Kiyosumi

  “What… is that? Is it another symbol of the Faith in Darkness?”

  Mr. White, who had been quietly praying, suddenly looked up and asked.

  “It looks like a person. Doesn’t she know she’s not supposed to step onto the altar?”

  Only priests are allowed to set foot on the center of the altar.

  “She’s quite a large woman,”

  Mr. White murmured.

  He was right—

  From the silhouette, she was wearing an absurdly wide, old-fashioned long skirt.

  But “large” didn’t even begin to cover it.

  She wasn’t fat.

  She looked like someone had stretched a regular image three times its size.

  Not just tall, but oversized.

  “…Is she floating?”

  I thought it was an optical illusion and turned to Mr. White beside me.

  “She’s slowly rising,” he said. “And the color… it’s strange.”

  Even Mr. White—usually so unreadable—was staring, wide-eyed, his emerald eyes fully open.

  As he said,

  the woman was slowly floating toward us.

  That alone would’ve been frightening enough—

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  but then her skin caught the moonlight, and I froze.

  It was steel.

  Not steel-colored—actual steel.

  Not just her face—her entire body gleamed with metallic sheen.

  This… this has nothing to do with the Darkness.

  No angel could possibly emit such a menacing presence.

  She stopped a few meters in front of us.

  And then I saw it—

  A face.

  Not just blank.

  She had an expression.

  It wasn’t just fear—my spine turned to ice.

  She wasn’t looking at Mr. White.

  She was clearly staring at me.

  The steel woman had no eyes.

  Where her eyes should be were dull, gray voids.

  You couldn’t even tell if they were eyes or not.

  And yet, I could feel her looking at me.

  That sensation—being watched—flooded every cell of my body.

  But the worst part of all—

  was the smile.

  She was grinning.

  …What the hell is so funny, Steel Lady?

  Was she planning to crush me with that heavy metal body of hers?

  Paralyzed by fear, unable to run—

  I braced for whatever would come next.

  And then—

  She slowly tilted, diagonally and deliberately—

  And I heard the sound of a bell.

  That sound—I knew it.

  It was the exact same sound as the call bell in the owner’s café—

  ??

  The bell rang out in my head, rattling through my skull with a splitting pain.

  I collapsed to the ground, helpless.

  —It’s hot.

  I opened my eyes because I could feel heat blowing across my face.

  “What are you doing?! We have to get out of here!”

  Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me up.

  “A fire?”

  The shift was so abrupt, my brain couldn’t keep up.

  “Look around. That guy lit the place up and took off.”

  The man holding my arm said, dragging me along.

  “That way. I hate to say it, but we have to leave this place behind.”

  He pulled me forward through the smoke, which had turned everything to haze.

  “Is this… the cathedral?”

  I asked, confused.

  He handed me a towel and said shortly:

  “Stop talking.”

  Covering his own nose and mouth with a handkerchief, he began moving again.

  I did the same, pressing the towel to my face—

  and only then did I begin to realize.

  This was not the same cathedral.

  The wall I touched.

  The feel of the air.

  And above all—

  The back of the man guiding me… was white.

  This stranger, too, was a man in white.

  This was the underground world.