Kisa was quite flustered to receive an unexpected guest.

When Lily came and said that an investigator wanted to meet Kisa, she thought that Vicius might have come on an errand from the abbot.

However, Lily shook her head and said it was an elderly investigator she had never seen before.

Though puzzled, Kisa couldn’t keep the guest waiting outside, so she showed him into the small reception room attached to the guest room.

But the unfamiliar investigator who entered the reception room suddenly introduced himself as Investigator Makio.

He said he was Seiard’s master and the one who had refused Kisa’s request for a meeting yesterday.

“Ah, I see. Please have a seat.”

After being momentarily stunned, Kisa quickly regained her composure and offered the elderly investigator a comfortable chair.

“Thank you.”

“Shall I bring some tea?”

As he sat down, Lily asked Kisa.

But before Kisa could ask Investigator Makio if he had any particular drink preferences, he spoke up.

“I’d like some lemonade from the general store next to the mill. If it’s alright, could you get some for me?”

At such a specific request, Lily’s eyes widened for a moment, but being an exemplary servant, she didn’t question the guest’s words.

“Yes, I’ll go get it right away.”

After Lily left, only Kisa and Investigator Makio remained in the room.

Kisa studied the wrinkled face of the man for a moment.

‘So this is Priest Makio.’

He looked quite different from what she had imagined after hearing about him from the two investigators yesterday.

Rather than looking strict and intimidating, he just seemed like a somewhat stubborn old man.

In any case, now that he had introduced himself, it was Kisa’s turn to introduce herself.

“Hello, I’m Kisa Vanspelt. I recently got engaged to Duke Hillan.”

At those words, Investigator Makio bowed his head slightly.

“I see. So you’re Seiard’s…”

While the other monks she saw yesterday all referred to Seiard as Investigator Hillan or the Duke, Investigator Makio was the exception.

Perhaps it was due to the closeness from once being his master.

Encouraged, Kisa asked a question she was curious about.

“You refused my request yesterday, may I ask why you changed your mind overnight?”

“I apologize if I’ve caused you trouble. I needed some time to think then. And if possible, I wanted to meet with you privately.”

Kisa realized there was another meaning behind the picky request Investigator Makio had made to Lily earlier.

His goal wasn’t the lemonade, but to get Lily to go outside.

The general store he mentioned was probably quite far from this hotel.

Kisa became even more curious about the reason for Investigator Makio’s visit.

“If I may ask, do you have something urgent to tell me?”

The investigator remained silent for a while in response to Kisa’s question.

It was a heavy silence, as weighty as the years he had lived.

After a moment, he moved his rough lips.

“I have a favor to ask of you. But before I reveal what it is, I’d like to confess one of my past mistakes.”

And so began the confession of his sin.

“When I first met Seiard Hillan, he was just a small boy. Though he pretended to be fine, he was a pitiful boy wounded by the fact that he had been abandoned by his family and the world.”

An image of his youth, which Kisa had never seen, naturally formed in her mind.

“I thought I needed to guide that boy onto the right path. This is where the problem arose. I believed that faith would be the thing to guide Seiard onto the right path. So even when others told me to leave him be, I forced faith upon Seiard. At the time, I was captivated by a self-righteous sense of mission. I thought that even if there was some resistance, it would be for Seiard’s benefit.”

He continued speaking in a calm voice.

“Naturally, Seiard became more rebellious as time passed, and unable to admit that my beliefs were wrong, I ended up committing an irreversible sin.”

Suddenly stopping his words, Investigator Makio fumbled in his robes.

What he then placed on the table was an old leather notebook.

“This is Seiard’s diary.”

Kisa’s gaze was fixed on the worn notebook.

“I thought there must be some minor problem with my teaching that was causing Seiard to go astray. I believed that if I could just figure out what it was, I could bring him back to the right path.”

“…So you stole and read his diary?”

The old investigator nodded weakly.

“To be more precise, I didn’t just read it secretly, I confronted Seiard with the contents of the diary. Of course, Seiard furiously berated me. After that, he completely ignored me. When the abbot realized our discord was not something to be ignored, he assigned Seiard’s education to another investigator.”

Then, he says, something surprising happened.

