My Childhood Friend Became an Inquisitor

“…If we’re caught like this, we’ll both get scolded terribly by your mother.”
“Ehehe… Louis’s embrace is warm…”
“Well, if you’re happy, then whatever.”
*

It wasn’t.
It was my delusion again. All of it.

No one comes and goes in this space. The white horizon that appears to be a straight line, when looked at closely, undulates slightly, showing that the space mixes and changes a bit.

But that doesn’t mean someone new will appear. Sometimes I could see solitary cells with silver bars like the one I’m confined in on the side or across, but the insides were empty.

A desolate structure completely identical to the room I’m in, except for the absence of a chamber pot and Bible. How many heretics have been stuffed in here?

“Anne!”

Anne was gone, and of course, my voice doesn’t reach the outside.

But there was nothing else I could do. Just thinking about reading the Bible made me nauseous, so I kept calling your name incessantly, like a devout believer crying out God’s name.

“Anne! Anne! Anne! Anne! Anne!”

Anne, Anne, Anne…

It seemed to echo in the vast space. Or maybe my broken head just couldn’t distinguish its own voice.

Who cares. I grinned and then smashed my head against the wall. A dull pain shook my skull, but the pain that blurred my reason was sweet. Nothing could torment me more than the anguish and distress boiling in my heart.

Come to think of it, I seemed to have hurt my head earlier too. The blood flowing from my cracked forehead was fresh. I don’t know, maybe this space has regenerative effects too, Anne just didn’t mention it. I giggled without even trying to wipe the flowing blood.

A few drops falling into my mouth create a sweet and salty taste. But most of it evaporates before it can flow, as if receiving a concentrated barrage of light. Out of regret, even the stains I deliberately smeared on my hands are erased as if someone carefully wiped them away.

Suddenly filled with defiance, I started to self-harm. In my hazy mind, the pain I inflicted on myself was nothing compared to the torture I had experienced. Maybe the threshold of sensation had risen due to the scarring experiences.

“Ha, hahaha.”

I want to believe you.

Can I really leave this place? If I’m a heretic, can I be purified? To begin with, I don’t even understand what it means that I’m stained by darkness?

Can we be happy again?

“Ahahahahaha!”

I laughed.
I smashed my head against the wall. Even in this state, I was too afraid of burning on the silver bars to make a fuss towards the exit. As my brain turned to mush, everything mixed together, and in the sight of melting away with tears, I just laughed.

I wish I could forget everything. If I don’t remember, maybe it didn’t happen. Keep erasing, erasing, erasing. Yeprinse, our hometown. Can’t I let my mind stay in that time forever?

Ridiculously, I was still convinced. Even if I regressed to a real child, you would take care of me devotedly. If I couldn’t feel anything, I could be happy even in this small white cage. Because you would be by my side.

If you harmed me, there would clearly be only one reason. To drive out the darkness within me.
So what is that.

“What is it!”

Stopping my laughter, I started to scream. As if Anne was right in front of me, I poured out all my resentment, sorrow, and anger into the empty air that no one was listening to.

Is it corruption if I don’t love you? Am I stained by darkness if I fear you? It’s natural. A monster like you, a monster that kills humans with bare hands! It’s natural to be afraid! I’m just human. Human, human, human!

Before you destroyed our village, I had no connection to violence, and before you massacred the villagers, I only vaguely feared death! But my present self who shouted such things was drenched in blood all over.

Self-harm and self-questioning, a puddle of hatred that hurts myself stagnantly pooled. I screamed and struggled in the sticky stains that even the purifying light couldn’t erase immediately.

Bang.

There’s a limit to regeneration and purification. Once again, when I smashed my head against the wall like a madman, I felt the world spin. The now all too familiar sensation of fainting.

It’s rather fortunate. While everything is buried in darkness, at least my heart can… be… at… peace…

Fainting was something you couldn’t get used to no matter how hard you tried. After sleeping like the dead, I opened my eyes clutching my throbbing head.

Maybe the pain remained like an afterimage because I had hit my own head so many times. The mind that had once been cut off was depressed, but I could feel it was soaked in blood oil, ready to ignite at any moment.

