The sight of Hyakin crying so pitifully put the Chief God in an awkward position.
— I’m sorry, but as I’ve already said, a Saint once chosen cannot be changed. That said, you don’t actually want to die, do you?
At the word ‘die,’ Hyakin’s narrow shoulders gave a startled flinch.
“Dying…… I don’t want that. But I don’t want to be ground up like mismatched gears alongside kids who treat me like a bug and get torn to pieces that way either.”
This particular Saint had an unusually fierce attachment to life.
All the other Saints were practically desperate to sacrifice their own bodies and souls.
Were those others the abnormal ones, or was this child?
The Chief God — who, despite having shaped humans as his own creations, did not fully understand the human heart — could only tilt his head in bewilderment.
But rules were rules.
— I understand how you feel, but unfortunately the Saint cannot be changed. Return to your quarters.
“No!”
With a face swollen and round as a puffer fish, Hyakin grabbed at the Chief God’s trouser leg — there was simply no other way to describe it — and showed every sign of flopping down flat in protest right then and there.
The Chief God was beyond exasperated, and had in fact begun to find this peculiar Saint’s antics oddly fascinating.
— Whatever you say, you are this generation’s Saint. Nothing will change, so take that as fact. And you keep grabbing at my trouser leg — it does no good, because a god has no fixed form.
True to his word, the Chief God simply dissolved his dream-body into smoke, slipping free of Hyakin’s grasp.
“That…… you can’t……”
Staring after the Chief God in dumbfounded disbelief, Hyakin’s already-red eyes brimmed with tears once more.
“I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die in some horrible, agonizing way. All I wanted was something that isn’t even that much to ask — just one simple plea, to let me live……”
— I’m sorry about that.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it. You think a bare-mouthed apology is going to fix this?”
Hyakin wiped the tears away on his sleeve, and a fierce spark lit up in his eyes.
“Just you watch. I’m never giving up.”
— It would serve you far better to accept your destiny sooner — then you too could find release from your suffering, and have the chance to make peace with the end that is coming…… You are truly stubborn.
“You’re no pushover yourself. Let’s see who gives in first.”
And just like that, an unwanted contest — that wasn’t quite a contest — began between the Chief God and Hyakin.
* * *
Young Hyakin prayed that same prayer to the Chief God every single day.
“Please just let me quit being a Hero!”
Always. Every day. Without fail. Without ever tiring.
The place didn’t matter either.
In the waking world, he mostly directed his quiet pleas at every statue of the Chief God enshrined within the Papal Palace. He was afraid that, as the Pope had warned, someone might try to kill him.
In his dreams, he gnawed at the Chief God’s thigh like a rabies-infected dog and begged desperately to be spared.
“Ugh! Come on! After all this, shouldn’t basic decency require you to grant it out of pity or sheer annoyance if nothing else?!”
— Decency?! If you want to talk about decency, you release my thigh first!
“You said a god has no fixed form, so being bitten doesn’t hurt, right? Thank you so much for giving me a guilt-free excuse to bite as much as I like!”
— Good grief! Even so, you little — you insufferable little——!
The two of them were perfectly matched in a war of words.
Neither side was willing to back down, so as time passed, both grew increasingly worn down.
In fact, the Chief God — a spiritual being for whom the concept of fatigue did not exist — accumulated such profound mental exhaustion that he eventually stopped appearing in Hyakin’s dreams altogether. He had, in short, made his escape.
He had severed the connection between himself and the human’s dreams!
“This…… how dare this ■■■ run away from me?!”
Shooting upright in bed, Hyakin was so furious he had no choice but to unleash every profanity he’d learned across both his past life and his current one.
“What’s going on?”
“Who dares to casually invoke the Chief God’s name like——”
“Wait, isn’t that his voice?”
“Oh, it’s that half-baked Saint.”
Because of Hyakin’s impious screaming of the Chief God’s name in the dead of night, all four of the other Hero children had been woken up.
“And — isn’t that guy spewing vulgar language that insults and degrades God right out of his mouth?”
“……Seems so.”
“He’s finally lost it.”
“……Whether he has or hasn’t, I couldn’t care less — but I’m going to shut his mouth.”
Sleepyhead Ciel had been forcibly yanked out of a blissful dream, and was in an extremely foul mood.
He used a rather heavy-handed spell to knock Hyakin — who had been cycling between sobbing hysterically and erupting in furious shouting — unconscious, and then settled into sleep with a satisfied smile on his lips.
Muteric, Garet, and Pesar watched Ciel execute the incantation with not a single wasted movement, their expressions caught somewhere between admiration and disbelief.
“He really will do anything for the sake of sleep……”
“But sleeping well during your growth years is important.”
