Ch.374Episode 14 – One Religion, One Faith, Two Saints

A dreadful silence enveloped the surroundings. The air in the bedroom settled lower and colder than ever before.

In the suffocating silence that followed, no one dared to speak hastily. Lucia looked around with a dumbfounded expression, clearly in shock, while I watched the two saints cautiously.

Just then, one of the saints personally broke the thin ice of tension.

It was Veronica, her voice hoarse from hours of screaming.

“I think we need to talk… but this isn’t the right place.”

In my opinion, the location hardly mattered. The real problem wasn’t the place but the situation itself.

However, Veronica wouldn’t budge. Using the blanket as makeshift clothing to cover herself, she rose from the bed with an air that suggested she wouldn’t accept any objections.

“…Let’s move to another room first.”

Episode 14 – One Religion, One Faith, Two Saints

Having regained her composure, Veronica began tidying the bedroom. She brought magical tools maintained as cathedral property and meticulously erased all traces from the bed.

After finishing the cleanup in an instant, Veronica summoned the nuns of the cathedral. Despite the late hour, the clergy promptly responded to the saint’s call.

“Please escort Saint Lucia to her room. It hasn’t even been a full day since her canonization ceremony, and the night is deep, so she must be exhausted.”

“Yes, Saint.”

“Prepare bath water as well. After the saint completes a simple purification bath, send up comfortable clothing and tea to help with sleep.”

“We will do so.”

Veronica ushered Lucia into the bedroom. To be precise, the clergy and nuns guided Lucia.

It might seem incomprehensible to send a guest who came with business in the middle of the night straight to bed without even conversing, but neither Lucia nor the clergy who assisted her questioned Veronica’s decision.

The clergy didn’t object because the saint’s decision was reasonable, while Lucia didn’t resist because she was too bewildered.

“Saint Lucia, I’ll escort you to your bedroom.”

“……”

“S-Saint…?”

Lucia, having witnessed her sister’s infidelity, still seemed unable to recover from the shock. With vacant eyes, she stared at her sister and didn’t respond to the nun’s address.

Veronica, on the other hand, showed no particular reaction.

“…Take her away.”

“……”

“What are you doing? Hurry and take her. Sisters, do you intend to leave the saint standing in the hallway?”

“Y-Yes!”

With an indifferent gesture, she instructed them to take away her sister, who was staring at her with a shocked face.

Lucia disappeared down the corridor with the nuns, almost being pushed along. Since she kept her gaze fixed in our direction even as she walked away, I fixed my eyes on the floor, fearing our eyes might meet if she turned her head.

As soon as Lucia completely vanished from sight, Veronica dismissed the clergy with a gesture. After looking around thoroughly and confirming no one was listening, she finally addressed me.

Her voice was extremely urgent.

“We’re doomed. What do we do now, Major?”

“…Why are you asking me that?”

Veronica asked me for a way to resolve the situation, but I didn’t have any good solutions either.

It’s not like someone just told her about the adultery. She witnessed the affair with her own eyes, so what could be done? If she had heard it through the grapevine, we could have dismissed it as a blatant lie, claiming Veronica and I were nothing to each other. But having been caught by Lucia of all people, there was nothing I could do.

“Can’t we just beg for forgiveness…?”

“W-would she forgive me if I begged? I’m still her older sister….”

“How would I know that? Besides, if you had any awareness of being her sister in the first place….”

I was about to say that if she had even a speck of consideration for her sister, she shouldn’t have committed adultery. But thinking about it carefully, I wasn’t much different from Veronica.

After all, I had slept with her sister after receiving Lucia’s confession. From any perspective, it looked like the man had exploited an innocent woman’s feelings to commit adultery.

If this had been featured on a news program, I would have sat in front of the TV cursing, “That bastard can’t even control his lower half.”

In other words, I was now in a situation where it wouldn’t be strange to be exposed on a news program. Considering that the women I was two-timing were the only two saints in the world, if this fact became known, my face might fill the front pages of reputable newspapers worldwide.

That would be ruinous. Not just for me, but also for Veronica, who would be identified as my affair partner.

And as for Lucia….

“……”

It was obvious that she would be torn apart by the infidelity and the broken trust with her sister. Even a former U.S. President nearly divorced his wife after having an affair with his secretary. What would happen to Lucia and me, who weren’t even married?

“…Damn it.”

I ran my fingers through my hair. While my hair merely became disheveled, my insides were burning black like charcoal.

I wasn’t the only one burning up inside; Veronica couldn’t stay still. She watched me anxiously from the side.

It was then.

When Veronica cautiously approached me.

“Um, Major?”

The saint bit her dried lips. Despite checking multiple times that no one was listening, she looked around nervously and lowered her voice.

Her evident anxiety and impatience made me increasingly uneasy as well.

Veronica spoke in a hushed voice.

“I have a good idea….”

“Y-yes. Let’s hear it.”

“W-well. My sister may have caught us being intimate, but whether there was sexual contact or not is also important, right?”

Sexual contact. The phrase was strangely familiar, giving me a sense of déjà vu.

I looked at her with anxious eyes.

