“Go this way. Prayer classroom first!”
Pero did not hesitate at all. He immediately grabbed the young nun’s hand, lowered his body, and moved quickly through the corridor thick with smoke.
His vision was gradually being covered. Pero could only gather a little airflow to blow the flames and smoke aside, but he did not dare make it too violent, because that would only make the fire burn faster and fiercer.
As for controlling wind pressure to extinguish the flames... maybe he could have done that several years ago, but now, he had long since lost that much strength.
Fortunately, Pero was very familiar with this place. He knew that after just one more corner and one more corridor, they would reach the prayer classroom.
The matron should be there. Pero, who often “crossed swords” with the matron, knew she was actually not a weak nun. Faced with this kind of situation, she should have some way.
“We’re almost there. We’re almost at the prayer classroom. My sister and the matron are both waiting there. Don’t worry. Don’t worry...”
Pero was still comforting the nun behind him, enough to make people forget that he was even younger than the young nun.
That corner was right before his eyes.
But just then, with a creak, a crisp snapping sound rang out from somewhere in the thick smoke. It came so suddenly that Pero had no chance to react at all.
A large section of the ceiling collapsed, dragging burning planks and beams down with it. Pero’s pupils shrank. As he silently cried that this was bad, he instinctively tried to use his frail wind magic again.
No good. Completely useless.
His magic was far too weak now. At a time like this, it could not do even the slightest thing.
Pero fell into despair...
“Hm?”
He suddenly felt his body fly up from where he stood. The violent feeling of weightlessness even overwhelmed his fear.
He whipped his head around and saw that it was the nun behind him who had shoved him away.
“Miss Nun!”
“Go.”
The nun tried to support herself with Holy Light that had already grown dim, but she could not even hold out for two seconds. A large mass of burning wreckage crashed down on her, burying her completely inside it.
Only less than half of her body was left outside, likewise gradually being eaten away by the flames. With little sputtering sounds, her pale flesh was burned bit by bit, like pork skin blistering and bursting with oil over a roasting fire.
“You... why did you save me?”
Pero’s eyes widened.
The nun had clearly noticed the danger before he had. On top of that, she still had Holy Light she could barely use. Logically, as long as she ignored him, the nun could have survived. And yet...
“Cough, cough...”
The young nun raised half her face, already burned into charcoal, and forced a difficult smile.
“Don’t look at me like this... I’m actually a faithful believer of the Goddess too. How could I just sit and watch someone be in danger right in front of me and do nothing? If I did that... I wouldn’t be able to return to the Goddess’s embrace, would I?”
“But...”
Some familiar scene suddenly surfaced before Pero’s eyes. A tremendous sadness abruptly appeared in his chest, even though he was not very familiar with the nun before him at all.
At the same time, a certain self-blame and regret enveloped him, making him unwilling to accept this strangely familiar ending. He gritted his teeth and tried to claw away those burning planks, only to be blocked by flames that burned even more fiercely.
“Run.”
The young nun was still smiling as she urged him.
“As for the Goddess’s embrace, I don’t really want to share it with anyone for now.”
“Th... thank you.”
Knowing that he had absolutely no ability to save Miss Nun now, no matter how painful it was, Pero could only give up in despair, turn around, and keep running...
One short corner. Half a corridor.
Yet Pero felt as if he had run for a very, very long time, through a very, very long distance... until he had thrown behind him the sound of burning flesh and the girl’s painful groans.
“Pero!”
Pero suddenly felt himself grabbed by a large hand. He lifted his head and found that it was the matron, who was glaring at him with a furious face.
“You little brat, why are you still running around at a time like this? Do you have any idea how worried you made me and your sister?”
“I... I’m sorry.”
Pero opened his mouth. He felt like he had many, many things to say, but a certain sense of déjà vu surfaced, and in the end, he only gave the palest excuse.
“I... I went to get something...”
“What could be more important than your life? Hurry. Go hide in the corner!”
