“High Priest!”
Nick spoke with an exaggerated inflection and knelt at Rou’s feet. Jes’s face turned deathly pale. He knew there was no way Nick would greet him so obediently. Nick extended his palm toward Rou, and Rou looked down at him intently as if about to reach out his hand at any moment.
The nouveau riche grinned at Jes’s trembling hands. Though dismissed by other nobles as having only money and no refinement, even he could hold his head high proudly here. Nick found this power—where even his impudence would be tolerated—thrilling.
When Nick heard that Jes was leaving the southern temple to hurry north, he thought it was an opportunity. In a place where the Goddess’s power was weak, he could wield greater influence. His idea was to put the temple into great debt so he could extract greater blessings.
Sensing something ominous from Jes’s pale face, Yan stood beside the still-hot teapot. If that unwelcome guest dared show disrespect to the sacred High Priest, he would absolutely not stand for it.
Rou placed his gaze once each on Yan, who was half-grasping the teapot’s handle, and Nick, who was holding out his palm. Rou’s empty teacup moved slowly, and Nick prepared to kiss the white back of that hand profusely.
However, what landed on his palm was something completely unexpected.
“Wh-what is this?”
Rou’s empty cup settled not on the worn side table nor with the attendant, but on Nick’s palm. Nick’s palm had suddenly become a saucer. Nick placed the empty cup on the side table. Serving someone else’s tea. His face became quite a sight at being treated like an attendant.
“You were staring at my hand so intently. I thought you might need a cup.”
“What? No, how could that be?”
“Ahem!”
Jes hurriedly cut him off before Nick could commit further impudence.
“The High Priest is simply unfamiliar with such greetings.”
“Did he perhaps fall suddenly from the Goddess’s embrace?”
“Nick!”
Rou’s shoulders trembled slightly at the sharp, piercing words, and Yan, wondering if he was cold, poured him a full cup of hot tea. Rou held the bitter tea water in his hands and asked.
“Is there a greeting done with hands?”
This gave weight to Jes’s opinion that he hadn’t deliberately ignored the greeting.
“In the Empire and several kingdoms, they kiss the back of one’s hand as a sign of respect.”
‘To exchange such a greeting that would smell of saliva.’
Though it was a situation born of misunderstanding, Rou thought it extremely fortunate he hadn’t extended the back of his hand. While muttering “I see” somewhat strangely, Rou didn’t put down his teacup.
Nick, who had intended to thoroughly crush the face of this young and insolent High Priest, realized something had gone slightly wrong. That High Priest was quite something—knowing yet pretending not to know. Having completely failed to seize the initiative, he plotted to kiss his hand as soon as it was free, but Rou never finished the tea that didn’t even contain sugar.
‘This isn’t ordinary, is it?’
Knowing yet pretending not to know. Hearing yet pretending not to hear. These were common occurrences in high society, but not situations he’d expected to encounter in a temple. Such aristocratic behavior made Nick hesitate.
That composure wasn’t falsely constructed. Nick narrowed his already thin eyes even further and glanced sideways at Rou. Having spent his life not offending the high and mighty while being desperate to fill his own pockets, Nick possessed the ability to gauge someone’s status from their minor habits.
The High Priest appeared ignorant of etiquette, yet wasn’t frivolous. No—elegance oozed from his elbows and jawline. His natural dignity, without even trying, seemed rather transcendent of the rules humans had established.
‘Could it be… he’s of a status I cannot even gauge?’
Eventually, just as cramps were about to set in his legs, Nick’s short patience ran out and he sprang up from his seat. At the same time, his hair moved somewhat strangely from the recoil. His head and hair moved with exactly half a beat’s difference.
The nouveau riche huffed and looked back and forth between Rou’s nonchalant face and Jes’s flustered one, but when he looked left his hair moved right, and when he looked right it moved left—the rhythm was so perfectly off that even Yan, an outsider to such matters, could tell it was clearly a wig.
Yan clenched his teeth at Jes’s sidelong glance and erased his smile, admiring how the High Priest was like a calm sea, his expression unchanging even at such a ridiculous sight.
“High Priest. I left behind the peaceful and warm sunlight of the south to come all the way to this harsh north because I have a request.”
The nouveau riche couldn’t hold back and began. At the mention of abandoning warmth to come here, Rou became attentive, wondering if he had some pitiful story.
“I would like you to bless my wealth.”
“Wealth?”
