Side Story:
Fabian Checks Whether Fia is a Saint or Not
“YOUR HOLINESS!”
I was walking around town with Fabian on my day off when a child cried out. I spun around to face a young boy, perhaps around five years old, his eyes twinkling.
Oh shoot. He’s calling out to me, isn’t he? I recognized the boy as the one whose scraped knee I’d healed during my pretend saint performance at the central plaza.
“Your Holiness! Thank you for healing me the other day!” he said.
I tousled his hair.
“What’s this about, Fia?” Fabian said, exasperated. “Since when did you change jobs from knight to saint?”
“No, er, well…” I scrambled for an excuse, looking to the boy for help, but he ran off to join his friends. “Wha—hey!”
Fabian laughed. “Looks like your only lifeline is gone. What’ll you do now, Your Holiness?”
“Oho ho ho, oh Fabian. You know I’m a knight! This is all a misunderstanding. Remember how I invited you to become a jester disciple with me? You declined, but I actually went through with it.”
“Seriously?” His eyes shot wide. “That’s…quite something. You’re a woman of action, I’ll give you that.”
“As part of my jester training, we went into town to perform together. I dressed up as a saint, not a jester. Oho ho ho, but my performance was so excellent that that boy thought I was a real saint! Not that I am a real saint, of course.” I put a heavy emphasis on that last bit.
He smirked and said, “Is that so? I have a hard time believing somebody, even a child, would mistake you for a real saint. Why don’t you try your best to trick me into believing you’re a saint?”
“Huh?”
He was asking me to do the impossible.
Did he know about the holy stones? Now that I thought about it, he was sitting a bit away when I received them in Sutherland, so he might not. Holy stones were top secret, so I had to play it safe and avoid bringing them up here.
“Uhhh, you seem to be in tip-top shape, and saints can’t do anything for you unless you’re hurt or sick.” It was the first excuse to come to mind.
Fabian grinned impishly and bowed with exaggerated politeness. “Please look more closely, Your Holiness. I was struck during sword practice and have a bruise around my stomach.”
To my horror, he began to unbutton his shirt and revealed the entirety of his chest.
“Whuh?”
W-was Fabian always the type to strip like it’s nothing?!
“F-Fabian, what are you doing?! Y-you can’t just expose yourself in the middle of town like an exhibitionist!”
He raised an eyebrow and said, “Pardon? All I’ve done is open the front of my shirt. I sometimes bare myself far more during sword practice. Many knights take off their tops completely.”
“Aaaaaah! That’s okay because it’s at the training grounds! Not out in public like this!”
“Perhaps, but all I’ve done is open the front of my shirt to show you my bruise.”
“I am a dainty, unwed lady and will absolutely not check out your bare chest!”
“I see. I apologize,” he said. He quickly buttoned up his shirt, smiling pleasantly. “You’re a lady who’s too dainty to check out a man’s chest, huh? Then you must exclusively work with women as a saint.”
“Huh? O-oh, sure!”
Thank goodness. He seemed to buy my excuse, and it was all thanks to my good sense when it came to public decency!
Seeing how well this went, I swore to continue being a lady of good sense. But ladies don’t chortle, nor do they go for seconds at mealtime, so I soon gave up on that idea.