Chapter 8
The orange-red rays streaming through the window stabbed at Aria's eyes.
She woke with a frown.
“Haaah.”
Aria stretched, spreading both arms.
She'd slept poorly.
Maybe it was because she'd fallen asleep exhausted.
When she got out of bed, her legs trembled, and her crotch throbbed.
Last night's sex had been rougher than usual.
……No, could that really be called sex?
Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it a gang rape?
‘……It was awful. Truly.’
After today, they wouldn't be able to have Aria again.
The surrogate saintess would be away from the cult for a while, helping the Hero.
Last night's gang rape could be considered their own sort of farewell party.
Thanks to that, it had been the hardest night she'd had in quite a while.
She'd climaxed, and climaxed, and kept climaxing, even though she didn't want to.
She'd climaxed so many times she wondered if she'd become an idiot.
And toward the end, hadn't she even wet herself?
Remembering that she'd lost control of her bladder made her feel embarrassed all over again.
Bad men.
How many times had she shouted for them to let her use the bathroom?
They hadn't even pretended to hear her.
Aria rubbed her throbbing lower back.
Maybe because she'd had such a wild night, her back was terribly stiff.
To be suffering back pain at such a young age.
It was miserable.
“Ugh.”
On top of that, her period had started, so Aria was in a terrible mood.
Menstrual cramps stabbed sharply, as if needles were jabbing at the organs in her abdomen.
The creeping pain came with nausea and a migraine, making her feel like she was dying.
She hadn't known when she was a man, but a woman's body came with more inconveniences than she'd expected.
She drank all the water she'd left by her pillow, then got out of bed.
She wanted to sleep in a little longer, but as a saintess, she was supposed to set an example.
In other words, she couldn't afford to be lazy.
Even if she'd only slept four hours, Aria would get moving.
She had to, if she wanted to maintain the reputation of the saintess Makarov admired.
Rubbing her tired eyes, she thought of the visitor who would be coming today.
‘……The Hero's coming, isn't he?’
That's right.
Today, the famous Hero himself would be visiting the Erotic Cult.
Of course, the reason was to pick up the saintess, Aria.
‘I don't like this, somehow.’
Aria tidied herself up, changed out of her nightclothes and into her vestments, then left her room.
The cathedral was rather bustling when she stepped outside.
They seemed to be preparing all sorts of things for the saintess's departure ceremony.
She thought all the fuss was unnecessary.
‘………They could just let me go normally. Who would be happy about all this?’
When she asked a nearby nun, she was told the departure ceremony would be a lavish affair.
It seemed secondary factors like the cult's dignity and honor had played a major role.
‘………Sigh.’
Everyone from the cult seemed excited, but Aria, the person at the center of it all, felt little of anything.
Instead of squandering money on pointless formalities like this, wouldn't it be more useful to support the children at the orphanage?
Aria was thinking this as she walked down the corridor to morning Mass.
“Well, if it isn't Saintess Aria?”
A man with brown hair parted to one side smiled at her.
He was Bishop Ronin, who had risen in rank in just one year.
“……What brings you here, Bishop Ronin, when you're so busy with official duties?”
Aria's tone was sharp.
It couldn't be helped.
Marblov wasn't the only one who'd dragged her into the abyss.
A man named Ronin was one of the people who had driven her to despair, too.
“No matter how busy I am, I have to attend the departure ceremony of a saintess who's like my own daughter.”
Aria's cheek twitched.
That ‘like my own daughter,’ over and over and over.
“Does Your Grace have some horrible fetish for violating your own daughter?”
“……Is that so.”
“It's nice to see you doing so well lately.”
That sounded more like mockery than anything else.
As if to say, ‘So you don't resist anymore?’
“That's all thanks to you, Bishop Ronin.”
Aria looked at Bishop Ronin with a gaze that said, ‘You broke my will to resist, and now you're saying that?’
For some reason, he looked dejected.
“Saintess.”
“………What is it?”
“I hope you'll have a little more hope.”
“……What?”
Having said his piece, Bishop Ronin turned on his heel and walked away.
From Aria's perspective, it was absurd.
Who was it that had crushed her hope?
Who was it that had snuffed out her desire?
Who was responsible for all this?!
“……Hah.”
Aria, trembling with humiliation, wiped the corner of her eye.
It was already a bad day, and now it looked like it would get even worse.
* * *
Bishop Ronin liked seeing Aria fall apart.
More precisely, he liked the feeble resistance she showed as she fell apart.
When she resisted pleasure with a sharp glare.
When she spat crude curses and scratched him with her nails.
Each and every one of her fierce little actions dutifully satisfied Ronin's sinister desires.
‘Aria, how can you be such a sweet, delightful being?’
Recently, however, Ronin had been dissatisfied.
It was because Aria had become far too obedient.
Where had all that passionate resistance and desperate defiance gone?
He wanted her to suffer and struggle more.
He wanted her to resist with more spirit.
Only then would the despair she felt taste all the sweeter.
Ronin thought this couldn't go on.
There was no pleasure in tormenting Aria as despair consumed her, like fruit browning in the open air.
What fun was there in playing with an empty puppet?
That was what Aria had become now.
No matter what he did, she acquiesced like a well-trained puppy, accepting everything.
Her emptiness made Ronin grow restless.
What he wanted to see was Aria, her face full of life as she put up a feeble resistance—not Aria with dead-fish eyes, blindly obeying every order.
