Chapter 33

“Normally, there shouldn’t be any reason for someone else to enter the room where the defendant and the saint candidate are alone.”

If anyone were to come in, it would only be a single person accompanying the saint candidate, Anna. However, that didn’t mean anyone was forbidden from entering.

If either of them had said they hoped no one would overhear their conversation, the Church would have taken that request seriously, but no such request had ever been made.

And so, the fact that another saint candidate, Sophie, overheard the conversation while coming to retrieve Anna was simply unavoidable.

Then, there was the fact that she ended up numbly listening to that conversation.

Choi Soo-bin, appointed as the lawyer of evil, was supposed to be Anna’s loyal ally. After all, the role of the evil lawyer is to scrutinize the qualifications of those who are candidates for sainthood, and therefore, their job is to catch and present even the smallest flaw in the candidates.

This time, however, the saint candidate Anna claimed that she has no faith and doesn’t believe in God, which should have made this verification process uniquely easy…

But at least the current atmosphere wasn’t flowing that way.

“So, let’s think of it this way, Anna.”

Soo-bin was persistently trying to persuade Anna for some reason, while Anna was rigidly refuting everything with a stiff expression.

“Your powers might not actually belong to you.”

“To begin with, they aren’t actually mine…”

Anna acknowledged Soo-bin’s point but still maintained her stiff expression.

“Uh… So, whenever you try to heal people, that power is perhaps just being manifested through you…”

“Yes, that’s right. The being above is exercising its power through me.”

“Uh, Anna, the conversation hasn’t really progressed, but doesn’t what you’re trying to say ultimately suggest that there is a God up there?”

“No, I just can’t be sure that the being above is God.”

Even as Anna denied the term “God,” she didn’t entirely deny the existence of that higher being. Rather, she looked perplexed as if she couldn’t understand why they were even having this conversation, as though it were strange not to grasp such common sense.

Sophie found Anna’s remarks intriguing.

After all, Anna had spoken about such things directly to Sophie before. In fact, at that time, Sophie had seriously contemplated whether she should report Anna to the Inquisition. It seemed odd that the Cardinal hadn’t immediately forwarded the letter to a trial.

Yet, curiously enough, this unique nun who outright denied the concept of God spoke with an attitude that seemed entirely unashamed of what she was saying.

“The concept of God varies from person to person, doesn’t it?”

Soo-bin cautiously remarked, noting that Anna’s demeanor was somewhat stiff but still unwilling to back down from her stance.

“Therefore, honestly, not being omniscient or omnipotent, the existing entities under the concept of God include various beings. The gods of Greco-Roman mythology are gods, and so are the gods of Egyptian mythology. Even the being referred to as a ghost in the East is a god.”

“Yes, exactly. So I see the very term ‘god’ as meaningless. What significance is there in calling the being above as ‘God’?”

“Uh…”

“For instance, if we say that the being above actually exists… once many people acknowledge it, then, the gods that were previous no longer remain as ‘gods’. Even now, if we tell someone to believe in the gods from other myths as true gods, very few would be willing to believe it. There might be people who think that their worshiped gods have finally descended in that form.”

For some reason, upon hearing that, Maria—whom Anna called ‘Ria’, perhaps as a nickname—who had been silently standing there with her arms crossed, let out a soft chuckle.

Anna slightly glared at Maria but calmly continued to make her point.

“Therefore, the concept of ‘God’ is a word that can be completely denied, right? Even if it seems that many are being helped now, what if a situation arises in the distant future where that very concept can be refuted? Would they then strip the term ‘God’ down to the position of ghosts, or would they simply drop the term altogether?”

Sophie blinked.

Previously, she had been outraged at what seemed to be an outright denial of everything she believed in, and prior to that, she had somewhat despised the fact that someone aspiring to be a saint actually denied God.

But now, while listening to Anna’s words, for some reason, it felt as though Anna had been talking about something ‘different’ right from the start.

“From my perspective, the concept of ‘God’ isn’t fundamentally a universal concept. It’s much like the concept of vegetables and fruits—where in one country, tomatoes are considered vegetables, in another, they are classified as fruits, and in yet another, neither. If we were to define that being above, we ought to classify it with a much more objective concept rather than calling it ‘God’.”

“Hmm, but it seems your words still don’t entirely deny that being, Anna. Doesn’t what you’re saying merely seem like a profession of faith?”

“So, I can’t help but wonder about what exactly I’m ‘believing’ in.”

“So, you’re talking about that sacred being above, right? According to you, it might not even be considered ‘God’. “

“Uh, that’s a bit different. I don’t ‘believe’ that something exists above. I ‘know’ it exists.”

Blip.

Sophie blinked once.

Maria, who was a bit away, caught the slightly dazed expression on Sophie’s face and exchanged a glance with her. Maria shrugged, as if to say, ‘Just look at that.’

