70.
“About that chapel earlier.”
I asked as I watched Prien, now changed into fresh clothes, turn back toward me.
“Is it some kind of special…… place?”
“Yes. It is the place where, more than twenty years ago, an oracle descended just once.”
“To that statue?”
“No, that statue was erected afterward. To begin with, this Great Temple itself was built here because of what happened then.”
“I see…….”
Mm.
I considered asking more, then stopped.
‘It wasn’t an unpleasant or ominous feeling, after all.’
And nothing had happened in the first place.
It had just felt strangely familiar.
I felt Prien’s gaze quietly fixed on me.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he was standing still in front of the wardrobe screen.
‘Why isn’t he coming over?’
I lightly patted the space beside me and said,
“Come here.”
After confirming he was coming, I rose to my feet.
I took his hesitant arm, pulled him over, and laid him back down on the bed.
Since I was at it, I carefully pulled the blanket up over him as well.
I also gently freed the hair trapped beneath his arm and let it fall neatly.
Only then did his pale face enter my eyes.
“Do you want to sleep a little?”
“Then are you going to leave?”
he asked quietly.
I kept my mouth shut and breathed out through my nose.
Then I let out a small laugh.
“You’re acting like a child.”
“…….”
As if that was not something he particularly wanted to hear, Prien flinched and lowered his gaze.
His lips pressed together in a straight line.
Suddenly, he pushed himself up.
‘……Did I say the wrong thing?’
The thought came too late, but the water had already been spilled.
I stood there, holding him as if to support him.
“What’s wrong?”
He stared down at my hand for a moment, then raised his head.
“You went out of your way to make time to come here. If I send the Baron away like this, I think it will weigh on me.”
“…….”
I could have said I would come again next time, but I hesitated.
In that brief while, Prien straightened his clothes, then brought his hand to his disheveled hair.
Perhaps his fingertips still had no strength, because his attempts to gather it slipped through several times.
I let go of the hand I had been holding and moved behind him.
When my fingertips touched the nape of his neck, the strength left his hand and his hair slid down through his fingers.
I took out the hair tie that happened to be in my pocket, gathered his hair, and tied it.
He fiddled with his tied hair, then smiled faintly.
“Thank you.”
The nape of his neck was exposed.
Only then, belatedly, did I notice the faint burn scar, as though he had been seared by fire, covering nearly half the back of his neck.
I had never seen it all this time.
‘……Or maybe I simply hadn’t been interested.’
I had tied it well enough, but the places where his hair was tangled here and there bothered me.
Since I had tied it without combing it, there was nothing to be done about that.
“So, what did you call me here for?”
“There is something I want to show you. Taking it outside is strictly controlled, so I had the Baron come all the way here.”
That…… meant he had to leave this room.
Reading my hesitation, Prien spoke gently, as if telling me not to worry.
“I had an attack just a moment ago, so I should be all right for a while now.”
But.
Just a moment ago, he had obediently lain down on the bed as I led him.
He had lain under the blanket I covered him with, his eyes drowsy, hoping I would stay by his side.
He hadn’t said anything like this then.
In the end, I had no choice but to nod.
“All right. Let’s go.”
* * *
The place he took me to seemed to be a storeroom inside the temple.
The lighting was slightly dim. There was a musty smell of mold.
Dust drifted faintly through the air.
Once we were actually inside, I could see all sorts of miscellaneous objects beyond the bookshelves.
However, they were all so old that I was afraid they might crumble if touched, so I naturally became careful in my movements.
“I will not ask you to pay for them, so you need not worry too much.”
“I don’t have to pay?”
“If one had to put it that way, they are things you could not pay for.”
“…….”
I decided to be even more cautious than before.
When I stuck close beside him, Prien moved his arm as if uncomfortable, so I began walking slightly behind him with an awkward expression.
But as soon as he sensed I had disappeared from his sight, he looked back at me.
Then, after looking into my somewhat sheepish face, he smiled like a helpless sigh.
“By nature, I do not much like being touched by others.”
R-Really?
