For anyone watching from the side, it might have just looked like we were forming a scrum; and it wouldn’t have been very sexy, but I could feel the warmth from all four of them. That let me finally calm myself. Once I had gotten a good full minute of that, I released them.
Liscia fixed her now-slightly-messy clothes and asked me, looking a little angry as she did, “Geez… You’re going to give us some explanation for what that was all about, right?”
The concern for me that I could hear hidden behind the anger in her voice made me a little happy.
“Yeah, I’ll fill you in.”
“Souma, you got like that towards the end of the meeting, right? What exactly happened?” Liscia asked.
“The whole time, there was something about that girl, Mary, that felt… off to me,” I said.
“Something that felt off? Nothing she did seemed suspicious to me, though.” Aisha cocked her head to the side in confusion.
I shook my head. “It’s a little different from what you’re thinking. The first time I saw Mary, I thought she was incredibly beautiful. But… at the same time, I felt she was strange somehow.”
“Strange? Whaddaya mean, strange?” Roroa asked.
“I should have found her attractive, and yet I couldn’t see her that way. That’s how it felt.”
“Hm… She seemed like a cute girl to me, though,” Hakuya said.
Yeah… Probably no other person would have noticed it. I’d noticed because of who I was, and because of that, I’d been able to discern the truth behind it.
“I didn’t notice it myself at first, either,” I said. “But the moment I thought she was doll-like in her lack of emotion… or artificial, to take it a bit further… I realized what it was that had felt off to me the whole time. She… looked like them.”
“Looked like them? Who?”
When she asked me that, I put my hand down on Liscia’s shoulder. “Like you, Liscia.”
“Huh?! Like me?!”
“Yeah. And like Aisha, and like Roroa, too.”
“Huh? Did she?”
“Like me, too?”
Aisha and Roroa looked at each other after hearing what I said. I looked over to Hakuya.
“Hakuya, if you were to describe Mary’s face for those of us who weren’t there, how would you express it?”
“Well, let me see… she had regular features, silver hair, and it was tied back in two tails…?!” Hakuya seemed to have picked up on it, and his eyes went wide.
I nodded. “Here’s how I’d describe her. Her regular features were like Liscia’s. Her silver hair was like what Aisha has as a dark elf, and her hairstyle was like Roroa’s. In other words, Mary’s face was like a composite of Liscia, Aisha, and Roroa’s faces.”
“O-Our faces?!” Liscia yelped.
Yeah. The reason I hadn’t been attracted to her, despite her being so young and beautiful, was because of the disconnect with my expectations. If one day, out of nowhere, Aisha had suddenly gained human facial features, that would surprise me, and if Liscia or Roroa’s hair had turned silver, it would be only natural for me to think something felt off.
Aisha raised her hand and said, “Wait, hold on. If she has a mix of all of your fiancées’ features, what part of her do you suppose would have come from Juna? From what I saw, her figure was average, too.”
“See, that’s it,” I said. “From what I saw, Mary has practically nothing in common with Juna. If I had to give you something, I’d say those sensual eyes of hers were similar, but that’s a little weak as far as traits go. That’s got to have been a coincidence. Also… can one of you tell me what the difference is between Juna and Liscia, Aisha, and Roroa?”
“I’m the only one who’s a secondary queen candidate,” said Juna. “Besides, I’m also… the only one whose engagement to you hasn’t been announced yet!” Juna clapped her hands as she figured it out.
I nodded. “My engagement to the other three has been announced already, but we haven’t been able to announce Juna’s yet because of her work as a lorelei. In other words, it’s not known that she’s my fiancée. So, when we think about how Mary, who has the defining characteristics of all my fiancées except Juna, was sent here, combined with the fact that the Orthodox Papal State’s spies have been growing more active in the castle town, we can infer that the spies were collecting intel on what my fiancées looked like. They did this in order to create a woman I would like, or at least not find unpleasant, and send her to me as a saint.”
“Souma, that’s…” Liscia began.
“Yeah… When I said, ‘The way you say that, it’s almost like you’re coming to marry me,’ do you remember what Mary said in response?”
“If Your Holy Majesty wishes, you may do with my body whatever you might please. I will offer my body and heart to you as I do in service to God.” Mary had said that without hesitation.
A girl tailored to my tastes had been sent to me, and that girl had said, “You may do with my body whatever you might please,” and, “I will offer my body and heart to you.” Then, as if asking for compensation, they had tried to push their own demands through. In other words…
“For the Orthodox Papal State, the saint is a honey trap laid for state-level actors,” I said.
“What they’re doing is the same as the nobles trying to sell their daughters to you…” Liscia said, sounding exasperated.
Honestly, for a country ruled by men of the cloth, they came up with some vulgar ideas. It looked like, as a country, the Orthodox Papal State was a very human enterprise.
“Once I figured out what felt off about her… I asked Mary about how she was selected to be a saint,” I said. “When I did, she kindly gave me a thorough explanation.”
I was told that the saint had been chosen from among the nuns of the central church by the divine revelations contained in the Lunalith. Most of those nuns had originally been orphans, and there were nearly fifty of them. Most likely, the goal was to keep a diverse stock of potential saints for any rulers they wanted to seduce.
The nuns were trained at the central church, and raised learning the doctrines of the faith in a place cut off from the secular world so that they would become obedient believers. Then, if they reached a certain age without being chosen as saints, they were sent out to churches in each region as bishops.
“That’s… terrible,” Aisha said with open revulsion. “Then they really are like dolls. It’s as if they have no will of their own.”
“Now, now, Big Sister Ai,” Roroa interjected, “it doesn’t sound like that bad of a deal to me.”
Aisha was critical of the system, but Roroa seemed to be of a different opinion.
“No matter what country ya go to, there ain’t nothin’ harder to run than proper orphanages,” said Roroa. “If they don’t get educated by the time they’re old enough to work, they’ll just end up bein’ used for cheap labor. It’s rare to find places like ours that teach readin’, writin’, and arithmetic. For girls who come up out of the orphanages… often, sellin’ themselves is the only thing they can do. If they’re bein’ lifted up from that situation, given food, clothing, and shelter in the church, don’t ya think that’s fortunate for them?”
“But they’re being raised so they can be given as offerings to foreign rulers, you realize?” Aisha shot back.
“I’m not sayin’ I like it. But usin’ girls to form bonds is somethin’ every house, noble, knightly, or greater, does. I mean… in a way, I used myself politically like that, too.”
“Oh…”
When Roroa pointed that out to her, Aisha was at a loss for words. It was true, when Roroa had arranged her own marriage in order to protect her people, you could say she had been making use of her position as a woman.