“Dear Bishop, is this really all right?”
In a hidden location, Otto, the masked man, gently set down the Communicator Crystal.
Indeed, those were not merely messages he had left for Letia; they were his final words to her.
He had heard her confusion and uncertainty, and he had seen her donning the Saint’s Robe.
They really did… look so much alike.
Otto did not answer Ella’s question.
He simply turned his gaze silently toward the Dungeon—toward its darker, deeper reaches.
“This journey is destined to be a road of no return for me.”
“It is not so much that I cannot let go of the White Church, but rather that I cannot let go of Letia.”
“There are too many variables in this world.”
“If Letia does not end up with Red, then this status as the Holy Maiden… will be the last sanctuary I leave for her.”
“Perhaps in your eyes, this ‘for her own good’ gesture seems incredibly willful, as if I have no regard for her own feelings…”
“But… just consider it my first, and last, selfish request.”
Otto adjusted the mask on his face.
No joy or sorrow could be detected in his tone.
Beside him, Ella simply watched the man in silence.
“Achoo!!”
Letia, walking down the street draped in her Saint’s Robe, let out a violent sneeze.
‘I feel like someone was just talking about me… It couldn’t be that jerk Otto again, could it?’
While she had indeed become the Holy Maiden of the White Church, Letia had no intention of telling Red this news yet.
After all, she truly didn’t know how to explain it clearly to him.
Besides, hadn’t she warned Red before to be careful of Otto?
Hmm…
Should she use that as a starting point?
Letia pondered for a long time, but ultimately, she couldn’t find a lead.
“It seems I’ll have to wait for a better opportunity.”
“Tsk—we’ll cross that bridge when it—no, I mean, everything will work out in the end! I’ll confess when a better ‘opportunity’ comes along!”
She muttered to herself in a fit of self-abandonment and pushed open the creaking wooden door of the pub.
“Yo! Is Red here?”
Letia’s voice carried its usual vitality, instantly drawing the attention of most people in the pub.
Mason, Tos, and Brian, who were sitting around a table having a drink, turned their heads at the sound.
All three wore identical expressions of surprise, exchanging looks that clearly asked, ‘Why is she here?’
“Huh?”
Mason set down his glass and scratched his head.
“Red? Didn’t he say… he went to find you? He left not long ago.”
“Huh?”
Letia froze for a moment, then clutched her head and let out a helpless sigh.
She knew, of course, that Red might have said he was looking for her, but it was highly unlikely he actually was.
If he said that, he probably just wanted to find a place to be alone and quiet.
After all, even if it didn’t show on the surface, the way he had slept the previous night proved that Litt’s departure had a massive impact on him.
It wasn’t the kind of thing that could be brushed off with a lighthearted comment.
“He… went to look for you?”
Mason frowned, his finger unconsciously tracing the rim of his glass, his voice carrying a hint of worry.
“He wouldn’t be… bottling things up and heading off to do something stupid, would he?”
However, Tos countered that thought.
“How could that be? He was laughing and joking with us just now. How could he suddenly lose his will to live?”
Brian nodded in agreement.
“True, Red isn’t the type of person to act purely on emotion.”
“That guy, Red…”
“Alright, alright,” Letia said, waving her hand to signal the three of them to be quiet.
“You don’t need to worry about that lolicon. I can probably guess where he’s going. I’ll go check on him.”
With that, Letia turned and left the pub.
After she was gone, Tos finally seemed to exhale a breath he had been holding.
He took a massive gulp of ale, then nudged Brian with his elbow and lowered his voice.
“Hey, did you get… a really, really strong sense of deja vu just now? Like we’ve seen this somewhere before?”
“I did.”
Brian set his glass down and crossed his arms, answering firmly.
“And it wasn’t just a regular sense of deja vu. This feeling… it’s too vivid, like a replay.”
Mason held his glass, looking at the two men speaking in riddles with a dazed expression, clearly unable to keep up.
“What? What deja vu? What are you guys talking about?”
“It’s about before…”
Tos looked toward the door, then whispered softly, “It felt just like this when Litt used to call Red home for dinner. The only difference is that Litt wasn’t as noisy as Letia…”
Brian nodded solemnly, his gaze drifting thoughtfully toward the empty doorway.
“Honestly, don’t you guys think Letia and Litt look really similar? Like they’re sisters, their faces are practically carved from the same mold.”
As Brian’s words hung in the air, Mason didn’t respond immediately.
The hand holding his glass froze mid-air, his expression becoming solemn as he fell into a strange silence.
***
Two days ago.
After leaving the heavy atmosphere of the pub, the three of them hadn’t gone straight home.
Instead, clinging to a final, sliver of hope, they had slipped into the cathedral of the White Church.
They knew Litt’s body had already dissolved into bloody water.
Even the soil soaked with despair and filth had been dug up by the people of the White Church and placed inside that coffin.
While it was somewhat unethical… for the sake of giving Red something to hold onto, the three brothers wanted to see if they could dig out a small amount of that blood-soaked earth from the coffin.
But when they opened the coffin, they discovered something extremely bizarre.
After a person dies, their dissipated magic lingers like invisible vapor in the air and soil for a considerable amount of time.
Furthermore, the inside of a coffin is not ventilated; logically, this magic shouldn’t have vanished so quickly.
And yet…
There were no magic fluctuations inside the coffin.
It was empty, and so clean… it was hair-raising.
According to Mason, the inside of that coffin looked as if no one had ever died there.
Huh, I didn’t expect the drinking buddies to become suspicious. Would actually be kinda fun if they figured it out. Especially with Letia identity as the holy maiden.