“Yes. Then I will do my utmost to help you, High Priest, adapt to this barren place!”
Nick rubbed his palms together and laughed. He thought that having said this much, the High Priest would understand. Look at this temple, no different from ruins. It wasn’t an environment where someone who looked like they’d lived on nothing but black tea and sugar water could endure.
The High Priest appeared deliberately calm, but in truth might want to escape this temple more than anyone. He would need wealth more than anything right now, so he wouldn’t be able to endure without bestowing a blessing. Nick waited for Rou’s next words with a triumphant laugh. When he pretended to reluctantly give the blessing, Nick could sob as if deeply moved.
“Are you cold and hungry now?”
Rou knew what eyes the destitute had. He knew that boy with those hollow, haggard eyes.
That’s why he said that while slowly looking over the man before him. Except for his face and hands, the human revealed not a bit of skin, and though his height was closest to the ground among those gathered in this room, his weight seemed paramount. He didn’t particularly seem starved, nor did he appear to lack shelter from the cold wind.
However, the question that flowed from Rou’s mouth was completely unexpected to the nouveau riche. The straight gaze descending from head to toe seemed to reproach his greed.
“Th-that’s not it, but.”
“When you have sufficient provisions to eat through winter and clothing to protect your body temperature, how do you wish for further blessings?”
Rou’s face as he said this was extremely reverent. Perhaps because he said it with a face that seemed finely crafted by a god, Nick was momentarily speechless with inexplicable shame.
“With-without my help. You intend to stay in this shabby place? Don’t you wish to announce to everyone that the Goddess has chosen a new High Priest?”
“Well. Won’t the Goddess have prepared a path?”
Rou’s voice when mentioning the Goddess was so plain that some might think him indifferent to temple affairs. However, Jes simply lowered his head. The High Priest often casually mentioned the Goddess’s existence like this, and each time Jes was made to painfully reflect on his own shallow faith. Enough that Rou, who actually had no particular thoughts about it, would feel quite sorry if he knew.
Jes couldn’t raise his head for a long while after that.
“Is-is this person really the new High Priest?”
“Look here, Nick.”
Jes intended to advise him to abandon such idle suspicions. However, Nick, whom even he found unsatisfactory, wouldn’t listen to the former High Priest’s words. He kicked open the door and raised his voice loud enough to sweep away the corridor.
“Until I confirm the Goddess’s Dew. I cannot acknowledge this! If you’re so confident, show me proof!”
“…Let’s do that then.”
Rou rose lightly from his seat. Thanks to the tea Yan had poured and the human irrationally getting heated beside him, his body and the surrounding air were warm. Though he couldn’t understand why this human had been so bad-tempered from earlier, he had a definite premonition that showing him the Goddess’s Dew would quiet him down.
Jes and Yan quietly followed behind Rou, and in the end, no one stopped Nick. Sometimes witnessing one overwhelming sight would be clearer than explaining it a hundred times with words.
Had water leaked through the tightly shut door? The corridor leading to the Room of Declaration was wet. Nick was too busy grumbling about whether water was leaking somewhere to notice Yan’s shoulders trembling as he hid his laughter.
When Rou grasped the doorknob, Jes unconsciously grabbed Yan’s hand, and Yan nodded with a rather determined face and hugged a nearby large pillar with one arm.
Perhaps because water had pooled inside the room. The heavy door burst open with just a slight pull on the doorknob. Water poured into the corridor like a wave. Naturally, anyone not holding onto something was swept away by the current.
Rou survived by holding the handle, Jes and Yan by relying on each other, but Nick, who had received no advance warning from anyone, drifted far away screaming. Nick squirmed at the end of the long corridor and spat out water for quite a while like a pufferfish with a bloated belly.
Unable to come to his senses, Nick finally opened just his eyes, barely clinging to the floor. And realized everyone was looking down at him. Unlike himself, who was a mess from the water bomb, those who had survived the current were wet but relatively intact.
“Y-you!”
Just as he was about to accuse them of deliberately not warning only him, something soaked and wet slipped from atop his head. Feeling the sudden cool air on his scalp, Nick hurriedly reached up, but the wig, unable to withstand the weight, fell with only a ‘splat!’
Nick froze stiff on the spot. His scalp was suspiciously cool, and a familiar shape glistened at his feet. He only turned pale, unable to even think of picking up his wig.
At the suddenly changed atmosphere around them, Rou looked once each at his bald head and the clump of hair that had fallen to the floor with a slow gaze.
