Chapter 127 – Lily and Marie

The sharp, disinfectant smell unique to hospitals stung my nose.

I had come to the special private room in the church infirmary to see Lily.

She was under strict guard inside, surrounded by Holy Knights.

Two Holy Knights stood rigidly at attention in front of the door, their expressions tense.

Peeking quietly into the room, I saw Lily propped up on the bed, gazing out the window.

At that moment, she noticed something and turned around.

“Marie!”

She rushed toward me barefoot, as if bursting out of the room, but the Holy Knights immediately restrained her.

“It’s okay.”

I entered the room and signaled with my eyes for them to release her as I spoke. The Holy Knights seated Lily back on the bed.

“Saintess. Please, this way.”

“Thank you.”

I gave a light bow and slowly took a seat in the chair offered by the Holy Knight.

Lily watched the scene intently, looking like she had something to say.

“Um… that… I didn’t know anything about it.”

“I heard. That must’ve been a real ordeal.”

I let out a sigh-mixed reply, and Lily gazed at me with worry.

I couldn’t sense her usual composure there.

“That guy Sid said what he threw at you was poison. But I didn’t know. He told me it was just sparkly powder.”

I’d heard about that too. And how she’d been tricked into nearly dying herself.

Once I dropped my prejudiced gaze, Lily struck me as someone entirely different.

“Hey, Lily. I heard you wanted to make up.”

Lily froze with a startled look on her face, then nodded at me.

“I’m such an idiot that everything I think is good turns out bad. That time, I just saw a pretty light—I really had no intention of stealing your blessing.”

Lily pouted sharply, staring at me with the face of a young child.

When we reunited, I’d been horribly rude to her, but Lily didn’t seem to mind at all.

This is what’s so sly about her. How can I stay mad?

“Sigh. That’s fine now. I don’t fully get it, but my power seems to be back. More importantly, what have you been up to all this time?”

Lily launched into a rambling account: being chased out of a remote village and traveling with Gain and the others, then fighting someone who sounded like Ted during the saintess pilgrimage.

I’d gotten a brief rundown before coming here, but hearing it straight from Lily made it sound even worse than I’d imagined.

Lily had absolutely no sense of crisis. After showing her status to Mina, she should’ve been locked up for a while to encourage some reflection.

And worst of all, she apparently planned to become a saintess alongside me, ditch Kirika, and marry Heart. As if marriage were even on the table when her own life hung in the balance.

“Kirika—you mean that Kirika, right?”

“You remember Kirika, Marie?”

Remember? How could I not…

“But Kirika was your first love, wasn’t she? You can just dump him?”

“No way, Marie. Kirika likes me, so we were just together.”

Heh. Is that how it was? My mistake, then.

After that, I heard all sorts of stories about kids our age.

“Rudy’s here too, huh. I had no idea.”

“Yeah. He’s going to be a magic teacher.”

Everyone’s grown up and standing on their own two feet. Time really flies.

“What about your mom and dad?”

“Dad’s always scary. Mom’s super scatterbrained all the time. But she did talk about you sometimes.”

“About me?”

For some reason, I was scared to hear it. I braced myself without thinking.

Lily fiddled her interlocked fingers, twisting her mouth uncomfortably as if it was hard to say.

“About how I stole your blessing—and that it was my fault. They thought you were dead the whole time, but they heard you were alive when you became the saintess. Then Mom put you in the church. She said she never meant to take away your freedom. Dad had no idea.”

My brows furrowed involuntarily at that.

Your mom and Lily are so alike, seriously.

Everything they do or say with the best intentions just backfires.

“What about Grandfather’s letter?”

“Mom threw it away for my sake. She said getting involved would be a capital crime.”

Sigh… My head’s starting to hurt.

Yeah, your mom would absolutely toss it. She just makes inconvenient stuff disappear.

“I resented you for so long, Marie. Because you let me steal your blessing. And it was unfair that only you could use magic. But it’s true—I always wanted to see you. Eheh.”

Lily cutely tilted her head with an upward glance.

“Hey. None of that ‘eheh.’ Quit resenting me over your ridiculous logic.”

“It’s fine to resent you a little. It doesn’t cost me anything. Besides, I don’t feel that way anymore.”

True enough.

“Marie. That Sid guy punched me. Isn’t that awful? But Gain told me to be grateful. He said I had to provide information just to survive. Is that true? Am I going to die?”

Gain had told me about that too.

If Master hadn’t handled it that way, she’d have been tortured by the covert unit.

Lily, who’d been laughing just moments ago, toyed anxiously with the sheets as she looked at me.

Grinning like an idiot to fool herself, acting tough. She hadn’t changed a bit since back then.

“It’s true. So thank Sid. Thanks to him, there’s at least a sliver of hope. But I can’t guarantee you’ll be saved.”

I said it sternly and decisively, and Lily threw herself at me.

“Waaah! Big sis! I don’t wanna dieee!”

The guarding Holy Knights looked flustered, glancing at me as if to ask, What do we do?

Jeez! They were explicitly told not to let her touch me.

I waved the Holy Knights back with my hand and gently rubbed Lily’s back.

“Lily, listen carefully. All we know right now is that we might never see each other again. So let’s make the most of what little time we have left, okay?”

Lily lifted her tear-streaked face. “Eh?”

“Nooo! I don’t wanna be apart from Marie! Even back then, I wouldn’t have been lonely if you’d just been there… Waaah!”

I gazed down calmly at Lily sobbing in my arms.

She’d been such a trauma for me—always taking everything that was mine.

Yet whenever she was in a bind, she’d come crying to me like it was the most natural thing.

But right now… was I mad? Surprisingly, no.

Maybe because we’d never meet again. Or because she might die.

The day we parted, I happened to run into Gain and the others, and they raised me with so much love.

Maybe that’s given my heart some breathing room.

If I don’t forgive her now, I might regret it for the rest of my life… I could even think that with a calm mind.

Eventually, the Holy Knights couldn’t stand by any longer. “Excuse us,” they said apologetically, prying Lily off me together.

“Lily. Think about why things turned out this way. What you should have done. What went wrong. Without blaming anyone else.”

Reseated on the bed, Lily rubbed at her eyes with both hands and nodded weakly.

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