My Childhood Friend Became an Inquisitor

“…From now on, don’t play with that child.”
“What? But Auntie, she’s your daughter! Do you know how lonely Anne has been lately?”
“That person, no. That child is not my daughter. And this is for your own good too.”
*

When I slightly opened my eyes, feeling the white light shining through my eyelids, I thought for a moment.

‘Is this heaven?’

Had I died and come to the afterlife?

But soon the white light turned into a holy flame and began to burn my senses. With a sensation like staring directly at the midday sun, I opened my eyes with a scream.

A shadow falls, blocking the light. In the center of the shadow, a pair of small skies had ripened.

“Are you awake, Louis?”

Anne was looking down at me, bending her waist. As I had expected, the gap between the silver bars was wide enough for a person to pass through, and she had pushed her slim upper body into the prison.

She had voluntarily left the protection of the holy barrier. If I reached out, I might finally be able to achieve my goal this time. Whether to grab her collar, or to harm her, or whatever.

But the more I looked at that face – the more certain I became that ‘I couldn’t do it’. No matter how much I hated her, despised her. Never.

My outstretched hand falls without grasping anything. Perhaps misunderstanding the meaning of my action, Anne caught my falling hand and gently pulled me up.

My body, having tasted two faints and two extreme pains, no longer had the strength to push her away.

“I understand that you’re shocked. But, won’t you calm down a little? You’ll soon understand everything too.”

“…Where is this?”

As even the strength to be angry disappeared, my mind became strangely calm instead. A cold and rational thought, as if I were not myself, as if I were a stranger.

Just getting angry and shouting won’t change this situation. It’s impossible to persuade a blind fanatic with logic, so it’s best to grasp the current situation for now.

Even if Anne has become a fanatic in the time we haven’t seen each other, her affection for me is still there… It even seemed to have deepened with the longing of the time we were apart.

“I finally get to introduce it, this is a re-education center.”

“Re-education center.”

I repeated the word she casually uttered. Though I had never even heard rumors about it.
It’s a place that feels unpleasant and uncomfortable just by its name.

“Yes. It’s a place to return children who have fallen on the wrong path back to His embrace.”

It wasn’t difficult to understand the meaning of that metaphor. But.

“I understand. But, why… am I here?”

Shadows fell on Anne’s expression as she slightly turned her head, but it was clearly readable to me. Complicated feelings.
Why are you making such an expression?

“I’m not a heretic.”

“……”

“Let me out of here. I haven’t done anything wrong. I can prove it! I don’t know what misunderstanding there might have been, but…!”

“Louis.”

At her still gentle and mild voice, my mouth closes as if under a spell.

“Yefrinse, our hometown. Where rose scent covered the whole village in spring, and where a tributary of the Nern River that cooled the summer heat flowed right in front of our houses…”

Even with my eyes closed, that scenery is still vivid. A village of red petals, yellow roofs, and blue river water.
The place where Anne and I grew up together, where we promised a lifetime.

“…That place has already been ‘purified’.”

Thud. At those words, calm yet all the more cruel, the scenery in my mind shatters.

My past, present, and future were all there. It would be a lie if I said I hadn’t occasionally had such fantasies. If Anne hadn’t left for the city, if we had remained in the village and held our wedding ceremony…

Life in a small countryside wouldn’t have been as luxurious or glamorous as in the city. We would have prepared for trade runs together, just walking the same monotonous and peaceful paths, with days as unchanging as those paths continuing.

Some might point fingers calling it shabby, some might say it’s worthless, but that life was all I wanted.

“…Why?”

“Heretical acts, demon worship, human sacrifice.”

She lists crimes, each alone sufficient to exterminate three generations, in a clear voice while folding her fingers one by one.

It wasn’t even funny. It was nonsense, slander. Those innocent villagers?

“That’s absurd…”

“Of course, I think there’s a separate mastermind. Judging by the state of the people, they were likely forced to participate rather than joining voluntarily…”

The face that appeared was full of genuine regret and pity without a trace of pretense, and seeing that expression made my teeth grind.

“Liar…”

“Louis. I understand it’s shocking news, but…”

“Don’t lie-!”

At my resounding shout, Anne’s detestable mouth closes.

