic dream, there was simply no way to stop that phrase from surfacing in my head.
I shook my head violently, trying to drive away both the contents of the horrible dream and the uncomfortable truth about prophetic dreams.
…The sticky, unsettling dreams I mostly had in the demonic realm were infuriating enough, but this one—whispering sweet words with a man—managed to deliver a completely different flavor of awful.
“Hmm… but there’s definitely a difference.”
Groaning softly, I got up and opened the window. The crisp dawn air flowed in, making me feel a little better.
The dreams I occasionally had inside the temple were usually things like going on dates with a man or cuddling affectionately.
If I had been an ordinary woman, they would have been perfectly normal dreams. They might even have become reality someday.
“Goddammit, get a grip, Beatrice. What kind of idiotic thought is that? ‘A future an ordinary woman could dream of?’ Seriously?”
I abruptly came to my senses and smacked both cheeks hard with my palms.
I hit myself so hard my eyes watered, but at least it cleared my head and drove away that bizarre attempt at self-rationalization.
Anyway, there was definitely a difference between the dreams I had in the demonic realm and the ones I had elsewhere.
First, the frequency was different. In the temple, it had only happened once in a week. But in the demonic realm, even nodding off for a moment was enough to trigger those damned dreams.
The contents were different too. The dreams in the demonic realm felt far more obscene and sinister.
…What was the difference, you ask?
To begin with, in those dreams from the demonic realm, there were barely any times where I was actually wearing clothes.
…Fuck.
“At this point, someone really is messing with my dreams.”
Someone was definitely interfering with them.
Following the advice Grandpa Pope gave me last week, I should go ask the Goddess directly.
There was nothing more reliable than that.
As soon as I decided, I threw a robe over my pajamas and ran straight for the prayer chamber.
After all, there’s a saying about striking while the iron is hot. If I didn’t act immediately, I’d just keep putting it off over trivial excuses.
“Saintess!!! Please dress yourself properly!”
Bartolomew’s thunderous roar exploded through the hallway when he saw me sprinting around in my sleepwear.
“Ah, sorry, old man! I urgently need to talk to the Goddess!”
Meeting the Goddess was far more important than fixing my appearance, so I zipped past him and hurried into the prayer chamber.
“Hah.”
I shut the door at the last possible moment right in front of Bartolomew charging after me in fury.
A victorious smirk spread across my lips.
[…It’s not good to tease your elders too much.]
“I’m not teasing him.”
As soon as I prayed, the Goddess’s reproachful voice echoed out.
I denied it immediately.
…I really wasn’t teasing him.
The old man was just far too serious about everything.
[That child seems to suffer quite a lot because of you. Before you arrived, all his prayers were pious and sincere. But afterward, they became things like, ‘Please let the Saintess grow into a proper, graceful lady,’ and ‘Please stop her from causing trouble.’]
Flinch—
My conscience stabbed at me, and I instinctively shrank back.
…Especially after learning that widening foreheads couldn’t be healed even with divine power.
[Recently, they’re not even prayers anymore. They’re laments.]
“Yeeah… I’ll try not to stress him out so much.”
I ultimately had no defense and could only nod obediently.
[Anyway, what brings you here? Judging by how a grown lady came running in wearing pajamas, it must be something urgent.]
“I have something I want to ask about the dreams I’ve been having recently.”
[Dreams? Prophetic dreams? What kind of dreams made you come rushing over like this?]
Apparently, not even the Goddess could see prophetic dreams.
She once explained that prophetic dreams weren’t bestowed by gods but by the world itself, so divine beings couldn’t interfere with them.
She explained more after that, but it was all so complicated and headache-inducing that I couldn’t remember any of it.
Anyway…
“Ugh…”
I tried to speak about the dreams, but the words simply wouldn’t come out.
How was I supposed to say that I kept dreaming about being all lovey-dovey with a man? And that the dreams became even stranger and more frequent in the demonic realm?
…It was incredibly difficult to say aloud.
After agonizing over it for a while, I ended up vaguely skimming over the contents.
[…Oh my.]
The Goddess let out a small exclamation after hearing my hesitant explanation.
[Well, I suppose it’s about time our little darling fell in love.]
“…What?”
[Hehe, don’t worry too much. Some rigid goddesses like Hestia demand lifelong chastity, but our order doesn’t care whether you marry or have children.]
Ah, right.
Eris was the Goddess of Love.
Because I’d carefully danced around the details, she apparently thought I was asking for relationship advice.
