CH 5.3

I had been thinking a lot, but I suddenly wondered.

The place I was in was very deep in the back alley visited by bad guys who want to violate women. It was a place where ordinary people didn’t even know about it, moreover, it was a place where a cardinal of the Temple wouldn’t step in. But Yohan was standing in front of me. He was casting a shadow over me and looking down at me.

There was only one thing it meant.

The thrill, the thrill of joy, rushed from the tip of my toes. I smiled broadly at the person I loved.

“Did you come to see me?”

“… Young Lady Rivero. I’m going to call the guard, so wait here until… No, let me look at your wound.”

Yohan covered my body with his clothes and healed my wounds with divine power. The wound on my head as the branch broke, the small wounds from struggling, and the wounds from getting hit as I resisted disappeared like snow melting without a scar. But the blood on the ground and the blood on the clothes proved that I was hurt. It was just like the wound given by Yohan on my last day in the basement that won’t heal.

Yohan unusually didn’t hide his feelings in front of me. He got angry.

“Do you lose your sense of danger if you go crazy? Why did you step into such a dangerous place?”

“How did you get to this dirty place?”

“Not everyone living in the back alley is as shameless as those people. It’s also my job to take care of my poor and marginalized neighbors.”

Yohan’s hand, which healed the wound, moved away from me. I grabbed the leaving hand and said,

“Lie. You knew I was here and you came to save me, right? I know everything.”

He didn’t shake my hand and looked at me with a calm eye. He was angry. With me, with himself, with the vagrants, at his own shadow that covered me, at the blood I spilled on the floor, at the wounds I made to meet him. At the whole world. And he said to me,

“You are really out of your mind.”

“You don’t have to fool me. I know everything. Your heart, your anguish, your worries. Everything.”

“You always put me to the test.”

Yohan was angry. Yohan’s hand moved to his chest and grabbed something with his clothes. It was a locket he always wore around his neck. Yohan showed intent to kill. I think it was hard to bear the murder intent to the vagrants who made me look like this.

“You are very honest.”

“That’s my strength.”

“You threw everything away for love.”

“Because I love you. Because I know. Because I know it’s not a one-way emotion, but mutual.”

“When I look at you, I sometimes think that everything I’m worried about is insignificant.”

“Don’t worry about it. Choose the happier one.”

“My happiness is fixed. If you are happy, I’m happy, too. If people are happy, I’m happy, too.”

“But I’m not happy right now?”

“Young Lady Rivero.”

He let out a long sigh and told me.

“You can enjoy the ordinary happiness of marrying a good person and having children. Then there’s nothing else I want.”

“I can never be happy if that person is not you.”

“Even if you don’t love him, you can have affection for him and you can be happy.”

“Is that how it works for you? I’m not. I, I can’t be happy unless I’m with you. I can’t be happy. I can’t laugh. Yohan! Don’t fool me anymore!”

His Holiness was in a bad condition and I was getting married. I thought that was the last chance to convince him. He kept denying and refusing to admit his love for me. Or maybe because he loves me, he was trying to give up on me for my ordinary happiness as he said. But my happiness wasn’t like that. It was never my happiness.

Because my happiness is to live in love with the person I love.

“You can just act. You can just lie. I’m sure everyone will get fooled. The Holy God probably fell for it, too. Maybe your heart was fooled, too. But I. It might work with anyone else, but you can’t fool this Tite Rivero.”

The sun was completely down. The twilight had gone and the star appeared. Yohan stared at me as unmoved as he did the moment he found me before I was raped. His lips opened small and his eyes shook. I cried out desperately.

“Yohan loves Tite Rivero! Because that’s the unchanging truth!”

Yohan’s face was distorted. He raised his hand like he was about to slap me in the face. He wouldn’t do that, though, you see. But all of a sudden, his movement stopped. At the same time, a shooting star fell from the sky leaving a long tail behind. Yohan changed his face to a blank expression as if he had never distorted his face like that before he looked up at the sky and said.

“His Holiness has just passed away…”

It was a sad story. I prayed for the Holy Father’s soul to be in the arms of the Holy God. When I opened my eyes after praying, Yohan was a step away from me. His face was as calm as ever. He looked sad at the same time. So I asked the obvious question.

“Will you be Pope?”

“Yes, I will.”