At first, Erza thought Sister Mary was just a strange, overly religious woman—the kind who spoke of God and sin and redemption with the casual certainty of someone who had never doubted anything in her life. But the more they talked, the more she found herself actually enjoying the saint's company.
There was something calming about her voice, something steady and warm that made the small apartment feel larger, made the afternoon heat feel less oppressive, made the time pass without Erza noticing.
They had been speaking for nearly an hour, their tea growing cold beside them, their conversation drifting from Yuuta's childhood to his schooling to the strange, stubborn way he had always refused to give up on anything, no matter how impossible it seemed.
Sister Mary spoke of him with a fondness that reminded Erza of the way she spoke of Elena—not as something she owned, but as something she had been given, something precious, something she had tried her best to protect.
It was strange, Erza thought, to hear someone speak of Yuuta that way. She had spent weeks calling him pathetic, useless, a mortal who was not worth her time.
And here was this woman, this saint, this woman who had dedicated her life to God and goodness, speaking of him like he was something holy.
"Oh!" Sister Mary clapped her hands together, her face lighting up as if she had just remembered something important. "I almost forgot. I brought something with me. I thought you might like to see it."
She reached into the bag beside her, the same worn leather bag she had carried through the church for as long as Erza had known her, and pulled out a thick, dusty album.
The cover was faded, the edges worn soft, the pages yellowed with age.
It was the kind of album that held decades of memories, the kind of album that was opened only on special occasions, the kind of album that was passed from hand to hand and treasured long after the people in its photographs were gone.
"I have an old album from the orphanage," Sister Mary said, her fingers tracing the cover. "Yuuta's childhood photos are in it."
Erza's face did not change. Her hands did not move. Her voice, when she spoke, was as cold as it always was.
"Oh?"
But inside, something wicked stirred. A smile crept onto her face, slow and dangerous, the kind of smile she wore when she was about to win a game no one else knew they were playing.
An album. Photographs. Childhood memories. My dear husband's most embarrassing moments, preserved forever in paper and ink. This is a gift from the heavens.
Sister Mary reached into her bag and pulled out a thick, dusty album. Its cover was worn, its edges soft, its pages yellow with age.
She opened it carefully, reverently, the way someone might open a book of prayers.
Elena, who had been sitting quietly beside Erza, immediately leaned in.
Her eyes were wide, her wings fluttering, her tail curling and uncurling with excitement.
The first page showed a small boy with red eyes, his hair messy, his clothes too big, his smile too wide. He was covered in flour from head to toe, white dust clinging to his eyebrows, his cheeks, his nose.
He was holding a baking tray that was clearly too heavy for him, and half the cookies on it had already fallen to the floor.
Sister Mary laughed. "He wanted to make bread for the younger children.
He said everyone deserved to eat something that was made with love."
Elena giggled, pointing at the photograph. "Papa is so messy!"
Erza did not laugh. She was looking at the boy's eyes.
They were the same as the man's—red, bright, too bright for a world that did not want him.
But in the photograph, they were still hopeful.
They had not yet learned to be afraid.
She turned the page.
There was Yuuta again, this time with singed hair, black marks on his face, a pan in his hand that was smoking so much the photographer must have been coughing.
He looked proud, despite the disaster around him.
Another page. Yuuta slipping down the stairs, his legs flying into the air, his face frozen in a scream, his schoolbooks scattering around him like leaves in autumn.
Another. Yuuta in a school play, dressed as a tree, standing so still that another child had fallen asleep against his trunk.
Another. Yuuta covered in mud after a rainstorm, grinning at the camera, holding a frog that was clearly as surprised as he was.
Elena laughed at every picture. "Papa is so funny, Mama! Look at his face!"
Erza did not answer.
She was looking at the photographs more carefully now, at the spaces around the boy, at the other children who appeared in the frame but never beside him.
In group shots, the other children stood together, their arms linked, their smiles bright. Yuuta stood apart. Always apart. A few feet away, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders hunched, his smile never quite reaching his eyes.
She frowned.
She turned the page.
More photographs.
Yuuta alone.
Yuuta in the garden alone, pulling weeds by himself.
