“We’ll be good cards for each other.”

“First, come down.”

“Promise me you’ll go to Vesoul right now and propose to me.”

“I won’t say it twice. Jump.”

Timeo spread both arms. Phyllis looked down at Timeo at her feet with a dissatisfied expression. Coincidentally, Phyllis was being shy with him. The weak boy had grown into a man whom persuasion and threats no longer worked on.

Would it be easier if Timeo Völlörban felt guilt toward her? Instead of actively jumping, Phyllis drained strength from her lower body that had been sitting on the tree, as if she had accidentally slipped.

Nevertheless, Timeo caught her perfectly as if he had been waiting. Though Phyllis ended up embracing Timeo’s neck in confusion, she too naturally relaxed her body in his arms. She heard Timeo’s irregular breathing in her ear. Since she heard his firm refusal to return once more, Phyllis closed her eyes. Though she annoyingly asked whether he meant return to the room or return to Vesoul, there was no answer from Timeo.

While returning to the room entrusting her body to him, Phyllis recalled their childhood.

Back then, Phyllis and Timeo were similar in size, and the boy lacked the strength to carry the girl. Nevertheless, Timeo tried to protect Phyllis from Marcel, and sometimes the two would freely roam the garden holding broken tender branches. The merciless and wicked girl grew into a thoroughly calculating woman. Timeo, who had been raised like a dog by his brother……

Phyllis, hanging from his neck, strained her eyes while looking into the distance for no reason.

†

Late at night, those who visited the assembly hall used for reading meetings were quite flustered to see Timeo staying late, but sincerely welcomed him. Before being a priest, wasn’t he a Völlörban? He was no different from a god to the ambiguous second sons who had been cast into the monastery without status, land, or a trace of faith. He was also the one who had formed this private organization that read God’s word after meeting the monastery head alone as a novice priest.

Nevertheless, Timeo deeply hated the act of several priests in black cassocks gathering to chatter about whether marriage was beneficial to religious people or not. When they occasionally gambled with cards among themselves, he would mercilessly sweep up all the stakes. Such a fellow was lying diagonally on the assembly hall sofa with his back to the reading society priests, looking down at the garden. Turning away from some priests carefully bent over a billiard table with Bagnole leather padding, and priests gossiping about the staying nobles……

Heavy rain was falling in the garden. It was an unpleasant afternoon.

“You’re not sleeping in your room.”

Someone asked carefully, but he didn’t answer as if lost in thought. Though it might actually be thoughtless, Timeo Völlörban lost in contemplation with his mouth closed was handsome enough to make even other men lose their minds. He was said to closely resemble his brother back home in appearance.

“What do you think it would be like if I got married?”

“Pardon?”

The young priest who had been hovering around Timeo dropped the glass in his hand.

It seemed that what Phyllis had managed to shake and break wasn’t just the branch. Ever since he had held her, Timeo had been absorbed in the deep confusion within himself. It was the first time he had ever embraced someone so desperately. Phyllis Menez had wrapped her arms around Timeo’s neck as if such acts were familiar to her, and remained docilely in his embrace on the way back to the room. The very woman who had pressed her entire body against him seemed unbothered, but only Timeo, who had embraced Phyllis, felt noisy inside. He repeated meaningless actions like clenching and unclenching his hands, hoping his resentful feelings would subside.

It would soon be ten years since he had been cast out from Völlörban. At the monastery, his main task had been to turn away from the hometown that had abandoned him, but looking back now, the monastery’s bleak scenery and his hometown Vesoul resembled each other somewhere. Even this reading society was actually…… His feelings were complicated.

Though it was early summer, the day was unbelievably chilly. Only now did he regret leaving Phyllis abandoned in his room like an object, hastily bringing up only meals and distancing himself from her. Since it was still raining around dawn, he only thought that Phyllis, who would return to Vesoul, would suffer quite a bit.

†

Early morning, Timeo was the first to come out and sit in the main hall for Mass. Though it was hard to believe he had stayed awake all night, he maintained the bearing of a religious person without a trace of dishevelment. He felt a presence behind him. He could tell it was her without having to look back.

“……So what I mean is, I’m not asking you to love me. Living in such a desolate place, the human feelings remaining within you would naturally have frozen.”

