The Reason I Fell, (4)
I muttered under my breath.
"Honestly, what is he trying to pull here? If he's the one who told me to come to the temple, shouldn't he handle his own business?"
I gave a polite little nod to the passersby while muttering just quietly enough that no one could actually hear me.
"Back when he told me to let Beati know, he made it sound like she was some precious little treasure he cherished. And now he's suddenly leaving a child in the hands of a man he doesn't even know what to make of…?"
The orphanage drew steadily closer. Niger did not answer.
"Since it's come to this, maybe I should just spill everything to Beati and let myself get dragged off by the Imperial Inspectorate…."
If I screwed my eyes shut and made a formal appeal begging to be taken into custody, I figured they might actually oblige.
[Oh, knock it off.]
Just kidding. Kidding.
I don't exactly want to die either.
Before I knew it, the orphanage building stood before my eyes. I couldn't for the life of me understand how even an orphanage had been painted completely white, but since I hadn't been the one to plaster it, I kept the complaint behind my teeth.
"The kids are going to lose their minds."
[One does not lose one's mind merely because the surroundings are white.]
"That's a rich thing for you to say."
The words actually slipped out. I mean, these were children who ought to grow up seeing all sorts of things, all sorts of colors—what business did anyone have doing this to them?
I made a quiet vow to myself that someday, I would paint the temple in every color of the rainbow.
The central temple would go green first.
I was mulling that over as I stepped inside the orphanage, and promptly ran straight into one of the sisters.
"Oh my, Priest Niger? It feels like it's been an awfully long time since you've visited."
she said, looking genuinely surprised.
"Yes, I'm afraid work kept me away longer than I intended."
"I see. Hmm… oh, that's right. Beati has been waiting for you this whole time, you know."
"…Did she. I owe Beati an apology, then."
I gave a wry smile. To me, she was nothing more than a child I was meeting for the first time—but she was also a character I'd put through this exact scene more times than I could count in the novel.
She was waiting like this even now, and I couldn't help wondering whether it was right for me to be standing in for someone else.
[….]
Even after hearing all that, Niger offered not a word.
So I wandered through the orphanage interior. It was immaculate—whether through constant cleaning and upkeep, there wasn't a single shabby corner, and the children were bright-eyed and cheerful.
And every time I crossed paths with any of them, the nuns and children alike had exactly one thing to tell me: that Beati was waiting for me.
"Even now, am I really supposed to be meeting her in your place…?"
[…Yes.]
I sighed at Niger's unchanging reply, and before long I found myself at the room at the far end of the hall, facing a small girl.
Despite never having seen her before, one glance at that crouched figure was all it took. I knew instinctively. That tiny frame, and black hair nearly as long as she was tall.
This child was Beati.
So I called her name softly.
"Sister Beati."
Her head lifted. That small silhouette swiveled around smoothly and looked my way. Between the curtains of black hair, brown eyes sparkled.
From everything I knew, the corners of her mouth should have been turned up in her usual ready smile—but they were drooping slightly, as though her mood was poor.
"Oh…, Mister Priest…?"
Her voice was a little husky. As listless as her slumped shoulders.
Which was, I suppose, why I found myself smiling all the harder on purpose. I gazed at the child with a warm, gentle smile—the kind of smile Niger never would have conjured.
Then I bent my knees to lower myself to her level and opened my arms toward her.
Something about it just felt like the thing to do.
"Yes, I'm a little late, I know."
"Mister Priest!"
And apparently my instincts hadn't steered me wrong, because Beati scrambled up at once and threw herself into my arms. Her tiny body wrapped around my back as best it could, her face pressed into my chest.
I heard her murmuring against me, a slight tremble of tears woven into the words.
"Mister Priest…, I thought you were never coming back…."
"How could that ever be? I just…, had rather a lot of work."
Good heavens. So this was why people adored her. I was beginning to understand why fathers turned into complete fools for their daughters. And, come to think of it, why even a murderer had been won over.
How could anyone not fall for a child who beamed the moment she laid eyes on you?
