Re:Zero The Archbishop of Envy
Prologue
---
The drawing was almost finished.
I had been working on it for an hour, maybe longer. Time moved differently when I was drawing her. The pencil moved across the page with the particular care I gave to everything connected to Satella. Every line considered. Every detail deliberate.
The pose had taken the longest to get right. The way she was looking back over her shoulder. The curve of it. The expression that existed somewhere between gentle and something else entirely. I had restarted it twice before I was satisfied.
I shifted slightly in my chair and the body pillow in my lap shifted with me. Warm and familiar. I had made it myself.
I had made it myself. Badly, probably, by anyone else's standards. It was hers and it was mine and I had slept with it every night for two years without apology.
Around me the desk was covered in the evidence of the last hour. Pencils. Ink. The small careful tools of someone who took this seriously. The medical textbooks were stacked to my left, their spines soft from handling, the largest one hiding the worn paperback I did not need to look at to remember.
I did not need to look at any of it to remember.
I knew every word she had ever said.
I let that sit for a moment.
Then I set down my pencil and looked at the drawing.
It was good. Not perfect. She could never be captured perfectly. But it was good. It was hers. I would add it to the holy scripture when the ink dried.
I set the drawing aside carefully.
I reached for my chocolate and looked toward the window.
Outside the city was doing what it always did at this hour. Existing without permission. I was not really watching it. My eyes were moving toward it without intention the way they sometimes did when I needed somewhere to rest that was not the drawing or the books or the walls of this room.
Then I saw him.
The boy from the convenience store down the street. I did not know his name. I had seen him enough times to recognize him the way you recognize a song you have never learned the title of. He walked out through the glass doors with a white plastic bag swinging from one hand looking like he was having a private argument with the universe.
I watched him until he turned the corner and disappeared.
Something about that felt like nothing in particular. Just a face I recognized going somewhere I did not know.
I raised the chocolate back to my mouth and turned my attention back to the room.
Behind me the medical textbooks sat in their careful towers. I had read all of them. Or rather I had sat in the library and listened while a patient librarian read them to me, one by one, over more visits than I could count. I could not read the words myself. I had never learned. But I had memorized everything that mattered and that was enough.
It had always been enough.
Tucked between the largest anatomy textbook and the wall where my father would not think to look was a worn paperback. Re:Zero. Arc 4. I did not need to take it out. The pages had gone soft at the corners from my hands, from all the times I had held it open while someone else read the words I could not read myself. I had heard that particular section so many times it lived somewhere deeper than memory.
The part where she speaks.
Where Satella speaks.
My friend had shown it to me years ago. Sitting beside me with her laptop open saying just listen to this just this one part and she had read it aloud and something in my chest had cracked open like a window being forced after years of being painted shut.
She had been talking to him. But I had never been able to make myself believe she was only talking to him.
Love yourself more.
I had heard those words on the worst nights. The nights after. When the floor was still cold and everything hurt and the broken lock meant nothing and there was nowhere to go. I had lain there and said them to myself in the dark like something I was trying to remember.
She is talking to me.
I knew she was not. I was not foolish enough to believe a fictional character was speaking directly to me across the pages of a light novel.
But I had needed it to be true badly enough that the distinction had stopped mattering.
She was real to me. That was enough.
That had always been enough.
I was still holding that thought when the door slammed open.
The smell reached me first. Sharp and sour and familiar in the worst possible way. My body knew it before my mind caught up. Shoulders tightening. Breath going shallow. The particular stillness of something that has learned to make itself small.
I turned.
My father said nothing at first. He never needed to. Words were just accessories to him. Optional.
The first hit took me off the chair. I hit the floor. The chocolate slipped from my fingers and hit the ground somewhere nearby.
"I'm sorry," I said.
His foot connected with my ribs. The same ribs as last time. They had not finished healing.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
I curled inward the way I had learned. The way my body did automatically now without being asked. Make yourself small. Make yourself a smaller target. It does not help but it is something to do.
"I'm sorry. I'm a bad girl. I'm sorry."
Another kick. Then another.
"She died because of you."
He said it the way you say the weather is cold. A simple fact requiring no particular emphasis. Something everyone already knew.
