Prologue 6—They Deny God

2002 Summer

Something was very wrong with this church.

A group of several dozen strangely dressed people were assembled in a round room.

They were old and young, men and women; even their races were different. The gathering was quite diverse. You might expect to find any one of them at an ordinary Sunday service, if it weren’t for the strange aura around them.

Everyone present, adults and children, was dressed in the same way.

The actual type of clothing varied, but it was clear from a glance that they belonged in the same category. All the garments had the same odd design in red and black. The young men’s jackets, the women’s dresses, the children’s pullovers, and the old men’s robes were all covered in the same two colors.

All the lights were turned off, but the moonlight streaming in from an overhead skylight illuminated the place more brightly than one would have expected.

This room was perfectly silent except for the sound of breathing, and here—

—everyone stood around an empty altar. The strange, round fixture was positioned in the center of the room.

They didn’t pray, and they didn’t kneel. They just stood there silently, at ease.

Then, when the moonlight was nearly at its brightest—

—the door at the back of the room opened, and several men and women appeared, accompanied by about a dozen children.

At first glance, the man at the head of the group looked like a research student who’d snuck out of a lab. The moonlight reflecting off his glasses hid the color of the eyes behind them. He held a large bundle of loose documents under his arm, and there were several ballpoint pens in his breast pocket.

He was the very picture of a researcher, except for one thing.

His “lab coat” wasn’t white.

An odd pattern in red and black covered every inch of the fabric, as if it had laid waste to an ordinary lab coat.

“Hiya! Sorry to be late! That last boss was tougher than I expected. Had to hit Continue five times!”

With that, the mood was shattered, and the man walked over in front of the altar with a clownish grin.

“Still, you know how it is with these modern shooters! The bullets like fireworks around you, the thrill of dodging and weaving among them—it’s exhilarating! Just for that moment, you rule the world! It’s magnificent. A toast to the technical skills of the Japanese developers, who have made toast of yours truly,” the man rambled, placing the bundle of paper on the altar. Perhaps he was talking to the group, or perhaps he was merely talking to himself.

The children who’d come in with him dispersed to stand in a ring around the room, and a few adults lined up beside the man.

Two young women stood on his left and right, and two odd-looking men stood on either side of this group.

One was a big man who resembled a gorilla, while the other man wore a black suit and had bandages wound around his face. The bandaged man in particular was eerie in a way that made bizarre a better descriptor for him than odd. The bandages themselves were stained with the same red and black as the people around him; in fact, it was questionable whether they were even bandages at all.

His face and neck were completely hidden, and he was wearing bright-red leather gloves.

It wasn’t possible to tell the man’s age or race, and he made the already creepy scene even more uncomfortable…

But the young man in the red-and-black lab coat didn’t seem to care, and in fact he seemed completely unconcerned. “Okay, okay, okay, quiet down! Quiet! Wait, I guess I’m the only one talking. Beg your pardon, folks! I’m a really shy person, and this is… Well, you know? Standing here with all of you makes me terribly, terribly nervous! …So there’s no way around that, really.”

He adjusted his glasses and looked around, but he didn’t make eye contact with anybody. Despite his rather foolish grin, his gaze was darting around through empty space in a patently dubious way.

“Besides, uh, you know what I mean. We have someone new with us today—a woman. Problem is, I really can’t talk to women, truly… So, uh, let’s have a round of applause! Everybody, clap! Give it up for our new friend, Miss Lucotte!” the young man cried in an attempt to disguise his nervousness.

He held out his hand to a young woman standing among this odd group.

She was dressed in an outfit with the same colored design as the lab coat. As she took an embarrassed step forward, she thought to herself:

What the hell is this?

The thought was full of confusion and contempt.

One month previously Somewhere in Europe

Celice Artia was an employee at a detective agency, and her fate was decided the moment her boss—whom she hardly ever saw—tapped her on the shoulder.

“You want me to infiltrate them for a report…sir?” she asked, confused.

“Yep,” he answered casually. “It’s a mildly problematic religious group with some characteristics distinctly similar to those of a cult that was active in the past.”

