// .. is ’pause’ (-: // enjoy reading

Haru arrived in the room with nunchaku marks on his face, a bruise on his temple, a split lip... All battered.

Golden slept on his back with his mouth open, breathing calmly, without any weight.

"What a mess..." Haru thought, looking at him. "And I still have to sweep the academy..."

He threw himself onto the bed and in the blink of an eye, it was morning.

The bell rang before the sun appeared.

Haru woke up running, he gave himself a quick shower.

"The previous night... the students who are caught have to perform a task. Depending on when they caught you, whether it was early, in the middle, late..."

"In my case it’s in the middle. I have to clean up the Baptism mess with the others."

Moments later, Haru was in a line with other captured students, all with the same expression of someone who had slept little and regretted a lot. thing.

The continus chief distributed orange uniforms without commenting.

A group of late students came running to the meeting point, pleading, gesturing.

The continus chief didn’t even look.

"You’re already late," he said simply. "Go back."

"Please, just this once..."

"Go back."

They went.

Haru felt an involuntary shiver remembering the Chinese man’s words from the previous night: "Don’t be absent. Complete your assignment. Otherwise... you’ll be baptized again."

"Good thing I wasn’t late..."

The continus chief extended a map containing marked areas and numbered sectors.

"Take an area. Be flexible. We’ll clear as much as possible before the general bell." The continus chief looked at them. "Did you hear?"

"Yes, sir!"

The continus chief gave a slight smile.

"Alright... go."

"Here." Haru pointed to the marked area on the map. As the Cathedral Sanctuary, he stood up before anyone could question him.

"Heheheh... finally I’ll be able to talk to Lilithine..."

...

The sanctuary gates opened without question, the orange uniform saying everything that needed to be said.

Haru rushed out with a mop, passing the other continus who stayed behind, not understanding the rush.

"Hey, where are the guys who live here?" Haru stopped suddenly.

The guard replied. "Nobody lives here. It’s the sanctuary."

"What do you mean? On the first day I saw several monks and nuns."

"Ah... from afar, they only came to clean. This is public space for everyone."

"Then why are the gates always closed?"

"Because the academy hasn’t started yet. Only those from the Cathedral are allowed in for now."

...

"And continus, of course."

As soon as Haru crossed the main door, something pierced him.

It was like being recognized for something he’d rather not be. Recognizing it.

The spirits within reacted immediately, in collective panic, a hundred voices recoiling at once, pushing each other toward Yukihime’s core deep within the mana center.

Suppressing presence. Erasing traces. Shrinking like animals hiding from something larger.

Haru felt his knees weaken, without bending, but he felt them.

The world felt heavy for three seconds... but then it suddenly passed.

"...what the hell was that." He composed himself, stretching his neck. "It must be the holy energy. For a moment my spirits... confronted it."

He felt something different then, lighter. As if the weight he had carried for weeks had decreased by a degree.

Strange, but not bad.

He raised his eyes and stood still.

The temple seemed small from the outside, but inside it was another world.

High ceilings, too high, as if the stone had decided to have no limit. Light entering through side stained-glass windows in Impossible angles, breaking in gold and blue on the marble floor.

Smellless, there was only silence and clean air.

In the center, above a shallow, still lake, stood she.

A woman with a crown of thorns, not of gold, not of flowers. Of real, dark thorns, embedded in the white stone as if they had grown there.

Blindfolded.

Four open wings, not of an angel, not of a demon. Of something in between.

And the lake... the source of the lake was her tears. Slowly trickling down the grooves of the marble, never stopping, never overflowing.

Below, two knights knelt facing each other, bathing in those tears, heads bowed.

The statues were not small.

They were enormous.

Haru stared for a while. There was no rush; there was something in the air that made haste impossible.

"Everything here is so real that it makes me feel small..."

"Unlike Earth. Here I can place one hundred percent of my faith in a religion, because due to magic, I’m certain it exists."

"What really varies is who you pray to. And why."

He walked slowly to the statue beside the entrance, smaller than the central one, but present nonetheless.

White marble worn by time, not by carelessness, but by hands. Many hands touching over the years, polishing the stone unintentionally.

A woman with a long veil, hands clasped before her chest, without a sword, without a scepter, without imperial grandeur. Only presence.