“Excuse me, Goddess, that’s not… haaah… Fine. I’ll just tell you honestly.”
I had a feeling the conversation would keep going nowhere if I continued being vague, so I finally confessed the truth about the dreams.
The Goddess silently listened while I stammered through the details with a burning face.
…When I finally finished speaking, silence descended.
“…Goddess?”
Unable to endure the heavy silence, I cautiously called out to her.
[Have you ever loved a man before, Trixie?]
“Absolutely not! And I never will!”
The unexpected question shattered the silence, and I reflexively shouted my answer.
“And I’m never going to love women either!”
I immediately blocked off the next thing she was probably about to say.
She definitely would have started talking about “having an open mind” and how love was what truly mattered regardless of gender.
I intended to remain single forever.
I could never like men, and I couldn’t like women either. Maybe because my body was female now, but no matter how beautiful a woman was, the only thing I felt was “she’s pretty.”
My mind rejected men, and my body rejected women.
So in the end, I was doomed to live as a lifelong celibate.
Anyway, back to the conversation.
[Have you ever… comforted yourself alone before?]
“Comforted myself how?”
I tilted my head, completely unable to understand what she meant.
[Well, you’ve obviously never had experience with men or women…]
“What are you even talking about?”
Again, I could only tilt my head in confusion.
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 I technically had experienced both sides.
Of course, if I ever said that aloud, the Goddess would probably start sincerely worrying that her Saintess had gone insane, so there was no way I could tell her.
[Hehehe… you really don’t understand at all. How innocent.]
“…That laugh seriously creeps me out.”
The Goddess ignored my questions and said something completely unrelated instead.
For some reason, her laughter sounded strangely lewd.
[Ahem, anyway. Back to the main topic. The contents of the dreams you have in the demonic realm, and the abnormal frequency… yes, it definitely sounds like something is interfering.]
“Yes, that’s what I thought too. That’s why I came to see you.”
After clearing her throat once, the Goddess spoke seriously without a trace of teasing.
I nodded in agreement.
[Coming directly to me was a wise choice. Could you tell me how your physical condition has been lately?]
“Hmm… nothing major, but sometimes I feel strangely lethargic or absent-minded.”
Recently, I had suddenly started suffering from chronic fatigue.
Getting up in the morning had become unusually difficult, and there were plenty of times where I found myself spacing out without realizing it.
Ever since becoming the Saintess of the Order, my body had always overflowed with divine power like a clear spring, leaving me practically immune to fatigue and illness.
Of course, situations like going a week without sleep or fighting powerful monsters and demons in the demonic realm were exhausting.
But feeling this drained while simply living normally inside the Order was clearly abnormal.
After hearing my answer, the Goddess fell silent again.
She seemed deep in thought, so I quietly waited for her response.
[It’s a little early, but I suppose you’ll need to bathe.]
“…A bath? But I already washed this morning.”
After quite some time, the Goddess finally spoke, but what she said made absolutely no sense.
Did I smell bad?
Thinking that, I grabbed my hair and sniffed it, then sniffed my arm too, but I didn’t notice anything strange.
Then again, people supposedly can’t smell themselves properly.
[Tell Bartolomew or Sylvester. They’ll prepare everything for you.]
“…You’re telling me to ask the old man or Grandpa Pope to personally help me bathe? Grandpa might, but the old man will probably collapse clutching the back of his neck.”
[…]
“Goddess?”
[…]
“…Goddess?”
The conversation abruptly cut off.
…What was that?
She had never ended things so one-sidedly before. Did something urgent happen in the divine realm?
No matter how many times I called, the Goddess didn’t answer, so I scratched the back of my head and left the prayer chamber.
Gods liked speaking in riddles to humans.
No—more accurately, they enjoyed watching humans desperately rack their brains trying to interpret those riddles.
Eris was no exception, so she often said things that were difficult to understand.
But today’s conversation had been especially incomprehensible.
The stuff about “comforting myself” and “experience” just sounded like pointless teasing, so for now, I’d simply tell Bartolomew or Grandpa Pope, “The Goddess said I need to bathe.”
Maybe then I’d get some kind of answer.
“Saintess Beatrice.”
And just like they say about speaking of the tiger…
The moment I stepped out of the prayer chamber, I ran directly into Bartolomew.
…This was bad.
I hadn’t expected him to still be waiting here.
The old man was normally so busy that I thought he would have gone back to work by now, but he had completely caught me off guard.