“…And?”

The saint continued.

The sentence that emerged from her full lips contained something I had never imagined.

“What if we just deny it happened? Wouldn’t that work?”

“……”

“Or say we only did it orally….”

Saint.

Yes, Major?

Shall I find you a mental hospital?

…Let’s just go apologize.

*

Despite racking our brains until dawn, we couldn’t come up with a clear solution. Even with the combined intellect of a nationally certified troublemaker and the church’s greatest con artist, we couldn’t devise a clever plan. In the end, we had to personally experience the truth that lies cannot overcome the truth.

“Major, what about just going crazy and being completely honest? Say I couldn’t be satisfied with just one person, so I played around a bit.”

“That might work as a matador line during election season, but it’s not something to say when you’re going to apologize for a sin. Especially not from someone who committed adultery.”

“Tch… Am I the only one who sinned? It takes two hands to clap, but you act like you’re innocent. Anyone would think babies are delivered by fairies.”

Forcing our heavy eyelids open as we sat around the table, we exchanged pointless jokes. Objectively, it wasn’t a situation for jokes, but in our current state of mind, we couldn’t bear it without them.

“Veronica.”

“What?”

“Are you scared?”

“…Not a lot, just a little bit a lot…?”

We gazed at the rising sun.

Warm sunlight filtering through the fluttering curtains. The sun rising, dyeing the dim dawn red.

The brilliant light shining on the misty holy ground was a spectacle worthy of a modern painter’s canvas, but somehow today, I despised the sun.

Despite our all-night efforts to find a way out of the situation, everything was in vain. No matter how we tried to package it with excuses, it was impossible to smooth over what had happened last night.

Considering Lucia’s benevolent character, she might forgive us if we simply repented, but given the circumstances, receiving her forgiveness seemed distant. Besides, I felt sorry for Lucia, who had been caught in this ridiculous situation where the man she had just confessed to was having an affair with her sister.

In the end, we concluded that facing the situation head-on was the only option.

Having made up our minds, it was time to act. With haggard faces after washing up, we crossed the silent cathedral to find Lucia’s room.

But I never got to meet her.

The Vatican guards protecting her chambers stopped me from entering.

Extending their arms to block me, the guards said:

“We have orders to allow no one except Saint Veronica.”

I was cut off at the entrance.

*

The Vatican guards escorting Lucia stopped me as I tried to enter her chambers. There was an order that only Veronica could enter.

Considering that the guards at the entrance were from Tranquille Cathedral, and that Lucia was the mistress of Tranquille Cathedral, it was clearly Lucia’s will not to meet me.

At this point, I could roughly guess what future awaited me.

I sat quietly in the guest room prepared in the cathedral and waited.

“……”

When I gently closed my eyes, I couldn’t see anything in the darkness, much like my future. This wasn’t just a metaphor; it was literally true.

The fact that Lucia met only Veronica and excluded me, the other party involved, meant that she currently found it difficult to face me.

When a child dealing with bootleg magic spread by demons in the north got into a dispute with an inquisitor, Lucia had listened to both sides before taking action. Considering that, this was clearly an unusual situation.

“Major.”

As I sat on the sofa repeatedly rubbing my face, the door to the guest room opened and Veronica entered.

It had been half a day since she went alone to meet Lucia in her quarters.

“How did it go?”

A faint sigh escaped through her full lips.

“The conversation is over. It ended well.”

“How specifically did it end?”

“How else? I begged until my hands became feet.”

Veronica plopped down beside me and continued.

She said she had literally begged until her hands became feet. She had also honestly revealed what kind of relationship she and I had. Of course, she omitted anything related to intelligence agencies.

She added that although there had been some awkward moments, everything was resolved, so there was nothing to worry about.

“…Is that all?”

“What, did you want me to have a life-or-death confrontation with my sister, Major?”

“No, but….”

Despite Veronica’s somewhat sharp response, I couldn’t hide my puzzlement.

Is this really the end?

The man she confessed to was involved with another woman, her sister no less, yet she decided to accept just an apology from her sister? Even though Lucia was known for her saintly character, the current situation was incomprehensible no matter how I looked at it.

I wondered if there might be some other circumstances I wasn’t aware of. I was deeply pondering this when:

“Ahem.”

Suddenly, Veronica began clearing her throat.

After a couple of deliberate coughs, she began in a seemingly stern voice.

“Anyway, Major, you need to treat our sister well.”

“Of course I should, but….”

Just as I was about to speak, wondering if there had been some conversation between Veronica and Lucia that I wasn’t aware of, Veronica fumbled in her bosom and pulled something out.

“In that sense, I need you to help me….”

Silently, I took the object she handed me.

A soft fabric. Strings were attached to both ends of the cloth. The black fabric was so thick that light would hardly penetrate it even under strong illumination.

Yes, this was unmistakably.

“A blindfold?”

I looked up at Veronica, absently fingering the blindfold.

After clearing her throat, she rubbed the nape of her neck and glanced at me.

“Put that on and follow me.”

“What are you suddenly trying to do?”

Then she added:

“There’s somewhere we need to go.”