Chapter 10

Fragment 2 I suppose it happened when I was about three years old. I was taken to church, where I asked my mother: “Mother, why is everyone praying?” “It’s so that they can ask God for a favor. They’re all praying to be happy.” “But, Mother, God doesn’t…” …care about humans. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to sense God’s presence. Just His presence. My parents and their peers, all devout believers, said this was a miracle. That I had to be a Holy Maiden. But it was no miracle to me—because God had no interest in us humans. Father, Mother, and the vast majority of believers offered up their earnest prayers, only for God to look the other way. It was a tragic yet comic sight, as if humanity had a one-sided infatuation with God. I did not want to be so pathetic. And so I thought of God’s power purely as something to use. His miracle—healing magic—was mine to wield. Not a single part of me believed. It was pointless, after all. At first, I was under the impression that the priests thought the same way I did, that there wasn’t much purpose in unheard prayers. But I was mistaken. The priests clung to God’s power through their prayers. They were no different from mages chanting an incantation, the way they served as mere catalysts to the miracles. They did appear able to sense God’s presence dimly, but it was like a haze to them. They could not perceive it accurately. Ironically enough, they took that as a sign of God’s greatness. Being an astute child, I didn’t say anything to undermine anyone’s faith. In fact, I conformed with everyone else, even if it was only on the surface. People called me a “Holy Maiden” or “God’s chosen” by pure virtue of my ability to sense God’s presence and channel His miracles, and so from a young age, I got used to playing the part. I never thought of this as a burden. But I will say that since I wasn’t really the Holy Maiden, I felt a growing wall between myself and others the more I put on the act. The one exception to this was a boy my age: Solon. He was so clever that people praised him for his “God-given talent” from a young age, but that only made him doubt God even more. “If God was on the side of humans, then the monsters, which are the enemies of humans, wouldn’t exist. As long as the monsters are around, God is no ally. Alternatively, it means God didn’t actually create this world,” he would say flatly. Such precocious statements were probably why, for all their talk about him being a prodigy, people kept their distance from him. I was the only one who knew he was correct, so I felt a sort of camaraderie with him. We even got to talking a little. But I kept him at arm’s length as well. People would think I was as weird as he was if we got too familiar. Looks are another thing I’ve been praised for since I was young, which factored into people calling me the Holy Maiden. This had everything to do with my parents, however, and nothing to do with God. As I grew older, I could tell from how people reacted to me that I was becoming prettier. Many admirers courted me, but I had no desire to be with people who only saw me as the Holy Maiden. Occasionally, a highborn noble would try to pressure me into marriage, which would have been difficult to turn down under normal circumstances because I came from a family of minor nobility. But since I was the so-called Holy Maiden, I was able to get out of it by leaning on the church’s authority and declaring that I would join its ranks in the future. Besides, it was what my parents wanted, too. Such were my circumstances when I enrolled in Falm Academy at the age of fifteen. By all appearances, it was completely pointless. Nobody in this country was better than me at using healing magic, which obviously included the teachers. But I still had to go through the formalities, so I resigned myself to being a student while paying lip service to the staff. I noticed that Solon, who was in a similar predicament, was openly disgruntled about being in the mage class and didn’t get along with his peers. He was an antisocial sort…or no, maybe he was a pure soul in the truest sense of the word. My life as a student was uneventful. The teachers left me alone for the most part, and my peers respected me more than the teachers. Although the classes were boring, that was the story of my life in general, so I didn’t think much of it one way or the other. Then, one day, Ares came into my life. Out of nowhere, he barged into the priest class and said to me, “Could you teach me healing magic?” I was surprised, just like anyone else would be. For one thing, he was of common descent. Although I came from minor nobility, I still wasn’t the kind of person he could casually strike up a conversation with. Besides, it was unheard of for a warrior to ask about learning healing spells of all things. Maybe he came to me with this random request because he wanted to flirt with me? I talked with him a little, bracing myself for the worst, but it turned out that he actually did seem to aspire to become the Hero. And his vision of the ideal Hero was a warrior who could use attack and healing magic. I couldn’t fathom what he was thinking. Was he really trying to model himself after fairy-tale characters? From what I could see, he felt no kinship with God. He had absolutely zero prospects. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it was impossible for him… …and yet his eyes were serious. He was different from everyone else, who simply followed the crowd, slaves to conformity. Well, this is interesting! The first seeds of emotion sprouted within me. Although I didn’t quite understand what was going on, I accepted his request. From that day forth, my life at the academy was awash with color. How can I teach someone healing magic when they lack the talent? I grappled seriously with this question. When I asked Ares about his experience with healing magic, he said that a priest in his hometown had introduced him to it, but he’d never been able to sense a thing. This was dire. Normal methods would definitely fail to work—emphasis on normal. Given how apathetic God was toward humans, He wouldn’t suddenly care about a person after a bit of prayer. Ares needed to do something to amuse me—er, God and win His favor. I was racking my brain on this problem when my stomach began to rumble. That was when it hit me—bread! Yes, I could ask Ares to buy me some bread. He could search for God’s presence and bread at the same time. What a fine trial that would make—I was sure I would get some scrumptious bread out of this. I wasted no time looking for Ares and passing on this request. It was a total disappointment. For his first trial, Ares bought me average bread from the academy cafeteria. Was he not taking his search for God seriously? I did give the bread a try, and it was, indeed, average. This would not do. He needed a tougher trial. Yes, this was all for Ares’s own good. But I had to wonder about this feeling that was swelling within me. Perhaps it was love. I could not stop the pounding in my heart. I decided to have him search the river for a rock for his next trial. Many trials later, Ares began bringing me progressively tastier bread and sweets. I thought of trials for him almost every day. Watching him desperately attempt his weekly tasks brought me great joy. For the first time in my life, I was grateful to God. Thank you, Lord, for granting me such a wonderful person. I could not say for certain whether a simpleminded person like Ares would be able to sense God. I didn’t know of any previous cases of God suddenly giving His blessing to a person out of nowhere. I explained to Ares that this was a fool’s errand, and that it was determined at birth whether a person could sense God. Just some slight nudging would have sufficed to teach him healing magic if only he’d possessed the latent talent. But Ares did not possess even the dimmest of prospects. If he was to achieve his goal, it would be nothing short of a miracle. He understood that, and he refused to give up. I had no idea what made him strive to such lengths, but he completed every one of my demands—er, trials—with an unflagging spirit. Looking back, I’d shown him my true self right from the beginning of those trials. But he accepted me for who I was and continued applying himself to my tasks. Somewhere along the way, I ended up rooting for him to sense God. At the same time, a part of me feared that our sweet time together would come to an end. He looked absolutely comical, taking those challenges so seriously. And it made me feel the beauty of humanity. Then one day, Ares came to see me. “Thanks a bunch! I can use healing magic now!” He was beaming. There was evidently no falsehood in his words. “…Seriously?” I was so shocked that my vocabulary slipped to the level of an uneducated pauper. For the very first time in my life, I witnessed a miracle. Not from the hand of God but from tireless human effort. I had never believed in what the “Heroes” represented. They had always seemed like nothing but a pipe dream. But at that moment, a Hero stood before my eyes.