episode_0018

*

It was one day when Lucia and I came up to the mainland.

She was covered in white fluid all over, tugging at her damp clothes with her fingers.

Not only her clothes, but her head, face, arms, and sleeves were all smeared with the monster’s bodily fluids.

It was because a monster that sprang out from my blind spot tried to attack me while Lucia was off guard, and Lucia, who belatedly noticed the monster, rushed in like lightning and burst it open.

Such a tiny girl covered in pure white liquid was quite a suggestive sight.

Lucia suggested that she wanted to take off her clothes and wash her face, and I, who owed her my life, readily accepted her request and took her to an empty house in the village.

“Um… Father,”

“Yeah?”

“…Could you… help me take off my clothes?”

“…”

“Just kidding… Don’t look at me like that…”

“Go in quickly.”

Lucia went into the empty house alone to wring out her nun’s habit, soaked in the monsters’ fluids.

I waited for her, slightly distanced from the heavily cracked wall of the house.

Since they pass through walls, I naturally developed a habit of being careful of walls.

I waited for her and fell into thought.

“Has it been about a month already…”

Before I knew it, it had been over a month since Lucia handed her body over to the devil and gained power.

Lucia and I took a boat to the mainland every five days and brought back various supplies from the village.

Our boat was so flimsy that we tried not to go out on days with high waves, but even when it was stormy, the weather cleared up as if nothing had happened on the morning we had to go out.

It felt as if the world was trying to get us off the island.

Usually, when something strange happens in this world, the cause is mostly a devil, and I could tell that the weather was also Kunat’s trickery.

When I stabbed one of his eyeballs with a Holy Water-tempered blade, Kunat readily confessed, but he maintained an attitude as if he was just helping and didn’t see what the problem was.

In fact, it was clear that Kunat’s magic was helping us get supplies.

However, there can be no good intentions from a devil.

I couldn’t accept his trickery with a naive heart because I couldn’t figure out what Kunat was aiming for.

“Hehe, Father…”

At that moment, Lucia’s voice flowed out from inside the abandoned house and broke my train of thought.

“…What is it?”

“It’s still summer… But it’s cold when I take off my clothes…”

“Then hurry up.”

“…Tch.”

“…”

I don’t know what Kunat’s trickery is, but there’s one thing I suspect, and that’s that Lucia’s been a little strange lately.

It’s hard to put my finger on it, but since a devil entered Lucia’s body, she’s been looking more and more different from before as the days go by.

First of all, she smiles a lot more.

You might wonder what’s wrong with having more things to smile about, but I can’t shake the feeling that Lucia’s smile isn’t quite right.

Her eye smile, which curves her large, clear, sky-like eyes like a bowstring, reveals more sexiness than purity,

And her unique smile, where she pulls up the corners of her lips as much as possible while slightly biting her lower lip with her front teeth, looks more like shackles forcibly holding back emotions than joy.

It wasn’t just her expressions that changed.

Her actions have also become subtly provocative.

That she’s making such lewd jokes now,

And she always tries to sit next to me when she gets on the boat, and lately, she’s even tried to sit between my legs.

At first, I politely refused, but she strongly insisted, saying not to refuse because she was suffering from severe seasickness with a very sulky face.

In the end, when I allowed it, she snuck into my arms with a beaming face, not even trying to hide that seasickness was just an excuse.

It would be one thing if she just sat there, but she even pushed her hips closer and closer to me in time with the waves.

I felt very uneasy about the change.

The impression I had of Lucia was closer to that of a demure literary girl, far from a little lady making clumsy attempts at seduction.

Of course, she returns to her demure self, the way I knew her when she was at the monastery, but on the mainland, where we can only be alone together, she always hides those strange expressions and actions.

However, even while feeling strange about Lucia’s appearance, I couldn’t quite warn or restrain her.

Is her nature being corrupted after handing her body over to the devil,

Or is it her true nature that hasn’t been expressed until now because she was weak,

Or is it just the influence of belated puberty,

Or is it due to a kind of liberation that was expressed because she had lived on the island her whole life and came to the mainland.

I couldn’t be sure that any one of those was the cause.

If I rashly pointed out her actions, the shame that Lucia could feel would be enormous if it was an action unrelated to the devil.

That’s why I decided to let it go for now.

It may be a somewhat optimistic thought, but I judged that all of this was simply due to her lack of common sense.

In the first place, Lucia and Solana grew up on the island their whole lives, so it was natural that they would lack common sense.

It might be unfair to them to rebuke their lack of common sense by pointing out that it is a behavior that is not right in the eyes of the world.

Well, there may be no one left in this world to demand common sense from them anyway.

Fortunately, we have Anna, who is sensible and sincere, at our monastery, so I can ask her to take care of the two of them’s education later.

She has the experience of being charmed by a Succubus and regretting it, so she will be especially wary of such sexual and wicked things.

“Father? What are you thinking about so hard?”

“Ah, no, nothing.”

Lucia, who had already wrung out her clothes and put them back on, came up to me and wrapped her arms around mine.

The fabric twisted and crumpled by her grip was slowly unfolding, revealing her figure as it clung tightly to her breasts and hips.

Even though she squeezed them with her powerful strength, her clothes were still damp.

The unique stench emitted by the monsters’ bodily fluids was also wafting in the air.

“Lucia. Don’t stick to me.”