Perhaps she had slept poorly due to the changed environment, as Phyllis’s voice was slightly hoarse. Feeling mild guilt, this time he deliberately turned around to respond.

“I know well.”

“How should I express this act so that you won’t feel repulsed and I can get what I want? Hmm…… Could you think of it as a contract rather than marriage?”

Contract? A hollow laugh escaped from Timeo’s lips.

“There will be no love or faith, but we’ll be the best means for each other. I guarantee it.”

“What is it that you want?”

“What a woman needs most is wealth and inheritance.”

“Then do you know what I want to achieve using you as means?”

Phyllis immediately nodded.

“Revenge.”

Everything you should have rightfully enjoyed is there. Phyllis and Timeo’s eyes met. Neither avoided the other’s gaze. He had just read passages before coming to the main hall about not committing adultery, not marrying hastily, not being greedy, and not seeking revenge.

“Be a man instead of a priest.”

Ridiculously, his heart raced at those words. On the first day he came here, the monastery head priest with large palms had placed his hand on the young boy’s chest who couldn’t even open his eyes properly from the cold and prayed. That he would castrate all desires arising from the heart. It had been a lonely but peaceful life. Years of attending monastery school, welcoming travelers, maintaining silence, and constantly striving to extinguish the yearning within himself through others’ unfortunate confessions.

Into the tedious life that was no different from death even while living, Phyllis Menez had made blood flow and breathed life.

In the main hall where coolness lingered due to the heavy downpour, Timeo heard God’s message to live as a man rather than a priest. Timeo’s god led him outside the main hall.

Sometimes he had long dreams.

Dreams of looking down at Phyllis Menez, who wandered the monastery corridors for a long time in the early summer of barren Alzaz where even a handful of greenery was gloomy, lost in thought. She remained frozen for a while, watching until the back of some young priest heading to the confessional disappeared into a dot. At the confessional, and in that priest’s room, she spent the day steeped in slight sorrow. Soon, the moment their eyes met, it was a strange dream where she joyfully leaped toward the cowardly self who had been observing from afar.

But Phyllis.

It would have been better if we hadn’t met. You should have complained of a mild headache, or been unable to come or go because the carriage wheels got stuck in mud before departure. You shouldn’t have involved me in the scenery of your life that would have been beautiful if left to flow as it was, and I too shouldn’t have presumptuously desired something and harbored vain yearning. Because you chose me and I responded to you, everything gradually went awry, and it would be better if I went blind and never held you in these eyes again, over and over, over and over……

†

Phyllis, who had boarded the carriage first, let out a long sigh. She had visited Alzaz alone without even a maid. But that was because she had been so desperate. When she returned, her nanny would scold her all day long. Thinking of life in Vesoul, Phyllis became truly tired.

Timeo Völlörban outside the carriage was receiving countless words of advice from the monastery head priest. The two looked exactly like father and son. Though they would travel quite a distance, Timeo’s luggage looked extremely simple. Timeo, who had been listening to the monastery head’s sermon with one ear, suddenly made eye contact with her. This time Phyllis turned her gaze away first. As expected, he wasn’t easy to deal with. Phyllis, whose mood had soured, drew the curtain again.

“I won’t pray for your brother’s recovery.”

The monastery head seemed sincere. This wasn’t the first time Völlörban’s eldest son was critically ill. That damn eldest son was a severe mental patient who begged for attention from many, complaining of extreme agony during seasonal changes or national holidays. Each time, the Völlörban fools who would die for their eldest son would gather everyone from branch families to servants’ families and offer blessings that weren’t blessings for the noble eldest son’s swift recovery. A few years ago, he still vividly remembered the coldness directed at Timeo when he visited Vesoul upon hearing that Marcel was critically ill. Those cold stares that looked at him as if he were a country bumpkin who had come to quickly gather the grain that would fall from his brother’s death……

“Visit Vesoul once this year. Didn’t you call it home?”

“It’s just that your territory is so extremely filthy that I don’t want to visit twice. Don’t you know better than anyone? ……There’s no place more suitable for avoiding the curse of the twin gods.”

“I’m not a twin.”

Instead of replying, the monastery head stared intently at Timeo like he was his son. He was one of the few saints who had breathed life and faith into the child’s face marked by sighs and led him to the light.