8 The Republic of Aska 8

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008

Given her present circumstances, Felice had no particular objection to becoming a nun.

Although becoming a nun meant being confined to a convent for the rest of her life, seeing almost no one besides the other sisters—men least of all—and, in stricter convents, being forbidden even to speak with the opposite sex, let alone marry, Felice did not find these restrictions especially difficult to accept.

For one thing, she had always been an indoor person. During her school years, she had lived along the simple route between home and school. Unless family or friends dragged her out, she never attended gatherings of any kind.

The same had been true after she began working. Especially after resigning from a major corporation and joining that tiny studio, she rarely went outside except for work or to buy necessities. Setting up a booth at a few comic conventions each year had been one of her very few opportunities for socializing outside the home.

As for romance and marriage… in an age of food shortages, poor sanitation, primitive medicine, and childbirth that could randomly claim a mother’s life, becoming a nun who would never marry was clearly the more appealing option.

Most importantly, Massimo had already donated his inheritance to the monastery. The contract had been concluded, and changing the will at random would not only violate the deceased man’s wishes but also have no legal or moral justification.

Even if the abbess were kind enough to return that portion of the inheritance to her, allowing her to use the money to become Master Giovanni’s adopted daughter, Felice still did not think it was a good idea.

Master Giovanni truly did care for the descendant of his old friend, but Felice could tell that his wife, Isabella, was not particularly happy to welcome her.

Felice had no grounds for complaint. His wife was pregnant, after all, and showing up at their door at such a time really was inappropriate.

If she put herself in Isabella’s place, what would she think? If her husband, out of loyalty to a friend, suddenly brought home a child who had only recently been in contact with plague victims and decided to raise her, she would consider it an act of kindness that Isabella had not thrown the girl out immediately. To expect her to raise that child as her own until adulthood as well… The mere thought was enough to make Felice sympathize with the poor woman.

Massimo and Giovanni might indeed have been the closest of friends, but the affection between them had already taken Giovanni far enough: he had risked sheltering her and paid for his friend’s funeral.

Now that becoming a nun was an option, Felice did not want to exhaust this precious bond for both of them.

On the other hand, as Massimo’s closest friend, Master Giovanni must have known something about the original Little Felice. With prolonged contact, she would inevitably reveal that something was wrong.

If she went to a convent, it would be an entirely new environment, filled with people she had never met. Even if her personality differed from that of the original Little Felice, no one would care…

Everything had been going smoothly. Yet Felice had never imagined that the person the monastery’s head had spoken of—the one who would “choose a convent for her”—would not be the head himself, but some “acquaintance” who had appeared from nowhere…

She did not know anyone named Sal-something!

And this time, even Professor Palleurso could not help her. It was a name neither human nor ghost had ever heard of. Worse still, the other party had apparently “hit it off wonderfully” with the original Little Felice…

How on earth was she supposed to pretend when the time came?

After returning to her room from the monastery, Felice clutched her head and racked her brains, trying to dig up some fragment of the memories that should have belonged to this body.

Unfortunately, the original Little Felice’s memories had vanished completely, leaving her not the slightest clue.

“…”

“Tell me, if I behaved strangely—if someone caught me talking to you, for instance—would they mistake me for a witch and drag me away for trial?”

After tugging at her hair for a while, Felice finally voiced her concern to the ghost floating beside her.

“A witch? You mean a woman who uses magic, like those in the legends of Azure?” Professor Palleurso pondered for a moment before answering impartially. “Those are figures from tales and myths. How could anyone take them seriously? If someone truly saw you talking to empty air, you would be far more likely to be taken for a madwoman.”

When he said the word “witch,” his tone held more surprise than familiarity. His sensitivity to the subject was so low that Felice immediately realized something was wrong.

The “witch trials” were one of the defining labels of the Middle Ages. According to legend, the Old Continent had witnessed countless absurd trials, and the witch hunts had only gradually disappeared in the modern era… An element so overused in novels, games, and films could not possibly have been entirely fictional, could it?