None of this was unusual.

For the right price, this detective agency would conduct fairly risky investigations that were kept separate from its usual business.

They had probed into the seamier areas of various societies before, including the occasional background check of mafiosi and politicians using illegal methods. Celice herself had made contact with various criminals and gangs of thieves.

Her work had brought her to religious groups a few times as well, and it wasn’t as if she’d never felt that her life was in danger.

However, this was the first time she’d heard a job referred to as “infiltration.”

Naturally, there were other employees who did that sort of thing, but she couldn’t understand why this job had come to her.

Even as those thoughts ran through her head, Celice asked her supervisor about the details.

“A cult from the past… How long ago are we talking?”

“A good while. Just about three centuries.”

“Huh?”

“Way back when—I dunno exactly where it started; I think Spain or Portugal—this group of religious weirdos was scattered all over Europe. It was more an ideology than a religion, really… Anyway, now there’s a new sect cropping up with the same mind-set. God knows why now, of all times. All the details are in here, so take a look.” With that, Celice’s boss held a single CD-ROM out to her. “Give it a skim, then decide whether you’ll take the job. I can’t force you to pick this one up.” Once he’d said his piece, he left.

She gazed at the CD-ROM uncertainly for a little while, but eventually, she realized she’d never get anywhere if she didn’t at least look at it.

And so she loaded the data into her computer and opened it.

As a result, she ended up inside that peculiar church.

What is this? Some kind of joke?

The religious group was called SAMPLE.

It was a ridiculous name, in her opinion.

According to what she knew, this sect was descended from another that had been found all across Europe several hundred years ago. That ideology hadn’t been widespread; it was more of a localized collection of isolated groups here and there.

She didn’t know whether those scattered units had been in contact with one another. One thing was clear, however: At one time, there had been untold numbers of them, and then, in the blink of an eye, that number had plunged.

During the infamous witch hunts, they had been true heretics.

They hadn’t split off from some larger religion; apparently, they’d had their own completely independent doctrine and faith.

Still, they would have been considered blasphemous not just in the eyes of the largest, most prosperous religion in that area but probably by most regions and religious denominations around the world.

Child murder.

Of all the customs condemned as heresy the world over, theirs was no doubt the most heretical.

Yes, the sacred books of a few religions did include child sacrifice, but in the case of SAMPLE, the word sacrifice didn’t hold quite the right nuance.

When she’d seen the passage about the deliberate abuse of children for faith-based reasons, she’d initially assumed it was some sort of sacrificial act, but apparently, that wasn’t the case.

The children’s blood and souls weren’t offered up to a god, or to nature, or to any sort of higher power.

It was written that they had offered “pain” to the children and treated their screams—or their deaths—as an object of worship.

She hadn’t understood what it meant. What sort of beliefs could lead to such behavior?

Even stranger, the reason for inflicting that pain wasn’t clearly defined.

Its significance seemed to change depending on the specific subsect, and some of the remaining records had described groups whose ideology had been more like magic, the polar opposite of faith: “If you eat the flesh of a child, you will become immortal.”

Over a period from the end of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, the church had sent out its chivalric order and destroyed a certain country’s particular sect, which was considered to be the most influential.

The philosophy behind that group’s child-killings had been “Making them shoulder all the misfortune in the world.”

As an idea, it wasn’t something she couldn’t understand in the first place, but she couldn’t fathom acting on it in an era when the witch hunts were almost over.

That said, fanatical groups were responsible for all kinds of incidents, even in the present.

Maybe they’d chosen the deviant course of sacrificing their own children because they’d lost sight of what was around them.

Of course, it was probably deviant only as far as her own sensibilities were concerned; within their community, it had been normal.

Still…that faith has been resurrected in the present? What’s going on?

When she read through more of the data, she learned that the group seemed to spontaneously well up from time to time, even today. According to one theory, there might have been a main organization that had existed all along, with factions that showed up in mainstream society every now and then.

Was the organization she was infiltrating the main one, or a faction, or a group that had simply seen and copied past records?

