The girl needed confession.

“In the name of the Holy Spirit, amen.”

After the last visitor left the confessional, Lev quickly slipped into the empty seat before the lamp went out and began to speak.

“Your Holiness the Saint, please hear my sins.”

“……Sister Lev?”

Solaith seemed somewhat surprised by Lev’s sudden voice, answering after a brief silence.

“Firmly believing in the mercy and grace of the Holy Spirit, repent of your sins and confess truthfully.”

“I hate someone.”

His languid golden eyes widened.

“Hatred and contempt for someone keep welling up inside me.”

Solaith pressed his lips shut, wanting to ask who it was.

“I hate and despise the person tormenting me, but I also hate myself for constantly loathing that person.”

Worry and anxiety tangled chaotically across the saint’s face. Though he wanted to know more details, Lev didn’t continue speaking.

After moistening his dry lips, Solaith remained silent for a long while before answering as the saint conducting confession.

“The merciful Holy Father reconciled all creation with Himself and sent the Saint to atone for sins……. May the flesh seated on the throne of the chapel personally grant forgiveness and peace to the faithful. The Father’s mercy is eternal.”

When the following prayer ended, Solaith blew out the confessional lamp. Then he entered the other side where Lev hadn’t yet emerged.

“……Ah.”

The girl praying quietly alone was startled. The saint sat beside her with a gentle smile and calm demeanor, seemingly to reassure her.

The interior was quite cramped, being a single-person space. So when Solaith sat beside her, their bodies inevitably pressed close together.

Anyone who saw it would surely point fingers at such an irreverent scene.

“Your Holiness, if you come in here…….”

“Didn’t you suffer from something special today, Sister? God must have sent me to you. Now then, please tell me what happened.”

Just because he’d grown tall didn’t mean he wouldn’t listen to her nagging and smoothly brush it aside.

The small lantern flame on the ceiling swayed precariously. When Solaith looked down at her, Lev bowed her head deeply. Because from the breath of her younger brother that used to only smell of milk, she caught whiffs of an unfamiliar man’s scent.

‘Should I tell him? Should I not?’

Warm vermillion light dropped down, creating a long shadow beside the girl’s prominent nose. The saint gazed at her lovingly.

But Lev couldn’t open her mouth. To talk about what happened with Priest Raoul today, she’d have to mention starting her first period. The fact that he’d thrown vile mockery at her suffering from menstrual cramps rose to her throat. But it stopped before her mouth could open.

It might have been much easier if the saint were still very young. Having properly learned about menstruation and women and the world, he would have unhesitatingly offered his healing hands and words to Lev, a female believer.

But what was now pressing its chest against her shoulder was a man close to being a young adult. 

‘I shouldn’t keep distance, I shouldn’t think it’s uncomfortable.’

His dear face gradually moved away from her thoughts, and a stranger exuding an unfamiliar scent squeezed in. She absolutely couldn’t tell him.

How much like a man he’d grown. Glancing up, she saw an inexplicable heaviness dwelling in the golden eyes revealed between his fine golden thread-like hair. 

His nose bridge had grown high, firmly crossing the center of his face. And what about the Adam’s apple protruding below his white neck? Only his red lips and pretty eyes were the sole delicate parts of his face.

Lev shook her head, at least in her imagination.

No. He’s not a man. This child is my only friend and younger brother. She should think that way, yet Lev felt strangely embarrassed, like she was n*ked. 

Of all times, she felt the cloth laid over her underwear getting soaked with blood. She hoped this fishy blood smell wouldn’t reach him.

Lev hastily mumbled.

“I guess I’m still lacking. The work supervisor gave me stern advice and I felt a bit hurt by it……. I felt resentful. That’s all.”

Lev felt tremendous guilt for using the temple supervisor’s name and clenched her hidden fist tightly. Sweat rose from her pressed palms.

“…….”

Solaith closed his mouth in heavy silence, seeming to half-doubt her words, or perhaps deeply worried. But due to his considerate nature, he didn’t cross the precarious line she’d drawn. Instead, he offered comfort to soothe her heart.

