The Face of My Father
Even in my old life, I had nothing much to call my own. Family. Money. A home. I lived without any of them. Perhaps there was no law saying someone like me had to die, because I was placed in the care of a church facility and grew up safe and sound until I came of age.
If I'm honest about how I felt in those days, I ached to become like the nun who had raised me as if I were her own son. But once I learned that such a thing was impossible for a man, I dreamed instead of becoming a proper priest. And after I admitted that a single night had overturned my whole life, both of them became dreams I would never fulfill again.
The full curve of the chest that met my eyes every time I bowed my head had already told me the priesthood was a road I'd have to give up.
The bewilderment of suddenly finding myself in a woman's body, the sense that my future had gone pitch-dark — that lasted only a few days. Wallowing in defeat alone would have been a terrible waste of the new endowments I'd been handed. I pleaded sickness and shut myself in my room all day like an invalid, and even then, the light never faded.
Even though it was nothing more than a woman's mask I had put on, the reflection in the mirror was simply beautiful. Blue eyes like captured waves and lustrous black hair set off a small face, while the nipped-in waist and the hips and backside anyone might covet made even me hesitate to let my gaze linger. That exquisite face seemed to turn everything into a dream.
Perhaps because of that, I stepped out of my little world with a far lighter heart and met people for the first time. There were moments the stares turned on me felt heavy, but everything ceased to matter once I learned that I was the Saintess.
The one needed to drive out the demon who had thrown this world — the world inside a novel — into its greatest turmoil. Until then I had thought of it only in those terms, and never once tried to look closer at what a Saintess's life actually was.
But now that I stood inside it and looked around me, I understood anew. It was certainly fair to say the Saintess's power was great — and I, too, could work those miracles for someone. For whomever I wished.
That single fact turned reality on its head. I could now offer my help to every soul who stood beneath me by their own choosing. Merely imagining the swelling dream that one thought conjured set my heart pounding and left me grateful, of all things, to be alive.
Even now, with my hand resting on this full chest as I turn to look behind me, I owe that same gratitude for being able to give myself to the office of Saintess alone — rather than to the strangeness of this woman's body, in which the thought that it is not mine still reigns.
It would be because I left nothing behind in my old life. After the nun passed away, I lived on nothing but the longing to become a priest, so yearning for another person never once stirred in me.
"So this is where you were."
And — whether heaven had lent a hand, I couldn't say — even here, I had found a priest whose air resembled hers. So it was no stretch that I carved into myself the resolve to leave my old life behind and devote myself to the reality I'd been dealt.
In this reality, my name is Serina Frechern. And it has now been just one year since I began living as the Saintess.
"Saintess Serina."
At the sound of my name, I turned slowly to find a middle-aged man in full clerical dress walking toward me. Cardinal Gelf Arium. The one who had given me more help than anyone in the year since I came to inhabit this body.
"Oh, Gelf, you came?"
"The night air is still chilly. You should head in soon."
And my guardian.
The volunteer work and speeches I had spent the past month preparing had come to a successful close, leaving me unburdened and, if anything, proud of myself, so with Gelf's leave I had climbed the nearby hill. The sunset glow was beginning to sink — apparently some two hours had slipped away.
I invited Gelf, who had drawn near before I knew it, to take the seat beside me, then squared my gaze toward the view.
"I'm fine. Did you come all the way up here just to see me?"
"I came to keep the Saintess company and have a chat while I was at it."
"Hmm? Funny, considering how much you're carrying."
"I can't get anything past the Saintess's sharp eye."
Gelf showed me the coat and the snacks he had brought along. I was already shivering, so — perfect timing, I thought — I slipped my arms into the thick coat and reached for a pastry.
"Saintess? Wouldn't it be better to offer your greetings first?"
"Greetings? To whom?"
"Saintess! Here I am!"
A familiar voice. I tilted my head and saw, far off past Gelf, a nun walking toward us. Looking closer, it was a face I knew.
"Michelle! Come on over!"
"So you're leaving, I hear."
Waving in my excitement, I slowly let my arm fall.
"Huh...? You're leaving...?"
"Better you hear it from her directly. I heard she came all this way to say her farewells to you, Saintess."
It was just as Gelf said. She was wrapping up half a year spent away from home and leaving for Aileum.
The city where the Saintess of her childhood had stayed with Gelf. On its outskirts stood the Order of Letan. Why the two of us alone had been posted to live in this far-flung place, I still hadn't been told — but we hadn't been back in ten years, and I never expected we would be. Our hometown was not Aileum but this place, Vegatin.