The matron clearly had no time now to deal with Pero’s disobedience. She threw him directly to the side, while she immediately cast magic to seal the doorway where the flames were surging.
Pero mechanically followed the matron’s instructions and went to the corner of the room. This was precisely the prayer classroom they had agreed on earlier.
It was the largest classroom in the entire welfare home. All the children of the welfare home gathered here for activities.
Pero still remembered that when he first came here, the welcoming party had been held here.
And now, this place seemed to have become a cage, once again locking all the children of the welfare home inside...
Once again?
“Damn it.”
Pero suddenly clutched his head and crouched down. “What exactly is going on? Why does this scene... look so familiar to me...”
This classroom filled with terror should clearly be something he was seeing for the first time.
“Did you find a way out?”
“No! It seems like someone outside is attacking. We can’t get out!”
“What about magic to resist the fire?”
“We’re using it, but... our magic is almost...”
The anxious voices of the matron... and the other nuns echoed through the classroom. The temperature inside the classroom grew higher and higher. Outside the thin door panels, the shadows of leaping flames could already be seen clearly.
Several nuns tried to rush out and search for a path to survival, but after a few screams, all sound from them vanished.
What wandered outside was not only fire. Pero was very clear on that point.
“Sister.”
Pero found Aviva. This girl, who was always calm no matter what she encountered and had even comforted Pero in return while carrying a terminal illness herself, was trembling at this moment too.
She had just received a new life, only for it to be about to end abruptly here. The fear inside that was naturally far more terrifying than facing a death she had already expected.
The feeling of gaining something only to lose it again was more frightening than death itself.
“It’s okay, Sister.”
Pero embraced his sister, just like his sister had once pulled that filthy version of him out of the sewer.
“We’ll be okay, because someone will definitely come save us... right?”
It should have been comforting, utterly certain reassurance.
But for some reason, there was a trace of uncertainty in Pero’s words.
The flames churned. Wails gradually rose. Those images in his mind once again rolled uncontrollably.
Everything before his eyes grew more and more familiar.
Like a replay, that despair which could not be rewritten descended once again.
“Is that it?”
Pero took the two brand-new bills out from his chest and clenched them tightly in his palm, but he could no longer feel the warmth from before.
“Was all of this just my own wishful thinking?”
After all, how could there be someone who always appeared suddenly at the moment of his greatest danger to save him?
Again and again, without ever tiring?
A savior?
No. There was no savior in this world.
In the end, someone weak like him, someone who only knew how to flee, did not even have the right to have his prayers answered.
“I’m sorry, Sister. I’m sorry...”
Pero hugged his sister and closed his eyes in despair.
Waiting for death.
...Only even he himself did not notice that, even like this, his hand still tightly gripped... that fragile thing.
...
...
“Huh? Wh... what’s going on?”
At the other end of the classroom, the matron, who was using the last of her strength to drive back the flames and trying to find a sliver of life for the children, suddenly cried out in surprise.
Because the flames... had changed color.
“This fire... why is it starting to turn black?”
Black?
Had the matron finally gone insane? How could flames possibly be bla...
“Hm?”
Pero still opened his eyes.
Because he had also suddenly discovered that the scorching temperature around him was returning to normal at an extremely fast speed.
Even the smoke and dust had disappeared.
The air was no longer poisonous. Those children who had already fainted actually let out tiny cries.
“What exactly is...”
Pero lifted his head blankly, and then... saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.
Flames rose into the air.
But they were not scarlet-orange, blazing, dazzling flames.
They were... black, profound, silent black flames.
Those black flames devoured the ordinary flames and smoke at incredible speed, then gradually rose into the sky and, not far away, gathered into...
A black sun.
Beneath the black sun, a blond man stood quietly. A faint breeze stirred the hem of his clothes, like a hero about to save the world, walking over amid hymns filling the heavens.
“Sorry.”
The savior split apart flame and death, and said softly,
“I’m late.”