She had to admit she’d been curious about that.

However, her main reason for accepting the job had been the enormous reward listed on the job order.

There was also the fact that it all seemed very unreal, and she hadn’t been as wary of the group as she should have been.

…And so she had acquired the official identity of a stranger named Lucotte and flown to another country to infiltrate the religious group in question.

The request itself was a simple one: After the clients’ son had joined that religion, he had started contacting them less and less frequently. Something seemed odd, so they wanted Celice’s company to look into it.

In cases like this, since the individual had made a voluntary decision, it was hard for the police to take action unless there was a clear crime. They’d requested an infiltration to find out whether the group was doing anything criminal.

With a record like this, you’d think the police would’ve cracked down on them a long time ago.

The group’s own doctrine embraced child abuse and murder. Technically, she thought it was weird that it hadn’t been broken up already, but she managed to accept the fact after thinking about it for a while.

Well, if they said all that was three hundred years in the past, I guess even the police wouldn’t cross-examine them about it.

In addition, there were no signs that they were actually kidnapping children; they seemed less harmful than a gathering that played at devil worship as a hobby.

The data she’d received from her boss had contained almost no information about this present organization; they didn’t seem to be living communally, and they had no restrictions on time or location.

They really do seem like a group of hobbyists.

With some chagrin, Celice had made contact with the group—

—but there were a few things she hadn’t noticed.

The intelligence in the data file she’d received from her boss was factual—but she didn’t know he’d obtained it from a dedicated information broker. Nor that this person could obtain intel that wasn’t ordinarily in open circulation…and that the file fell into that category.

From the fact that the group had no restrictions regarding time or place and the fact that they hadn’t been marked by the police, she’d mistakenly assumed that the people around them knew.

If she’d done some checking around on the Internet, she probably would have realized.

Both the general public and the police were almost entirely unaware of the organization’s existence.

Even the clients, who were the young man’s parents, probably didn’t know about the religion’s past or its origins.

The perfection of the data had made her careless; none of this should ever have seen the light of day.

In other words, the information broker her company had used had been too good.

There was also one miscalculation that had nothing to do with her:

Her boss had been stingy with the broker’s fee.

As a result—the broker hadn’t included any “deeper” information in the data.

The deepest, most vital information…

“Even today, that group is extremely dangerous. If you don’t want to ruin your life, you must not get involved with them.”

Information that could have changed Celice’s fate.

And so, with no way of knowing any of this, Celice—who was pretending to be someone named Lucotte—gave an incredibly reluctant internal sigh.

Is this literally a children’s club?

She’d managed to contact them with startling ease. They’d initially asked her, “Who told you about this organization?” but that was all; they hadn’t truly interrogated her or been wary of her at all.

And now, three days after she’d made contact, they’d said they’d introduce her to the religion’s founder.

I swear—this is going so well, it’s frightening. With a group this soft, infiltrating them is a piece of cake.

Even as she scoffed inwardly, Celice spoke respectfully to the young man in front of her.

“Yes…I’m pleased to share the same faith as the rest of you.”

“Oh, no, no! Don’t be so stiff! There’s no need for such formality here. Just act however you like!” The bespectacled young man smiled awkwardly.

At the moment, he seemed to be the one in charge. Regardless, to all appearances, he was nothing but an uninspiring researcher. The black-and-red design only appeared as a contrived attempt to look tough, one that actually made him seem less reliable.

I can’t imagine that this guy is the founder… I suppose he might be a caretaker.

The big, inhuman, gorilla-like man and the man with the bandages concerned her, but at this stage, the organization still seemed like a club of eccentrics to her. Maybe they were like a group of fans who had been influenced by a self-proclaimed devil-worshipping rock star.

If they had had the enthusiasm and fanaticism of such a group, it would have been frightening, but what the bespectacled young man said had only disturbed the mood a little.

It really does feel as if it began from some sort of university club.

Although…it does seem odd to find children and mature adults here as well.

Even as she got the very minor sense that something wasn’t quite right, the man with glasses continued in a detached way, averting his eyes.