Because of thoughts like those, I kept having to fight down a silly smile that kept escaping anyway. It wasn't that I intended to live as some incurable grump, but I also had no intention of straying wildly from Niger's established personality. Smiling like an idiot was simply not permitted. Niger's face was fundamentally sardonic, so by mutual agreement, a gentle smile was as far as the line went.
"Mister Priest…, sniff. Hhic, Mister Priest…."
"Yes, I'm sorry. Please don't cry."
And so I spent the time soothing Beati as she burst into tears. My still-unhealed body kept creaking and complaining, but I could hardly let the child notice. I'd left a girl who loved me this much stranded for two whole months—there wasn't a shred of excuse I could offer.
But really. If he cherishes her that much, he should come see her himself. Why is he palming her off on me?
And so began my life at the temple.
Frankly speaking—at first, I'd worried about the strict, regimented routines of devout clergy, but apparently they didn't demand that sort of thing even from a patient. They were far more flexible than I'd expected, you could say. If anything, it seemed the inflexible, hard-line fanaticism was a trait exclusive to Niger himself.
[That is an unpleasant sentiment.]
"Ah. My apologies."
And so I simply lay in the single-patient room, taking a rest I'd never asked for.
Even so, little by little, worry began to sprout in the back of my mind.
I'd somehow managed to handle both the first incident and the midterms, but thinking of the novel's storyline, it felt less like I'd gotten somewhere and more like I'd only now stepped up to the starting line.
"Hmm. But is it really all right for me to be lounging around like this?"
[You've already dealt with everything urgent. What's the problem? You're worn out, so just rest.]
When I raised the question, the murderer dismissed it out of hand, telling me to stop wasting my thoughts on pointless things.
But as the man who knew the future, how exactly was I supposed to rest with an easy heart?
"Mm, well. I'll rest for now, I suppose…."
Even as I said I would, an uneasy feeling needled at me for no good reason.
"Oh, and by the way. Your business is finished now—so when exactly are you planning to explain things?"
That is: when are you going to tell me about the conversation you had with His Holiness the Pope?
[Not yet.]
"What do you mean, not yet?"
[Dropping the honorifics?]
"S-sorry…, kgh. No, I think a cough is coming on, haha…."
Good grief. He is insufferably strict, honestly.
Considering how much time I was spending cooped up in that hospital room, you'd think I'd be bored to death—but in practice, I wasn't.
For the simple reason that Beati came to visit every single day.
"Mister Priest, Mister Priest! Are you hurting much today?"
"No, I'm fine today, just like yesterday."
I flashed the child a gentle smile, and she always gazed back at me with those wide, sparkling eyes that were so quintessentially a child's. She'd grip the bed rail with both hands and rest only her face atop the mattress. It was unbearably cute.
At the academy, all I ever got to see day in and day out was the chairman, whose bald head positively gleamed; the headmaster, whose shine was steadily increasing; Elia, about as far from fresh-faced innocence as one could get; and students marinating in exhaustion.
"Mister Priest, I think you smile so much more now. You never used to smile at all before."
"Haha…, somehow it just worked out that way. Do you perhaps dislike seeing me smile?"
"No, no! I like it better. I'm glad because it seems like you've become happier."
You've become happier.
Beati really did have a lovely way with words. That beaming smile she wore as she said it—glad because I looked happy—was absolutely beautiful.
And I found myself thinking: maybe this was exactly why. Why I, who had only known Beati for the shortest stretch of time, kept growing helplessly attached to her. The way she'd burst into tears the instant she saw me. The way she'd clung to me and said she'd missed me. The way she beamed at me just like now. It was affection I hadn't earned half well enough.
So really, there was nothing I could do about it.
"Won't your arms get tired like that? You can come up on the bed, you know."
"Oh…, really? May I…?"
"Of course. From now on, you needn't wait for me to offer—if you want to, any time."
I said it with a grin, and Beati climbed up onto the bed with a face grown even brighter. The way she stole a glance at me and then beamed was adorable. Although—there was also a gaze in the room that was decidedly not cute, you could say.
