The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master [Novel] Chapter 11

What he held was a white handkerchief. When he folded back one layer of cloth, the stiff carcass of a bird lay inside.

“It was found directly beneath the prayer room window. It appears the bird failed to register the glass pane mid-flight and struck it.”

Just as he said, the area around the dead bird’s head was caked in blood. The half-crushed skull was thoroughly grotesque.

The Pope let out a short, quiet sigh — ah — and accepted the dead bird. He draped the handkerchief back over it and offered a brief prayer for the life so pitifully lost.

“Born of the sky and returned to it — may you be free forevermore beneath God’s call.”

“The bird is so tiny… It’s too pitiful.”

Despite the grisly sight, sympathy seemed to outweigh fear. Fresh tears welled along Sena’s still-damp lash line.

“All life and death are God’s will, child.”

The Pope answered while stroking the girl’s hair.

God’s will, he says.

A bird smashing its head into a window and dying — and that same incident nearly cracking her skull open and killing her — all of it was God’s will?

If so, that wasn’t God. That was closer to the devil.

She really should have done more than just flip the middle finger. She should have cursed the thing out properly.

While she glared resentfully at the small goddess figurine on the table, entertaining these thoroughly impious thoughts, a calm voice cut in without warning.

“Though it seems God misjudged this time.”

Wait — did I say that out loud again?

She clamped her mouth shut in alarm, but everyone’s stunned gazes were directed not at her but at the Pope.

“…Your Holiness?”

It was blasphemy no one could believe had come from God’s own representative. Yet the man in question merely shrugged, perfectly composed.

“They say scorching fire and hundreds of hammer blows forge a sharp blade, but can we really regard this as meaningful hardship and trial when an innocent life was extinguished?”

“……”

“Above all, the saintess nearly came to harm.”

The voice directed at her was endlessly gentle, endlessly kind.

Just like that time.

[My hobby happens to be walking, too — would you mind if I joined you? They’re a bit worn, but please accept this much as a bribe.]

After she had awakened in the Holy Temple, floundering in a stranger’s body and unfamiliar surroundings, the Pope had readily knelt before her when she came running barefoot out of her room — and gladly removed his own shoes to slip them onto her feet.

She stared, dazed, at the same tender smile that recalled that moment.

Was his consideration because he was a man who served God? Or was it because he was Cecilia’s godfather?

The man’s warm hand was now gently patting the back of hers.

Oh.

A heartwarming atmosphere settled so thick it weighed on a corner of her chest for no good reason.

“I will make sure proper measures are taken so that an accident like this never happens again.”

Or rather, that atmosphere had formed — and promptly vanished.

Surely by “next time” he doesn’t mean the Relief Festival ceremony… right?

“So that the saintess may participate in the ceremony with peace of mind.”

He does.

An actual accident had occurred, so she’d assumed the whole matter would quietly fade into nothing.

So all that concern was just buildup to make me do the ceremony or whatever it was.

The tender sprout of gratitude that had bloomed modestly in her chest was ripped out by the roots in an instant.

Clicking her tongue internally, Cecilia glanced down at her hand, still held captive by the Pope.

Maybe a future of living with hands that glow on their own would’ve been better than being pointed at as a saintess who can’t even use holy power.

But unfortunately, at some point her hands had stopped glowing entirely.

It was near sundown by the time she escaped what had been ostensibly a recovery room but was really a one-on-one audience chamber with the Pope.

Fleeing from the Pope’s inquiry about the date of her next visit to the Holy Temple, Cecilia buried the bird with Sena in a sunny spot before finally preparing to return to the estate.

I want to collapse into bed. I want to do absolutely, aggressively nothing.

Before or after the transmigration, she was someone who’d spent twenty-three of every twenty-four hours holed up indoors. Today’s schedule had been excessively cruel.

Drained of every last drop of energy, Cecilia was shuffling along when the space to her left suddenly felt empty.

“What are you doing back there?”

Nox, who had been annoyingly glued to her side, had stopped a few paces behind.

“CiCi, head home first. I want to check on things a bit more before I go.”

“Check on what?”

Hadn’t they just buried the cause of today’s accident with their own hands, moments ago?

He’s not using that as an excuse to slack off, is he?

Cecilia cracked open her fatigue-laden eyes to narrow slits. She’d heard that Nox had been quite busy helping the Marquis with work ever since returning from the capital. It wouldn’t be surprising if he was reluctant to go home.

