My Childhood Friend Became an Inquisitor

“If lowlifes like us mingle with high-class people without knowing our place… it brings bad luck.”
*

I might have felt a little relieved if Anne had laughed off my words as nonsense, or if she had acted unlike herself but like an Inquisitor and barked at me to shut up.

But Anne was silent.

I couldn’t possibly interpret that silence as anything other than affirmation.

“Answer me, Anne.”

“……”

The paradoxical situation of a prisoner inside the cell speaking aggressively to a guard outside.

Instead of answering, Anne lowered her head. Her platinum blonde hair fell like a veil, covering her face, and I couldn’t see what emotions her grayish-blue eyes held beyond it.

“I said answer me!”

Her mouth, which seemed like it would maintain silence to the end, finally opened. From her lips, pale rather than red, beautiful yet sickly, the answer I wanted didn’t flow out.

“Even if offered to the waves, would salt wash away the emblem engraved on the shield?”

An archaic tone. A non sequitur that didn’t fit the context. I knew it was quoting a scripture passage, but in this situation where my head was burning so hot, I didn’t have the mental capacity to fathom its meaning.

But still, there was something I could feel. Anne’s attitude. Proud and righteous, or if not, the brazenness to appear so.

A meager self-esteem, or a defense mechanism. Whichever it was.

“You…!”

“It’s time to go.”

As if trying to escape this situation, Anne spoke in a somewhat awkward tone and stood up.

Shouting in anger was all that was allowed to me. I couldn’t immediately leave this prison, nor could I reach out through the silver bars to grab her. I could only shout with a feeling like I was coughing up blood.

“Don’t run away! You vile traitor, you murderer! The one who should fall into hell is… Ugh, cough! Hack.”

I couldn’t continue speaking and lowered my head. It hurt as if my throat was really torn. When I opened my mouth, pink saliva made stains on this pathologically white and clean room.

“Louis.”

“Huk, cough, huu……”

Anne called me again, but I no longer had the strength to answer.

As if knowing that I wasn’t refusing to answer but couldn’t, Anne looked at me gasping for breath with a pitying expression for a moment. But her actions were still damnably cool-headed.

“Tell me later if you find out your fiancée’s location. If you remember, that is.”

I don’t know. Damn it, I don’t know!

“Well then, goodbye.”

In the end, I couldn’t speak, and Anne didn’t listen.

As if she couldn’t bear to see me clutching my throat and coughing painfully, she tightly closed her eyes and turned her head.

Ironically, it was right at this moment, more than any other, that I truly felt Anne had changed. When she killed the villagers, pinned crimes on innocent people, and finally turned her back even on me.

The white ghost-like shadow recedes beyond the bars. I no longer shouted at her, reached out, or tried to grab her. Because I realized it was useless anyway.

Her will, though twisted, was as hard as diamond.
What on earth changed you like this?

Rural life. For the people of a small village, life in the big city was always an object of longing. Even knowing that there were deep shadows under that lamp, even adults who knew better were often fascinated by that light.

Me too. After Anne left for the city, going to the city became the purpose of my life. Even though I didn’t know where she had gone or what she had become, I still hoped for a fateful reunion someday.

A dream I couldn’t even recall at some point. Why did I give up on it?

Thud.

I slump down, strength leaving me. As my head naturally dropped, I caught sight of my own state.

I realized belatedly that what covered my body wasn’t prison clothes, but luxurious attire I had never worn in my life. Snow-white fabric, decorations with subtle edges that weren’t excessive. But I wasn’t happy at all.

It was a complete one-piece that I couldn’t take off, and being expensive, it was too sturdy to tear. In the very center of the robe, on the chest, as if branded, a vivid golden cross was engraved.

The cursed symbol of the Church. As if mocking my imprisoned state as a criminal, a blood-stained crown of thorns wrapped around the cross.

Without realizing it, my hand was scratching at my chest. But it was impossible for the pattern to be torn off so easily, and my soul’s struggle only left wounds on my body.

“Ugh.”