I had no idea.
“Of course, it has nothing to do with the Baron…… But after something like what happened a moment ago, the sensation of things touching my skin becomes more sensitive.”
“…….”
“It is not that I dislike it. So…… come here.”
He held out his hand to me.
I knew because I had held it before.
A long, hard hand, callused over.
“But just now you clearly said you didn’t really like it…….”
“It is all right.”
As if gently urging me, he extended his hand farther forward.
In that dim place filled with ashen dust and shadow, his face showed faintly.
His red eyes, with their unusually vivid color, and the hand held out to me.
“…….”
In the end, we began walking slowly again, crossing the library area while holding hands.
“What is it that you wanted to show me? More importantly…… is it really all right for an ordinary citizen like me to see it?”
At this point, I couldn’t help but wonder.
No matter how insensitive I tended to be about these things, at a glance, this did not look like a place just anyone could enter.
Even at this very moment as I asked the question, we were gradually walking deeper inside.
“I am the Baron’s guarantor.”
Prien said it briefly, as if that were enough.
“……And if it is not shown to the person who needs it, then there is no meaning in its existence.”
He stopped in place.
Only then did I realize we had arrived at our destination.
I looked around.
There was nothing special, nothing that looked visibly extraordinary at a glance.
Just as I was feeling slightly relieved, he took out a small wooden box, unlocked it, and removed what was inside.
It was a small…… medicine bottle.
I felt a chill crawl up my spine and tap at the nape of my neck.
“……What is this?”
“It is an elixir.”
“…….”
On the outside of the bottle, something that might have been grime or dust or who knew what had settled thickly, leaving it almost opaque.
But I could clearly see that there was ‘something’ inside it.
I asked in a trembling voice.
“Is it…… a love elixir?”
“No.”
My head spun.
“The love potion’s… origin, so to speak. You could call it the medicine it began from.”
“Origin?”
The voice I heard in my ears—my own voice—was trembling terribly.
“Why is that… in the Great Temple?”
Had they confiscated it? But for that…
It gave off the strong impression that it had been carefully preserved for a very long time.
“Have you ever heard how heresy came to be?”
As if it had not been a question meant to receive an answer, Frien placed the medicine bottle in my hand and continued speaking.
“Originally, they were priests. Yet they denied the doctrine head-on, and went beyond adoring ‘God’…”
“……”
“They were swallowed by the desire to become ‘beings comparable to Him.’ That was the beginning of heresy.”
“……”
“Which also means that if the heretics know how to make something, it is safe to say that most of those things began in the temple.”
I looked down at the medicine bottle in my hand.
“Then…”
“Before it developed into a sorcery that subjugated someone and drove a specific affection into their mind, this was simply…”
“……”
“A potion of courage.”
Frien’s voice continued slowly.
A single wish, one that someone must have prayed for more strongly than anything else: to protect a beloved person, to make that desire come true no matter what.
That, he said, was courage.
“If you consider its essence, Baron.”
“……”
“It cannot simply be said that those who love you were toyed with by something horrific.”
“……”
“In truth, they may have gained the courage they had long wished for.”
So please, do not push yourself.
His last words, whispered softly, settled gently at my bedside.
Before I knew it, my head was bowed.
The tip of my nose stung.
My two eyes, fixed on the floor, burned hot.
In my clenched hand, the presence of the medicine bottle felt painfully tight.
“Why are you… telling me this?”
Something like this,
that I would hear it,
I had never once imagined it.
I had only…
A clue.
Something that could serve as proof.
Somehow.
I…
“Because I know that I am the only one who can tell you this.”
“……”
“So you do not have to be so kind to me, Baron.”
He whispered it with such tenderness.
Ah.
My vision blurred.
With my head bowed, I braced my hands on my knees.
It was hard to stand.
“Why…”
In the end, I could not finish the words. I could not even remember what I had been trying to say.
A suppressed groan slipped out.
I clutched at the hem of his clothes.
“I am sorry, Baron.”
His voice came from very far away. And yet I could feel it clearly.