“So, uh, you see, I hear Miss Lucotte Diaz has lived in England since she was a child, and her hobby is baking cookies. I’m looking forward to having her bake some for us, aren’t you?! Ha-ha.”

He laughed, attempting to lighten the mood, but since he wasn’t making eye contact with anyone, it had absolutely no effect.

“Uh, I mean, it’s not that I can’t bake cookies myself or anything. It’s just that, you know, making them for other people to eat is scary. What if they hate them and stop being your friend? Oh, uh, the thing is, what I’m trying to say is, well, um… Oh, right. I’m introducing Miss Lucotte. Ha-ha.” The second forced laugh did nothing to brighten the mood.

This guy is pathetic, Celice mentally sneered, but she kept listening without letting the emotion show on her face.

“Ha…ha-ha… Ahem. Uh, so, well, you know how it is; she’s…”

If this was how it was going to be, this job would probably be an easy one. She’d report that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, sniff out a few of their weaknesses just in case, and that would be that.

Internally, Celice chuckled to herself, but—

—the next moment, both her inner smile and her actual expression froze simultaneously.

“She’s… Ah, right! She’s a Hillrom University grad! That’s a good school, you know! I’m incredibly jealous; my school was bottom of the barrel.”

Huh?

She forced herself to break out of the ice freezing her thoughts, but it happened again.

Huh?

She kept trying to think, but the only thought that would form was confusion.

Hillrom University wasn’t in the paperwork for Lucotte Diaz.

It was the university Celice herself had gone to.

“After graduating from university, I hear she joined the St. Crystelle Firm right away. She successfully completed various jobs, both open and private, earning the trust of the company. That’s really splendid! Trust has a value that can’t be exchanged for any form of money.”

Her heart was racing—more like sprinting at this point.

It was leaping so violently she thought it might burst.

The St. Crystelle Firm was the name of the detective agency where she actually worked.

The false self she’d built up, acquiring a stranger’s official identity and personal history, even a fake passport…

They know…about all of it?

She wanted to think it wasn’t possible.

She didn’t want to believe it.

As a professional with one foot on the wrong side of the law, she’d been self-assured.

A group of patent amateurs like this one really couldn’t have found her out.

After all, if they had, she was doomed before she’d even begun.

Suddenly, she felt like throwing up.

Sweat broke out all over her body, then instantly evaporated, chilling her skin. She couldn’t sense anything from the outside; the only feeling in her brain was her own subtle trembling.

However, her expression still remained neutral.

He had to be trying to trap her into an admission.

That simplistic wish let her stand her ground, one step away from the brink.

“What are you talking ab—?”

Pretending to be calm, Celice tried to put him off the track, but sadly, her attempt ended in vain.

After all, the bespectacled man wasn’t listening to her anymore—he hadn’t been listening to her in the first place. He had no intention of listening to her after this, either.

“On top of that! She came here from that detective agency, all by herself, to infiltrate and investigate our group! Talk about brave. She didn’t even know what she was getting into! Give her a hand, everybody! Let’s give her a sincere round of applause!”

The next moment, the confused woman was bombarded with admiring, envious applause.

What?

She had absolutely no idea what was going on.

She didn’t understand what was happening or why she was being applauded.

But the people around her kept clapping, and she was still confused.

“Oh…” The sound escaped her involuntarily. She didn’t even know what she’d been trying to say.

What is this?

What kind of joke is this?

She was beginning to feel as if she’d stepped into a world where nothing made sense. Maybe she’d wandered into Wonderland, like Alice. It was as if she’d been abruptly invited to a house party by people she’d met right then, and all she could do was stand there in silence and watch events unfold around her.

“Oh, that’s right! We were going to introduce you to our founder today, weren’t we?! Let’s take care of that now. Except, uh, you already have. In a way. Hi.”

“……Huh?”

“Ooh, ouch! ‘Huh?’ she says! Yikes. I knew it: Humans are scarier than anything else! I got a ‘Huh?’ from a person I just met… Well, it doesn’t matter. Whether you believe it or not, I’m Bride, the forty-third founder of SAMPLE. It’s great to meet you.”