"I'm sorry. I'm a bad girl. I'm sorry."
Another kick. Then another after that. This was not unusual. This was just Tuesday. This was just the apartment. This was just my father and the smell and the broken lock that had never been fixed because fixing it would have required someone to care.
She died because of you.
"I'm sorry. I'm a bad girl. I'm sorry. I'm a bad girl."
I knew he was right. I had always known he was right. My mother had stood between me and him one night when I was very small and after that she was not there anymore and I was and the math of that was very simple.
She had protected me. And it had cost everything.
And here I was. Still on floors. Still sorry. Still bad.
The words stopped meaning anything after a while. They were just sounds. The right sounds in the right order. I had learned that very young.
At some point the sounds stopped mattering and there was only the floor cold against my cheek.
Somewhere nearby the chocolate bar was sitting on the floorboards. I could see it from where I was. Still in its wrapper. Still good probably.
I'm sorry. I'm a bad girl. I'm sorry. I'm a bad girl. I'm sor—
And then nothing.
And then something.
Warmth.
Arms around me.
The floor was gone.
I was not on the floor anymore.
Something was warm.
That was the first thing I understood. Warmth. All around me. Holding me.
The second thing I understood was that the floor was not cold anymore. There was no floor. There was no apartment. There was no smell of alcohol and the particular silence that came before.
I opened my eyes.
Darkness. Endless and deep and somehow not frightening. Like the darkness inside a closed hand rather than the darkness of something empty.
And arms.
There were arms around me.
I looked up.
The face above me was one I knew better than any face in the world including my own. I had traced its outline in my memory so many times it had worn smooth. The white hair. The features that existed somewhere between gentle and devastating.
I knew this face.
I was dreaming. I was unconscious on my apartment floor and my father was probably still in the room and I was dreaming because my brain was doing what brains do when the body is in pain. Inventing comfort. Manufacturing the one thing it wanted most.
That was all this was.
Then she spoke.
"You are a good girl."
Her voice.
Her actual voice.
Not words on a page. Not something I had read so many times they had stopped being words and become something else. Her voice. Real and present and directed at no one in the entire world except me.
"You are safe now."
I could not move.
"Everything is going to be okay."
Something was happening to my face. Something wet. I raised one hand and touched my cheek. Looked at my fingers. Understood distantly that I was crying. I could not remember deciding to. It was simply happening the way breathing happens.
She was real.
Satella was real. She was holding me. The words coming out of her mouth were not meant for him or anyone else in any world.
They were meant for me.
Only for me.
I had told myself for years that they were meant for me even though I had known they were not. I had needed that small lie badly enough that I had kept it carefully, polished it, protected it.
And now it was not a lie. It simply was not.
The crying was not quiet. It was not dignified. It was the kind of crying that comes from somewhere very deep and very old and has been waiting a very long time for permission.
I pressed my face into her and cried. She held me. Said nothing more. Did not need to.
At some point the crying slowed.
I became aware of myself again. Of my hands. Of the warmth still surrounding me. Of the darkness of this place that felt like the inside of something rather than the outside.
I thought about what I was.
About the broken lock and the cold floor and the words I had said in the right order for so many years they had lost all meaning. About the medical textbooks I had listened to in the library over and over until I understood what was wrong with my body. About the worn paperback hidden behind the anatomy book that I had taken out on the worst nights.
About what all of that had made me.
Satella's arms were still around me and I had only one thought left.
Ah.
I really am broken.
The pleasure of it moved through me like something coming home.
Like something that had been screaming inside me for years went suddenly and perfectly silent.
Like putting down something unbearably heavy and realizing with complete certainty that I would never have to pick it up again.
I had never felt anything like it in my entire life.
It was still moving through me when Satella's arms loosened slowly.
She straightened.
I was on my knees.
I had been on my knees the entire time without realizing it. And she had bent down. The holy goddess Satella had bent herself down to reach me where I was. Had folded herself toward the floor of the shadow garden to put her arms around something as small and broken as me.
She had bent down for me.
The thought moved through me like something I did not have a name for yet and was not going to examine too closely.
The darkness of the shadow garden settled around us both like something breathing. I stayed where I was on my knees. Breathed. Did not look at her face yet. I was not ready to.
