Episode 121 Iriel’s Reminiscence (2)
Two days have passed since we boarded the ship.
Where are you going, are you leaving this far away?
Iriel asked the priest.
“Where are you going?”
“We are going to Gehel. If it was there, Iriel would be able to have fun too.”
“Um…”
I don’t know where it is, but the happy life in Gehel that the priest told me about made the girl’s eyes full of excitement.
Eventually, with such anticipation, when another day passed, the priest and Iriel were able to set foot on land.
Iriel admired the place where people were quite crowded and pleasant noises could be heard.
“Wow.”
For her, who grew up only in the cathedral, the vibrant city center was a dreamlike landscape.
The priest took the girl’s hand and pulled it.
Passing through the market with many people, we also pass the downtown area lined with large buildings.
The two of them arrived after walking until their legs hurt, and they arrived at an old alleyway that was neither a pleasant-looking town nor a large city center with good facilities.
A child with a slim stomach because he couldn’t eat anything in sight, and two women laughing and wandering on the street as if they had lost their minds.
It was a sight that could not be said to be pleasant even as a joke.
Iriel looked at the bride with slightly uneasy eyes.
Father Hana didn’t say anything, just took Iriel’s hand and headed towards a corner of the alley.
The bride, who had stopped in front of a store with a signboard reading ‘Days of Joy’, entered without hesitation.
Then, a man with a long cut on his face pretended to know.
“Oh, how long has it been? Are you here to buy something nice again?”
At that, the priest smiled and said.
“no. I’m not here to buy it this time.”
Saying that, I gently lifted the hand holding Iriel.
The man who was observing the girl’s whereabouts spoke in admiration.
“Hmm. He’s a pretty good kid.”
“It’s not good enough. If it’s this much, you’ll know even if I don’t say it, right?”
“ha ha ha. Are you still talking about money? Will you be the bride?”
“I’m done nagging… how much can you give me?”
“Let’s see…”
The man came close to Iriel.
But she had no time to be surprised by the man.
No matter how young he was, he wasn’t dull enough to listen to the current conversation and not notice the situation.
No, compared to his peers, he even had a sense of being overly fast.
Iriel’s small body began to tremble.
Looking at her, the man with a sinister smile shook his shoulders.
“Two platinum coins.”
The bride frowned at him.
“two? Hey, take a good look at that look again. At that level, I can get four platinum coins.”
The man shook his head.
“Because of that look, there are two. How long do you think a kid with that look could go in a back alley like this? Half a year at most? Do all the boys around here look like they’ll leave a kid like that day and night?”
The priest could not refute the man’s words.
Gehel, certainly a free city and a trading town, is actively visited by different kinds of people.
Even in such a place, there would not be a single great person who would leave Iriel alone in this place where only bad guys gathered.
If I could earn two platinum coins with one orphaned girl anyway, I’d be content with that.
“If you know, accept it.”
The man threw the bag containing the money.
The priest accepted it and smiled at Iriel.
“From now on Iriel, please live happily here. Oh. Should I keep my promise to meet my friends? If you want to see a friend, write a letter anytime. I will send that friend here too.”
“Father Poetry… is that a lie?”
Iriel grabbed the bride with eyes that had lost focus.
The bride shook her head.
“Don’t do that, Iriel. If you do… wouldn’t this money from selling you make you want to buy you tonight?”
It wasn’t something to say to a child.
Even the man frowned slightly at those words.
‘Crazy bastard.’
The bride in front of me was a regular at the shop.
I buy a lot, but I also sell a lot.
If you want to have a good child in a church that you do yourself, you come to sell it like this.
Of course, from the man’s point of view, buying the orphans was not a bad deal, as there was no fear of being found out.
One issue was after that.
He bought the child again at night with the money he had sold the child he had brought.
I didn’t want to imagine what would happen after that.
As always, the children committed suicide or fell ill shortly after the shock.
Even now, the odds of that happening seemed very slim.
The man clicked his tongue and winked at the bride.
“A kid with two platinum coins. You will have to be prepared for the price.”
“ha ha ha. I’m kidding. If I had this much money, I wouldn’t have to do meaningless things like a church anymore.”
The priest, who always advised us to hold the Bible tightly in our hands and engrave God’s words deep in our hearts, was mocking the church, calling it meaningless.
Seeing that, Iriel felt something wear out.
Instead of the usual kind eyes, he looks at himself with creepy, disgusting eyes.
Then, looking at his expression, he smiles as if he is having fun, and then walks out of the store.
Iriel didn’t even think of running away in a daze.
So stupid and naive, he sold himself.
To a man I’ve never seen, in a city I’ve never thought of.
When emotions passed the acceptable limit, there was no crying.
Only a huge sense of despair blocked his eyes.
* * *
After three days in Gehel, there were several middle-aged people who heard the rumors and came to visit.
After seeing Iriel’s face, they started bidding at the tavern, and eventually, tonight was awarded to the person who paid the highest amount.