“…”

Celice’s mask of calm finally crumbled before this man calling himself Bride.

She gazed at him, her face a mixture of fear and doubt. He looked like a gloomy researcher and nothing more. He didn’t have a shred of charisma—hardly the kind of man people would trust to lead them.

“Calling myself the forty-third ‘founder’ may not make all that much sense to you, but what it really means is ‘the progenitor of the teachings.’ We don’t have blind faith in a single human being; we believe in our sacred book, as it should be. We can keep the same faith, even if our founder changes. At the same time, our canon is still incomplete. Thus, even if someone new takes the position, they are a founder and originator who continues to create our doctrine. Which means—” Muttering in a low voice, Bride shuffled around the bundle of loose-leaf paper on the altar.

The papers were densely covered in small writing, while the later sheets were blank and white. When she looked closer, she noticed that the first section was parchment or something like it, and that the paper gradually got newer down the stack.

“—I suppose you could say this sacred book is our true object of worship,” he murmured. “Carrying it around has gotten to be kind of a hassle lately, so we’ve been batting around the idea of digitizing it. What do you think? Our sect has been around for over three hundred years, but in some respects, we’re rather modern. That said, bigger and older religions than ours have been making full use of modern conveniences for a good long time now. Makes me jealous.”

Celice couldn’t understand what he was saying.

A sacred text on loose-leaf paper? And some of it’s blank?

And to top it off…you’re telling me this awkward, insecure nerd is actually the leader?

Various questions whirled inside her, and she opened her mouth to say something, but she had so many questions, she didn’t know which to ask first or even how to string the words together in her head.

Then Bride smiled, clapped his hands together, and drove the final nail into the coffin of her reasoning.

“Okay. Starting now, I’ll become the founder for a bit!”

“…?”

“My thanks to civilization,” said Bride, gazing up at the ceiling. He slowly extended his hands to either side.

Each of the two young women flanking him placed an object in one of his hands.

Syringes?

They were indeed syringes, the type used for ordinary vaccinations. They appeared to be filled with a clear fluid of some sort, and together they might have been about three ounces.

The man skillfully tapped the air bubbles out of the syringes, and then—

—he plunged them into both sides of his neck simultaneously.

“!” Celice gave a wordless scream.

However, the bespectacled man was unperturbed. Slowly, he pushed in the plungers. “Oh, no need to worry. It’s just a glucose solution,” he said quietly with an unreadable smile. “You see, uh, unless my brain is saturated with sugar, I can’t fully perform my role as the founder.”

The muscles of his neck moved slightly as he spoke, and the syringes shifted with them.

Before she could even worry about the risks of that, the injection was complete. He withdrew the empty syringes from his neck and gave them to the women who stood beside him.

“…”

Without a word, the man briskly turned around and returned to the altar. He removed his glasses.

Celice looked at him as he stood, still facing away from her.

…She realized the mood had changed completely.

“Ohhh… Ooooooooh…”

With a sigh that sounded like a groan, Bride bent backward, and the sound of all his joints cracking reached her clearly.

“OouuaaaaaAAaaAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAaaaah…”

The groan became something like a scream, and as it ended, time came to a stop around her.

She felt a chill; the air was oddly cold and heavy.

The actual temperature hadn’t changed as far as she could tell. No one had turned the air-conditioning up or down. It wasn’t physically cold.

The air was simply, genuinely icy.

When she looked, the smiles had disappeared from the faces around her. Their expressions weren’t tense, but the eyes of children and adults alike were akin to an emotionless abyss.

I blew it.

That was when it finally hit her.

I screwed up. I made the wrong choice!

She never should have come here.

The people before her weren’t here for mindless fun, and they were nothing like a university club. They had something that clearly set them apart from the rest of the world.

Setting down his glasses, the man slowly turned around.

“Allow me to greet you again… It’s good to meet you.”