Yuuta in the library, reading by himself.
Yuuta in the courtyard, kicking a ball against a wall, by himself.
There were other children in the background, always in the background, playing together, laughing together, living together. And Yuuta was always at the edge of the frame, watching, waiting, alone.
She looked at Sister Mary.
The woman's smile had faded. Her hand was resting on the open page, her fingers tracing the outline of a small boy who had no one to play with.
"Why is he always alone?" Erza asked. Her voice was not cold. It was not sharp. It was something else, something she did not have a name for.
"Where are the other children? Did he not have any friends?"
Sister Mary was quiet for a moment.
Her blindfolded eyes were fixed on the photograph, on the boy who had tried so hard to be something the world did not want him to be.
"He tried," she said finally. Her voice was soft, careful, the voice of someone who had been carrying this memory for a very long time.
"He tried to talk to them. He tried to play with them. He tried to be their friend. But they—" She stopped. She closed the album gently, her hands pressing against its worn cover. "They avoided him."
Erza's chest tightened. "Why?"
Sister Mary did not answer immediately.
She sat there, her hands on the album, her face turned toward the window where the afternoon light was beginning to fade.
When she spoke again, her voice was the same voice she used when she was telling the children at the church about the things that happened before they were born, the things they needed to remember, the things they could not be allowed to forget.
Sister Mary closed the album.
Her hands were steady, but her voice was not.
"Because they thought he was cursed."
The words hung in the air. The afternoon sun, which had been warm, suddenly felt cold. The shadows, which had been soft, suddenly felt sharp.
Erza looked at Elena, at her daughter's face, at the confusion that was spreading across it, at the questions that were forming behind her eyes.
Cursed.
She looked at the album, at the photographs hidden behind its cover.
Cursed.
Her hands, which had been resting on the table, curled into fists.
"Why?" Her voice was colder than she intended, sharper, the voice she used when she was about to kill something. "Why would they think that?"
Sister Mary sighed. It was a long, slow breath, the breath of someone who had carried something for a very long time and was only now setting it down.
"His Cursed eyes," she said. "His eyes were red. They had never seen anything like them. They did not understand them. And children—children are afraid of what they do not understand."
Sister Mary paused as she was ready to uncover the truth, her fingers tracing the edge of the worn photo album in her lap.
The room was quiet.
The shadows on the floor had grown longer, reaching toward the corners like fingers stretching in sleep, and the warmth that had filled the apartment when they were laughing at Yuuta's childhood photographs had faded into something heavier, something that pressed against Erza's chest like a weight she had not known she was carrying.
She reached for her glass of water, her movements slow, deliberate, without any of the warmth she had shown when she was pointing at photographs of a small boy covered in flour and soot. She drank.
She set the glass down.
She folded her hands in her lap. There was no rush in her, no hesitation, only the careful preparation of someone who was about to speak words that had been waiting to be spoken for a very long time.
"It was several years ago," she began, her voice soft, her blindfolded gaze fixed on a point far beyond the walls of the small apartment, far beyond the city, far beyond anything Erza could see.
"Yuuta was just a small boy then. Playful. Bright. He smiled like pure sunshine—innocent, hopeful, full of the kind of light that children have before the world teaches them to be afraid."
Erza glanced down at Elena. Her daughter was leaning against her side, her small fingers gripping Erza's dress tightly, her face turned toward Sister Mary, her eyes wide and still.
She had been quiet ever since she heard the word cursed.
She had not asked questions.
She had not giggled.
She had simply listened, her small body pressed against her mother's, her hand holding on like she was afraid of what she might hear next.
Sister Mary continued, her voice steady, her words measured, each one placed with the care of someone who had carried them for a very long time. "Many years ago, Yuuta and I came to the church through Father Elijah. He was one of the founding priests of Saint Sharon Michael. He was a good man, a kind man. He took us in when we had nowhere else to go."
She paused, her fingers tightening on the album.
"In the beginning, Yuuta was happy. Playful. Like the other children. I thought maybe this time, he would live his life fully. Maybe this time, he would forget the pain that had followed him for so long. Maybe this time, he would be safe."
Erza listened. She did not speak.
