Don’t Be Holy! - Chapter 142

Eir stopped what she was doing and turned around as if asking what that sound was. The book she was holding slipped from her grasp and landed on the floor.

Abel realized then that she knew nothing about what was happening outside.

“You didn’t know?”

“What do you…… mean by that?”

Eir barely managed to answer with a slightly quieter voice. Abel frowned at her confused demeanor. He felt complicated emotions.

While his brother was going to such lengths, was this woman just comfortably reading books without knowing anything? He felt some resentment, but at the same time, he gained a strange realization that his brother had tried so hard to protect this woman.

‘Should I be the one to break the secret my brother tried so perfectly to keep?’

Briefly, such doubts and caution arose, but because the woman before him was a witch, Abel was able to quickly shake off his hesitation. He spoke with a more confident tone.

“I don’t know what kind of witch you are, or what relationship you have with my brother. Since you’re someone my brother chose, I assume you’re not a terrible person. I kept thinking that perhaps there are special circumstances that could be forgiven. That must be why my brother made such a seemingly reckless choice.”

Although Abel had expected to immediately hurl accusations, he momentarily set aside the hostility he had been showing toward Eir and spoke that way.

“I, too, don’t believe what people say—that my brother was merely manipulated by a witch’s tricks. But it seems a bit unfair that you’re here knowing nothing.”

He looked at her quietly, as if asking whether she didn’t recognize the suspicious circumstances if she just tried to think about it.

Eir said nothing.

How could she explain and make him understand that her inaction had been a kind of loyalty to Rubel?

‘Will you promise me not to run away?’

Every time she recalled Rubel’s straight gaze as he waited for an answer under the sunset streaming through the window, she felt a clanking in one corner of her heart, as if carrying a heavy burden.

Sometimes, while heading down to the kitchen, she would observe the patrol times of the guards protecting the mansion or calculate the shift changes, but whenever she remembered Rubel’s gaze, she would return to where he had told her to stay.

‘Please answer me clearly. I’m leaving believing only in your word.’

Only you. Those words constricted her heart more effectively than any witch’s spell.

Just as I trust only you and leave, you too should trust me and wait here. Following those words, she had quietly waited. How could she make Abel understand that this had been more difficult than doing anything else?

Eir chewed her lips nervously before asking.

“Just what is happening?”

Abel answered without hesitation, as if he had been waiting for this question.

“My brother has decided to undergo the Purity Rite. As a witch, you may not grasp how dangerous this is, but to put it simply, it’s almost like saying he’ll take the punishment for your crimes.”

Eir silently opened her mouth and stood dazed before lowering her head and raising her hand to her throbbing temple.

She kept muttering “crazy person” under her breath.

Yes. She knew well that he was someone who would do shocking things as if they were nothing. But still, Eir hadn’t expected Rubel to come up with something like this.

Because the Purity Rite, while nominally a ritual to prove innocence, had been used to take lives in God’s stead, inflicting suffering until death on clerics who had committed mortal sins.

Being punished for even the smallest sin. No matter how exceptional Rubel Shinote was, he couldn’t be sinless enough to have never told a lie.

“So that’s why he did it.”

Eir murmured blankly. The reason Rubel, who would normally never leave Eir alone for a moment, hadn’t touched her on the return journey became clear. He had been preparing for the Purity Rite from that point. Realizing this, she felt so betrayed her face turned red.

“I thought he would demand me as compensation for what he’d done, or something like that.”

When Eir spoke in a constricted voice, Abel frowned.

“My brother would never do that.”