Then I heard the faint sound of paper.
I looked up and my stomach dropped before I even fully understood what I was seeing.
Satella had something in her hands. A piece of paper. She was studying it with her head tilted slightly to one side.
The drawing.
The one I had been working on when the door slammed open. It must have come with me when she summoned me. Lying on the shadow garden floor where I had landed and she had simply reached down and picked it up without thinking.
She was looking at a drawing of herself.
The outfit was black and left very little to the imagination. Her entire lower half was almost completely exposed, the fabric covering so little it seemed more suggestion than clothing, her legs entirely bare. She was looking back over her shoulder at the viewer with an expression that existed somewhere between gentle and something else entirely. The pose drew attention to exactly the parts of her that the outfit was failing to conceal.
It was very detailed. I had spent an hour on it and it showed.
She tilted her head the other way.
Then very slowly, with the particular focus of someone trying to understand something through direct experience, she turned slightly and looked back over her own shoulder replicating the angle in the drawing with a small concentrated frown.
My face felt warm.
She was. Even confused. Even with that small concentrated frown. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and right now she was also inexplicably the most endearing thing I had ever seen and I did not know what to do with either of those facts so I simply sat there on my knees with a pink face and said nothing.
She held the pose.
And then something changed on her face.
It clicked.
I watched it happen. The slight widening of the eyes. The realization moving through her expression like something she had not been prepared for.
Her face went very pink.
For one moment she simply stood there with that expression.
Then she turned back around immediately.
She held the drawing out to me at arm's length. She was not looking at it. She was not looking at me. Her gaze was directed at a point somewhere in the middle distance. Her expression was doing something I did not have a word for.
I took it from her carefully.
Neither of us said anything.
The shadow garden held its silence around us like it was keeping a secret.
I folded the drawing and tucked it inside my holy scripture where it belonged.
The quiet sat between us for a moment longer.
Then I reached into my pocket. The chocolate bar was still there. Still in its wrapper. Still good.
I held it out to her.
"Thank you," I said. "My goddess."
Something shifted in her expression. Surprise. Quiet and genuine. Like the title had caught her off guard in a way she had not expected.
She said nothing about it.
She simply looked at me for a moment with those eyes. Then she reached out and took the chocolate bar gently. Slipped it into the pocket of her dress like it was the most natural thing in the world.
My face felt very warm. I was aware of it in a way I could not explain and did not want to examine too closely. Something that lived in my chest that had no name I was willing to give it.
I looked down at my hands.
She looked at me for a long moment.
"I need your help," she said.
I looked up.
"There is someone precious to me," she continued. Her voice was gentle but underneath it was something vast and old and aching. "My beloved. I cannot reach him the way I need to. I cannot protect him the way he needs. But you can."
She raised one hand.
"I will give you a part of my authority. I do not know what form it will take when it reaches you. That is not something I can control."
She was offering me her power.
My holy goddess was looking down at me on my knees in the darkness and offering me a piece of herself.
I did not hesitate.
"Yes," I said.
Satella is truly a goddess.
I thought it and it was not enough. The words were not enough. There were no words that were enough for what she was or what she had just done or the fact that she was standing in front of me right now in this darkness asking me for something. The holy goddess Satella. Real. Present. Looking at me. Choosing me for something.
Her beloved. She had a beloved and she wanted me to protect him and I would. I would burn every world that had ever existed before I let anything happen to someone she loved. I would do it with everything I had and everything I was and everything I would ever be and when that was not enough I would find more.
I would not fail her.
Then something occurred to me.
"My goddess," I said carefully.
She looked at me.
"My chocolate. I have a warehouse. Could you. Would it be possible to." I stopped. Reconsidered. "Please."
Something moved across her face that might have been amusement.
"Yes," she said simply.
Something warm moved through my chest that had nothing to do with her authority.
Then her hand touched me. The warmth became everything. The darkness became white. The white became nothing. One last thought about broken things and goddesses and chocolate and—
---
I opened my eyes.
Blue sky.
Stone streets.
The sound of a city that had never heard of convenience stores or medical textbooks or broken locks.
I was somewhere else entirely.
I was in her world.
End of Prologue