"P-please... please don't do this..." The Saintess's voice was pitiful... mournful and weak... almost a prayer.
Lyudmila gently pushed at the girl's hand, but... Su Yuzu held Lyudmila firmly under her control.
Lyudmila's Favorability, as high as 73 points, had already made it difficult for the Saintess to muster any will to resist when facing Su Yuzu.
What was more... because of the long-standing incursions of that unknown Goddess, Lyudmila naturally harbored a kind of dread toward Su Yuzu.
And now... it was once again a moment when Lyudmila's faith was being violently shaken by Su Yuzu.
Add to that the blindfold veiling Lyudmila's vision.
Lyudmila was practically routed by Su Yuzu, her defenses scattered in utter defeat.
"I don't understand—" She couldn't push Su Yuzu's hand away; if anything... Yuzu-senpai seemed to grip tighter and tighter.
Lyudmila wanted to resist, yet the will to resist dissolved into a sorrowful, feeble voice before it could even rise.
"I don't understand what Senpai is talking about."
"I believe... that what I hear... is the voice of the divine Lord."
"Doesn't a deity stand behind Senpai as well?"
"Senpai..."
"Senpai—" The Saintess's whimpering voice was almost a sob. Unable to push away Su Yuzu's hand, she could only let her own rest lightly against Su Yuzu's wrist.
To a bystander, it almost looked as though Lyudmila were the one pressing Su Yuzu's hand to herself, feeling her own heartbeat through it.
"Doesn't Senpai, too, always make use of that deity's power... to bring down Blessings."
"To toy with me... with us?" Lyudmila felt she could barely even keep herself standing; had Su Yuzu not propped her against the stairwell wall, Lyudmila truly would have slumped straight to the floor.
Su Yuzu gazed at the whimpering girl before her.
She could feel it clearly.
Within the body of the Saintess before her, some kind of power was brewing, sublimating, and seething.
That power... possessed a majesty equal to the evil beast concealed beneath her own chest.
Sensing how far Lyudmila's soft, strengthless body was gradually sliding down the wall, Su Yuzu gently gathered her into her arms; the hand that had been gripping the Saintess's wrist now lightly encircled the Saintess's slender waist—a waist without a trace of excess flesh.
A well-trained girl's waist—slender, with a pronounced hollow at the small of the back, the muscles soft yet springy—was something utterly different from the waist of a girl slender merely out of frailty.
Su Yuzu held Lyudmila gently, bringing her cheek right up to the Saintess's ear.
She could plainly feel the trembling of the girl in her arms—that faint resistance, as if half-refusing and half-yielding. To a wicked person like Su Yuzu, such feeble resistance only made her all the more intrigued.
At the same time—
She also sensed the power hidden beneath Lyudmila's body—that majestic power, slowly stirring awake.
Fully bearing up Lyudmila's body, Su Yuzu murmured beside the Saintess's ear.
"Student Lyudmila's birthday..."
"was one week ago—"
"isn't that right."
"Yes." After her tentative resistance just now had come to nothing, Lyudmila had utterly lost the will to resist.
Her violently shaken faith made her subconsciously listen, intently, to the voice of the girl before her.
Lyudmila, being the Saintess, was no fool.
On the contrary—
She had already realized just what kind of anomaly she was: she, who could hear the voice of a deity, within the Holy Royal Court that worshipped human courage, human tenacity, and human sacrifice.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"Because..."
"Because..." Lyudmila tried to tilt her head aside, to put a little distance between herself and the girl's face.
It was too close.
Yuzu-senpai... Su Yuzu-senpai... was pressed far too close.
With both her eyes veiled by the blindfold, that closeness bore down on Lyudmila until she could scarcely even breathe.
"By the doctrine of the Holy Royal Court..."
"a birthday is a thing that holds no meaning for me."
Su Yuzu tilted her head, then suddenly broke into a smile. "Then... does Student Lyudmila know what day it was, one week before seventeen years ago... no, eighteen years ago?"
The very tip of Lyudmila's heart trembled all at once, and Su Yuzu could plainly feel, in her own palm, the girl's tremor.
"Student Lyudmila already knows... doesn't she?"
"It was when Lord Saint Michael snapped off her own wings, sacrificed her own Word of Command, and intercepted Kujou Iruka—and thereafter... became but a single notch upon the scale of history."
Lyudmila pressed her lips together, tight and unmoving.
"That... that still doesn't prove..."
"Shhh—" Su Yuzu's raised index finger pressed against the girl's lips. She lifted her knee, and almost the whole of Lyudmila's weight came to rest upon Su Yuzu's leg.
The Saintess's breath caught in her throat.
Su Yuzu sensed the Saintess's held breath, sensed the Saintess's wildly racing heartbeat. With her brows and eyes lowered, smiling, her intimate manner gave the impression that she was about to press a kiss to the Saintess's neck.
"Does Student Lyudmila know—"
"Every time I..."
"Mmm~~~" Su Yuzu smiled softly and gently, leaning close to Lyudmila's ear. "That wicked deity behind me—"
"each time she bestows a Blessing upon Student Lyudmila,"
"the power and radiance with which Lord Saint Michael shrouds the skies above the city is weakened by one degree."
Su Yuzu could feel Lyudmila's helpless resistance and trembling, could feel the girl's quivering heart and wavering faith.
"How could that be..."
"When Student Lyudmila finally let down her guard around me—"
"the power and radiance left behind by Lord Saint Michael finally developed a fatal breach."
"And so one Aberrant after another... finally found their chance to slip in through the gap, infiltrating the Tokyo metropolitan area."
Lyudmila looked up, dumbstruck.
Su Yuzu gently pulled down the blindfold that had covered the Saintess's eyes. The girl's eye sockets already seemed red and swollen, and the brimming tears had long since spilled over.
"It's not true."
"Yuzu-senpai..."
"It's wrong..."
Su Yuzu licked away the girl's tears.
The Saintess's dazed, muddled mind kept replaying each time... each time that wicked Goddess descended a Blessing upon her, and her own resistance in those moments.
Recalling—
each time a Blessing was sent down upon her, the deity's voice within her heart growing ever more sorrowful and faint.
Her faith... collapsed.
So that was it... the divine Lord's gradually weakening, vanishing voice had not been because her own faith was being crushed.
But rather because the will of the divine Lord... of Lord Michael, was likewise being eroded by the power of that Blessing?
Was it... like that?
Su Yuzu watched the girl on the verge of breaking down, and wondered whether she had gone a little too far.
If... she had not laid the truth bare—
Lyudmila might well have gone on living as she was: deceived... living out her life as a Saintess favored by a deity.
Until one day—
Saint Michael's power would utterly collapse.
Saint Michael's voice... would vanish completely from the depths of her heart.
"It's not like this."
"Yuzu-senpai, tell me it's not like this..."
"My divine Lord... my divine Lord..."
"Tell me it's not like this." The girl, her faith seemingly disintegrated and crumbled to ruin, helplessly clutched at Su Yuzu's wrist.
In her heart, she cried out her grief to her deity.
[Aah——]
Su Yuzu seemed to hear the girl's sorrowful sigh.
The whimpering girl raised her head, her expression having suddenly turned resolute and yet detached.
Brilliant golden eyes opened, and in their gorgeous depths it seemed flames of light were flowing.
With a complicated expression, she looked at the Su Yuzu before her.
"Why..."
"Why did you have to expose it."
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