episode_0006

*

I opened my eyes to the loud sound of rain.

It seemed to be the middle of the night, as it was dark all around.

The ceiling revealed by the faint candlelight is familiar.

I’m in my bed in my room.

I think I lost consciousness on the boat, and it seems the trainee nuns carried me here.

Sure enough, when I slowly turned my head, I saw gray hair guarding me in my sleep.

Lucia.

She, with her weak body, was pressing and massaging my sleeping arm.

As I quietly gazed at her, I met her eyes as she slowly turned her head.

Lucia looked at me with tearful eyes in an instant.

“Father…? Are you awake?”

“Lucia…”

“A-Are you alright? What on earth happened…? Why are you… Was it a robbery or something…?”

As if she had many things to say, she was stumbling over other questions before even finishing one.

I slowly sat up.

“Ugh,”

“Ah, no! You should still lie down. You’ve lost too much blood.”

Certainly, my whole body was wrapped in bandages.

I could feel the herbs placed under the bandages mixed with blood and becoming sticky.

It stings badly.

The pain I didn’t feel when I was frantically running while fending off the monsters was now vividly felt.

I dropped my head back onto the bed and slowly opened my mouth.

“How long… was I lying down…?”

“You’ve been lying down for half a day. Of course, you should lie down for much longer…”

“Were you… watching me the whole time?”

“No, I was taking turns with the other girls… I’ve only been here for about an hour.”

“I see…”

“What on earth happened to you?”

“… Hooo”

I sighed and took a moment to collect my thoughts.

I was wondering whether to explain to them what had happened or not.

After all, they can’t leave the island anyway, so is there any need to tell them that the monsters exist or that the village has been destroyed?

It would only make them anxious and wouldn’t help at all.

Besides, as I confirmed while escaping, the monsters didn’t seem to be able to cross the sea.

They don’t know how to swim, and they don’t have the intelligence to travel by boat.

But is it right to hide this fact from them—the fact that the village, maybe the whole city, might have been destroyed?

How can I make them understand that support won’t be coming in the future without explaining about the monsters?

Besides, in the first place, I didn’t even know what the situation was right now.

After pondering, I slowly opened my mouth.

“Bring me a cat.”

“… Father? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“Sola has a cat, bring me that cat.”

“No, I know Sola has a cat, but why suddenly a cat…”

Lucia spoke in a rare, stern tone.

It seemed like my sudden request was quite absurd.

I let out a soft groan and replied.

“No, I’m in too much pain, and I think I need to lie down for a long time… In the meantime, I want to touch something soft. I want to see something cute too…”

“Something soft… something cute…”

Lucia lowered her head for a moment and scanned her body a few times before hesitantly opening her mouth.

“I-If that’s… what you want, I…”

“… Huh?”

“No… It’s nothing… it’s nothing.”

Lucia blushed and slowly got up.

“Did you… like cats?”

“… Yeah, I used to like them.”

“It didn’t… seem like it…”

“I used to like them, but Sola always kept it with her, so I just left it alone.”

“Yes… I understand.”

Lucia slowly opened the door and went out.

And a moment later, there was a crashing sound, and the door burst open with a loud noise.

“Father! You’re awake?!”

“… The door’s going to break.”

Sola, holding a cat in one arm, kicked open the door.

The cat looked as if it didn’t know what was going on, its eyes wide open, dangling from Sola’s arm.

*

Unlike Lucia, it wasn’t easy to send Sola out.

Sola got angry at me, threw a tantrum, and in the end, she insisted on not leaving my room, pointing out that I didn’t bring her meat.

However, when Anna, who had heard about the situation from Lucia, showed up, Sola was eventually dragged out by Anna’s hand.

Finally, in the quiet room, I dropped the cat I was holding into my arms.

Despite the wind and rain, fortunately, the window wasn’t open.

I gritted my teeth and slowly got up and went out of bed.

“Agh… It hurts, damn it.”

I opened the bottom drawer and took out a pouch tightly wrapped in thin leather.

When I untied the string of the pouch with trembling fingers, I saw about thirty brown *kkachi* cigarettes inside.

I took one out and put it in my mouth.

It was a special cigarette that reduced pain and helped the body recover.

It was made by marinating various herbs in holy water and drying them, then rolling them with tobacco leaves that had been dried with opium sap. In the days when I was fighting demons almost every day, I used to smoke ten of these a day.

Lacking the strength to strike a flint, I lit the cigarette with the candle that was lighting the room.

After taking a deep puff, I slowly composed myself and gritted my teeth again, reaching into the bottom drawer.

Then I took out a white chalk and a transparent glass bottle.

“Agh, sss… Hoo…”

Every time I bent over, the abdomen that had been bitten by the monster tingled.

I could feel the damp blood soaking into the bandage.

I hurriedly sucked in the cigarette and slowly sat down on the bare floor.

“Hoo… brings back old memories.”

Just when Bishop sent me a leave of absence to rest, this kind of thing happened.

Well, three months is enough rest.

I let out a hearty laugh with the white cigarette smoke and drew a picture on the wooden floor with chalk.

I drew three large circles and filled the area around the circles with dense ancient characters.

“I was worried I wouldn’t remember, but my body remembers, my body, ugh, how tiring.”

I threw the short chalk behind me and picked up the cat and sat it inside the circle.

Despite being a beast, the cat was sitting still.

I sat down in the largest circle, and in the remaining circle, I placed a dish with the liquid in the bottle.

A yellowish liquid with a pungent smell.

Sulfur.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this again.”

This was a ritual to summon demons that I had learned when I suppressed a pagan group in the past.

I often used this ritual to negotiate with high-ranking demons to send back low-ranking demons or to return the souls taken by demons to Heaven.

