Chapter 35

Draft

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Before this day, you thought that waiting for unknown doom was the greatest suffering. Before this moment, you felt that your fear of death was the most fearful you'd ever be in your life. But at that moment, when the knock on the door rang, you realized that everything before was insignificant.

The sword of Damocles, which have been falling for some unknown time, finally touched your scalp at this moment. The cold penetrated into his your bone marrow.

Your brother took you out of the cellar, and you pray that you don't meet anyone until the candy melts, but you bump into your father head-on. It was as if yesterday had reappeared, as if it was destined, you were as frightened as you were in the past, and blood froze under your skin. But now you're an adult, your "contraband" is the living Lemuel, he's still alive, and you want to keep him alive.

"Hide!" You say to Lemuel.

Lemuel nods quickly, but you were still worried, grabbing him and emphasising: "No matter what happens, never come out!"

He frowns when you say this. Lemuel looks at you inquiringly, you pretend not to see and walk out quickly. You close the door of the guest bedroom, you take out the key under the sofa cushion, lock the guest room, and slide the key into the door along the gap under. You rush into the bathroom, tossing Lemuel's toothbrush and toiletries into the cupboard, you then go to the kitchen and tear off all the sticky notes on the refrigerator ("There's pudding in the fridge, good night") and throw them into the trash. These illusions are better than nothing, and you could've prepared better if you had the time, but this has left you with only a few minutes to react.

After the few minutes, the door opened by itself.

This house has been built by you as a fortress against demons. Even if the town falls under a tide of demons, your house can last for a few days. Prayer of exorcism are hidden in all kinds of places. In front of the demons who can only rampage, they are scorpions and thorns, but for the clergy, they are just paper walls.

The protection was torn open layer by layer, and the back door lock was smashed, leaving only a muffled sound. You stand in the living room, facing the hallway, watching the uninvited guests. Four, four people in total. Their faces are unfamiliar yet familiar to you.

The uninvited guests are all dressed in robes, not the priest's black clothes, but the khaki-colored robes of monks. That's the costume of the staff in the Chapel, the usual costume of your entourage. The people wearing this robe are as inconspicuous as dirt, silently buried in their work like worker bees in a hive. But it's not the clothes that give you familiarity, but their gestures, their expressions, their eyes... You feel a terrible intimacy.

It seems that there's a special smell that only people from the same place can smell- no, even people who live there all the time can't detect it, just like how sea fishes can't detect the saltiness of the sea. You've been away from the group for so long, your lungs are full of fresh air. You never noticed before, but now you know what they are when you look into their eyes. Sacred statues, God's shepherds. They are a part of a hundred. Just like you, like your brothers and sisters, and the many, many faceless people who walked around you like shadows.

The person in the head is slightly taller, the third person is the shortest, the second person has slightly bulging cheekbones, and the fourth person has a less pronounced aquiline nose. They all walk in, there are four of them, but none of them is the Son.

Is there anyone else? But the connection was clearly in front of him, in the middle of the four. You look down and see what looks like a compass in the second person's hand, the needle points at you. You suddenly realize what you were sensing.

This isn't right, the Holy Relics will obviously not bring such a feeling, only living Holy Sons can perceive each other. There's no way a "compass" can contain remains, and of course it can't hide a living person...

You suddenly remember something.

Early in the morning of the second day of the fire rain, you woke up beside the river covered in bruises and wounds, healing yourself and cleaning your injuries. You dig out the infected flesh out of the wound, but you could still faintly sense the disembodied flesh as it lost life.

Now that you think about it, it isn't a feeling, its "induction".

You suddenly realize.

That bulky "compass" is alive, or rather, contained within it a living part of a living Son. If in addition to the Pope, there's still one living Holy Son in the Holy See, His Majesty the Pope must've reappeared in the television in good health rather than still "in ill health".

The first twenty years of your life belonged to the Holy See, and you know in what style it runs in. You're never stupid, you're just used to avoiding thinking, what good is knowing the truth that you can't change. Yet your brain is racing at this moment, scattered questions and answers are scrambling to jump out.

