“Kaoru, you went way too far! The priests weren’t even trying to kidnap you or anything like that, right? Now you’ve made it look like they attempted to abduct a minor... They could’ve been ordinary faithful folks with wives and children, just following orders from the higher-ups. Escorting someone who was blessed by the Goddess would be the right thing to do as a priest, and maybe they thought you’d be happy to go with them, since it would be an honor for a stray priestess to be invited to the Temple.”
That was one way to look at it, but...
“But I had the inn’s staff tell them I was tired and sleeping from my long journey. The staff tried to stop them, and they forced their way through. They tried to barge into a room where a girl was said to be sleeping by herself because she wasn’t sleeping well—without even asking for permission, I might add. That’s just selfishly pushing their demands without an ounce of respect for the other person. Why should I spare any sympathy for people like that?” I said.
“Oh, in that case, they deserved it. We can probably just let them deal with whatever consequences come their way,” Kyoko agreed.
“Still, isn’t it a bit much for them to be excommunicated from the religion they have faith in and be treated as criminals? They might deserve a few days in jail at worst, but do they really deserve to be labeled sex offenders?”
Kyoko and Reiko were in complete disagreement.
Hmm, what to do...
Kyoko was typically an advocate for strict punishments at times like these, but Reiko’s policy was that the punishment should fit the crime. Reiko attached importance to the offender’s intent, while Kyoko cared more about the facts of what had been done. She was of the opinion that the offender should take responsibility for what they’d done, regardless of whether they had ill intent or not. She’d also say something like, “What, so you did it without any malice? If you can do something like this without ill will, then that means you don’t think you did anything wrong, and you’ll do something like this again without thinking anything of it, right? And if this is what you do without malice, then you’re capable of doing something much worse with malice. Am I wrong?” and steer the conversation so the offender would be punished even harder.
As for me, I placed importance on the scope of the damage the offender had tried to inflict and the probability of a repeat offense. If someone came at me with a knife, whether I got stabbed and killed or avoided it and lived would only matter in hindsight—it made no difference to their intent and actions. Therefore, I was of the opinion that the offender deserved to be punished harshly regardless of whether the victim avoided death or not. If they got a light sentence just because they didn’t kill their target, they’d come back to try and finish the job too. That was why the damage they tried to inflict and whether they’d be a repeat offender was what mattered, not the actual result. This line of thinking wouldn’t be accepted in Japan, but here, it was a different story—when I was the victim, anyway. As for this case...
“Hmm, they were probably gonna force me to go with them, but that might’ve been the extent of their violence. And I’m sure they were just following orders... Maybe I would feel a bit sorry for them if they got punished too hard. Whether they’d do something like this again would depend on their higher-ups, and even if they’d refused, the ones giving the orders would just have sent someone else. I guess their superiors are the ones to blame, not them...”
That was what it came down to. Just because there were a few bad apples, it didn’t mean the entire organization was evil. Unless we were literally talking about a secret society of evil planning on world domination, that is. There were surely some devout believers among the Temple’s priests who were genuinely faithful to Celes. Back then, it was the original headquarters, the Holy Land of Rueda, that was rotten to the core. The Temples in other countries considered Rueda’s pope to be the top of their religious hierarchy, but they still hadn’t aided Rueda during the war. They’d been followers of Celestine and therefore considered each other kindred, but that didn’t mean they were going to blindly obey the pope, who was just an ordinary human.
Besides, the Celes that had manifested herself at the peace talks had said to the representatives of each country that they’d be allowed to continue using her name if they completely cut ties with Rueda. In other words, she’d given them a free pass by making it clear that the blame for that incident would fall solely on the Holy Land of Rueda. That was why Celes hadn’t punished the priests of other countries even when I’d vanished thanks to Rueda’s remnants. That day, every religious official on this entire continent had repented, but things had been muddled again by the passage of time.
“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow, I’ll go to the guard headquarters and ask the captured men why they came to visit me and what their intentions were. Depending on their answer, I’ll try to get them a lighter sentence.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Reiko agreed.
“Whaaat?” Kyoko said, sounding disappointed. Kyoko was merciless when it came to bad guys; she’d smile cutely before ending their lives. She had the body of a child and a mind that could be childish too.
“If they say something stupid, I’ll ask for a harsher punishment,” I added.
“Well, in that case...” Kyoko relented.
So, it’d been decided.