I Thought I Healed the Villain's Sickly Younger Brother - Chapter 1.2

***

“…Saint, where have you been again? We’ve been looking for you for ages!”

Merrien, who had casually returned to the temple only after nightfall, pretended to clean her ears as she watched the lower priests running towards her urgently.

Standing still with her arms crossed, the first one to approach raised his voice.

“Do you know who came today? One of the only two Dukes in the empire! And it was Duke Hartez, famous for his mystique!”

“Hmm, I see.”

“What do you mean, ‘I see’!”

The lower priest, his face turning red and blue, couldn’t bring himself to get angrier at the saint and just beat his chest in frustration.

Usually, when she returned after running away, they would be nervous and flustered.

Judging by this reaction, it must have been quite an important noble.

“He said he wanted to see the Saint in person, did you meet him? He has black hair and blue eyes. He was… he was truly beautiful.”

The lower priest, recalling Duke Hartez’s face, forgot his excitement and let out an exclamation.

Frowning at that unpleasant expression, Merrien remembered a different pair of ‘blue eyes’.

“No. The only one I saw was Whitey.”

“Pardon?”

The other lower priests who arrived afterward were panting, hands on their knees.

Assuming that Duke Hartez had left empty-handed, the atmosphere suddenly turned gloomy.

“…Saint, haven’t we told you that our temple maintains its livelihood through the support of the nobles!”

“If we get on Duke Hartez’s bad side, it’s really over for us!”

They all threw out a word or two with resentful looks, but Merrien retorted without caring.

“You feed me tasteless soup every day, and you have the nerve to say that?”

At this, they all seemed to be at a loss for words, turning their heads away or pretending to look at the air.

“Ahem, ahem. That’s something we can’t control… Since the High Priest manages the ledger…”

“Still, when we receive support from the nobles, don’t we get enough supplies to live on somewhat comfortably, Saint? Please, we beg for your cooperation.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The lower priests could only persuade her like this every time.

After all, the temple was running solely on Merrien’s holy power.

These people were priests in name only; their holy power would be depleted after healing just a few minor injuries.

Even the High Priest, who had a considerable amount of holy power, wasn’t attached to the temple.

He merely held the real power, using Merrien to entertain the nobles who visited the temple, and managed the support goods received in that way.

Yet, with the temple’s shabby state unchanged, it was impossible to know where the support goods were going.

‘Well, obviously they’ve gone into the High Priest’s mouth.’

Merrien glared at the lower priests with her arms crossed, but eventually sighed and returned to her room.

In a way, they were victims too, so there was no need to be angry at them.

As soon as she closed the door, she collapsed onto the bed with a thud.

“At this rate, I’ll die in the temple before the Archmage even gets to kill me!”

Ouch!

Even this wasn’t easy.

The mattress was so hard that it felt like her back would break if she lay down wrong.

Holding back tears that threatened to fall, she placed her hand on her lower back and infused it with holy power.

“How is this the empire’s only saint… It’s a scam.”

Making a crying face, she looked around her room, still unfamiliar even after six months.

A hard bed and a desk on the verge of falling apart from age.

Clearly, the room was spacious enough for one person, but these two pieces were the only furniture.

From the outside, it looked like she was receiving ‘saintly treatment’, but when you looked closer, everything was like this.

“…I thought reality was the worst hell, but I guess not.”

A sigh-like murmur escaped involuntarily.

In reality, she had no family and no real friends. She had just been living because she couldn’t die.

Still, she had struggled to get a job to live and tried to develop hobbies, even getting interested in web novels.

Who would have thought she’d wake up inside that novel?

“…Either let me transmigrate after I’ve read it all! Or transmigrate me as the female lead!”

Finally, unable to contain the anger rising from within, she shouted, and a coughing sound was heard from the next room.

This made her calm down for a moment, but thinking about her daily routine made her want to cry, so she kicked her legs weakly on the bed.

“Argh! Reality would be better than this!”

She even thought about running away, but she didn’t know anything, so she had nowhere to go outside the temple.

Soon, she couldn’t even kick her legs weakly anymore.

The worn-out bed frame had started to creak.

‘Sigh…’

All she could do was lie there and sigh.

‘At this rate, I’m no different from waiting with my neck ready for the Archmage to come and kill me.’

Merrien looked up at the ceiling, reflecting on her absurd life from her previous life until now.

While blankly staring at the mold blooming on the ceiling and resenting the world.

As she looked at the blue color of the mold, for some reason, she was reminded of the light and cute incident from earlier in the day.

‘Blue… eyes.’

Then, as if by magic, she felt all her anger dissipate.

“Whitey. It was cute.”

White and fluffy fur, a tiny body, and even pink jelly paws.

“How did it get there?”

It was a garden she had found with difficulty while trying to escape this dirty and miserable temple.

It wouldn’t have been easy to discover, so how did it get there?

“I hope it comes again.”

One fluff, two fluffs…

As Whitey floated in her mind.

She fell asleep with a warm heart for the first time in a very long time.

***

“…Saint. Saint Merrien!”

The next morning.

Merrien opened her eyes wide at the unusually fussy cries of the lower priests.

“Surely it’s not another noble coming today.”

‘I’m going straight to the garden.’

While making such an escape plan, she immediately threw off her blanket and habitually headed for the window.

If necessary, she was planning to jump out using the rope she had secretly prepared.

“Duke Hartez has sent incredible gifts for the Saint!”

“…Huh?”

But she stopped in her tracks, making a strange sound.

Wondering what it was all about, she opened the door to find gifts piled up enough to fill the entire interior of the temple.