His smile was pleasant, but the depths of his eyes held no emotion, as if dark, dull glass beads had been set into his skull.

“Eep…!” A scream escaped Celice. Everything was feeling less and less real.

The individual who’d turned around was that awkward young man from before, she was sure. He’d merely taken off his glasses.

Somehow he was a totally different person.

The change was so complete, one might suspect a split personality, but it was nothing of the sort. The man’s brain had simply been fully nourished with glucose.

“Let me welcome you, she who was once Celice Artia, she who is now Lucotte Diaz.”

This was a different person, though, or so she wanted to believe.

People snap in an instant and lose their minds. His transformation was of a similar type.

It was as if the uncertain young man of a moment before had been pulverized and reconfigured into a new shape. After such a great change, one might wonder at how much a pair of glasses could change someone’s appearance.

It was like a scrambled Rubik’s Cube had instantly snapped back to its default configuration, so clear you could almost hear the click.

With a mere two injections, less than three ounces of glucose solution, the man was now complete.

No, it was more than the man—the world around them might as well have been replaced.

The emotion that assailed her was less fear and more anxiety. The unease of being instantly transported to an alien world.

Existential dread roiled inside Celice, as if everything she’d ever been was falling away.

The world around her kept spinning in its own unique time, leaving her behind.

“Now…let us sing.” Bride smoothly spread both hands. His eyes were already closed.

He was talking less, and even as excitement seemed to buzz all through him, down to the ends of his capillaries, he sounded far more collected than he had a few moments ago.

There was no longer anything heartwarming about the believers around him. Their tension was based not in anxiety or fear, but in respect.

What’s…about to happen? Celice wondered as their world left her behind, but the man ignored her and waved both of his outstretched arms like a conductor.

And then—

The answer lies within us. Fear death.

“““The answer lies within us. Fear death.”””

A monotone canon echoed through the church.

The world lies within them. Dread life.

“““The world lies within them. Dread life.”””

It didn’t come from the believers.

Fear death. Fear death. Dread life. Dread life.

“““Fear death. Fear death. Dread life. Dread life.”””

The children who had entered with Bride and the others a moment ago stood by the walls, singing in clear voices. They were less than ten years old.

Your own flesh accepts death. Your own heart wishes for death.

“““Your own flesh accepts death. Your own heart wishes for death.

Yet still you live, O noble goats.

Yet still you live, O noble goats.”””

When she looked closer, each of the children wore headphones over their ears—and every one of them was blindfolded. Their sight had been taken away, and if any sound was playing, they wouldn’t be able to hear the outside world.

They could sense nothing around them but what smell and touch could tell.

And still the boys and girls continued singing the tuneless song in beautiful voices.

Quell the soul that is to be devoured. Worship pain.

“““Quell the soul that is to be devoured. Worship pain.

We affirm our god Who does not exist.

We affirm our god Who does not exist.”””

She couldn’t detect any emotion in the children’s voices, but somehow, the sound was like a scream—and she was certain.

That’s exactly what they are. Those are the screams of the children.

What was playing through those headphones? She was far away, and she had no way of knowing.

When she looked closely at the boys and girls, she noticed that their hands were behind them.

A glance at their feet revealed sturdy-looking shackles, which suggested their hands had received the same treatment.

Taking another look at the children, she saw that something seemed very wrong, and then she realized why.

Their clothes didn’t have the red-and-black design on them; instead, the cloth was a white so startlingly pure one might imagine it was made of fine snow or swan feathers.

The cut of the garments was simple, yet they exuded a sense of airy beauty.

If that was all you looked at, the children seemed like angels—those classic religious figures—or the heavenly maidens and fairies that appeared in folktales the world over.

However, the much more practical physical restraints undercut that illusion.

The bound children simply continued to sing.

Their song held none of their own emotions, carried on impassive screams.

Bride moved his hands in an elegant, flowing manner, directing that unsettling “song.”

The children were little more than speakers, there to be his voice now that he’d grown quiet.

Death is a neighbor to be feared.

“““Death is a neighbor to be feared.

Life is kin to be dreaded.