“Is that really all?” she asked incredulously. “Wouldn’t someone tie me to a stake and burn me alive?”

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“What?!”

Professor Palleurso looked even more shocked than she did. His eyes, hidden beneath slack eyelids, went wide.

“Holy Mother above! How could you possibly come up with such a horrifying idea?”

After an exchange in which neither side understood the other, Felice finally extracted one piece of good news from the old professor’s indignant tirade.

At the point in time where she found herself, the so-called “witch hunts” had not yet begun.

Never mind witch hunts—even the notorious Inquisition of later ages had only been established a hundred years earlier. It was not yet a permanent institution, but more like a traveling secular court, dispatched by the Church only when some region suffered a serious outbreak of heresy.[*1]

“Stupid! Crude! The work of barbarians!”

After hearing Felice’s description of the “witch trials,” the old professor grew so furious that he began stamping his feet and shouting at the top of his voice.

“What kind of cruel person could devise such a punishment? What kind of fool would accept the results of such a trial?! This is not a search for truth. It is intimidation—an attempt to threaten those poor, ignorant people into becoming their vassals! Anyone who uses such a method is either an idiot or a tyrant!”

Felice had not expected such a strong reaction and could not help asking another question.

“So the Inquisition never used burning at the stake?”

At that, the old professor, who had still been hopping angrily about, suddenly froze. His furious cursing ceased as well.

“…It happened.”

“A hundred years ago, His Holiness the Pope approved the burning of those who refused to renounce their heretical doctrines, even unto death, during the campaign against the Prala sect… But when I was studying abroad in Roland, I learned about the origins of that turmoil. The teachings of the Prala sect were not nearly as extreme as the legends claim!”

After a long silence, he finally sighed. Yet the anger soon returned to his face.

“The trouble grew so severe only because the King of Roland wished to limit the Church’s influence within his territory. He secretly supported those heretics as they traveled about preaching, never imagining that the Pope would respond with such force… And what was the result? The king himself submitted to the Pope soon enough, while those poor ordinary believers he abandoned so easily died without ever knowing that they were nothing more than sacrifices in a struggle between two tyrants!”

…A moment ago, it had been “His Holiness the Pope.” It had taken barely two sentences for him to become “a tyrant.”

Remembering how the old man had once lain on the ground cursing the gods after being attacked by other undead, Felice gained a somewhat more multifaceted understanding of this scholar, who looked as though he had stepped out of a plaster statue.

She was certain he would never have dared speak this way while alive. The dead really did seem to have fewer scruples than the living…

After watching the old man’s animated performance for a while, she turned her gaze toward the gray sky outside the window.

At some point, a light rain had begun to fall, and there were far fewer pedestrians in the streets than before. During the few short minutes Felice spent staring blankly outside, another group hurried downhill carrying a stretcher covered with cloth.

They were too far away for her to tell whether the person upon it was alive or dead, but she could be certain that nothing resembling a spirit floated away from the stretcher.

Looking at the person being carried off, then at Professor Palleurso—the man who had expanded his list of targets for abuse from the Church to the lords of every nation—Felice suddenly found herself wondering about a question she had ignored from the very beginning.

How had a ghost like him come into being?

It seemed that not everyone became a ghost after death. At least, she had never seen anything resembling Massimo’s spirit… And Professor Palleurso was unlike the ghosts that gnawed on one another. Not only could he communicate with her, he also retained his own thoughts and reason. So far, he was the only ghost of that kind she had encountered.

“Professor Palleurso, do you remember how you became like this?”

After hesitating for a long while, Felice decided to ask him directly.

“When I first saw you, you were already on the main street. But I heard that you died outside Aska City… When did you regain your consciousness afterward?”

Unlike her earlier tone of mild curiosity, her voice was noticeably more cautious this time.