Iriel began to come to his senses to some extent as time passed.
He was tricked by a fucking priest and sold to a brothel, and he is now in an unknown region.
I had to constantly come up with ways to overcome this situation.
At first, I thought my head was going crazy with the impatience that I had to escape as quickly as possible, but as I started to think calmly, good thoughts gradually began to come to my mind.
The fortunate thing is that the monitoring of oneself is quite lax.
For three days, he just sat idly by like a madman, so he deserved it.
So it would have been better to act like now as much as possible.
I continued to think of Iriel as I sat blankly in the chair with unfocused eyes.
As I squeezed my head to think about how to escape, night came soon.
she was taken somewhere
When we arrived, it was a large room.
A desk with a lit candle and a small bed are placed all at once.
A fat middle-aged man was sitting in the room, scanning his body with sinister eyes.
“Heh heh. I saw it during the day, but I can only admire it.”
The man who swallowed his saliva approached Iriel.
He must have made an escape plan, but his body trembled.
No voice came out of his throat, and the approaching middle-aged man was so huge that he didn’t dare to look straight at him.
The middle-aged man stroked Iriel’s hair.
The goosebumps were all over.
However, he pretends not to express himself and acts.
As if she couldn’t speak, she just stared blankly at the man like a doll with no emotions.
As if having fun, the man who carried Iriel to the bed whispered into her ear.
“You are such a lucky kid. I bought it because I liked it.”
Undo the pants dance while talking.
Iriel’s eyes lit up.
‘now!’
When both hands were in his pants, Iriel stabbed the man in the upper part of the neck with his mother’s keepsake rosary that he had been holding tight.
A fragile part that can be easily inserted even with the power of a child.
Once stabbed, the pain is painful, but the flowing blood blocks the airway, making it impossible to breathe.
It wasn’t because Iriel had some knowledge.
I was just lucky.
Actually, she was aiming for the chest, but she was shaken at the thought of hurting others.
The thought of stabbing him and the thought of not killing him conflicted.
As a result, more clean killing was possible.
If Rosario had been stabbed in the chest, it wouldn’t have gone too far.
If it is one neck, the story is different.
Unlike the chest, the bones that protect it are not hard and the muscles are not thick.
In addition, it is a place where all the major blood vessels are concentrated, so even if it misses, it can cause considerable bleeding.
As evidence of that, the middle-aged man grabbed his throat, where blood was pouring out, and coughed up blood, then immediately drooped.
Even if he tried to speak, his vocal chords would be so full of blood that he would not be able to scream.
However, Iriel couldn’t escape straight away on that road.
He looked down at his bloody hands with shaking eyes.
killed a person
That fact gave the little girl an inexplicable sense of fear.
It wasn’t just fear that I felt.
Iriel raised his bloody hand and touched his own face.
Then he found himself smiling with his facial muscles stiff.
A dizzying experience that I have never seen, heard, or experienced when I was confined to a small cathedral.
Full of thrill and extreme excitement.
Murder, the most atrocious of the sins taught in the cathedral.
The heavy guilt that comes from having done it himself and the insane sense of immorality that surpasses him!
Her young eyes seemed to be stained with blood.
The thoughts I had after that were not the kind of thoughts a child would have.
‘Wouldn’t it be possible to kill the priest if we left quickly?’
Iriel, who had been sitting down, glanced at Rosario, who was covered in blood, and started to run with a grin.
The destination was the port from which the bride had brought her.
* * *
If there is a difference between the three young men and Iriel, is it that they couldn’t resist and Iriel did?
Iriel, who recalled the past for a moment, took out the rosario in her arms and glanced at it.
It is the weapon that freed you in the past.
However, now it was a precious object that made me feel the weight.
It wasn’t until she became a saint that she realized how precious the weight of life was and how hideous it was that she gained pleasure from killing herself.
Rosario, who served as the so-called medium that helped her become a saint, was irreplaceable to her.
Of course, it was only used as a tool for murder before that.
Iriel looked down an alley in Gehel.
The place where he committed his first murder as a child.
It was there in front of me.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts.
“It’s the past… He was a murderer, so to speak.”
As Iriel smiled and said, the young people nodded their heads involuntarily.
She was a saint who never backed down even when dealing with two sword masters.
Even if she had learned divine power from the inside, it would be impossible considering her age.
After arriving at Gehel and running for two hours, they entered the city gate.
The soldiers who saw Iriel’s face quickly opened the door and announced her entry.
Then a slender middle-aged man came out with several paladins.
He took an example to Iriel.
“…Meet the saintess.”
You can feel the bitterness in your voice.
It seems that her arrival is not welcome.
The look on his face was enough to make anyone think that way.
Iriel smiled coldly at him as he knelt down on one knee.
“It’s been a while. Hierarch of Gehel.”
“…”
“…since you don’t answer, should I call you ‘Father’ like before?”