Haru read the inscription:

"Saint Lilithine. She who remained."

He stared at her expression; even though she was stone, even with her eyes blindfolded, there was something there.

Weariness, not weakness, but longing.

Like someone who cried too much... and carried on anyway.

Further down, a smaller inscription:

"During the White Plague, when priests fled Noxviel, Lilithine remained among the sick for forty-three days."

"She healed as long as she could."

"And when she could no longer... she just stayed."

Haru reread the last line slowly.

"She just stayed."

He was silent for a moment.

And for some reason... that weighed more than any miracle he had ever seen.

He sighed.

"I intended to leave a letter for Lilithine. But I can’t, firstly because I don’t have paper or pen now. Secondly, because I think I should speak to her in person."

He looked one last time at the statue.

"After breakfast."

Then he picked up the mop and began to clean the sanctuary, as best he could, trying not to think about what he was doing in a sacred place after a night like that. Because they were in the continus, Haru and the others had the privilege of eating long before the general bell rang; the cafeteria was empty, the food was hot, and there was silence.

When the other bells rang and the cafeteria began to fill, Haru had already finished.

He was sitting on a bench outside, leaning against something, his head tilted back, his hand slowly running over his bruised face.

"Hard to believe I died and woke up here..."

"And after all this, I was given the power to die and come back."

...

"I have nothing to lose anyway. Things happen."

In the middle of the incoming crowd, he saw Lilithine and stood up.

Lilithine saw him out of the corner of her eye, turned back without stopping, without changing her expression, and went back the way she came.

"She saw me. She’s avoiding me. Why?"

Haru followed, not running, but not stopping.

Lilithine turned into a passageway.

Haru turned. She looked back, didn’t see him. She sped up.

Haru sped up too, keeping his distance, but not losing track.

She turned into a corridor she didn’t recognize.

Then another.

Then she came out through a side door.

And stopped.

Now she was in a courtyard she clearly didn’t intend to explore yet.

Tall trees with dark trunks arranged asymmetrically, growing freely, their roots lifting the stone ground in places. Stone benches beneath them, dark with moss.

Golden leaves falling slowly in the morning wind, few, but constant. As if the courtyard were always in that state between autumn and something else.

There were no students. Only silence and a low breeze and the distant sound of the cafeteria filling up.

It seemed like another world.

Lilithine coughed once, softly, restrained.

She sat on the stone bench with her hands pressed against her skirt.

That resonance wouldn’t leave her head.

The platform. The fall. The skies darkening from it.

And his gray eyes.

"Haru." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Her chest tightened again.

"No..." she thought before she even finished. "I so desperately want it not to be..."

She closed her eyes for a moment.

"I’m devoid of sanctity because of this."

And worse than the guilt was the fact that she still remembered his smile. The way he spoke to her. The way he looked at her.

"I need to tell Father Elias."

But even thinking that...

She hadn’t told him.

Not yet.

"Haru is dangerous."

She opened her eyes.

Haru was already standing before her.

Standing still and quiet. As if he had been there for a long time without her noticing.

Lilithine wore an orange Continus uniform, her hair was messy, she had a purple bruise on her left temple, her lip was slightly split, and she looked tired.

But she was looking directly at her.

"Were you avoiding me?"

Lilithine’s eyes widened slightly.

"...Haru."

She wanted to get up. She wanted to leave, but her body wouldn’t obey.

Haru approached slowly and sat beside her on the bench.

"I noticed you haven’t been well since the first day I got here..." he said softly. "And when I tried to talk to you today—"

"Haru Mizuki," she interrupted, her voice weak but firm.

She didn’t look at him. "...are you a gamer?"

...

Haru’s face didn’t change immediately.

But his eyes, his eyes betrayed everything.

He turned slowly to her.

"So that’s what it was..." he said softly, almost to himself.

"That’s why you’ve been avoiding me." Lilithine kept staring at her own hands

, her fingers pressed against her skirt. She couldn’t look at him.

Because a part of her still wanted to hear a lie.

"...it was you, wasn’t it?" Haru asked slowly. "Who moved the platform."

She remained silent, but that was answer enough.

Haru lowered his head.

"I’m sorry."