Tranquil yet beautiful, the place brimmed with appropriate majesty.

“The interior looks sturdy, doesn’t it? During feast days and masses, quite a few people come and go, so we maintain it well. And the view outside the windows is worth seeing too.”

Dusky clouds were seeping into dark brown branches just then. White, hazy afternoon light filtered through the branches, casting shadows on Kata’s statue. Unable to tear her gaze away, Rosaline whispered,

“More than my room, I often felt comfortable here.”

She moistened her dry lips and smiled unconsciously.

“Looking at the god Kata here, I never felt alone. It felt like a friend……”

“……”

“You can laugh at me. ……Oh, right!”

Lost in her words, Rosaline didn’t let go of his hand as she brought him behind the altar. Then she knelt down.

When Romeo knelt beside her, Rosaline pointed beneath the altar. On the horizontally long altar, a rippling sea was carved, and above it an unmarked circle was engraved.

“I learned this while studying—I thought this circle was the sun at first. But……”

“Tivre.”

Romeo’s hand touched the relief. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the altar, stroking it slowly as if viewing someone dearly missed. Rosaline realized for the first time he could make such an expression. She probably looked similar when viewing Juliet.

“Yes, Tivre the moon god.”

Feeling somehow like she was stealing glances at him, Rosaline hesitantly lowered her gaze.

“Since the symbols are the same circle, I think the architect mistook it and erected Kata’s statue right on the altar.”

“……So Kata isn’t alone.”

Though he was usually unkind, when he whispered softly like now, it felt like being caressed with words. Rosaline nodded.

“Right. So I sometimes leave flowers here too, asking Tivre to look after Kata while he’s alone. Father would be horrified if he heard… so I’m keeping it secret.”

“Rosaline, really……”

“……”

“What a childish notion.”

He was right, but it was hard to hide her sullen mood. She was about to snap back at him, but Romeo’s downcast black gaze had softened endlessly, choking off her words. He gathered the scattered hair from Rosaline’s furrowed round forehead and kissed it.

“Utterly sacrilegious.”

His eyes touched her lips. Knowing what this presaged, she closed her eyes as if entranced, then heard a thick laugh.

“Weren’t you here to clean?”

“……!”

“With work piled up, you offer your lips first. One time and you fear nothing. You’ve truly fallen, Rosaline.”

He pressed her lips like stamping a seal, then stood and removed his cloak. Rolling up his shirt revealed firm forearms.

“Well, I’m just as sacrilegious, so I can’t say much.”

“……Romeo.”

“I’ll help. Let’s finish quickly.”

The ears of the standing man had reddened. Did he get embarrassed too? Rosaline suppressed the urge to tease him and stood up to begin cleaning alongside him.

Thanks to Romeo moving well according to Rosaline’s instructions, they finished organizing earlier than expected. But Romeo seemed to think differently—he stopped polishing the last gold ornament midway and frowned.

“There’s more to prepare than I thought. Have just the two of you been doing all this?”

“Yes.”

Rosaline nodded and took the gold ornament from him to place it back.

“Usually it’s not this much, but before mass there are some things to handle. Still, doing it with you, we finished much faster than with Father Laurence.”

“The sun’s already set.”

True to his words, by the time they’d organized the liturgy notes and prepared the holy water for the ceremony, the sun was already setting. Romeo scratched his chin and cleaned his hands thoroughly with a cloth dampened in holy water.

“Well… do those ornaments with pigs or whatever carved on them really need polishing?”

The gold ornaments he’d polished were small reliefs placed on the altar, carved with four-legged beasts like cattle and horses. Since reliefs were placed on the altar instead of living offerings, they had to be polished well like preparing live sacrifices.

“They need polishing. They substitute for live offerings.”

“What a fine substitute.”

Displeased with something again, he leaned against the altar and smirked at her standing beneath Kata’s statue.

“……Rosaline, looking closely, you’ve got nerve. Or should I say you’re immodest.”

“Immodest?”

“Someone who’ll become a priest bringing the one she joins below with to the temple so casually.”

“It would be a lie to say I feel no guilt at all, but honestly I’m not that afraid.”

Rosaline faced him and added a smile.

“Doctrine isn’t absolute. It’s changed dozens of times according to contemporary society and politics.”

“……That’s even less something a priest should say.”

“Miss Juliet told me. And I was fully convinced.”

