Welcoming the Guest at the Holy Dormitory (1)
“Th-that… what do you mean….”
“Ah……”
The girl seemed to realize only then that she had blurted out something she should never have said in front of me. She clapped both hands over her mouth. Far too late, of course.
“U-um……”
Still unordained, the girl stammered, desperately searching for some thread that might unravel the awkwardness between us. Rather than remain silent and make things even harder for her, I decided it would be better if I spoke first.
“…Just what exactly has Pirel been saying about me all this time?”
At my sigh-like question, the girl pursed her lips, hesitating. She clearly wanted to speak but found the words difficult to release.
Then she bowed her head deeply.
“Aha ha ha… Pi-Pirel unni—ah, I mean Priestess Pirel—has been bragging so much about her ‘Kaira unni’… I was just so thrilled to meet the Hero that I started babbling nonsense even though we’ve only just been introduced… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Hero!”
Priestess Pirel. So she really had become a combat priestess after all. The fate that might have let her live as an ordinary bakery owner… or perhaps a stable hand… had been twisted beyond repair because of me. I could only hope the change had been a blessing for her.
Please, let it be so.
The girl was still bowing awkwardly, unsure what to do with herself. The sight of someone acting so deferential toward me felt deeply uncomfortable, so I offered a bitter smile and gently helped her back to her feet.
“It’s all right… really, don’t worry about it.”
Only after hearing those words did the girl—who was hard to classify as either priestess or nun—glance up at my face, checking my expression, before slowly straightening her back.
“Aha ha…”
She laughed sheepishly, clearly trying to warm the chilled air between us. The sight was so endearing that I decided to change the subject.
“…Anyway. I came to see Pirel. Is she available now? I heard the seminary has very strict rules.”
I asked without much confidence, remembering the torturous-looking devices the Saintess had described to frighten us. If Pirel was stuck in some unbreakable schedule, I thought, I could simply wait outside for a while.
“Well… Priestess Pirel isn’t here at the moment.”
“She’s not?”
“Even though she’s newly appointed, Priestess Pirel is a combat priestess whose skills have been recognized. Our direct jurisdiction and the Empire have a security agreement in place. It seems monsters influenced by the Demon King’s residual magic have been appearing frequently in the northern Empire, and she’s been dispatched to help purify them. She was sent to a different location from Saintess Azalea, who is also currently absent.”
I frowned slightly, caught between disappointment and worry. I had come all this way hoping to see both Azalea and Pirel, only to find them gone. That alone was enough to disappoint me… but fighting creatures tainted by the Demon King’s magic?
Will Pirel be all right?
The girl before me seemed to guess my thoughts. She deliberately brightened her tone to reassure me.
“Please don’t worry! If you had ever seen Priestess Pirel fight even once, you would never worry about her.”
I saw no need to mention that I had witnessed her fighting—both in that late-autumn forest where shadow tentacles writhed and on the swaying deck of a boat upon the Drankis River.
“She uses the pistol she’s carried since entering the order, loaded with bullets blessed by the power of light. Out of a hundred shots, she lands about a hundred and forty.”
I see.
“Though she’s still quite clumsy at handling divine power itself… Ah. Is this another thing I shouldn’t be saying?”
Indeed. From the very first time she had taken up the gun Kenetig gave her in the forest, she had shown an unnatural talent for shooting. She had never touched a firearm before in her life, yet she had saved me by striking the priest of the evil god whose tentacles had sprouted from the stump of his severed neck.
It must have been a natural gift she would never have discovered had she remained a simple bakery mistress.
In any case, the important thing was that Pirel was not here right now.
“…nim!”
Only then did I realize someone had been whispering my name repeatedly.
“Hero!”
“Eh…?”
The girl who had been attending me earlier now stood directly in front of me, eyes wide and sparkling with turquoise clarity, her face thrust so close that our noses nearly touched.
“Ah… I’m sorry. I was lost in thought. What is it?”
“Well… um……”
For someone who had leaned in so dramatically, she was hesitating again. I stared at her adorable, uncertain face. Finding my gaze burdensome, she turned her head slightly and finally spoke.
“I would very much like to invite you, Hero, to stay at our seminary dormitory!!!”
“Eh……”
Completely unprepared for such a suggestion, I simply stared at her with a blank expression. The arm that had been idly toying with Iskil’s brooch lost all strength, my hand dropping limply to my side.
The matter proceeded with astonishing speed. I barely had time to review even half a spell from Master Viran’s book.
The girl who had been manning one of the main temple’s reception counters—the very same seminary student named Malinka who had suddenly invited me—left me standing there after I had given a vague, noncommittal answer. It had been difficult to refuse her outright. She fetched the dorm supervisor priestess who oversaw the female dormitory where the seminary students lived.
Unlike the excitedly chattering Malinka, the supervisor greeted me with a polite and formal bow. Once the greeting was complete, she immediately made a request of me, despite our being strangers. She said she had heard much about me from both the Saintess and Priestess Pirel.
Every evening after dinner, they gathered the seminary students for vespers—a service that mourned the fading light of the day. After the service, they would set aside time for me. As the former Hero and a comrade the Saintess still longed for, could I share various stories with the students?
Any stories would do, she said. Tales of my life, accounts of the Hero’s party’s adventures from my perspective rather than the Saintess’s, stories about magic, or knowledge of any kind.
So the people here truly don’t view me as some wicked witch. I should thank Azalea and Pirel.
Even as gratitude filled me, I hesitated. I was still an unbeliever, after all, and the prospect felt burdensome. But Malinka’s eyes shone with such pure, innocent light that I could not refuse.