“When we’re walking along and encounter a stone, we don’t express that we ‘believe’ it’s there. It’s just there. Seeing a lightning bolt in the sky doesn’t mean we believe it’s striking; it’s simply striking, right?”

So Anna was saying that the being above certainly exists. She merely didn’t want to call that being ‘God’, because the term ‘God’ is too unstable, a term that can vanish at any moment.

“Hmm.”

At that sound, Sophie turned to look, startled, realizing that the Cardinal had entered the room. It just dawned on her that she hadn’t fully closed the door. Had the sounds slipped out through the crack?

A few priests following the Cardinal also entered the room, intrigued by the ongoing discussion.

The topic had subtly shifted away from where it was moments ago.

“In the end, being there makes good and evil irrelevant. Is the power that heals people inherently good? We know very well that the ‘power to heal’ isn’t categorically good or evil even before using the saint power to heal people. In nature, flies and maggots can be vectors of disease and are often associated with decay, although their characteristics can be utilized for medicinal purposes.”

“……”

“Therefore, saint power is the same. It’s merely a power to heal people. It isn’t my power to begin with.”

“So, Anna, are you denying all the accomplishments you may have made up to now?”

“At least about that point, we both agreed from the start, didn’t we? In that position, I haven’t achieved much of anything. I was just flitting around, unable to handle that power, being alongside others. You can’t call that an accomplishment. There are really people who fight at the risk of their lives, right? For the safety of others.”

Anna said that without changing her expression.

“If we’re talking about those who took risks, Ria here is much more remarkable than I am. The one who truly wielded a sword and fought was Ria, and that’s why I was able to survive.”

“Huh!?”

At that statement, Maria finally showed a slight look of surprise but quickly composed herself when she noticed the people nearby. However, her gaze was already upon Maria. Perhaps feeling shy, her face turned slightly red.

“Well, I understand why you’d like to call it ‘God’. Seeing the power that can heal what medical science couldn’t, allowing someone to live without impairment after losing arms and legs, can lead one to think of that being above as a benevolent entity and thus believe that it will continue to help in the future.”

Anna spoke in a calm voice.

“But in the end, isn’t it just about believing in the power? If I can be helped, would one not believe that a being capable of harming me is also a God? After all, people in the past believed that smallpox was a God. They feared it, calling it ‘Mama’. Some beings from the apocalypse can be seen as gods in some respects.”

The room fell completely silent, but it seemed Anna was oblivious to it.

“So, yes, to be honest, I’m not really sure what the current concept of ‘God’ that people speak of exactly indicates. Are they calling the white light that heals their injuries ‘God’? Or are they simply referring to the being that exists above as ‘God’? I think if one wants to claim that the concept of God exists, they must align their definitions of existence, which is what I believe.”

Having heard that, Sophie quickly looked around.

And she was convinced.

The Cardinal was looking at Anna, the nun standing right in front of him, with completely different eyes than when he first met her.

It seemed that Anna had been contemplating the existence of God for a long time.

Perhaps through that contemplation, she had finally come to hold some certainty about that existence?

Because of this, maybe she had been able to understand God better than others, and thus was able to invoke such abilities?

“…Alright.”

With a somewhat stiff expression, Soo-bin opened her mouth.

“I realize we aren’t looking at the same place at all. Then….”

Soo-bin lightly exhaled.

“So, what should we call that being? Based on what you’ve said, Anna, that is, assuming it exists at all. We need some means to refer to it.”

At those words, Anna finally broke into a bright smile.

Everyone’s gaze shifted to her, and they all held their breath waiting for her next words—

Finally, Anna spoke.

“First, we need to establish a proper scientific name.”

As she answered, she lightly brushed her hands off, shaking away the light that had been falling from above her head all along.

Ah.

If it weren’t for that last remark, everything would have been perfect.

*

“First, we need to establish a proper scientific name. Of course, for now, all we know is that it exists, but scientists often preemptively assign names to hypothetical entities.”

Indeed.

After learning that there are at least thirty kinds of fundamental particles, scientists theorized that there must be a single particle that makes up those thirty particles. However, since there was no way to observe it yet, they referred to that particle as ‘preon’—though no one knows whether it truly exists. Nonetheless, they think ahead and ‘hypothesize’.

So, isn’t it possible to appropriately name the ‘being above’ that does exist?

The concept of a human being is classified as an animal, and even within that classification, we have assigned the species name Homo sapiens sapiens. Thus, shouldn’t they apply a scientific name to the beings they refer to as ‘gods’ and study them as well—

As I turned to Ria with my thoughts, I suddenly realized there were far more people in the room than I remembered.

“……Oh.”

And I sensed an incredibly awkward atmosphere settling in.

Only Ria, standing at a distance, was the only one suppressing a laugh.