The Cowardly Baby Saint Can See Ghosts [Novel] Chapter 1

Chapter 1.
Thank goodness they arrived before I took a proper beating.
I must have been bracing myself so hard, for my entire body ached.
Letting go of that suffocating tension, I sank into the plush cushions of the carriage.
I stared blankly at the floating window that had been buzzing and blocking my vision since I woke up this morning.

To make matters worse, the status window was plastered in sickeningly cute pastel colors.

Tiny, sparkling firecrackers burst across the screen in mock celebration.
If its goal was to piss me off, it had already succeeded with flying colors.

The funny part was that the moment I laid eyes on that status window, I remembered that this world was inside a novel.

I wanted to deny it at first, yet seeing every single wound on my body completely healed forced me to accept reality.
My older scars had yet to vanish entirely, but judging by how faded they looked, it was only a matter of time.
Sure, I could handle all of that. It was the final line that got under my skin.

I was fated to die anyway, so why rub it in?
A hollow scoff escaped my lips.
It was a miserable excuse for a life, yet I still didn't want to die.
Unloved and entirely alone in my past life, I had no family or friends to speak of. I merely scraped by, bouncing between random part-time jobs just to survive another day.
Before I could ever see a glimmer of hope, I was hit by a truck. When I opened my eyes, I was here in this strange world.
An abandoned orphanage buried deep in the mountains, a place nobody ever visited. I had no desire to keep living, yet I refused to die, so I simply existed.
The director used to say my hollow eyes disgusted him.
Ashen hair and purple eyes were certainly rare. However, carrying the heavy, tainted gaze of an adult burdened by past memories, no one ever stepped forward to adopt me.
My emotions dulled, and thick calluses quickly formed over my festering wounds. Before I knew it, I had become an empty shell incapable of showing any expression.
The director despised me more than anyone else. He hated that a five-year-old child didn't act her age.

If I did cry, he would have just beaten me again for being too loud.
I endured day after day. Then, I woke up one morning to find a status window hovering in the air. The layout looked identical to the games I used to play in PC cafes.
The only unfair part was that I didn't realize this world was a novel until the exact moment I awakened as a Saintess.
More importantly.

Almost five years after reincarnating into this world, I finally learned the surname attached to my own name.
Diane Irene.
The first Saintess to appear in 300 years.

Would anything really change? Even if I went to The Holy Temple, they would just exploit my holy power. They would suck me dry to the bone and throw me away like trash.
I couldn't recall the novel having any specific descriptions about it.
Yet that was the unwritten rule of the world I had known my entire life.
Once you lose your worth, you are discarded.

So then, why was the knight sitting across from me looking at me as if he were about to cry?