“Sister, it’s okay. Our imperfect hearts are easily attacked anywhere, anytime. So hatred and contempt…… even foolish and pathetic feelings are natural in a way. But just like the Holy Spirit created us to move forward, even if there’s pain, if we focus on the happiness circling around us…… just like He created the world, a breakthrough will surely come.”

‘He doesn’t know what happened today. He doesn’t know what feelings Priest Raoul harbors toward me or how he’s been wagging his arrogant tongue.’

But even formal words in such a state become comfort when delivered through Solaith’s gentle voice. Is it because he’s truly chosen, or because he sincerely cares for her?

“I’ll always be with you, Sister.”

Or is it because he’s holding my hand?

She knows the words he’s speaking now come from a friendship deeper than a saint’s position toward a believer. That’s why her heart grew warmer.

Their hands clasped shyly. Solaith’s body heat melting in his soft fingers slowly seeped in from the extremities. Just, only. If only time had been a bit slower. If only everything had been perfect with no fault or speck between them.

Her stomach started hurting again.

“Ah…… ugh.”

A sharp contraction came to her lower abdomen, followed by a wriggling cramp. Lev released his delicate hand and clutched the painful spot, but the pain didn’t stop.

“Sister! Are you alright?”

“……Yeah, my stomach. It’s a bit upset. I’m fine now….”

The lips saying so were bitten between her teeth. No matter how hard she tried to ignore it, the pain clung to her like a shadow under the scorching sun. When transparent cold sweat formed on her temples, Solaith placed his hand on her shoulder.

“Sister…. If you’re not feeling well, don’t push yourself. I’ll ask the manager to give you sick leave.”

“No. I’m really fine.”

Lev, afraid that rumors might somehow reach him during conversations with the manager that she’d started her first period, urgently cut off his words.

The continued avoidance and lies made the girl herself feel guilty, but the saint was equally distressed. Yet he spared and spared his questions for his troubled sister’s sake.

But then, a gentle warmth began rising from Lev like a heat haze. It was the shoulder where he’d placed his hand. The softness she’d only felt in her extremities when they clasped hands now covered her upper body like an embrace.

“You’re really okay…… right?”

Ah. His warmth alone makes her body languid and reduces the pain. He didn’t even touch her lower abdomen. Solaith’s worried voice made her eyelids drowsy like a lullaby.

Lev nodded weakly. Suddenly her mind and body felt peaceful, like wandering through a comfortable night sky. Would it get a bit better if these warm hands touched her stomach?

She suddenly imagined his hand gently pressing her lower abdomen. A subtle sensation, both soft and ambiguous, squirmed beneath her heart. His large hands. If those firm hands with clearly protruding blue veins rubbed over my stomach and slowly wandered…….

No.

Lev’s dreamy face suddenly turned troubled. Heat of unknown origin covered her cheeks.

Having somehow imagined something very irreverent, Lev immediately stopped her thoughts.

“Sister……? Do you have a fever? Your face is red.”

Solaith covered her forehead with his hand. He didn’t stop there, carefully brushing away the red hair scattered on her temples with his fingertips. With an unmistakably loving expression.

“I, I don’t have…… a fever…….”

Lev, stammering like someone guilty, choked up. Because the face of the boy, pure to the point of being immoral, had drawn close. The lukewarm scent that had entered and left his lungs filled Lev’s nasal passages.

The feeling was strange. Solaith’s languidly relaxed eyes clearly looked this way, and she couldn’t avoid his gaze, like being pierced by a beast’s fangs.

‘I shouldn’t interpret the pure saint’s eyes through my own perspective, yet I see a strange turbidity.’

It consumed Lev like an unpleasant intruder beginning to soak her body. She felt pressure from the large hand on her shoulder that could squeeze her body.

“Sol……aith…….”

Lev, murmuring desperately, bowed her head deeply. Not that it would let her escape the saint.

‘This is strange. I used to look at Solaith with those eyes before. He was so cute that when I kept staring at him, he’d blush on both cheeks and look away first…….’

Though it could certainly be called the same situation as back then, or rather she tried to overlay that colored paper, Lev felt suffocated by the opposite situation. The air was strange, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of exposing her vulnerabilities to a predator. 

Impurely, irreverently.

Then the upper body of the man in holy robes slowly tilted forward. And he brought his lips close to Lev’s flushed ear, seemingly to kiss it.