Chapter 81: Cult.

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Translated and Edited by: luccayn.

Common Honorifics:
-san: A polite suffix, but not excessively formal.
-kun: A common suffix among friends and younger people.
-chan: A common suffix among people you're close with, mostly used for feminine nicknames and girls, since it's cutesy and childlike.
-senpai: A common suffix and noun used to address or refer to one's older or more senior colleagues in a school, workplace, dojo, or sports club.

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Michiru’s POV

When I became aware of myself, I was in a church.

White walls, a blue triangular roof topped with a cross, a main hall with a small pipe organ, and two rows of wooden benches. It was a church with a simple Gothic style—exactly the kind of place that comes to mind when someone who knows nothing about religion hears the word “church.”

My mother was a nun. Apparently, after being abandoned by my father, the shock caused her to suffer a mental breakdown. In her despair, she wandered the streets holding me, still a baby, when someone approached her and she converted.

As a small child, watching her devotion, I thought that if she could dedicate herself so deeply, then God must truly exist. I was proud of how she always worked so hard for others, tirelessly and diligently.

Besides, I didn't feel lonely even without a father, because there were other single-mother children who had come seeking refuge in the same way. More than anything, the priest was kind, so I never felt starved for a father's love.

He always praised me and even taught me how to study. Learning something meant discovering how much I didn't know. Every time I encountered a new mystery, it felt like the world expanded—and that made me happy.

“Michiru, do your best.”

That was one day after I became an elementary school student.

I had been given a solo part in the choir, and I practiced every day, desperately and earnestly. But it felt worthwhile. I worked hard to sing louder than anyone else. I worked hard to sing more beautifully than anyone else.

I sang and sang, but it never felt painful. Looking back now, I think I was born with that kind of talent. The talent to not find effort painful. Not that it was fun, but it never became a burden.

A talent that allows me to do what needs to be done for a purpose without hesitation. I think I was born with that kind of trait.

While I was singing like that, I saw my mother and the priest talking in the courtyard, visible from the hall. When I looked away from the sister playing accompaniment on the pipe organ and turned to them, the priest suddenly shoved his face under my mother's veil.

At that moment, I think they were probably kissing. I'd seen the priest kiss nuns in the courtyard or behind the church several times before, so I assumed my mother was also receiving some kind of ceremonial blessing.

But once I learned how to read books, I realized there was a contradiction in those kisses. And once I realized it, I couldn't suppress my curiosity.

So I asked the priest with clumsy words.

“Father, aren't you and Mama going against God's teachings?”

…He spewed ugly words.

He said those actions were not in defiance of purity, that they were not betrayals of God, and that religion was not being used as a personal tool. He tried to silence my young mind with tedious words that anyone with understanding would know were wrong.

“I see.”

By the time I finished reading the Bible, I had begun to question the very purpose of this church's existence. I wanted to know why the priest, a religious leader, would betray the God who had saved my mother.

“Believe. Those who believe will be saved.”

In other words, my mother had been tripped at the foot.

I finally understood why I didn't have a father. My mother must have been foolish. If she had been a bit more normal—diligent and earnest—and lived an ordinary life while dating a normal man, she would've surely been happy. She was just foolish, and because of that, she stumbled slightly into the wrong direction in this precariously balanced world.

Then what was the reason she hadn't fallen in the opposite direction? Why hadn't God led my serious and hard-working mother to ordinary happiness? Why, even though she believed in God, did my father never come back for her? Why was luck not aligned with ethical righteousness?

…I suddenly became afraid of the church.

And at the same time, I began to wonder what existed outside the church. It was the first time I turned my eyes to the world beyond. Even on the day I turned ten, I still didn't know anything about the outside, because my school was a missionary institution connected to the church.

However, as time passed and I became the choir leader, I was bound by responsibility and unable to move freely. Even as a child, I understood that our singing was helping the local community, and I knew it also contributed to the church's finances.

If I stopped singing, the children here might suffer misfortune. I hated that thought, and it prevented me from asking the priest or my mother about the truth behind everything.

“Michiru-chan. You'll be going through the ceremony soon too, right?”

That was said by Chisato-chan, a girl a year older than me, after Sunday mass.

“Ceremony?”

“Yeah, when a girl turns twelve, she offers herself to the priest.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don't offer your v*rginity to the priest, you can't become pure.”

That's a lie.

There's no such thing written in the Bible. First of all, the idea of offering something to a priest goes against the teachings of our religion entirely. The one we believe in is God, not a person—so all believers should fundamentally be equal.

And yet, being told we must offer ourselves to the priest is a contradiction. Chisato-chan's words solidified my distrust of the church into something closer to certainty.

“That's wrong.”

“But if you don't do it, you'll have to go out into the outside world. A world where your mom suffered something terrible. That world can only bring unhappiness.”

In short, that was the method the priest used to brainwash the children. If you don't offer yourself, your mother will suffer again. We'll all end up unhappy anyway. That's how he bound our minds and thoroughly eradicated any thought of rebellion.

…It's painfully ironic that the reason I was able to notice that malice was because I read the Bible.

But even so, I couldn't bring myself to resist. By then, I already hated the priest, but my mother seemed to revere him. And if it was something everyone else was doing, it felt wrong to deny it based on personal feelings.

No matter how much I doubted, the fear of the outside world still outweighed it. On that point, I was the same as everyone else. I was just scared. I didn't even know everything within the church, let alone what would happen if I stepped outside.

…My twelfth birthday. Until that child came to the church.

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T/N: As a Christian myself, it’s disgusting to see people trying to use the Bible as ammo to do heinous things. Absolutely disgusting.

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