~Chapter 37~
It was as if the letter kept reading her exact thoughts.
“Am I really that thoughtless?” Floria scratched her head in embarrassment.
Still, the contents didn’t seem all that important this time either.
— Good work today. Here’s a report as a gift. Even if you want to see me, hold back. If you really can’t, send me a letter. When I said I’ll come running if you call, I meant it.
Tap.
After reading the last line, Floria folded the letter back in half.
A dry laugh slipped from her lips.
“Hah… does he really think we’re dating or something?”
But in truth, just receiving letters instead of seeing him left her with a strangely empty feeling.
Even though she was busy to death with confessional duties every day, it felt hollow without Caspar noisily pestering her by her side.
“…Ah, it’s just because whenever he shows up, I get a week’s vacation afterward. That’s all I miss.”
Yes. That had to be it.
She absolutely refused to believe her feelings were anything more than that.
After rationalizing it in her head, Floria entered her room with the new report in hand.
That night, after putting Rose to bed, the clock already pointed to 11.
She finished preparing for sleep, since she planned to read the report and then doze off.
This time, the “report” Caspar had sent was unusually serious and secretive.
But—
Thud.
Floria dropped the report onto the floor the moment she read the first line.
“…A slave auction?”
Because it claimed the High Priest was involved with a slave auction.
Floria hurriedly picked it up again and reread Caspar’s report several times.
“We have to drag the High Priest out into the open somehow…”
But how?
It had taken her almost a week to memorize all the reports Caspar had been sending.
Most were just bundles of a few pages at a time, but even so, time wasn’t on her side.
“Free time after 6 o’clock” didn’t mean it was a blessing. It just meant she was dead tired before then.
After scarfing down dinner, rereading the reports, and helping Rose with her writing lessons, she would always end up dozing off before she realized it.
Then the cycle began all over again.
“…We need solid evidence.”
Caspar said the reports were all written by Shade, who had lived in the temple for a long time and recorded what he’d seen and heard.
“How long has Shade been here to know all this?” Floria wondered.
But what mattered more was this—
If all of it was true, then there had to be real evidence.
Like a secret ledger, for example…
But before she could think any further, the report slipped from her hands. She fell asleep as if fainting.
***
The next day, Floria entered the confessional and stifled a yawn.
She had fallen asleep suddenly the night before and woken with a start to her alarm.
By then, it was already time to prepare for dawn prayers, so she hadn’t been able to think about the report at all.
“Next believer, please come in.”
She rubbed her shadowy eyelids, still heavy with fatigue, and tried to focus on each believer with care.
“Priestess Floria, yesterday I stole a loaf of bread.”
“…Pardon?”
Stealing bread?
“I’ve been starving for a week, and I couldn’t help myself. With this bread, I can survive for a while… but my heart feels heavy with guilt. Can someone like me still be forgiven?”
“Uh… no. Forgiveness should come from the bread’s owner.”
“I thought so… but if I sell this bread, I could easily eat for a week…”
Floria frowned. No matter how hungry, stealing was wrong. But his voice was dripping with such desperation that it tugged at her.
Even though the “villainess soul” in her spoke coldly, ignoring her own softer thoughts, she still felt pity.
She wasn’t even sure if the villainess’s soul truly remained inside her anymore. If it did, maybe it would’ve spoken to her at least once. But it never had.
Her mouth just kept moving on its own anyway.
At this point, she gave up fighting it.
“…Whatever. No matter what I think, my mouth will just say what it wants.”
It was that same reckless mouth that had almost gotten her killed by Count Ridante not long ago.
But this time, she couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the man’s tearful voice.
“…Wait a minute.”
He said he wasn’t going to eat the bread, but sell it?
Floria’s eyes darted to the little hole in the confessional wall.
The man was stroking something carefully.
And what she saw made her eyes go wide—
It was an enormous, round loaf of bread, wrapped in cloth.
“No way…”
She didn’t know much about bread, but she was certain it was worth a fortune.
It was so huge it looked bigger than a newborn baby.
“…This is like Jean Valjean!”
Yes—like in Les Misérables. Jean Valjean had stolen a loaf of bread. But even he hadn’t stolen one this big.
Come to think of it, on rare occasions when bread was served as a “special meal” in the temple, the High Priest would always show up to brag.
And it was always just a tiny bite per person.
She remembered hearing once that without a proper oven, bread here had to ferment and age for a very long time—making it incredibly expensive.
“This absolutely must be returned. The baker must be in despair. If you’re caught, you won’t escape execution.”
And not just execution—the loss of something that valuable could destroy the baker’s entire livelihood.
Her pity for the man vanished instantly.
“Yes, you’re right. I’ll return it as you say.”
“…Good. I’ll be rooting for you.”
The man smiled faintly, clenched his fist with determination, then quickly wrapped the bread back in cloth and left the confessional.
“…Is he really going to return it?”
Floria wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t report him either.
By rule, everything heard inside the confessional was sacred. A priest could never tell another soul—it had to be taken to the grave.
“…Sigh.”
Her sympathy felt wasted. And after that, she didn’t even want to listen to confessions seriously anymore.
She had already listened to over a thousand “confessions,” and not a single one had felt genuine.
So she let her reckless mouth do the work, blurting whatever it wanted.
Instead, her thoughts drifted back to the letter she had found in her door at dawn.
— Floria. Don’t you want to reply to me? Go out into the hallway and shout, and Shade will deliver it for you. Honestly, I’m waiting for your answer.
…
This morning’s letter had been Caspar’s tenth.
Of those ten, only two had included reports about the temple’s corruption.
The rest were filled with trivial, almost useless chatter.
Floria had often thought of replying, and she had even written a few drafts. But she had never actually sent one.
— I’ve memorized most of the reports now, Your Grace.
— Rose wants to meet His Highness the Prince.
Things that could have been settled in less than ten minutes if they just talked directly.
But she had no way to send them.
All priestly letters had to pass through the High Priest, meaning he read them first.
So she had given up.
Until now.
Because in today’s dawn letter, Caspar had explained exactly how she could reply safely.
If she called Shade, he’d deliver it without the High Priest ever knowing.
But strangely… now that she knew how, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
And besides—
There was an even bigger problem.