Life is kin to be dreaded.

Our god

Our god

departs from within us

departs from within us

and returns to oblivion.

and returns to oblivion.

Agony abides with light,

Agony abides with light,

fury and shame dwell in shadow.

fury and shame dwell in shadow.

In their illustrious presence,

In their illustrious presence,

I simply consume a single leaf from the garden.

I simply consume a single leaf from the garden.

Fear god.

Fear god.

Fear thyself.

Fear thyself.

The acts of pity—

The acts of pity—”””

Don’t… Stop it.

The wave of singing voices undulated like a snake, coiling slimily and sickeningly around Celice’s heart, then squeezing it violently.

What’s wrong with them…? This is insane; this can’t be right.

The abnormality was clear, and their malice was palpable.

The believers who stood between Bride and the children were listening to the song in rapture and ecstasy.

Finally, Bride lowered his hands in a smooth motion, and the singing voices broke off neatly.

And Celice saw it.

The smile of the conductor held unmistakable happiness. The expression surpassed delight and pleasure to become pure euphoria.

Slowly, Bride covered his face with his hands and chuckled, lowering his head.

To Celice, every single move he made was unpleasant and terribly creepy.

At the same time, she understood:

This stomach-turning room had her life completely in its power.

What a horrifying joke.

They had caused her no pain.

They hadn’t taken her family or a loved one hostage.

They hadn’t forced her to witness an atrocity.

Even so, this place was unbearably disturbing.

She understood nothing but the hopeless truth that she should never have come here.

Her eyes were fixed on the something that had abruptly arrived in this room a moment ago.

It was neither a god nor a devil, just a human. And that was why Bride, whatever he was, made her blood run cold.

The anxiety crawling on her skin threatened to swell into terror, and the peculiarity around them became a formless grotesquerie.

Bride walked through the stagnant air toward Celice again, smiling quietly.

“Now, as for what we’ll do with you…Lucotte.”

Even the way the man spoke had changed, and his words made Celice tremble in spite of herself. She had completely succumbed.

Bride addressed her in a solemn voice. “You will marry me.”

“Aah…! …?”

“Don’t worry; it won’t be for long. Once I’ve found my true heart’s desire, I’ll divorce you, then kill you gently.”

“…?” She felt as if something vital had been stripped from her.

Marriage was a word she hadn’t even been able to imagine from the mood here. The threat of death that came afterward was less surprising.

Then, before Celice could get her emotions in order—

—a dizzying whirlwind of changes blew through, changes even more unimaginable…

There was a percussive roar, and Celice’s nearly blank mind woke up.

At the same time, the doors of the cramped church flew open—and several men forced their way in.

What?! What now?!

They appeared to be either Southeast Asians or darker-skinned East Asians. The tan, black-haired men were shouting something angrily in a language Celice couldn’t begin to understand.

However, what concerned her more than their words was what they held in their hands.

There seemed to be seven or eight intruders in all. One of them held an enormous machete that looked to be half his own height, while about half of the rest held smaller blades. The final three or so gripped small, gleaming, black handguns.

“Eek…!”

With an involuntary shriek, Celice retreated to the far wall and crouched down.

Meanwhile, Bride and the rest of the group remained perfectly calm. They only turned, slowly and silently, to look at the men.

At first, the men just kept yelling, but when they saw that the group inside wasn’t responding, they gradually lowered their voices and exchanged looks.

They seemed to have no intention of putting their weapons away, though, and one of the men with a gun was sweeping it back and forth as if searching for someone to shoot.

“Wait… This can’t be real…”

“Oh, they aren’t part of us.” Standing beside the shivering Celice, Bride smiled quietly. “We ended up having a little trouble the other day. We’re both foreigners in this country, and we would have preferred to get along with them, but… It’s a pity.”

Shaking his head regretfully, Bride slowly resumed his smile, and then—

—as founder, he issued an order to the silent believers around him.

“All right, everyone. If nothing changes, these men will kill us all. How truly dreadful.”