She did not move.
She sat at the small dining table with her daughter pressed against her side and a saint across from her, and she listened to the story of a boy she had been threatening to kill for weeks.
"One day," Sister Mary said, "a wealthy family came to visit the orphanage. The richest family in the country. They wanted to adopt a child. When they saw Yuuta, they were immediately drawn to him. They said he had a light in his eyes that reminded them of a better, purer world. A world they wanted to be part of."
Erza's chest tightened.
She could see it already—the small boy with the red eyes, the boy who had been alone for so long, standing in front of strangers who looked at him like he was something precious, something worth wanting.
"Yuuta was happy." Sister Mary's voice trembled slightly. "He was a child, barely seven years old. He jumped up and down. He clapped his hands. He ran through the orphanage telling everyone he met that he was going to have a family. He packed his tiny bag with his favorite broken toys and a few crayon drawings. For the first time in his life, he felt wanted. He felt loved."
Erza could picture it. A tiny boy with red eyes and a grin too wide for his face, running through halls that had never been kind to him, telling anyone who would listen that he was going to be someone's son.
That he was going to have a mother and a father.
That he was going to be loved.
Her hands, resting on the table, curled into fists.
Sister Mary's voice grew heavier, the lightness that had carried her through the photographs gone, replaced by something that had been buried for a very long time.
"The papers were signed. He was going to become the official son of James Walmart—the owner of the biggest shopping center in the country, a business tycoon, a man who had everything. Yuuta was going to have everything he had ever wanted."
She paused. Her fingers traced the edge of the album, back and forth, back and forth.
"But, Within the hour, disaster struck. The wealthy family faced multiple lawsuits. Their stock prices crashed. Their factories burned without reason. Their bank accounts were frozen. By the end of the day, their mighty tycoon empire had crumbled to the ground."
Erza's eyes widened. Her jaw clenched. She had seen this before, in her own world, in her own kingdom. The way fear spread. The way blame followed. The way people looked for something to blame when the world turned against them and she knew.
"James's wife slapped Yuuta." Sister Mary's voice cracked. "He was a child. He barely understood what was happening. The slap was loud. He cried for an hour. He did not understand why they were angry. He did not understand what he had done wrong. He only knew that he had been chosen, and then he had been thrown away."
Erza's fists tightened. Her nails pressed into her palms. She could imagine it—a small boy, crying, holding his face, watching the people who had promised to love him.
She could imagine the way his red eyes would have looked, wide with confusion, wet with tears, searching for someone to tell him what he had done wrong.
"They blamed Yuuta for all their misfortune," Sister Mary said. "They brought him back to the orphanage. They tore the adoption papers in front of him while he was still crying. They left without looking back."
Erza's heart was pounding. Her chest was tight.
"That was just the beginning," Sister Mary whispered. "After that, word spread. Anyone who considered adopting Yuuta met with similar tragedies. Car accidents. Sudden bankruptcies. Mysterious illnesses. One couple even claimed that a unknown entity was following Yuuta, weeping day and night, and that anyone who touched him would be cursed."
The room was silent. The shadows on the floor seemed darker, longer, as if they were reaching for something. The afternoon sun, which had been so bright, seemed to have withdrawn, as if it too was afraid of what it might touch.
"Soon, the rumors brought disaster to Yuuta's life. He went completely silent for many months. He wept so many times that he collapsed from exhaustion." Sister Mary's voice cracked again, and this time she did not try to hide it.
"He was a child. He was just a child. And he believed them. He believed that he was cursed. He believed that he was the reason bad things happened to people who loved him. He believed that he was dangerous. That he was poison. That he was something that should not exist."
Erza felt something crack inside her.
Sister Mary's hands trembled slightly as she continued, her fingers pressing into the worn cover of the album as if it was the only thing keeping her steady. Her voice, which had been so calm when she was telling the story of the adoption, was softer now, more fragile, as if she was speaking of something that still hurt to remember.
"The other children started avoiding him after that," she said. "The rumors spread quickly—faster than I could stop them. They said he was a demon. They said he had brought the curse upon himself. They said he was the reason bad things happened to good people." She paused, her throat working.
