“That’s right,” I said. “After I came to this world, I shared a room at the Order with them for a while. I’ve known them a long time.”
“I’m jealous. I shared a room with chickens.”
“You got spit out in the forest. That’s just bad luck, nothing more,” I said, offering words of sympathy.
He let out a long sigh, clearly agreeing with my assessment, and returned to polishing the floor. “But now you have enough money to hire a servant, right? So why haven’t you?”
“We had a goblin manservant come two or three times a month. But we’re always out on adventures and the mansion is empty a lot, so it doesn’t really get all that dirty.”
“Oh?”
“We started cleaning it ourselves recently, because we were going to buy a slave that would be useful in attacking a dungeon.”
“I wouldn’t call having a slave do your cleaning ‘doing it yourselves’…”
“I’m cleaning, too, aren’t I?!” I shot back at the slave. Yoi had bought such a complainer.
“Oh really? You haven’t lifted a finger this whole time we’ve been talking, have you?” he pointed out.
“Hmph.” I realized he was right. I’d been so focused on stories of my past that I completely stopped cleaning up the equipment for my experiments.
This world had people called patron saints of the Goddess. Thirteen people had been recognized as saints in the past, and now I was the illustrious fourteenth. They called us patron saints, apostles, and all kinds of other titles. And if the scriptures and texts were true…every single one of us was transported from another world. Buck. Naked.
Depending on their powers, the saints protected believers from violent threats or enriched the land with their discoveries. They were fonts of knowledge—sages, you might say. Following in their footsteps, I was the greatest known practitioner of divine healing magic. Even if a person lost a limb, I could restore it perfectly. It took a high level of skill in healing to do that, so they said, and I didn’t know of anyone else on the frontier who could manage it.
As long as a person still had the will to live, I could restore them to health, even from critical condition. It’s a bit interesting to live a life where you can cut through cancer with a thought.
The trade-off was that the rest of my abilities were completely average. Compared to Yoi, I was nothing special at all with elemental magic, and combat? Shooter was way, way better than me in that department. No doubt if he had been taken in by the Order of Templars, he would have been recognized as a patron saint, too.
I wonder what his holy power would have been.
But he had left a wife back in a village on the outskirts of Apegut and now he was enslaved. With this world’s prejudices, I wondered if he would ever be recognized as a saint now. Shooter was planning to go back to his village with his partner Nishka soon, and…come now, obviously running into this man was a complete coincidence, not the will of the Goddess, right?
Then again, what if Yoi hadn’t bought him from the slave traders? I probably would have never met Shooter, another stranger from another world. A person from Japan. From home.
I don’t know if the Goddess really exists. The ancient texts say that people really have received divine revelations, but I’ve never experienced that. The Goddess’s followers believe that my divine healing magic is proof of her existence. If afflictions that are normally incurable are healed by my hands, against all the rules of nature, then…
Well. I once asked the archbishop of Bulka’s cathedral: “Have you ever personally felt the presence of the Goddess?”
“Ha. An interesting question.” He folded his hands contemplatively. “Perhaps my faith or practice is lacking, because I might claim to have felt it or claim to have never felt it and both statements would be true.”
The archbishop was in the third tier of ranks within the Order of Templars. I was in the second tier, but that was only because I was a holy maiden. He was much hungrier for trials and meritorious deeds than me.
“What does that mean? Is that some kind of koan?”
“A…cone? A…round pyramid? No, it’s…I’m sorry, I’m a little confused.”
I knew from the holy texts that pretty much none of the thirteen previous apostles had actually experienced the presence of the Goddess. Oh, but she was “present in the hearts of her followers.” It’s always that, isn’t it?
I suppose the one concrete difference from the world we came from was that here, people definitely witnessed “miracles from the Goddess” in person. But, well, the miracles only occurred to priests of the various holy orders who worshipped her, so maybe it was linked to how strongly a person believed.
I was cooking in the kitchen while Shooter stood behind me, once again pestering me with questions.
“But if someone loses their entire arm, there’s no way you can fix that, right?” he asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous. If someone gets hurt and loses their arm, it might take several years, but it’s easy enough to grow it back.”
“‘Grow it back’? What a way to phrase it…”
Yoi had bought him to be a slave, but I insisted on doing the cooking. The girl was a genius—by the time she was five years old, she had acquired knowledge and developed magic to rival any adult—but she had no idea how to cook. Being raised in a noble family, servants had always cooked for her.
When I’d been a carefree high school student, I was able to use a rice cooker and make some simple meals, but that was it. Shooter, meanwhile, had lived on his own, floating from one job to another. I wondered if that meant he actually might be good at cooking.
“Would you like me to chop your head off and see whether my magic can bring you back to life?” I asked.
Shooter winced and took a couple steps back. “Hey, that’s not as funny as you think when you’re holding a knife.”
“I’m not even pointing it at you. Don’t freak out.” I paused. “But I’ve never actually tried doing that, come to think of it…”
“W-well, of course not! Just, please, keep your experiments limited to animals, if you don’t mind.”
I once read a medical text about divine healing magic that included a method for resurrecting the dead. No records remained of anyone actually doing it, and apparently experiments on dead animals had never been very successful. Even with access to the Goddess’s miracles, I probably wouldn’t be able to pull it off.
This fantasy world was not kind. You had to value your own life.
“My healing magic isn’t all-powerful, you know,” I blurted out. Ugh, why.
“I guess not. If all-powerful magic existed, anyone who used it would basically be a god.” Shooter gave me a long look. No trace of the sardonic. It was…gentle. “Have you ever not been able to save someone?”
“Once. Twice. Maybe a few more.”
Shooter nodded silently.
Even if those people had lived, my magic wouldn’t have been able to heal the wounds in their hearts. Magic could’ve helped. It still wouldn’t have been enough.
Shooter laid a hand on my shoulder as I cooked, moving robotically. You can shake off memories with movement. I say that to myself sometimes. He looked at me silently.
“Wh-what?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking, you must have been through so much, Mari.”
That knowing, punchable look on his face…
“Could I be alone for a little while?” I muttered.
“Yep. Just call me when the food is ready. I’ll go fold laundry in the meantime.”
“All right.”
He smiled at me as if nothing unusual had happened and went out to the living room.