Wearing an innocent, saintlike smile—one that held neither ill will nor desire—he said:

“I don’t want to die, so before they can do anything—”

Thirty minutes later

What followed was a perverse and hideous sight.

However, it would be about a month before Celice’s mind managed to process it completely.

Right now, she was simply trembling, like a soulless shell with vacant eyes.

Bride, now wearing his glasses again, put an arm around Celice’s shoulders and slowly drew her toward the church’s exit.

Holding the stunned woman close, he glanced away and began muttering to himself, the charismatic aura from a moment ago already gone. “Official paperwork aside, we’re man and wife as far as our doctrine is concerned, so, um, let’s get along and all that.”

“…”

Celice had temporarily become a shell of herself; it wasn’t even certain whether she was conscious.

Bride kept talking to her anyway, beginning with a bit of a non sequitur. “You see, our doctrine doesn’t condemn desire.” With a glance, he signaled the two women who were walking beside them and had them bring out several photographs. “So, you know, I want everything I want. That’s how humans should be. Um, so, what I’m getting at is… Well, erm, Miss Lucotte, once I get together with one of my first choices, we’ll divorce, and someone—probably me—will silence you. So I thought maybe you’d have an easier time dying if you knew a little more about my first choices. Ha-ha.” The remark probably would have infuriated Celice if her mind had been present.

He showed Celice a few photos. The first one was of a silver-haired woman with an ethereal sort of beauty.

“This is Miss Sylvie. Pretty, isn’t she? Makes your heart beat a little faster. She’s much, much, much older than me, so I’m nervous about that as well.”

He turned that photo over, and the next one showed a rather sickly-looking girl.

“And this is the next candidate. She’s younger than me… Apparently, she calls herself Illness. Odd name. She was a priestess with ancient, honorable origins from another branch, but that entire branch was massacred. Still, I guess that name could work, technically—”

Along with his meaningless commentary, the man flipped over one photograph after another. These showed men of various ethnicities.

An Asian man with narrow eyes.

A dark-skinned man who wore a peculiar mask.

A young man with a carefree smile.

A black-haired, golden-eyed youth with an intelligent expression; a tall man with glasses; a gaunt, whiskered man—all the different people were beginning to run together.

“These fellows are male, so they aren’t candidate wives. According to our doctrine, though, they’re living gods, so we have to safeguard them carefully.”

Then he plucked out one photograph in particular.

“Oh, right,” he said happily. “This one, this child. He’s the one! In a way, he’s even more important than the wives.”

“…”

“He really ticks all the boxes! I’m sure this boy would become a magnificent god for us! Um, his name was… That’s right, Czeslaw! It’s Czeslaw Meyer, or so I’m told!”

Bride opened the door of the car waiting for him outside the church and laid Celice—still stunned and immobile—down on its back seat.

Behind him stood the man whose face was completely hidden by red-and-black bandages.

“Oh, leaving already?” Bride asked. “…Okay. In that case, I’ll see you on the ocean next.”

In response to the oddly candid remark, the bandaged man nodded silently, then climbed into the backseat of a different car. The car pulled away.

Watching the black car leave a little ahead of his own, the “founder” quietly looked around.

The believers had already changed clothes by the time they’d left the building. They filtered back toward their homes and lives, dressed like anyone else.

As he saw them off, the young founder gave himself a quiet pep talk.

“Now, then… The next mass will be the first big one in a very long time. I was starting to worry about whether I could run it on my own, but… It’ll be all right. I can do it. If anyone can do it, it’s me. If it’s me… Hmm… Well, I’ll pin my hopes on the power of glucose.” Smirking at himself, he climbed into the back seat and spoke to the woman driving. “Okay, take us to Orihara’s. I have to return the key to the building. It sounds as though he’ll dispose of the bodies for us for free, so I need to thank him for that in person.”

As the car began to move, he turned his eyes to the skyscraper district outside. Gazing at a building in the distance that was larger than the rest—the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building—he smiled.

“This is a lovely country, isn’t it? It has such a wealth of arcades.

“…I hope the shipboard mass is as fun as a video game.”