"They refused to play with him. They left him alone at the dining table, surrounded by empty seats while the other children ate together. They pushed him, tripped him, called him names. Sometimes they would corner him in the courtyard and shove him until he fell, and they would stand around him, laughing, while he lay on the ground trying to catch his breath."
Erza's hands curled into fists on the table. Her nails pressed into her palms. She could see it—a small boy with red eyes, alone at a table full of children who would not sit beside him, being shoved until his knees bled, being laughed at while he tried to stand up again.
"They threw holy water on him at night," Sister Mary whispered.
"They believed they were killing a demon. They would sneak into his room while he was sleeping and pour it over him, and he would wake up coughing, gasping, crying. And they would run away, laughing, thinking they had done something good."
Erza's teeth ground together.
The sound was loud in the quiet room, the scrape of enamel against enamel, the tension of a jaw clenched so tight she thought it might shatter.
Holy water.
The words repeated in her mind, cold and sharp.
On a child.
On him.
She had seen the scars. Had traced them with her fingers when she healed him after the night in the field, when her magic knitted his flesh back together and she felt the old wounds beneath, the ones that had healed wrong, the ones that had never been tended. She had not asked then. She had not wanted to know.
Now she knew.
Now she wished she did not.
Sister Mary continued, her voice growing softer, sadder with each word.
"He endured so much. He learned to smile through it. To laugh. To pretend that none of it touched him." Her hands moved to her chest, pressing against her heart.
"But often... often, I found him crying alone in his room. That small, cold room in the back of the orphanage, the one no one else wanted because the window faced the wall and the sun never reached it."
She paused.
"He would be curled in the corner. Knees drawn up to his chest. Trying to make himself smaller. Trying to disappear. And he would be crying—silently, always silently, because he had learned that no one came when he made noise."
Erza's vision blurred at the edges.
She blinked. Forced it clear.
Small. Cold. Alone.
Curled in a corner where no one could see.
Crying without sound because he had learned that no one would come.
"He wanted so little." Sister Mary's voice cracked.
"Just a family. Just someone to love him. Someone to see him as something other than a curse. That was all. A boy who had nothing, who had come from nothing, who had no one—and all he wanted was someone to hold him and tell him he was good."
She wiped at her eyes beneath the blindfold, though the tears seeped through anyway, wetting the white cloth.
"But even the other sisters... the ones who should have known better, the ones who had taken vows to care for the abandoned and the lost... they began to treat him poorly. They ignored him. Pretended he was not there. When he spoke, they looked through him. When he needed help, they turned away."
Her voice dropped.
"And during the plays... the little dramas we performed for the festivals, when the children dressed up and acted out stories from the scriptures..."
She stopped.
"He wanted to play God. Just once. Just to know what it felt like to be seen as good, as holy, as someone worthy of love. But they always made him the devil. Always. Year after year, they dressed him in black, put horns on his head, and told him to crouch and hiss while the other children played angels."
She looked up, her blindfolded eyes somehow finding Erza's face through the cloth.
"And he would do it. He would stand there, in his costume, and smile, and pretend it did not matter. Because he wanted so badly to be part of something. Even if that something was only pretending he was evil."
A lump formed in Erza's throat.
She tried to swallow it. Could not. It sat there, hard and hot, pressing against her windpipe, making it hard to breathe.
She glanced toward the balcony door.
Yuuta was still out there. She could see him through the glass—a dark shape against the morning light, kneeling on the cold stone, his ridiculous posture of apology aimed at the sun. His lips were still moving, still muttering his apologies, still begging forgiveness for sins he had never committed.
This fool.
This stupid, stubborn, impossible fool.
He had endured all of that? Alone? As a child? As a boy who only wanted someone to love him?
The image would not leave her. A small boy curled in a cold room. A small boy dressed in black while other children wore white. A small boy smiling while they threw water on him, pretending they were killing a demon.
She thought of Elena. Thought of anyone ever treating her daughter that way. Thought of what she would do to anyone who tried.
Her fists tightened.
She would burn the world. She would tear it apart stone by stone. She would—
"Sister Mary."