Heretics? Offering humans as sacrifices? That’s impossible. Even if I was often away from the village, there’s no way I wouldn’t know about something so significant!

Anger or fear? My body trembled with an emotion I couldn’t identify myself. By now, Anne had withdrawn her body outside the bars.

Unable to bring myself to grab the bars, I pounded the floor and shouted wildly at Anne.

“Who, who on earth did it? Uncle Gil? Susan? Adam? There’s no one in our village who would do such a terrible thing!”

“We- no, I.”

At that moment, the scene that flashed through my mind was.

Anne’s figure, pursuing my fiancée with an almost bizarre obsession. The only moment when she, who had been pretending to be kind even in this dire situation, had used violence against me too.

“I suspect your fiancée is the root cause of all this.”

The preposterous story of innocent villagers becoming terrifying demon worshippers who offer human sacrifices overnight. In this situation, there were only two possibilities I could think of.

Either I was crazy, or Anne was crazy.

“So… is that it?”

“Hm?”

If the earlier trembling was anger, this time it was closer to fear. I was afraid of Anne. Afraid that the absurd possibility I had thought of might actually be true.

“Because I… broke my promise?”

Who would have known that the weight of the little fingers we hooked together in promise would be this heavy?

Anne’s mouth closes. Struck at the core, or lost in other thoughts? The expression that appeared on her face was unfamiliar, and this time, even I couldn’t fathom Anne’s inner thoughts.

Clearly, I was angry at first, but my voice gradually diminished, and before I knew it, I was stumbling over excuses.

“I had… no choice.”

“……”

“In the countryside, hands are scarce, and all my peers were already married. The pressure from those around me grew stronger day by day, and I couldn’t be certain you would return…”

Childhood friend was a name as sweet as the scent of early spring roses, yet with a slight tartness.

Childhood memories are beautiful and poignant, but knowing we can’t return to them, they fade. For me, the times when you were there were the most shining moments, but I couldn’t assume you felt the same way.

Life in the city, especially a life led as a person of high status, would be incomparably more splendid than the quiet and boring daily life in the countryside. To the extent that it wouldn’t be strange to quickly forget a childhood connection.

It was after another long silence that Anne’s mouth opened again.

“Is that what you thought?”

“……”

“That I did all this… to somehow take you away?”

I was aware that it sounded absurd. I’m not some incomparably beautiful person, nor born of any special bloodline.

However, if Anne’s feelings for me hadn’t changed, this was ultimately the most plausible reason. Even if it was just an engagement, its weight was no less than a marriage. The union of two souls sworn before God.

Not just an ordinary noble, but as a figure of the Church that values Ailim’s authority even more, she couldn’t interfere with that sacred ceremony… unless it was the trump card of heresy, which excuses any atrocity.

Even though Anne was pretending to be calm, I could see her eyes spinning around. A habit that appears when she’s flustered.

“What, such nonsense…”

“Then.”

It feels like my chest is burning. Although the very act of uttering that lie was deeply hateful.

“If our village really was a den of heretics, why did you spare me?”

On the off chance that everything Anne said was true.
Shouldn’t I too be a heretic deserving judgment? Why am I alive and having this conversation with Anne in a place like this?

“That’s. To find out the location of your fiancée…”

“To find her and harm her like the other villagers?”

“Because she’s the standard-bearer of the heretics…”

Anne’s voice lacked conviction even to herself as she said this.
Lies, nothing but lies.

“I may not know much about the Church, but I know that’s not the duty of an Inquisitor.”

If that were really the case, I would have woken up in a dark, damp underground dungeon instead of this white and clean space.

Though it’s still a prison, I would have been greeted not by that devilishly beautiful girl, but by a torturer no different from a demon.

Due to the bloody rumors, it’s easy to misunderstand, but interrogating heretics is not the job of Inquisitors. They are the Church’s foremost spear and hammer. Anne’s duty is to pierce through and shatter the towering citadels of evil.

Whether dirty or clean, this lowly task of crawling down to an underground prison to extract information from heretics-

It wasn’t the job of Inquisitor Anne. Though it might be Anne’s job.

What stands before me, is it a fanatic who has blinded herself with the delusion of faith, or a girl blinded by love, ready to mercilessly trample everything that stands in her way?

Anne was silent.