Even if you’ve suffered greater pain, it doesn’t lessen lesser pain. Feeling as if my nails were piercing my chest, I withdrew my hand, and red stains were already spreading like a plague on my fingers and the hem of my clothes.

Under the white light so bright it burned the eyes, for some reason, the blood was black rather than pink.

Exhausted, I lay flat on the floor. There was a bed right next to me, but I didn’t have the energy to go there, and it looked as hard as a rock anyway, so it wouldn’t make much difference.

There was a ceiling, and I had the sense that this was underground, but for some reason, the light seeping in was brighter than the midday sun. Turning my head and closing my eyes, I sank into thought.

‘What will happen now?’

In fact, the situation was clear. This place is a prison, and I’m a prisoner locked inside it.

But the peculiarity of the Church and the things I experienced just before coming here make my heart uneasy. Come to think of it, this room was too luxurious for a prison. The clothes I’m wearing too.

Even things like the chamber pot and bed have intricate carvings as if to prove they’re luxury items. The bed being hard is probably intentional though. It was clear that this wasn’t treatment befitting a mere prisoner.

It’s too luxurious for dealing with heretics or prisoners as Anne said, but too bleak to be seen as hosting nobles or guests.

With incompatible things mixed together, I couldn’t make a judgment. Whether I would be treated as a prisoner or received as a noble, either seemed plausible.

“Re-education center, huh…”

I mulled over the clue Anne had left. Re-education of heretics, in what way?

I don’t know. At least it wasn’t a problem I could answer right now. Since I’m trapped here anyway and can’t avoid the gloomy future approaching, rather…

Rather what? The past is corrupted and the present is ruined. Looking back at any moment now only brought pain. Because those times were so beautiful.

The more I traced my memories, the more the you of the past and the you of the present overlapped, making me tear up.

“Why, why on earth…”

I didn’t dare fathom how deep your love was.

If only you had spoken words of resentment to me. If you had blamed me, hated me, or even cursed me, I would have humbly accepted it all. Because it was my fault. Because I was the bad guy.

But this isn’t right. Her hatred swept up not just me, but all the other villagers too. And in a way I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Massacring an entire village to have one person isn’t a plan even a madman would easily come up with. Let alone a believer who should always be righteous before Lord Ailim, to all the people of the village where not just I, but you too were born and raised.

She killed them all.
People begging to be spared, people screaming in pain, not strangers but all those we once associated with.

I had long known about the bloody reputation of Inquisitors, but who could have predicted it would befall our village?
Moreover, that the Inquisitor would be Anne, who had been so kind and harmless.

“Whyyyyy!”

I cry, then laugh like a madman, then scream until my throat bursts.

There was nothing in this space. The light was painfully excessive, but other than that, nothing. The shabby scripture didn’t even smell like an old book, and when I closed my mouth, the entire prison fell into a deathlike silence.

I hated that stillness, that numbness. Tears were already streaming from my eyes exposed to the bright light, but when I closed them, I felt like I would go mad because I couldn’t feel anything in the dark world.

“Send me back.”

I muttered, not knowing who I was speaking to. Send me back.

The beautiful past, the times with Anne, the village of spring roses… If that’s impossible, then my hometown, my home. Anywhere but this cage of mad love.

Is the sin of betraying love this great? It was too much to be the weight of trampled and defiled faith. Crushed and oppressed, I groaned.

The longer the silence continued, the louder my heartbeat sounded, and uncomfortable voices mingled in those irregular pulsations. The voices of our villagers, now dead, struck my mind.

‘Aaagh! Sa-save… me…’

‘Don’t do this, dear. You were always the pride of our village.’

‘Stop it, please… Brother, brotheeeer!’

Though hallucinations, they were as vivid as if heard right beside me. Numerous names floated up in my mind, then sank back down into the dark abyss.

I feel nauseous. I was drowning in the delusion I had created myself. If at that moment, a real voice hadn’t been heard instead of hallucinations.

I would have vomited everything inside me right then and there. If there was anything left in me, that is.

“What’s this, a newcomer?”