This wouldn't do.
Ronin wanted to use Aria as the material for creating the perfect tragedy.
She couldn't fall apart this easily.
She needed to experience despair on a stage more suited to her, a despair more suited to her.
And so, for the first time in a long while, Ronin found himself pondering a problem.
How could he make Aria's will to resist burn fiercely again?
The conclusion he reached after careful thought.
It was to give Aria hope.
Give someone hope in order to make them despair?
It might sound contradictory.
But people only despair when they still have some hope left.
Think about it.
If someone had given up from the very beginning, there would be no despair or resentment.
They would have no emotions at all.
But what if they had even the faintest glimmer of hope?
What if there seemed to be a way out of their miserable situation?
Then Aria would think:
Perhaps she could escape this quagmire.
Maybe a tiny hope would begin to sprout.
And the moment that expectation reached its critical point,
he would crush Aria with overwhelming despair.
The fall from hope to despair would make her despair all the more deeply!
The thought alone excited him.
Bishop Ronin covered his mouth with his right hand, stifling a laugh.
Ah.
He wanted to see Aria's despairing face.
He wanted to see Aria fall apart.
Aria.
I am your fervent follower.
Please, resist with all the strength you have left.
For your happiness.
For my enjoyment.
Now.
What would be the best way to give this withering Aria some hope?
He stroked his chin, lost in thought.
Just then, information about a man called the Hero reached him at precisely the right time.
Ronin saw it as an opportunity.
The Hero and the saintess.
Wasn't that a story as old as time?
Perhaps it could be a good source of stimulation.
Ronin smiled.
He'd come up with a scheme he rather liked.
‘It's already been a month since then.’
Ronin finished reminiscing and continued down the cathedral corridor.
He hoped this plan would successfully bring Aria's will to resist back to life.
‘At last, today's the day.’
Today.
The Hero is coming.
People call him a perfect Hero.
Ronin didn't believe those fanciful rumors at all.
By nature, he judged only what he saw and heard with his own eyes and ears.
That was precisely why Ronin had set aside his busy official duties to come here.
Was the Hero who would arrive soon truly someone who could give Aria hope?
He intended to find out.
‘And see Aria while I'm at it.’
Speak of the devil.
Across the way, he saw Aria shuffling along awkwardly.
She must have been stuffed full of seed to make up for the time she wouldn't be able to serve as a surrogate while following the Hero.
“Saintess.”
“………What is it?”
Ronin couldn't help smiling at Aria's sullen look as she stared at him.
“I hope you'll have a little more hope.”
Wouldn't that be better for both of them?
Though it would be brief, Aria would escape her miserable reality and dream a sweet dream.
And Ronin would be able to enjoy the lively resistance of an Aria who still had hope.
If Aria knew what Ronin was thinking, she'd be appalled.
Well, she had no way of knowing, since she couldn't read minds.
* * *
After morning Mass, Aria stopped by the restroom for a moment.
She hadn't drunk anything in particular, but the urge to pee had grown intense.
Could it be that she'd climaxed so much last night she'd developed incontinence?
She suddenly grew anxious.
‘N-no way, right?’
Trickle, trickle.
The only sound was the stream pattering down.
Come to think of it, this was the restroom where she'd played hide-and-seek with Bishop Ronin.
Memories from a year ago suddenly crossed Aria's mind.
‘What if I hadn't been caught back then?’
Maybe she would have adapted to this fantasy world and lived well?
Rather than living like a canary trapped in a cage as she did now.
……It was a pointless what-if.
Aria wiped between her legs with toilet paper and stood from the toilet, and was just about to pull up her panties.
BANG!
The restroom door she'd locked was roughly flung open.
An unexpected turn of events.
Several question marks appeared over Aria's head.
Beyond the forcibly opened door, she saw black eyes and navy-blue hair, just like her own.
To her surprise, the one who'd opened the door was a man.
“So this is where you were.”
His voice was a pleasant, medium-low tone.
Aria froze, having stopped halfway through pulling up her panties.
“H-huh?”
“Come.”
He said only that, without offering any explanation of what was going on.
Come where?
More importantly, why had he forced open the women's restroom door?
He didn't look like one of the cult members, so how had he gotten in?
A multitude of questions surfaced in her mind.
But the man didn't give Aria a chance to ask any of them.
He grabbed Aria around the waist with his sturdy arm, hoisted her over his shoulder, and murmured something at the wall with the window.
It sounded just like a spell.
No, it really was a spell.
A flash of light and an explosion erupted.
KABOOOM!
The deafening rumble.
The wall had crumbled away before she knew it.
Was this the magic she'd only heard about?
Aria had seen holy arts many times, but even she had never seen magic firsthand.
So she couldn't help being thrown into confusion.
What was happening?
W-was she being kidnapped?
Why?
What use could she possibly be?
The situation was unfolding so quickly that her mind couldn't keep up.
Aria had spent the past year living a life of submitting to abuse and violence.
In other words, she hadn't encountered enough unexpected situations to calmly handle an incident like this.
That was why she couldn't help panicking.
“……W-who are you?”
The man's indifferent eyes swept over Aria.
He answered very briefly.
“The Hero.”
The man who'd introduced himself as the Hero tried to leave with Aria slung over his shoulder.
There was something she needed to say before he could move.
“W-wait a moment!”
“………?”
“P-please let me put my underwear on.”
Aria felt embarrassed even as she said it.