“Why…? I… worked really hard today…”

“…You’re wet. And you stink.”

“That’s too much. Saying that to a girl…”

You’re too much.

What can a man say in response to that?

I sighed and said.

“Laundry is your job, aren’t you worried?”

“I’ll do all the laundry. Including Father’s… too.”

“Okay… then let’s go inside and wash up.”

“…Together?”

“I told you not to make those jokes.”

“…I’m just saying.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing…”

Lucia sulked again and lowered her head.

I quickly felt sorry for her again at the sight.

Her timid and demure appearance is the original Lucia that I know, but that doesn’t mean that appearance is pleasing to me.

The reason why she had no choice but to have a timid personality was due to her disability from the injury, and I was the one who ruined her body,

So I couldn’t comfortably watch Lucia being discouraged.

I tried to cheer her up even with clumsy jokes.

“Anyone would think you see Father as a man.”

“…”

Lucia didn’t say anything.

She just tightened the hand that was wrapped around my arm even more strongly.

Is she embarrassed?

It was certainly a mischievous joke.

“I’m sorry, it was a lame joke.”

“…Yes,”

Of course, it’s just a joke.

I’m not stupid enough to be deluded into thinking that Lucia really has romantic feelings for me.

I still have two perfectly fine eyes, and there’s a mirror in the dilapidated monastery, so there’s no reason to be deluded.

There are hardly any women who would think my face, which is so rugged that I’m mistaken for a bandit when I’m not wearing my Priest Robe, is attractive,

And no matter how lacking they are in common sense and how little faith they have, they should still know that it is impossible for a Priest and a Nun to share secular love, as they have grown up in the monastery.

I wonder what meaning the religious doctrines of the destroyed world have, but faith is not about being bound by the rules of the world, but about being bound by my own conscience.

Of course, Lucia is a sinner who has fallen for the whispers of the devil, but… she should be able to tell the difference.

If Lucia has special feelings for me, that must be the work of the devil.

And I have lived my life smashing the devil’s trickery with my own two hands.

*

Back at the harbor, I wandered around the village to carry the luggage I had picked up onto the boat to return to the island.

The first time I went out to the village, there were so many things I brought that I borrowed Lucia’s hand, but today the amount of luggage was small enough for me to carry alone.

In fact, the luggage had already started to become meager from the third search or so.

That means I’ve already taken everything I can get from the village.

In particular, the food problem, which I can’t find anything intact as time goes by, is the most serious.

Most of today’s luggage was odds and ends that could be fixed and used, and the only ingredients I picked up were a few kinds of vegetables that had withered from the field and dried nuts in cans.

At least last time I went out exploring, I happened to find some wild animals and hunted them, but this time I didn’t have that kind of luck.

“Hmm, will this be enough?”

Kunat, who was napping on the boat, poked his head into the sack I had put down and asked me with a sneer.

No, did he just ask me normally?

Maybe I just hate Kunat so that’s how it sounds.

“I know. I have to start thinking about it.”

“Father? What… What do you mean?”

Lucia asked me in an uneasy voice.

“Thinking…? Don’t tell me… you’re going to stop exploring? Or… you’re going to go out with someone else,,,”

“Huh? It’s not that…”

I looked down at the sack on the boat and said.

“It seems like there’s nothing more to get from this village.”

“…That’s…right.”

“I can already hear Solana whining for meat.”

“Hey… Solana will understand…”

“She’ll understand, but she enjoys watching me get in trouble. Solana understands, but she still whines.”

“Hehe… Solana isn’t like that…”

“Last time, you kept insisting that you weren’t the one who opened my room window.”

“…Ha. Ha. That’s right.”

Lucia awkwardly laughed and agreed.

She probably knows better than I do how playful Solana is, so it must be difficult to try to defend her.

But Solana wasn’t just acting spoiled.

In reality, food procurement was one of the big problems that the monastery had to solve.

I don’t really care, but I have to make sure that they, especially Solana, who is at an age where she’s growing up, get proper meals.

As someone who has to protect them, I felt more sorry than feeling that Solana’s grumbling was simply immature.

“Okay, I have to make a decision.”

In the countryside, there are many cases where people abandon newborn babies because they are burdened by the increase in the number of mouths to feed.

I was probably one of those abandoned babies too.

That hunger that tormented me so much when I was a child.

That sensation is like a tattoo in my head, and I can still remember it vividly.

I was chosen as their guardian by the Bishop, and I was ordered to protect them.

The Bishop is already… no, the Diocese and the Pope may already be gone,

But I’m still alive and they’re still alive and well, so it’s my role to take care of them properly.

“Lucia”

“Yes, Father…”

I looked at Lucia and said.

“I’m going to go a little further on the next exploration. Is that okay?”

“…Huh? Yes, of course, that’s… good.”

Lucia answered blankly.

It seems like she didn’t quite understand what it meant.

“Lucia, did you understand?”

“Yes, you said we should go further… right? I under…stood.”

“…Going further means.”

“…”

“It means we might have to spend a few nights on the mainland.”

Lucia was startled and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Ah…”

“Would you be okay with that?”

Lucia was still covering her mouth with her hand and slowly nodded.

“Yes… of course.”

“Okay…”

I slowly climbed onto the boat.

Lucia mumbled something quietly behind my back, but I couldn’t hear it properly because of the loud sound of the waves.

“I under…stood… Hehe.”