CW/TW

It seemed to be an eternity until the elf and I arrived at a small room where a maid was cleaning. She seemed to be a woman, into her older years, maybe about sixty or seventy.

“Mary, could you please find this young woman some clothes? I’ll come back with the King’s aid so can talk properly.”

“Of course, Your Holiness.”

Young?

I scrunched up my face.

I wasn’t young by any means.

When I attempted to kill myself, I was forty-one years old. I was a child of the 80s and like other adults, the internet still baffled me.

I worked as an office lady until I had gotten fired off due to having a ‘character defect’. My job at that point was the only thing requiring me to leave me out. I covered up, always wearing my mask and slacks and long sleeve shirts. I had an ok personality for the most part. I was honest and diligent with my work, my supervisors never complained of my ethic, so I had wondered what I did wrong.

Then, on my last day after I went to go settle my paperwork, I overheard my coworkers talking. They were hush but direct with their words, with their subject of conversation being me.

“So, someone reported Scarface to HR, huh?”

“Someone? Take the whole department. Having her at work became an eyesore.”

“At least you don’t see her much. She handed some files earlier this week and I almost threw up.”

I was shocked and felt betrayed.

My coworkers, the ones I worked beside, had conspired to have me fired. I became a jobless NEET and lost my work visa because my face was ‘disgusting’ to look at.

That began my further spiral, which happened a few months before I jumped off my apartment building.

“Miss?”

The maid looked at me, and I shyly glanced at her, realizing she had tried to get my attention.

“Ah, I’m sorry, I’m just thinking.”

She smiles before presenting a plain, white tunic.

“My name is Mary. Please change into this…” She says faltering as if to give me an opening to give my name.

“Ah, I’m Lucia. Lucia Katō.”

I felt a lot less self-conscious being nude and changing in front of Mary than the elf—who I still didn’t know the name. I easily slipped into the tunic, which fit my pudgy frame except ah, for the chest.

Other than that, I was pleased with being at least covered.

Mary did call him ‘Your Holiness’ so perhaps he had a title?

“Mary?”

“Hmmm?”

While Mary tied her hair into a braid, I decided to ask her about the identity of the man who noticed me.

“Ah, he is His Holiness, Holy Father.”

I blinked, my mouth agape as I stared back at her.

I flash my body at him, I had him carried me!

“…not to be blasphemous, but isn’t he quite young to be the head of a church?”

And why was he, who looked young enough to be a brat calling me young lady?

Mary laughs.

“His Holiness is an elf, one of pure blood, a part of the aristocracy, and is one of the few mortals who achieved divine status. He’s been alive well before I was even born. I’ve known him since I was a little girl in the Church’s orphanage. In part with his status as a demi-god, His Holiness should be at least six hundred or so years old.”

Six? Hundred?

“Maybe I heard you wrong, Mary—”

“No, she’s off by a few hundred. I turn nine hundred and one this year.”

The voice that interrupted Mary was none other than the Holy Father, and behind was an elegant, red-haired, green-eyed human.

He introduced himself as the King’s aid, Beauford. After a while, we sat down with the two men across from me.

“Firstly, Miss, I’d like to apologize on the behalf of King Theodore. We did not”

I gave him a small smile.

“It’s fine, just give me a knife.”

“Eh?”

“Just give me a knife so I can end my life. I know how this goes I won’t be able to return to my world right? I don’t have anything to if I could go back. My resolve was death before I was summoned here, and it is the same after."

Let me die.