A plausible hypothesis. Unable to hide the suspicion in her expression, she pressed him — and Nox replied with rare firmness.

“Because it might not have been an accident.”

What was that ominous line supposed to mean?

Isn’t he just being dramatic to change the subject?

Also a reasonable suspicion. But she was far too exhausted to interrogate him further. Cecilia gave a half-hearted nod.

“Suit yourself.”

“So don’t get distracted — go straight home. Got it?”

“I can handle myself.”

“Miguel, look after my kid for me while I’m gone!”

Apparently he really did intend to investigate personally; he turned around without so much as a reaction to her barbed reply.

In the end, all that remained was Miguel, who had followed along, offering to escort her to the main gate.

“Well then… shall we go?”

“Yes.”

When she was first guided to the prayer room, Nox had been there, running his mouth without pause, so it had been fine. But walking side by side with a taciturn man she barely knew — the awkwardness was suffocating.

“Ahem!“

Unable to endure the continuing silence, she let out a pointless throat-clearing.

But the earnest holy knight apparently interpreted it as an early symptom of illness, because his expression hardened with alarm in an instant.

“Are you feeling unwell?”

“No, this was just…”

“I should have known better. After everything you’ve been through today.”

“Pardon?”

“I’ll carry you.”

Did everyone at the Holy Temple share a habit of charging ahead without listening to what the other person was saying?

At the absurd offer, Cecilia blurted out in alarm.

“I’m fine!”

Oh — was that too much of a recoil?

Granted, the experience of being held against that broad, solid chest would certainly be priceless, but the man was the Vice-Commander of the Holy Knight Order, no less.

He wasn’t someone she could pull stunts with the way she did with Rien, and — above all — jumping shamelessly into his arms required more nerve than the ant-sized crumb of conscience she still possessed.

“…You found it that objectionable.”

She had been too loud after all, it seemed.

His half-raised arm dropped limply back to his side. Were those slumped shoulders just her imagination, or did they really look that dejected?

Cecilia scrambled to add an excuse.

“It’s not that I find it objectionable — I’d just feel bad.”

“You don’t need to console me. I’m used to being refused.”

“What? You, Sir Miguel?”

Momentarily at a loss, Cecilia tilted her head up at the man in disbelief.

Silver hair glinting as it tossed in the wind. Blue eyes rippling in the sunset. Shoulders broad enough to make the unadorned white vestments look uncomfortable, and a solid build to match.

“Yes. Every woman I’ve escorted, in particular, turns red in the face and trembles with such displeasure…”

Because they’re flustered and their hearts are racing, obviously.

Now this was a familiar trope. Introverted, taciturn, a formidable fighter, and handsome on top of it — so wildly popular it’s insane, but the man himself has no idea. Not just the leads — even the most fleeting Extra #1 sends him adoring looks, and he alone is oblivious!

And the protagonist of that absurd trope was standing right here.

“I don’t think it’s displeasure. I’d stake the Weberdin name on it.”

The man tilted his head slightly. He seemed curious as to the reason.

Could it be because they’re flustered every time you do that, Sir?

Cecilia swallowed the line — wildly inappropriate to say to a clergyman — and hastily looked away. She and Rien might not be anything yet, but her inner Confucian standards absolutely refused to tolerate her heart fluttering over some other man.

Just then, a cluster of clerics caught the edge of her vision. The spot she happened to be passing must have been near the accident site; they were cleaning up beneath the familiar building.

“It looks like they haven’t finished the cleanup yet.”

“No. The accident had to happen in the Second Prayer Room, of all places…”

Miguel trailed off, looking troubled.

Unlike the main prayer room where the Pope and the congregation had been, the Second Prayer Room was smaller in scale — but one entire side of its ceiling was made of stained glass.

And a bird had to go and fly into that one.

My luck is absolutely rotten.

“I see.”

Cecilia stared blankly at the gaping hole in the ceiling and the riot of multicolored shards strewn across the ground outside the building.

The glass fragments glinting in the sunlight looked just like a smashed soju bottle…

Wait. Outside the building?

She stopped dead in her tracks.

In the chaos of the moment she hadn’t had the presence of mind to notice, but…

If the bird had flown in from outside, shouldn’t the majority of the debris have scattered inward?