His Majesty the Pope cannot afford to lose.

His Majesty the Pope is missing a few fingers.

"Every year a Son is born at Christmas, and the Holy See announces his or her name."

The Son is born from the people and is taken to the Holy See.

The name of the Son, announced every year, belongs not to the newborn, but to the victor. Not one, but seven sons come to the chapel every Christmas. The seven holy sons, some slightly older and some younger, are no more than a year old, it's impossible for them all to be born on Christmas Day. The Holy See found you on Christmas Eve and brought you back, not relying on divine revelation, nor angelic messengers, they used a "compass" to support themselves.

The Pope is alive, and the compass is alive, and the worker bees of the Holy See can use this to find the next Queen bee. The flesh and blood that drives the compass must have a "shelf life". If it's not a consumable that can only be used for a short period of time and cannot be mass-produced, if the worker bees can cast a net for 365 days a year, you wouldn't be able to escape for five Christmases. The hunched old man is probably missing more than one or two fingers.

You finally understand why His Holiness the Pope, who's best cared for, still looks so frail, old, and sickly.

How lucky you are.

The Holy Sons of the Holy See ahve been almost wiped out, and this time the search is at full cost and the net is widely thrown. They play music, searched everywhere, in places you don't know, there are countless deals being negotiated and battles silently being fought. They weren't looking for Enoch, the long-dead son, but they found you, and they've achieved their goal.

"His Royal Highness," Says the person who has the compass, not caring which Holy Son you were, "Please come back with us."

They don't ask why you're here, you don't ask questions, as always.

"I was going to," You say.

This isn't a well-armed combat team, just a more secretive search party who came to find the newborn son- if the naive baby can come in handy, you realize, then the "voluntary dedication" in the ceremony is probably not the decisive factor. There are only four people in front of you, it doesn't mean that you only need to face four people. The Holy See have many means of communication, and you can even roughly guess who has what on them, and how long it'll take for the follow-up troops to flood your home after they're activated.

But you meant to go.

You're leaving, and you're thankful that you've explained and said goodbye to Lemuel. As long as you walk with them, your home and everything in it will be safe and sound. You walk towards them, and they spread out a little, keeping you in the middle, as before.

It's so familiar, just take two steps, and your steps will be uniform. The way you walk are like several afterimages of the same person. If someone measured your steps, he'll be surprised to find that everyone and every step have the same distance. Their gestures, their robes, the aura that wrapped around them is like a bubble that wraps around you, squeezing a world that isn't yours away from you. The air soaks through your lungs, covering your entire body, and its so heavy and so familiar that it felt like it was always supposed to be there. Home, home, outlier gear, back into the machine, no need to break, run smoothly. You've spent four-fifths of your life here, polished to perfection, and you've gotten used to it.

"...I was once lost, but now I know how to return..." The melody of the hymn suddenly sounds in your mind, full of joy, squeezing all painful thoughts out, giving you a blank space for compassion, "...Let me go home after all..."

Slap!

From behind the closed door of the guest bedroom, there's the sound of something colliding.

All the melodies fall apart in an instant, panic and pain return, your heart skips a beat, and you keep praying that you've heard wrong, that they didn't hear anything. You don't change your face, continuing to walk out without stopping, but you bump into the back of the person in front. Their footsteps stopped at the same time, and they turned their heads in unison, ignoring the many times you prayed in your heart. No one asked you what's there, they don't ask questions, they just solve problems.

Three people stop beside you, and the tallest one comes out, holding the rosary in his hand. You know that rosary is full of prayers, and that the cross at the bottom of the rosary is a miniature pistol. The monk with the gun hurries to your guest room, and you stand frozen in place. Your throat is blocked, and you couldn't bear to utter even a single word.

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PastTimer: Good news! It wasn't my l293d that fried, it was one of the tt motors (for some unknown, I totally don't know why reason). Anyway I'm just glad and still jittery so here's another chapter ❣️