“I agree with Garet. We’ll need to be in peak physical condition to go after the Demon King. Height is part of that — so this was an appropriate measure.”
Is that so.
Strangely persuaded, Muteric left it at that and returned to his quarters to go back to sleep.
It seemed as though a peaceful (?) day was drawing to a close.
* * *
But what the four Heroes had failed to account for was……
“■■■! Why are you avoiding my prayers? Because something is bothering your conscience, isn’t it? If you are a god with a conscience and that conscience is nagging at you — then return me to my original life!”
“If that’s not possible, then let me quit being a Sa—…… ah, no. That’s not something I should say out loud in public. Regardless, I will not stop praying loudly until you grant my deepest wish!”
“Huu…… it’s been days and you’re still going at it. A god who reads and ignores. Aren’t you ashamed? Even so, I am a person of iron will…… ah, no, that’s not the right line for right now. In any case, if you continue to ignore the Saint’s prayers like this, unease among the faithful will only keep growing! Are you listening?!”
Hyakin was, it turned out, even more unhinged than anyone had realized.
He had resumed — again, always, every day, without fail, without ever tiring — screaming at the top of his lungs at every statue and idol of the Chief God within the Papal Palace, offering what was ostensibly prayer.
Garet, witnessing this, let fall exactly one remark.
“I’ve seen this kind of scene plenty of times. Customers at the shops under my mother’s guild who’d come demanding an exchange over some supposed defect in their goods — they looked exactly like this.”
“……”
“My mother took me along once and personally subdued one of them, and then told me that people like that are called ‘troublesome customers.'”
Garet’s gaze shifted toward Hyakin, who was bellowing at a divine statue in something between prayer and public disturbance.
“It seems the Papal Palace has produced its own troublesome Hero.”
“Haa……”
Muteric pressed a hand to his forehead and watched Hyakin’s spectacle with a gaze dark enough to curdle milk.
“To think that thing is a Hero just like us…… Unbelievable. What on earth was the Chief God thinking, pairing us with that?”
“Agreed……”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
As time passed with no sign of Hyakin’s prayers (?) letting up, the Pope finally stepped in himself.
“Saint, what is the meaning of this?”
“As you can see, I am praying to the Chief God. You ■——”
The Pope’s age-lined hand snapped over the Saint’s mouth — who was young enough to be his grandchild. At that, the other Heroes burst into applause. Ciel even pulled out the earplugs he had put in.
“Mixing language that insults the Chief God into a prayer is one of the gravest taboos! You couldn’t have forgotten something you learned as a foundational concept in your divine power class so quickly…… Did something happen to shock you severely?”
Hyakin faltered at something in the Pope’s words.
“Yes…… it did.”
“When, and where, exactly……”
“My heart and spirit were deeply wounded.”
“……”
The Pope was lost for words. Because the furiously indignant Hyakin standing before him looked, for all the world, perfectly fine.
Hyakin, wild-eyed, stared at the Pope with the whites of his eyes reddened and veined, and asked in a voice as chilling as a cursed doll’s.
“Pope.”
“Y-yes. Yes?”
“In any case, as the Saint, I outrank you — that’s correct, isn’t it?”
“That…… is so, but——”
The Pope felt a sense of dread. So did the four other Hero children.
“Then the only ones who could stop me are those four — my fellow Heroes?”
Hyakin’s slender finger pointed at the other four Hero children.
Unexpectedly finding themselves the focus of his gaze, they each gave an involuntary flinch.
It was because the boy — more beautiful than any goddess in the costly illustrations of a sacred scripture — was, for the first time, looking back at them with a gaze that didn’t falter or shrink. Madness in his left eye. Sorrow in his right.
“Th-that is correct……”
“Ah.”
Grin.
The gloomy, distorted expression on Hyakin’s face bloomed wide open.
For a brief moment, the other Hero children stared at him, transfixed. It was the first time they had ever seen Hyakin smile with anything resembling genuine feeling.
But that moment of being moved lasted only an instant.
Snap.
With a face gone cold, Hyakin declared.
“Then from this point forward — do not get in my way.”
“A-ah, but — the complaints and grievances from the faithful are growing worse by the day……”
“That is the fault of the Chief God for not answering my prayer, so submit a formal complaint to the Chief God and have him handle it. Oh! That way, the Chief God — now in an even more difficult position — might actually have a slightly higher chance of answering my prayer.”
Hyakin beamed with a sweet, cheerful smile — and yet the Pope and the four Hero children all felt an overwhelming wave of cold.
And at the exact same moment, each of them thought the same thought.
How on earth did a lunatic like this end up becoming the Saint……