Maybe this void makes me more miserable. There’s nothing here. Really nothing.

Even if I want to immerse myself in something else, the only reading material is the Bible, but the more I read it, the more unpleasant I felt. It was difficult not to feel hostility towards religion in this situation.

Now I’ve just woken up, and I’m somewhat calm due to the headache, but… Once a little time passes, the ringing in my ears and hallucinations will torment me again. When I come to my senses, I repeat the cycle of having seizures and hurting myself to subdue myself.

“Anne is.”

Not here. No one outside the bars.
No, there is someone. That person wasn’t Anne though.

It took me a while to notice the other person’s presence, as they were as silent as a ghost. The other person was staring at me blankly from outside the bars, and judging by the white robe they were wearing, they seemed to be a priest.

However, there was no emblem drawn on her gently protruding chest. Neither a humble silver cross, nor a noble gold cross, nor the thorny cross of the Inquisitors, nor the cross bound with thorns engraved on my clothes.

The plain priestly robe, devoid of any pattern like this space, formed a clear contrast with the other person’s night-black hair. I asked a question to the person silently staring in my direction.

“Who?”

Somehow, they seemed to resemble my fiancée. Hmm, what did she look like again?

The other person answered.

“Ah, a priest who’s come to teach what needs to be practiced…? Well, I guess I can just call you ‘Teacher’?”

‘Teacher’ nodded.

Come to think of it, didn’t Anne say she would take on that role? As soon as the question arose, Teacher quickly explained.

“Ah, so originally one person doesn’t take on this task alone, they say. Well.”

I didn’t know how many heretics there were, but the re-education center itself seemed very spacious, so it didn’t seem likely that Anne would handle everything alone.

To begin with, unless this place was being neglected, there must have been people managing it originally… The moment I thought of that fact, my body started to ache with phantom pain.

That red-haired Inquisitor too, he spoke familiarly with other prisoners as if he had been here many times. He even called them brother.

“You’re saying I should relax…? That you won’t do such things?”

“Haha, that’s a relief. Of course, I still can’t trust you, but if you’re a merciful priest, please understand this much.”

I rubbed my face dry. When I was with Anne, all my senses were focused on her, and I had no time to feel anything else.

When I’m with other people, or with Teacher, I feel like all the hallucinations and illusions that were screaming fall silent. As if they’ve met a predator.

I don’t know the exact reason, but it was rather fortunate for me. Loneliness was a poison that choked more than anything else, and I wanted anyone to be by my side.

…In the end, the only person I could find true peace beside, even while fearing, was just one person.
Come to think of it, why is Anne taking so long?

I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. I had already lost consciousness several times. The sensations throughout my body were tangled, and I couldn’t gauge whether hours, days, or perhaps months had passed.

“You’re saying that looking at my condition, it seems unreasonable to educate me now?”

Yes, what could enter my head in this mental state?

However, Teacher didn’t leave. Rather, they persistently hovered around, trying to stimulate me.

“You’re asking what happened? There’s nothing I can’t talk about…”

I’ve already spilled everything to that villain anyway. I was starved for human contact, and afraid of loneliness.

The priest’s mercy of bothering people, something like that, I guess. Things that would have seemed trivial normally were desperate at this moment.

Because Anne wasn’t by my side right now.

“The villagers died.”

“And by Anne’s hand, no less. It’s really unbelievable, right? She grew up in the village with me too.”

“Despite promising to marry, I guess she got angry because I made a separate fiancée. Is it my fault?”

“And then I was dragged here. Look at me now.”

Words pouring out haphazardly.
I thought I’d feel a bit better if I said it out loud, but I didn’t. Rather, I felt my chest tightening even more.

I still don’t know what the darkness Anne talks about is, but if it refers to my negative emotions, it felt like darkness was slowly rising from within.

Teacher looked at me and said.

“No.”

I shook my head.

I’m aware that my actions are contradictory. When Anne comes, I’ll inevitably hate and blame her again, but on the other hand, in moments when Anne is not here, don’t I crave her and try to protect her?

Teacher didn’t say anything. I said to Teacher.

“Anne is not bad.”