Professor Palleurso looked at the girl in surprise. Then, as though something had suddenly occurred to him, he fell into deep thought.

“I… don’t know exactly when I regained consciousness. Perhaps it was after entering Aska City…”

Lowering his head, the old man stroked the beard on his chin as he recalled the past.

“At first, I was in a daze as well. There was only one thought in my mind: I had to return to Aska. I had to return to Aska University and deliver the work of my entire life to the university library… When those things attacked me in the street, I was on my way to the university. It was only after they attacked me that I truly regained my senses…”

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As he spoke, the old man’s voice suddenly stopped. Then he let out a scream.

“My books… My books! Those vile thieves stole my books! The work of my entire life was destroyed by those stupid, ignorant brutes!”

The old professor screamed as he flew madly around the room.

“I remember now! Those hell-bound beasts! Those stinking vermin who deserved to be trampled into the mud! They had no idea what they had done—”

In all her more than twenty years of life, Felice had never once seen an undead creature lose its mind. She was thoroughly shaken.

Although Professor Palleurso had lost his physical body and, in theory, could no longer collide with anything tangible, he still ricocheted around the room like a ping-pong ball that would not stop bouncing.

It was difficult to say whether the sight was frightening or ridiculous.

“Y-you can’t do this! Calm down!”

Felice dodged to the side while trying to reason with him.

“It may not be as bad as you think. Thieves usually care about money. Maybe they didn’t even look at the books…”

“Impossible! I saw those shit-eating swine pry the gold off the book covers with my own eyes!” the old man said mournfully. “To humiliate me, they threw the pages into the mud right in front of me and let horses trample them beneath their hooves!”

Felice: …

A book adorned with gold. Yes, that would certainly be difficult for thieves to overlook.

While Felice hesitated over whether to keep trying to comfort him or simply let him vent his emotions, the figure standing by her door slowly straightened and crept downstairs on tiptoe.

“Why did you bring it back? She refuses to eat?”

Seeing his wife descend the stairs with the tray in her hands and a peculiar expression on her face, Master Giovanni frowned.

“She can’t go without food. I’ll go upstairs and persuade her…”

“Wait. Don’t go just yet.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the woman set down the tray and pulled her husband into a corner. Pressing her lips close to his ear, she whispered, “That child from Massimo’s family… Is there really something wrong with her? I just heard her talking to herself in her room, as though she were having a conversation with someone…”

Master Giovanni was startled as well.

“You really heard her? What was she saying?”

“I couldn’t make out everything, but she was definitely talking continuously,” his wife replied. “I heard people outside saying that the girl went mad after witnessing Martha die in childbirth. Didn’t she used to go around telling everyone that her mother wasn’t dead, but had simply flown up into the sky?”

“Shhh—”

Master Giovanni hurriedly cut her off and cast a complicated glance toward the upper floor.

“I told you about this before, but you must never repeat it to anyone else…” he said in a lowered voice. “Massimo once told me that after Fanato and Martha died, the girl often said she could see strange things…”

The woman let out a small gasp.

“So those rumors are true? She really is…”

“No, no. Abbot Camillo explained it himself. He said the child had merely suffered a shock and would return to normal after being properly comforted for a while… And sure enough, Massimo took her to the monastery before Lent, and she was fine when she came back.”

Seeing his wife’s expression relax, Master Giovanni emphasized once more, “Everything has already been arranged with the abbot. The gray-robed monk coming to collect her should arrive from Asiya within the month. Do your best to spend time talking with her these next few days and keep her calm.”

After hearing her husband explain the arrangements, the woman’s tense shoulders finally relaxed. As she sighed in relief, she made the sign of the cross over her chest.

“Holy Mother above, if that is what Abbot Camillo said, then it must be trusted.”

After praying, she looked toward the upper floor with pity in her eyes.

“She is a poor child as well… Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her during this time.”

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