So of course Michelle was leaving. Her hometown was Aileum — not some backwater village like this.
"Goodbye, Michelle. It's been so much fun, being with you all this time."
"Saintess. Whenever it may be, if you ever come to Aileum, please stop by the Order. I'll be waiting for you."
She was a precious bond. All I had to do was tuck her away, safely, in my heart like that.
"You're crying again."
Well, I had strained every nerve to keep it dammed up. Bawling in front of someone about to leave would only wound us both.
"Here, wipe your—"
I gave my nose a good clear into the handkerchief he handed over and brought myself to a barely presentable state. I wasn't woman enough to dab at my tears with it. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand, then declared with force:
"I'm fine now."
"...Are you, really?"
"Hic."
"Aigoo. If you're going to cry anyway, let it all out properly. There's no sense holding it in."
A needless bit of mischief seized me; I pinched Gelf's side hard and demanded he face forward with me.
"Hmph. Look at that instead. It's my favorite view in the world."
"A lovely sight indeed."
The view from up here in this moment as the sun went down, so like the tender face of a countryside where houses and fields mingled in just the right measure, always settled my heart into peace.
"You did wonderfully earlier, Saintess."
"Really? I did well?"
Gelf was not one to hand out praise as a rule, and there was no suppressing my giddiness.
"Of course. Did you not see everyone offering up their devotion to you?"
"Being praised feels good. Did I really seem like a Saintess?"
Gelf grinned. For this once — just this once — I thought I could forgive him for coming out without even a proper shave.
"You were wonderful. Truly... Hm? Saintess? What is it, all of a sudden?"
"...Because I'm so happy."
Because from here on, I was going to bawl. If the two of us went about together, anyone would mark my puffed-up face long before his shaggy beard.
At last the sound I could no longer hold burst out of me, and the crying would not stop; Gelf, more flustered than I'd ever seen him, reached out his hand.
"Saintess. How have you grown so fragile? You, who were once so steadfast..." He was rubbing the corners of my eyes with the back of his hand, wiping the tears away.
"Because you told me I was being a help. Because you said that if I tried, I could help people."
"Saintess, have I not told you before? Cry too often, and when your wedding day comes, the tears won't come at all."
"...I'm not interested in marriage or anything of the sort."
"You never know what life will do. You think I married out of keen interest? Living on, it simply came to that. And so I raised you, Saintess, like a daughter more precious to me than anyone."
"...Thank you."
"Think nothing of it. It came simply with being married. I was sunk in gloom over having no child when I came to raise you, and that chance, in turn, led on to the stigmata. Well, for one reason or another, it is plain fact that I cherish you more than anyone."
Once more he cupped my cheek, wiping my tears away.
"And so it grieved me deeply, too. It seemed to me you were all but discarding your own life to be faithful to your calling. For one who had kept watch at the Saintess's side so long, it hurt terribly, every time you wept in secret, alone."
"You could have comforted me, you know. I'd have liked that."
"I wanted nothing more — but I chose, like a man, to hold my tongue. Living half a lifetime beside the woman I loved, and raising a darling daughter like you, I came to think I understood a woman's heart. To weep in secret is to say you'd rather not be caught at it, is it not?"
"...Yeah. You'd be happy, and at the same time terribly ashamed."
"I thought as much. Had I left so much as a scratch upon our lovely Saintess's heart, this Gelf would have departed this world before ever seeing you walk into your wedding hall."
"What is that even supposed to mean..."
I had been in tears until a moment ago, so laughing like this ought to have been terribly ill-omened — but with the ever-grave Gelf carrying on like that, I couldn't help giggling like a fool.
"Feeling a little better now?"
"Yeah. Thank you. I feel lighter because of you."
"Good to hear. Now we can have a serious talk."
The word serious made me flinch, but what followed was blandness itself.
"As for whoever means to be your husband, I will look into him to the marrow and judge him myself, so see to the rest as you please. Understood?"
"Tch. You think I'd bring home just any man?"
A man. Marriage. All of it was futile — but I played the part, because I wanted to be seen as a real daughter. And Gelf, for this moment alone, seemed to want to feel like a father soothing his child.
"Every father's heart is the same. One could never send an only daughter off to some good-for-nothing..."
Smack.
My head snapped around.
Because I had struck my own cheek.
Because I could not trust myself to face, unflinching, Gelf's corpse — my father's body.