Saint's Prison - Chapter 9

Signs of the Stigmata

That day’s events are still vividly etched in my memory.

In the darkness, a shining silver.

Eyes of deep crimson, emotionless like jewels.

Gazing up at them, I—

—simply thought they were hopelessly beautiful.

＊＊＊

“…Andy-sama.”

I open my eyes.

Amal’s figure swims into my blurry vision.

A beat passes before I grasp the situation.

Damn, did I fall asleep just like that?

I hurriedly sit up.

“Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to just come into your room, I didn’t do anything!”

“Ahaha, it’s okay. I am the one who should apologize for bothering you… You carried me here and stayed with me the whole time, didn’t you?”

Amal looks down at our linked hands with a happy expression. Seeing that, I feel a sense of guilt.

“Yeah, um… Amal, I’m sorry for…”

“No, Andy-sama, you did nothing wrong.”

Amal says, smiling with tears in her eyes.

When I widen my eyes in surprise, Amal realizes she’s smiling and casts her gaze downward. It’s a gesture like that of confession.

“Andy-sama I am…”

Amal trails off, her head still bowed.

No matter how long I wait, the rest of her words never come.

＊＊＊

The next day.

I find myself back in the monastery’s library.

I’m trying to research that thing I encountered in the forest.

It seems it was something only I could hear and see.

When I ask Johanna if she heard or saw anything, she tilts her head and says,

“No, Kuro-dono, nothing. I only stopped you because you were about to carelessly touch a relic of a pagan past.”

Of course, I can’t completely dismiss the possibility that I was delirious and hallucinating.

But no matter what, I can’t convince myself that the writhing shadow I saw was just an illusion.

Johanna mentioned the forest as an “Otherworld.”

It didn’t seem like she was referring to this forest in particular, but rather the concept of forests in general.

An Otherworld is a place beyond human reasoning, separated from the secular world.

The most immediate image that comes to mind might be that of this world versus the afterlife.

It likely falls under the category of folklore, but unfortunately, I don’t have much knowledge there.

I only know a little from what a university friend who specialized in folklore once told me.

A place different from the world inhabited by humans.

Beyond the boundary line.

The concept of a boundary separating our world and the outside.

The concept of an Otherworld.

In Japan, too, this notion has existed since ancient times.

Mountains. Seas. Skies. Underground.

We fear and respect that.

In the sky, there is heaven, the world of gods, and underground, there is the land of the dead, the world of the deceased. Similarly, in mountains and seas, cultures are rooted that associate them with the afterlife.

The mountain worship of Kumano belief in Wakayama, or the utopia of Nirai Kanai believed to lie beneath the sea of Okinawa.

All these are considered Otherworlds lying beyond the boundary.

When one becomes lost in these places or, perhaps, concealed by beings not of this world, it is sometimes referred to as “spiriting away.”

This is probably the reality of it, my friend had explained.

Imagine someone disappears without warning. Of course, normally it is assumed they would return after a few days. But no matter how long one waits, they never come back.

One would normally think that perhaps some misfortune had occurred, and they had died.

However, instead of believing they died alone and unnoticed, their family, relatives, and friends chose to think that they must be living happily somewhere beyond human understanding.

It’s a belief that comforts the ones left behind, a source of solace.

That might be true.

A hope that it should be so.

Peace to the departed.

Punishment to the sinners.

Blessings to the saints.

Fear towards the grotesque.

These collective sentiments form the Otherworld.

Indeed, that could be.

Such a view is possible.

But what if the Otherworld truly exists?

It’s not just an idea or concept, what if there is something there?

After my recent experience, I’ve started to think that way.

In a sense, I’ve experienced a spiriting away. I wandered into an Otherworld, not of this realm, through the forest.

But then, I think.

If so, this world itself is an Otherworld to me.

A world completely different from the one I lived in.

—It is none other than another world.

With that thought, I realize that in this place, I am truly a foreigner, a stranger.

At that moment, a certain thought flashes through my mind.

A place isolated from the secular, marked by boundaries.

If that’s called an Otherworld… then from an outside perspective, wouldn’t this monastery also be considered an “Otherworld”?

The face of Priest Benedict, filled with fear at that thing, flashes through my mind and then fades.