He silently stared at me.
I silently tried to close the prayer chamber door again, but failed because he caught it with one hand.
“Old man, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Oh? That’s generally the sort of line spoken by people who absolutely did do something wrong.”
“……”
No one was better than him at leaving people speechless.
But I was equally skilled at dealing with him.
“But I’m the Saintess, so shouldn’t I be treated as an exceptional case?”
“……”
Ahem. Got him there.
Thinking that, I straightened my back with a smug expression.
The old man merely stared at me in silence.
Ah. That wasn’t speechlessness.
That was the face of someone desperately suppressing rage.
I should run.
Just as I slowly started backing away while searching for an escape route, the old man sighed and shook his head before speaking.
“There are truly many things I wish to say to you, but I shall refrain, as there is urgent news.”
“Urgent news? What is it?”
“The Hero Candidate has arrived.”
At those words, a chilling cold swept through my entire body like all the blood in me had frozen.
So you’ve finally come, Cassian.
You son of a bitch.
Tick—
It sounded as though the hands of a clock announcing the beginning of the original story had finally begun to move.
Chapter 8
“You’ve Finally Arrived”
The rich scent of coffee and the savory aroma of freshly baked bread tickled the tip of my nose.
The sky was clear without a single cloud, and a warm spring breeze lightly scattered my silver hair.
[Saintess, I brought your cake and coffee.]
That gentle voice instantly lifted my mood.
When I turned my head, a man was standing there with the sunlight at his back.
[You keep telling me not to call you by stiff titles like ‘Saintess.’ You said to call you Trixie instead. Or… at least call me by my name.]
I was sitting at a café terrace bathed in sunlight.
The man carefully placed my favorite sweet strawberry tart on the table before sitting across from me.
[Shall I feed you?]
[Mm.]
He cut off a small piece with a fork and brought it to my lips.
Normally, I would have snapped, “Are you insane?” and stabbed the fork straight through his fingers.
But the me inside the dream was different.
As if I had been waiting for it, I shyly smiled and slightly parted my lips to accept the tart he offered me. The sweetness spreading through my mouth made me beam happily.
[You got cream all over your mouth.]
He reached out and wiped the cream from the corner of my lips with his thumb.
It was only a simple touch, but the place he touched burned hot like I had been branded.
[Mm, it tastes better because you fed me.]
I answered with a bashful smile.
And then—
“Gyaaaaaah!”
Thud—
I woke up after rolling off the bed.
“Holy shit, this is seriously getting out of hand.”
I stared up at the ceiling of my room and voiced my simple, honest thoughts about the dream.
Had it been about a week since returning from the demonic realm expedition?
Things had been quiet, so I had finally let my guard down, only to get blindsided like this.
“Goddammit, what a shitty dream.”
Rubbing the back of my throbbing head—whether it hurt because I smacked it on the floor or because the dream itself hit me like a truck—I sat heavily on the bed and grumbled.
And then, like a ghost, a dreadful fact flashed through my mind.
A Saintess’s dreams are prophetic dreams.
A power granted only to Saintesses that foretells the future.
“Ahhh… fuck, just stop already!”
Every time I had one of those prophetic dreams, that sentence surfaced in my mind whether I wanted it to or not, and I clawed at my hair in irritation.
But honestly, it couldn’t be helped.
You know how if someone tells you not to think about an elephant, you immediately think about an elephant?
The moment I had a prophetic dream, there was simply no way to stop that phrase from surfacing in my head.
I shook my head violently, trying to drive away both the contents of the horrible dream and the uncomfortable truth about prophetic dreams.
…The sticky, unsettling dreams I mostly had in the demonic realm were infuriating enough, but this one—whispering sweet words with a man—managed to deliver a completely different flavor of awful.
“Hmm… but there’s definitely a difference.”
Groaning softly, I got up and opened the window. The crisp dawn air flowed in, making me feel a little better.
The dreams I occasionally had inside the temple were usually things like going on dates with a man or cuddling affectionately.
If I had been an ordinary woman, they would have been perfectly normal dreams. They might even have become reality someday.
“Goddammit, get a grip, Beatrice. What kind of idiotic thought is that? ‘A future an ordinary woman could dream of?’ Seriously?”
I abruptly came to my senses and smacked both cheeks hard with my palms.
I hit myself so hard my eyes watered, but at least it cleared my head and drove away that bizarre attempt at self-rationalization.
Anyway, there was definitely a difference between the dreams I had in the demonic realm and the ones I had elsewhere.