"Professor Elia, why are you staring at me like that…?"
Elia was watching me with an expression impossible to read, whatever thoughts might be churning behind it.
"A professor who is suspiciously tender toward a child. Could it be…."
"Pardon…?"
I was still wondering what exactly was suspicious about being kind to a child when Elia continued.
"Could it be she's actually yours?"
No.
"…She is not."
"Truly…?"
"Yes. Where on earth would that come from?"
This much, at least, Niger had denied to my face directly. When I'd been lying alone in the hospital room, I'd found it downright offensive how he'd answer nothing I asked—so out of sheer spite, I'd gotten curious about things like this and pried. I still remembered how bone-chilling his voice was when he asked if I'd lost my mind.
But you never really knew, did you? I'd genuinely wondered whether there might be another truth I didn't know about. Frankly, the idea of a murderer cherishing a child was strange enough to bend the mind.
At this point, I half expected people to start calling him the priest with a daughter out of nowhere.
That said, entirely separate from all that, I too was busy doting on Beati as much as I pleased.
"For someone who isn't, you're awfully tender with her."
"Well, she's cute enough to earn it, isn't she?"
"…That's a fair point. I have nothing to say to that."
Leaving Elia to pull some unreadable expression behind me, I stroked Beati's hair. A smile bloomed across her face every time my hand passed over it. Any trace of the sorrow she'd worn when we first met had long since vanished. She simply wore her innocent smile, gazing up at me as though she couldn't be happier.
And Beati, as if to give voice to that feeling, spoke up.
"Mister Priest, Mister Priest."
"Yes, go ahead."
"Are you staying at the temple for a long time this visit?"
Hmm.
At Beati's question, I tilted my head and turned the matter over in my mind. I genuinely had no idea how long I'd be staying. Coming to the temple had been Niger's idea in the first place, and this was my first time ever collapsing like this, so I had no sense of how long recovery would take.
"Mm, I can't say for certain…."
I was about to answer with an awkward smile when—
[Three days. Considering the schedule ahead, any longer would be a problem.]
"…I expect I'll be staying about three more days."
"Aww…, that's longer than before, but still not much time left…."
Since the answer had come from Niger, I simply relayed it as-is. Beati bowed her head in clear disappointment, and I gave her a bittersweet smile and stroked her hair.
But hold on.
When Niger said schedule, he obviously meant the academy's, right? He wasn't saying the urge to kill someone was hard to suppress for more than three days, or that he'd go mad unless he periodically cracked someone's skull open—
[It is the academy schedule, so kindly do not entertain unpleasant thoughts.]
….
No, seriously.
At this point, the man might as well have telepathy. Thoughts carry emotion with them, sure, but I so much as suspected and cursed him for half a second and he caught it instantly. Meanwhile, I could read Niger's emotions, but I couldn't predict his thoughts at all.
And that was precisely because—reading Niger's emotions as I did, the only conclusion I could ever reach was that the man was unhinged.
Whenever he gazed at the sky alone, I could feel no emotion whatsoever. He always felt like a hollowed-out man, darkness stretching empty inside. But the moment he killed someone, what felt like dozens upon dozens of emotions came surging up. An emotion that began as a guilt ill-fitting him would spread into euphoria, and then bloom once more into sorrow.
That side of him I could understand, at least to a degree. If anything, rather than killing indiscriminately, he was something like a dark hero who preyed mostly on criminals.
I had no idea what reason had started it all. But I doubted anyone could keep doing this without losing their mind in the end.
I was in the middle of those thoughts when I heard Beati giggling hehe in my arms. I heard Elia beside the bed, casting envious little glances at the girl.
But louder than even that clear, lovely voice, something far heavier echoed through my skull.
[…Brother.]
It was as if he'd read my very emotions—a voice sunk low and heavy.
[Do not presume to pity me.]
There it was.
What do they call this again—Stockholm syndrome?
Somewhere along the way, I had started pitying Niger.