Chapter 4
‘Uh, um.’
While Ella searched for an excuse to refuse, the examination room door opened.
Samael emerged from inside and smiled when he saw the two of them. He was also well acquainted with Missus Basti’s meddlesome nature.
“Missus, I’m sorry, but I’ve already marked Sister Ella out as a priestess-in-training.”
“Goodness, you mean to make a priestess out of a young woman with such a bright future.”
“Is my future not bright?”
Samael bent his knees to meet Missus Basti’s eyes.
At that, the woman let out a long sigh.
“If you thought your face would work even on an old woman like me, Head Priest… then you are very clever indeed.”
Missus Basti rose to her feet with a grunt.
Even with the support of her cane, her body trembled. Seeing that, Samael spoke to Ella.
“Please escort the Missus home.”
“Yes, Head Priest. I’ll come right back and finish cleaning up…”
“No, you can go straight home, as always. I can manage a little tidying myself.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to be. You always stay late working unless something like this happens.”
“The Missus knows that too, which is why she deliberately comes around this time.”
With that final reminder, Samael gave Ella a light push on the back.
Then, as if he would hear no further objections, he went back inside.
Missus Basti chuckled.
“He really is a kind man. Isn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s a good person.”
“Not every priest is that good-natured. For our village, he’s practically a blessing.”
She was speaking with the previous head priest in mind.
Ella did not add anything and focused solely on supporting the woman.
She had been told that when she was first found here, Ella’s left leg had been injured so badly it was almost unbearable to look at.
Treatment with divine power had saved her from losing the leg, but running was still too much for her.
And in truth, no matter how elderly the other person was, supporting someone’s weight like this was difficult for her as well.
“Come to think of it.”
Unaware that Ella was supporting her while enduring the ache in her leg, Missus Basti suddenly spoke as they walked down the corridor.
“Looking at you today, our Ella and the head priest seem a little alike.”
“Pardon? Me?”
Ella asked back with a puzzled expression. It was something she had never once considered.
‘Where? I don’t see it at all.’
Samael and Ella had completely different hair colors and eye colors.
But Missus Basti, looking up at Ella from an angle, nodded.
“Now that I look at you like this, you seem even more alike. The nose, and here… the shape of your mouth, around there.”
“Are you sure you don’t just think that because the head priest said he wants to make me a priestess-in-training?”
“Are you dismissing me because this old woman’s eyes are dim?”
“Of course not. Do I look like someone who would do that?”
“I’m telling you, you look alike.”
They were still going back and forth over whether they looked alike when they stepped out of the hospital.
“……?”
Ella flinched when she noticed an unfamiliar group.
As if they were surrounding the hospital, and yet not quite.
Several large men stood a few steps away, staring in their direction.
‘Who are they? Why are they watching this place?’
Perhaps it was because she had no memories, or perhaps there was some other reason.
A sense of danger that even Ella herself could not explain surged through her, and her heartbeat gradually quickened.
Unfamiliar faces.
Men she had never once seen in the village, dressed in expensive fabrics as if armored in them.
Their gazes were far too threatening for people who had come to visit a patient.
‘It’s as if they came here chasing some criminal…’
But most of the people who visited the church hospital were elderly people like Missus Basti.
And if an unfamiliar person had stumbled into a village like this injured, far from any city, there was no way the villagers would not know.
Ella’s thoughts grew tangled as she stood there, unable to leave yet unable to address them.
Ting, a sharp metallic sound rang out and caught her attention.
At the very back of the group.
A man removed his hat and placed a lit cigar between his lips, staring straight at her.
The tip of the cigar glowed red, and thick, fog-like smoke spilled between his parted lips.
The entire time.
His eerily gleaming eyes seemed to say,
‘Do you think it isn’t you?’
Ella froze where she stood.
The outsider in this village was none other than Ella herself.
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