She placed the carefully polished reliefs side by side and said,

“But if god exists, I believe he wouldn’t punish a woman just for coupling with a man. I just… think so.”

Rosaline didn’t care if he thought her truly selfish and unfaithful. She hadn’t known it herself, but meeting Romeo made her realize she truly was. Being with him kept revealing sides of herself she hadn’t known. Getting angry, shouting, being sarcastic.

Romeo’s gaze on her lingered. It didn’t take long for him to step closer with the playfulness gone from his eyes.

“Why are you trying to become a priest?”

“……What?”

“I can see you like this place, but you don’t seem particularly devout. If you were, you wouldn’t have done that with me even if it killed you.”

He hit the mark. But Rosaline wasn’t flustered or angry. Partly because she’d grown accustomed to his manner of speaking, but also because he himself seemed more uncomfortable. She felt that even with his brazen face saying such things.

“The Capulets invested a lot of money to make me a priest. Juliet took great care too.”

There was also Mother’s request, but since the Capulets were a household so distant from the temple, becoming their patron to create a priest would give them good standing.

“So I can’t quit now.”

“You can’t quit, yet you meet me.”

He scoffed.

“It must be dangerous.”

“In that moment… I wanted you. Enough to… ignore such danger.”

Perhaps the relationship that shouldn’t even begin applied not only to Juliet and Romeo but to Rosaline and Romeo as well. Rosaline closed her eyes self-deprecatingly, leaning her cheek against his chest.

“Romeo, you knew too, didn’t you? Weren’t we meeting with the promise of parting?”

The reason she could surrender to impulse despite all those risks was ultimately because Rosaline would leave. Though she’d anticipated it fully, speaking of parting aloud made her chest ache.

“When that time comes, I’ll really… really miss this.”

What was this emotion? No, she vaguely knew but refused to name it. Once named, once the emotion came alive and became clear, it would only hurt more.

Lifting her head, Rosaline met Romeo’s motionless eyes.

“Juliet and I are neither friends nor anything, but couldn’t you and I at least be friends?”

Though she couldn’t name the emotion, she didn’t want to remain in a nameless relationship. Just as she wrapped her arms around his waist pleadingly, he held her fiercely and pressed his lips to the crown of her head.

“Not a chance.”

A rejection? The moment felt distant, then he spoke urgently,

“Wherever you go, I’ll follow. Whether pretending to be a faithful innocent devotee or becoming a knight, I’ll stick like a shadow and never leave.”

As long as you don’t abandon me. Romeo added through gritted teeth, then lifted her up and laid her on the altar. Their lips tangled as he loomed over her in an instant. He endlessly stroked her hair while thoroughly disheveling the clothes that proved her god’s child.

“How could I let you so easily abandon me after taking what’s mine, when I’m already in debt?”

“Ngh, Romeo……”

The hand roughly grasping and kneading her br*asts was coarse yet heightened the heated tension, and doing this on the altar excited her.

When she placed her hand over his as he groped her haphazardly, his eyes darkened further. Romeo pressed his body close while lowering his other hand to stroke her v*lva in a long sweep from bottom to top.

“Getting wet from having your lips sucked—for a friend?”

He kept striking the split perineum with his dampened middle finger.

“What crazy bastard does this between friends? Don’t tell me you have?”

“No, I haven’t… ah!”

“While I was gone, maybe you did it with another friend. That’s why you say such things. Did you and Miss s*ck each other? Or with that father of hers?”

Why does he only say such nasty things? Even as Rosaline shook her head wildly, Romeo spread her folds like punishment and pressed down on the swollen nub.

“Aah!”

Not satisfied with that, he inserted his index and middle fingers at once and scraped the inner walls. Sharp pleasure rolled in like overlapping waves.

“Never say such things again.”

Rosaline had no intention of refusing him. Rather, his intense emotions transferred to her, filling her completely. Rosaline willingly spread her legs and pushed her p*ssy further onto his hand while stroking his thigh with her foot.

“Romeo, I really like you.”

She finally extracted part of her emotion and spoke it aloud. And toward him, frozen in his actions, she reached up like one defeated by her own emotions and slowly removed his open shirt.

With trembling hands, she traced down his elegant yet masculine neck like a sculptor. She stroked in turn his chest that breathed as if proving life and his densely woven abs.