“Seiard’s deviations decreased noticeably. Compared to before, he started following the monastery’s rules well and began to get along with the young investigators his age. People said that Seiard, who hadn’t matched with my teaching methods, had finally found a suitable master. However…”

Kisa unconsciously echoed, “However?”

“It looked different to me. Seiard had decided to hide his true self. He had an exceptional talent for acting and social skills.”

Investigator Makio’s hand pointed at the table.

“When he was still an immature boy, he at least vented his inner feelings in notebooks like this, but as he grew up, it seemed he no longer needed even that. Not long after, many in the monastery evaluated Seiard as an honest and fun person, even if his conduct wasn’t always proper.”

“…”

“By the time I realized my mistake, my relationship with Seiard was already completely severed. I tried to talk to him in my own way, but he firmly refused. I thought I should return this notebook, but in the end, I couldn’t. Even when people from the duke’s family came to take Seiard’s personal belongings, I couldn’t bring myself to hand it over.”

After pausing for a moment, he spoke with difficulty.

“Because this was also evidence of my sin.”

“Oh my?”

Lily, who had returned to Kisa’s room, tilted her head in confusion at the sight of Kisa sitting alone in the reception room.

“Miss, where is Investigator Makio?”

On the tray she held were a glass of lemonade and a cup of tea.

“…He finished his business and left.”

“What? I went all the way to buy lemonade…”

“He must have remembered some urgent matter. He asked me to tell you he was sorry.”

“Well, it can’t be helped. But Miss, why did he suddenly come today?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, it’s strange. He refused your request yesterday, didn’t he?”

“Well, I’m not sure either. Maybe he changed his mind overnight. Perhaps after thinking it over, he decided he wanted to meet his disciple’s fiancée and hear about his disciple after all.”

“I see. Did you have a good conversation?”

“Yes, we did.”

Kisa recalled the face of the old investigator who only revealed what his request was just before parting.

“Please, return this notebook to Seiard. I can trust you, whom he has chosen, to do this.”

When Kisa asked if he had any message to leave, he simply shook his head.

As if he felt he had no right to do so.

Kisa stared blankly at the handbag beside her.

Inside that handbag was the evidence of sin that Investigator Makio had left behind.

“…”

As Kisa was glaring at the handbag with complex emotions that were hard to express, Lily, who had approached without her noticing, spoke up.

“Then, are you postponing your outing?”

“What?”

“You were originally planning to look around Bonzmos today, weren’t you? I was wondering if you were changing your schedule.”

Oh no, she had completely forgotten due to Investigator Makio’s sudden appearance.

Kisa was about to say she would change the schedule.

She wanted to take more time to think about Seiard’s past that Investigator Makio had revealed and the notebook now in her handbag.

But for some reason, the moment she saw Lily’s clear eyes, her lips wouldn’t move.

“Miss?”

Investigator Makio had sent Lily out of this room, even going so far as to send her on an errand for lemonade.

Lily was Seiard’s person.

“No, we’ll go out as planned.”

The words flowed from Kisa’s mouth before she even realized it.

“The guest has already left, so there’s no point in staying here. Let’s go out and look around the neighborhood.”

“Yes, I’ll get ready right away!”

Lily just said that with a bright face.

Kisa returned to the hotel before sunset after touring various places in Bonzmos.

It was because Bonzmos was such a small and ordinary town that there wasn’t much to see.

Still, perhaps thanks to Seiard’s donations, the town was lively and there were quite a few people who looked like outsiders.

Kisa, with her glamorous appearance, attracted attention wherever she went.

After an early dinner, she sent Lily away, saying she would go to bed early.

Then she took out the old notebook from the handbag she had been carrying all day.

Swallowing hard, Kisa pondered the question that had dominated her mind all day.

Should she check the contents of this notebook?

Considering the reason she had come all the way here, she should naturally check it.

However, remembering the old investigator who had confessed that stealing and reading this was his sin, she hesitated.

Common sense dictated that reading someone else’s diary without permission was certainly not the right thing to do.

‘Let’s think about it a bit more.’

In the end, Kisa put the notebook down on the table without choosing either option.

No, she tried to put it down.

But her hand trembled so much that she ended up dropping it on the floor.

With a thud! The notebook fell open from the impact.

As if in a trance, Kisa checked the letters revealed on the white page.

Since coming here, there hasn’t been a single day when I haven’t thought about death.