The seminary students of the main temple were, in essence, the next generation of intellectuals who would lead the denomination with the largest following in the Empire. To be granted an official platform to defend myself among such young people was an opportunity I could not turn down. I wanted to reclaim my honor.
If things went well, it might even serve as promotion for the Riaska Encyclopedia. Heh.
“…That is all. With my limited insight and meager accomplishments, I am truly grateful for this chance to speak before you. It was merely one mage’s personal story, but I hope it may prove helpful to your religious lives in some small way. Furthermore, I hope it becomes an opportunity to better understand our neighboring brothers and sisters of different faiths across the river.”
That should make for a suitable conclusion, shouldn’t it?
Basking in applause far greater than I deserved, and feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the sparkling eyes of the young seminary students, I finally concluded my long speech—or perhaps it had been more of a rambling confession—in the hall of the seminary dormitory attached to the main temple. I had stammered at times and watched my words carefully, but the atmosphere had been welcoming.
So this is what being welcomed feels like.
At first I had wondered whether it was truly all right for me to speak like this, whether it might be some trap laid by someone within the Empire. But the mood among both the students and the supervising priestesses showed no such signs, and before long I was able to speak comfortably.
I… I suppose I have lived decently after all.
Neither in Riaska nor in the Light Denomination’s direct jurisdiction had I been treated like an evil witch. Perhaps, if I abandoned any thought of returning to my homeland in the Empire… living like this, warmly received, might not be so bad.
Though the denomination was said to possess a sexually liberal culture, the seminary dormitories were strictly separated by gender. There were also separate buildings for the youngest aspiring clerics and for those training to become full priestesses. In total, there were four dormitory buildings to house the students.
Only a wealthy denomination could manage such an arrangement, I thought. Yet here I was, being granted the use of the VIP room in one of those very dormitories. I had every reason to be grateful.
Half-pushed along by a flock of chattering girls, I walked toward the guest room in the female students’ dormitory that the supervisor had assigned me.
From a distance I could feel envious stares. The wistful gazes of the male seminary students who had lost their chance, along with those from the male monks’ and nuns’ dormitories. I deliberately avoided meeting their eyes.
Ugh… it’s so loud…
I thought as I was swept along. This was the first time in either of my lives that I had been surrounded by girls like this, buried beneath a crashing wave of gossip so loud it threatened to burst my eardrums.
It’s nothing like the magic university. The candidates there were always conscious of individual ability; they tended to view one another as rivals.
And then—
“Hero! Herooo!! Can I hold your hand once?”
“Wow… Hero, your skin is so white……”
“Touch Kaira-nim’s cheek!! It’s so soft and smooth, and even a little cool. Doesn’t it feel amazing?”
Having never experienced such an atmosphere in either of my two lifetimes, I felt as though I were drowning in a flood of girls, about to suffocate at any moment.
Just when the ego of Lee Sun-hyeon—the ordinary, middle-aged man I thought I had nearly forgotten—began to float up inside me, threatening to paralyze my mind with the sheer impossibility of the situation, one of the girls asked a question that jolted me back to awareness.
“Kaira-nim, are you really thirty years old?”
“What kind of question is that! It’s rude! But……”
Even as she scolded her friend, the girl’s hand gently stroked the top of my head.
“She really is cute like a doll… Just like a new seminary student. Like a little sister……”
My body remained that of an unchanging nineteen-year-old and four months. And while it was small even for its physical age due to poor development, I was not actually smaller than these girls who had not yet finished growing. At most, we were roughly the same size.
…Do I really look that young?
Then what about the customers at Arto’s brothel who specifically requested me, or the travelers who fell for my seduction so easily? What on earth were their tastes?
“I-It’s thanks to body-preserving magic.”
I could only gloss over the question. It wasn’t exactly a lie. Master Viran’s book had described such magic—though it was less about rejuvenation and more about anchoring a corpse-like body to the present world.
It was right then, as I began to reflect on all the criminal things I had done in this small body, that—
“Hyat?!”
A chillingly cool breeze passed through my hair. Someone had pressed their nose against my head and was sniffing.
“Yes. The smell……”
The girl buried her nose deeper between my strands of hair and took a long, deep breath.
“The smell of cookies… of bread… of the plain white bread served after morning service……”
Blushing furiously, feeling as though I had truly become their little sibling, I hesitated before pleading with them.
“U-um… everyone, this is… embarrassing… Could you please stop……”
“Wow, she’s getting shy! She’s getting shy!”
“Hiiiing. Kaira-nim is so cuuute!!”
It was completely useless. These girls, who presumably possessed deep faith, rubbed their cheeks against me and pinched my face like children who had finally obtained the cherished doll they had always wanted.
But even this… in its own way……
If I decide to enjoy it, it might actually feel… rather nice.
“That’s right, that’s right. Since Kaira-nim is visiting the dormitory for the first time, she’s basically like a new student. She’s as cute as any freshman. So why don’t we hold a proper welcome ceremony for her?”
“Oh, that’s perfect. If it’s the Hero we’re talking about, even the supervisor priestess wouldn’t dare object. Kaira-nim, come this way! Just follow us!”
As I was swept away by the cloud of girls and dragged toward a place entirely different from the VIP room, I cast a pleading look toward the supervisor priestess, begging for rescue.
“Understood. Then I’ll make the necessary preparations as well.”
With a playful glint in her eyes and an expression of genuine curiosity about what her charges were about to do, she utterly crushed my last hope.