First, the frequency was different. In the temple, it had only happened once in a week. But in the demonic realm, even nodding off for a moment was enough to trigger those damned dreams.
The contents were different too. The dreams in the demonic realm felt far more obscene and sinister.
…What was the difference, you ask?
To begin with, in those dreams from the demonic realm, there were barely any times where I was actually wearing clothes.
…Fuck.
“At this point, someone really is messing with my dreams.”
Someone was definitely interfering with them.
Following the advice Grandpa Pope gave me last week, I should go ask the Goddess directly.
There was nothing more reliable than that.
As soon as I decided, I threw a robe over my pajamas and ran straight for the prayer chamber.
After all, there’s a saying about striking while the iron is hot. If I didn’t act immediately, I’d just keep putting it off over trivial excuses.
“Saintess!!! Please dress yourself properly!”
Bartolomew’s thunderous roar exploded through the hallway when he saw me sprinting around in my sleepwear.
“Ah, sorry, old man! I urgently need to talk to the Goddess!”
Meeting the Goddess was far more important than fixing my appearance, so I zipped past him and hurried into the prayer chamber.
“Hah.”
I shut the door at the last possible moment right in front of Bartolomew charging after me in fury.
A victorious smirk spread across my lips.
[…It’s not good to tease your elders too much.]
“I’m not teasing him.”
As soon as I prayed, the Goddess’s reproachful voice echoed out.
I denied it immediately.
…I really wasn’t teasing him.
The old man was just far too serious about everything.
[That child seems to suffer quite a lot because of you. Before you arrived, all his prayers were pious and sincere. But afterward, they became things like, ‘Please let the Saintess grow into a proper, graceful lady,’ and ‘Please stop her from causing trouble.’]
Flinch—
My conscience stabbed at me, and I instinctively shrank back.
…Especially after learning that widening foreheads couldn’t be healed even with divine power.
[Recently, they’re not even prayers anymore. They’re laments.]
“Yeeah… I’ll try not to stress him out so much.”
I ultimately had no defense and could only nod obediently.
[Anyway, what brings you here? Judging by how a grown lady came running in wearing pajamas, it must be something urgent.]
“I have something I want to ask about the dreams I’ve been having recently.”
[Dreams? Prophetic dreams? What kind of dreams made you come rushing over like this?]
Apparently, not even the Goddess could see prophetic dreams.
She once explained that prophetic dreams weren’t bestowed by gods but by the world itself, so divine beings couldn’t interfere with them.
She explained more after that, but it was all so complicated and headache-inducing that I couldn’t remember any of it.
Anyway…
“Ugh…”
I tried to speak about the dreams, but the words simply wouldn’t come out.
How was I supposed to say that I kept dreaming about being all lovey-dovey with a man? And that the dreams became even stranger and more frequent in the demonic realm?
…It was incredibly difficult to say aloud.
After agonizing over it for a while, I ended up vaguely skimming over the contents.
[…Oh my.]
The Goddess let out a small exclamation after hearing my hesitant explanation.
[Well, I suppose it’s about time our little darling fell in love.]
“…What?”
[Hehe, don’t worry too much. Some rigid goddesses like Hestia demand lifelong chastity, but our order doesn’t care whether you marry or have children.]
Ah, right.
Eris was the Goddess of Love.
Because I’d carefully danced around the details, she apparently thought I was asking for relationship advice.
“Excuse me, Goddess, that’s not… haaah… Fine. I’ll just tell you honestly.”
I had a feeling the conversation would keep going nowhere if I continued being vague, so I finally confessed the truth about the dreams.
The Goddess silently listened while I stammered through the details with a burning face.
…When I finally finished speaking, silence descended.
“…Goddess?”
Unable to endure the heavy silence, I cautiously called out to her.
[Have you ever loved a man before, Trixie?]
“Absolutely not! And I never will!”
The unexpected question shattered the silence, and I reflexively shouted my answer.
“And I’m never going to love women either!”
I immediately blocked off the next thing she was probably about to say.
She definitely would have started talking about “having an open mind” and how love was what truly mattered regardless of gender.
I intended to remain single forever.
I could never like men, and I couldn’t like women either. Maybe because my body was female now, but no matter how beautiful a woman was, the only thing I felt was “she’s pretty.”
My mind rejected men, and my body rejected women.
So in the end, I was doomed to live as a lifelong celibate.
Anyway, back to the conversation.