Of course, it wasn’t a good method, so I was often scolded by the Bishop, but if I took a little risk, there was nothing faster and more effective than this in some cases.

I shook the thick ash at the end of the cigarette onto the sulfur dish.

The sulfur instantly caught fire.

Watching the fire burning red, I extinguished the candle burning on the desk.

As soon as the candle was extinguished, the fire on the dish flickered strangely once and turned green in an instant.

“That’s it.”

I was a little worried because it was my first time doing it in a while, but it seems to be working properly.

I looked at the cat sitting in the circle.

The cat was struggling on the floor, looking in pain.

It looked like it was struggling to get out of the circle.

But as if blocked by an invisible wall, the cat couldn’t even get a single claw out of the circle.

I opened my mouth.

“Don’t play tricks. There’s no way I’ll let you out.”

The cat stopped struggling when it heard my voice and slowly turned its body over.

Then, with a calm face, it sat up straight and stared at me.

The whites of the cat’s eyes had disappeared.

My face, illuminated by the green light, was reflected in those black pupils.

The cat took a slow breath and finally opened its small mouth.

“Alright, alright, I was just doing it just in case.”

“You’re being reasonable today, what’s going on?”

“I was thinking it was about time you called me anyway. To be honest, I was waiting.”

“Go to hell. Anyone would think I call you out often.”

“Heeheehee.”

The cat started laughing in a disgusting voice, strangely distorting its mouth.

Then, it continued in a smooth, playful voice.

“Why are you like this between us? I’m hurt.”

It’s creepy.

I frowned and continued.

“What’s between us?”

“Well, a wolf and a sheepdog?”

“We’re enemies. Got it right, didn’t you?”

“If you look at it from a distance, we’re also relatives.”

“Oh, give me a break.”

“Heeheehee, even after a long time, that snarky tone of yours is still the same.”

It scratched the floor while chuckling.

I ignored the words and kept the cigarette in my mouth.

Relatives my ass.

What priest in the world would be related to a great demon of hell?

When I didn’t answer, the cat started talking on its own.

“Speaking of dogs, I heard you were kicked out to a dead-end job. The hunting dog that finishes hunting gets eaten, they say. Doesn’t it fit perfectly?”

“It’s a vacation.”

“Your expression doesn’t look good for a vacation?”

“Don’t you think it’s because I saw you?”

“Heeheehee, what a waste, isn’t it? Wasting your talents, well, there were even talks about holding a party in Hell at the news of your demotion.”

“Don’t you guys have anything better to do?”

“You blocked everything.”

I shook my head.

No matter how great of an Exorcist Priest I was, there’s no way I could’ve defeated all those demons by myself.

It’s a method demons often use to boost their opponents more than necessary to induce carelessness.

Especially that demon I summoned inside the cat, ‘Kunat’, was a guy with even more skillful speech.

“Anyway, why did you call me, now that you’re going to be resting in the countryside? Did you want to have a chat with an old friend?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“Heeheehee, alright I know. I said I was waiting because it was about time you called me…”

There’s no point in talking to a demon for a long time.

Even if I’m not fooled, I can’t stop myself from feeling disgusted.

I immediately got to the point.

“What’s that monster? What did you demons do again.”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit.”

Kunat shook his head and said in a low voice.

“Listen here, Billy.”

“Ha,”

It said my real name so casually.

It’s a rule that a priest lives by their baptismal name after becoming a priest, but it seemed like that demon had no intention of following such a rule.

In the first place, that name might be made up by that demon.

Because I don’t have any memories of my parents who gave me the name.

“To be honest, considering the friendship between us, they’re not related to us. Believe me.”

“If you’re going to lie, do it properly. Are you saying that thing occurred naturally?”

“No, there is no such being on Earth, in Hell, or even in Heaven. Even I have never seen or heard of it anywhere.”

“… A lie.”

Kunat tilted his head and said.

“Then have you ever heard of such a creature somewhere? Besides, if that’s an existence from Hell, why didn’t your divine hand burn it?”

“…”

“Doesn’t that alone prove that those monsters didn’t come from Hell?”

I scoffed and said.

“How did you know that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That my power didn’t work on the monsters. How did you know, I only summoned you now?”

“…”

Kunat closed his mouth as if he had been hit in the bullseye.

“You were watching me all along, weren’t you?”

“Ha, oh dear, I’ve been had. I’ll be a laughingstock when I go back to Hell.”

“It’s your fault after all.”

I raised my fist.

“It isn’t.”

“Make your excuses in Hell.”

“It’s true that I was watching you. But really, those monsters have nothing to do with us.”

“Then why were you watching me?”

“I was watching because I was worried about you. I was so nervous when you started getting bitten by those things.”

“Bullshit…”

“I told you from the start. I was waiting.”

Kunat slowly raised the cat’s forepaw and gestured as if scratching the air.

Crack,

With a sound like glass breaking, the circle imprisoning the demon was distorted.

“I can easily break down such a basic pagan spell. But still, I’m sitting here and talking, aren’t I?”

“…”

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

“We?”

“Yes, all the demons… no, maybe even all the heavenly beings and even the humans on Earth might have waited for you.”

I shouted.

“Tell me in a way I can understand!”

Kunat slowly gathered the forepaws and placed them down politely.

I was so taken aback by the attitude that seemed polite that I unconsciously held my breath.

Kunat cleared away the slick attitude from before and opened his mouth in a very polite voice.

“Billy… no, Father Theodore. You are the only hope that we demons have found at this point.”

“The hope of the demons, what kind of…”

Kunat interrupted me and said firmly.

“Humanity has been destroyed. By those monsters.”