Her voice came out colder than she intended. Harder than she meant. But she could not soften it. Did not want to soften it.
"Just tell me this."
She paused. Let the words settle like stones in still water.
"How did he get the scars on his back? Those marks—like he was tortured, like someone carved into him with something hot and sharp." Her voice dropped. "Did the orphanage do that to him?"
Sister Mary stiffened.
The change was immediate. Her hands stopped trembling. Her breath caught in her chest. Her face, usually so calm, so serene, went very still—the stillness of someone who had been asked a question they had hoped would never come.
"I..." She hesitated. Her fingers pressed together. "I do not know about those scars."
Erza's eyes narrowed.
"The scars were there," Sister Mary continued, her voice careful, measured, wrong. "When he came to us. Before I knew him. They have always been there, from the very first day. I do not know where they came from. I do not know who put them there."
Liar.
The word rose in Erza's mind before she could stop it.
Liar. Liar. Liar.
She saw it in the way Sister Mary's shoulders had tightened. In the way her voice had pitched higher, the way her words came too fast, too precise. In the way she had not asked what scars Erza was talking about—had not questioned, had not hesitated, had known immediately what was being asked.
She knows.
She knows, and she is hiding it.
Something about those scars. Something about where they came from. Something about what happened to him before he arrived at the orphanage, before Sister Mary found him, before anyone knew he existed.
Erza opened her mouth to press further—
Elena burst into tears.
Not quiet tears. Not the soft crying of a child who was sad. Loud, heart-wrenching sobs that filled the room, that echoed off the walls, that made Erza's heart clench so hard she forgot everything else.
"Elena!" Erza pulled her onto her lap, her hands moving before her mind could catch up, her arms wrapping around her daughter's small, shaking body. "What is wrong? What happened?"
Elena clung to her.
Tiny fingers dug into Erza's sleeves. A small face pressed against her chest. The whole body shook with the force of her crying, her breath coming in gasps, her voice breaking on every word.
"Papa did not deserve that!" Her voice was high and broken, raw with a grief she was too young to understand. "All he wanted was love! Why did they blame him?! It is not fair! It is not fair!"
She was crying harder now, her words tumbling over each other, her small chest heaving.
"I hate them! I hate humans! I hate everyone who hurt Papa! I hate them all!"
Sister Mary stiffened.
Her hands folded tighter in her lap. Her face was still, but something flickered behind the blindfold—pain, perhaps. Or guilt. The words of a child, sharp as knives, cutting where they should not.
Erza tightened her hold on Elena.
She rocked her gently, the way she had when Elena was smaller, when the world was too big and too loud and too bright and she needed to be reminded that she was safe. Her hand stroked her daughter's hair, soft and fine, silver as moonlight.
"Hey, hey." Her voice was softer than she had intended. Gentler. "Do not say that. Do not hate. Hate is heavy, little one. It is too heavy for someone so small."
Elena's sobs quieted. Not stopped. But quieted.
"Your Papa is okay now." Erza pressed her lips to Elena's hair. "He has us. He is not alone anymore. He will never be alone again."
Elena sniffled. Her small body still shook, but the desperate edge of her crying had faded, replaced by something softer. More fragile.
"Really?" Her voice was a whisper. A hope too precious to speak loudly. "He is not alone anymore?"
Erza smiled.
It was not her cold smile. Not her cruel smile. Not the smile she wore when she was conquering, or threatening, or reminding the world that she was a queen.
It was something smaller. Something softer. Something that hurt to hold in her chest.
"Yes." She brushed Elena's hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ears. "He is not alone. If you do not believe me—"
She nodded toward the balcony door, where Yuuta still knelt in the sun, muttering his apologies to the sky.
"—go talk to him. Go see for yourself."
Elena looked up.
Her red eyes were wet. Her cheeks were stained with tears. Her lips were still trembling.
But there was hope in her face. Fragile. Trembling. There.
She slipped off Erza's lap.
She ran toward the balcony.
Her small feet pounded against the floor, fast and light, her shadow stretching long behind her in the morning light. She pushed open the door and disappeared into the brightness, into the sun, into the space where her father knelt and waited.
Erza watched her go.
To Be Continue...