[Have you ever… comforted yourself alone before?]
“Comforted myself how?”
I tilted my head, completely unable to understand what she meant.
[Well, you’ve obviously never had experience with men or women…]
“What are you even talking about?”
Again, I could only tilt my head in confusion.
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 I technically had experienced both sides.
Of course, if I ever said that aloud, the Goddess would probably start sincerely worrying that her Saintess had gone insane, so there was no way I could tell her.
[Hehehe… you really don’t understand at all. How innocent.]
“…That laugh seriously creeps me out.”
The Goddess ignored my questions and said something completely unrelated instead.
For some reason, her laughter sounded strangely lewd.
[Ahem, anyway. Back to the main topic. The contents of the dreams you have in the demonic realm, and the abnormal frequency… yes, it definitely sounds like something is interfering.]
“Yes, that’s what I thought too. That’s why I came to see you.”
After clearing her throat once, the Goddess spoke seriously without a trace of teasing.
I nodded in agreement.
[Coming directly to me was a wise choice. Could you tell me how your physical condition has been lately?]
“Hmm… nothing major, but sometimes I feel strangely lethargic or absent-minded.”
Recently, I had suddenly started suffering from chronic fatigue.
Getting up in the morning had become unusually difficult, and there were plenty of times where I found myself spacing out without realizing it.
Ever since becoming the Saintess of the Order, my body had always overflowed with divine power like a clear spring, leaving me practically immune to fatigue and illness.
Of course, situations like going a week without sleep or fighting powerful monsters and demons in the demonic realm were exhausting.
But feeling this drained while simply living normally inside the Order was clearly abnormal.
After hearing my answer, the Goddess fell silent again.
She seemed deep in thought, so I quietly waited for her response.
[It’s a little early, but I suppose you’ll need to bathe.]
“…A bath? But I already washed this morning.”
After quite some time, the Goddess finally spoke, but what she said made absolutely no sense.
Did I smell bad?
Thinking that, I grabbed my hair and sniffed it, then sniffed my arm too, but I didn’t notice anything strange.
Then again, people supposedly can’t smell themselves properly.
[Tell Bartolomew or Sylvester. They’ll prepare everything for you.]
“…You’re telling me to ask the old man or Grandpa Pope to personally help me bathe? Grandpa might, but the old man will probably collapse clutching the back of his neck.”
[…]
“Goddess?”
[…]
“…Goddess?”
The conversation abruptly cut off.
…What was that?
She had never ended things so one-sidedly before. Did something urgent happen in the divine realm?
No matter how many times I called, the Goddess didn’t answer, so I scratched the back of my head and left the prayer chamber.
Gods liked speaking in riddles to humans.
No—more accurately, they enjoyed watching humans desperately rack their brains trying to interpret those riddles.
Eris was no exception, so she often said things that were difficult to understand.
But today’s conversation had been especially incomprehensible.
The stuff about “comforting myself” and “experience” just sounded like pointless teasing, so for now, I’d simply tell Bartolomew or Grandpa Pope, “The Goddess said I need to bathe.”
Maybe then I’d get some kind of answer.
“Saintess Beatrice.”
And just like they say about speaking of the tiger…
The moment I stepped out of the prayer chamber, I ran directly into Bartolomew.
…This was bad.
I hadn’t expected him to still be waiting here.
The old man was normally so busy that I thought he would have gone back to work by now, but he had completely caught me off guard.
He silently stared at me.
I silently tried to close the prayer chamber door again, but failed because he caught it with one hand.
“Old man, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Oh? That’s generally the sort of line spoken by people who absolutely did do something wrong.”
“……”
No one was better than him at leaving people speechless.
But I was equally skilled at dealing with him.
“But I’m the Saintess, so shouldn’t I be treated as an exceptional case?”
“……”
Ahem. Got him there.
Thinking that, I straightened my back with a smug expression.
The old man merely stared at me in silence.
Ah. That wasn’t speechlessness.
That was the face of someone desperately suppressing rage.
I should run.
Just as I slowly started backing away while searching for an escape route, the old man sighed and shook his head before speaking.
“There are truly many things I wish to say to you, but I shall refrain, as there is urgent news.”
“Urgent news? What is it?”
“The Hero Candidate has arrived.”
At those words, a chilling cold swept through my entire body like all the blood in me had frozen.
So you’ve finally come, Cassian.
You son of a bitch.
Tick—
It sounded as though the hands of a clock announcing the beginning of the original story had finally begun to move.