Glimpse of Her
Chapter 33: Glimpse of Her
━━━━━━ʕ• · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·•ʔ━━━━━━
Two Weeks.
It had been weeks since she rang my doorbell, entangled with my life and bound herself with an oath.
True to her word, she didn’t touch the conditions.
She hadn’t tried to enslave me.
Not once.
No chains.
No tricks buried under blessings.
No “Oh, I misinterpreted that part of the oath.”
I did not sleep at the Church.
I did not wear a shock bracelet.
I did not get dropped into battlefields without consent.
I went home when I wanted.
I came here when I wanted.
Sometimes, when I didn’t feel like wanting, I still ended up here.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
I hadn’t used the syringes since I started coming here.
That was the odd part.
At the penthouse, sleep was almost impossible.
Whenever I closed my eyes, the visions came.
Bells. Fire. Hands letting go. Voice and scream inside my head.
I had resorted to chemical mercy.
Here, in this office that smelt like dust, ink, and something faintly holy, I’d woken up twice without
remembering when I’d fallen asleep.
Once on the couch.
Once sitting in a chair, head tipped back, a book still open on my lap and her coat draped over my
shoulders.
No [♪♪♪].
No drowning.
Just… blank.
It was terrifying.
And addictive.
I could have told myself it was because of the mana here. Divine interference. Sanctuary effect. Familiar territory of a spell‑saturated environment.
I didn’t bother lying that carefully to myself.
It was her.
Her presence.
Her eyes on me when I drifted.
Her voice, low and steady, somewhere near the edge of consciousness.
The nightmares didn’t dare intrude where she was.
As if they knew something about her that I didn't understand.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
We’d moved from relics to scrolls.
Ancient, brittle, and probably lethal if read improperly.
She had me sorting them.
Not because she couldn’t.
Because she wanted to see how I handled them.
We both knew this.
“I want lunch,” I said.
“You just ate,” she said.
“Then dinner,” I said.
“You think about food a lot lately,” she observed.
“My appetite’s grown,” I said. “Probably because of all the work you make me do every day. I’m just trying to adjust.”
She made a faint sound. It might have been a laugh.
“And yet all you do is slack off,” she said. “Every day.”
Her lips tugged.
She looked almost… human, when she did that.
Almost.
She reached for another folder.
As she did, her sleeve slipped back.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
We bickered over classification for ten minutes.
“This goes in temporal anomalies,” she said.
“That’s clearly divine relics,” I argued. “Look at the glyphs.”
“You don’t read this script,” she said.
“I don’t have to,” I said. “The stain pattern screams godly incompetence.”
“Stain pattern,” she repeated. “See this bit? That’s the mark of something that tried to be omnipotent and forgot half its own conditions.”
Her tone should have annoyed me.
It didn’t.
It settled.
Too easily.
That was the worrying part.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
There were moments when the room shifted.
Not physically.
In my head.
She would do the smallest thing.
Tie her hair up with a strip of cloth when it fell in front of her eyes.
Hum a broken melody under her breath while reading an unpleasant report.
Reach out and, without thinking, push the tea cup slightly further from the edge of the desk, away
from my elbow.
Tiny gestures.
Harmless.
Except they weren’t.
Because I had seen them before.
Not here.
Not with her face.
In a different place.
Under a cracked ceiling.
Next to a window that looked out over a city that never stopped burning.
[࿐𝄞𝄢℘]
“Even If I die in this loop…I’ll never lose it,” she had said there, once, laughing without sound as she tied
her hair back with a frayed ribbon.
I blinked.
The office came back into focus.
The Saintess’s fingers stilled in her hair.
Her eyes met mine.
“Is there something on my face,” she asked, “or are you just going to keep staring?”
I realised I’d been staring.
Too long.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Your expression disagrees,” she said.
“No, I was just thinking,” I said slowly, “that you are really beautiful.”
Her brows drew together.
“So your eyes have finally opened,” she said. “Were you blind before or merely slow?”
"Actually," I said, "I take it back. You're uglier than an orc."
She blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me," I said. "I don't think you are deaf, are you?"
She shook her head.
“Fine,” she said. “If you’re that eager for work, don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re drowning in it.”
“No–” I protested. “I was just testing something."
“Testing what?”
"That you look even better when you're angry."
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
Sometimes, the flashes hit harder.
Her hand brushing my shoulder when she passed.
Her face turned away, profile etched against light.
Her eyes closing briefly when she sat down, like she had only allowed herself to feel the weight of existence once the door had shut.
They layered over ‘her’.
Another world.
Another long story, one I couldn’t fully remember anymore.
My soul leaned toward her the way a tide leaned toward a familiar shore.
My mind pulled it back by the scruff.
Don't be ridiculous” I told myself, filing a scroll she’d dropped into my hands. “It wasn't her.
It wasn’t her.
It couldn’t be her.
It was madness.
“And you’re not here for that. You’re here because you were forced into a deal and you like not screaming in
your sleep.”
All those visions simply meddled and overlapped with my present.
That didn’t stop my gaze from following her when she crossed the room.
It didn’t stop my chest from making that unfamiliar, unpleasant twist when exhaustion carved itself deeper into the lines around her mouth.
It didn’t stop me from noticing that, some days, when she thought I wasn’t looking, her eyes went to my shadow on the floor.
As if she were checking it was still attached to me.
Or to her.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
We ate together often.
Not because we planned to.
Because neither of us planned not to.
The first time, it was an accident. I had stayed later than usual, lost track of the sun while arguing with a particularly obnoxious translation.
My stomach betrayed me.
It growled.
Loud.
She looked up from her desk.
“That was not the relic,” she said.
“No,” I said. “That was a human body protesting unfair labour conditions.”
“You could go,” she said. “There is nothing stopping you.”
“Too far,” I lied. “If I leave, I’ll end up buying whatever the closest convenience store sells, and I think
I’ve offended my digestive tract enough for one week.”
She regarded me for a second.
Then reached into a drawer.
Pulled out a lunchbox.
Metal. Scratched. Nothing pretty about it.
“Here,” she said.
I blinked.
“You cook?” I asked.
“Occasionally,” she said.
“I thought you didn’t need to,” I said. “To eat, I mean. Isn’t prayer enough?”
She gave me a look.
“Do you want it or not,” she asked.
I took it.
Rice. Simple side dishes. Better than anything I’d managed not to burn.
I ate.
She watched.
“Stop staring,” I said between mouthfuls. “You’re gonna make me choke on it.”
“I’m assessing if you liked it or not,” she said.
“You could have just asked me,” I said.
“You would have lied,” she said.
She wasn’t wrong.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
It became… a thing.
Tea breaks, at first.
Then small containers of food appearing on the edge of the desk whenever I stayed past a certain point.
“I’m not a pet,” I grumbled once.
“No,” she said. “Pets are less trouble.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“You eat like one,” she added. “Too fast. As if someone will take it away.”
I paused.
She put an extra piece of meat on my side of the box and pretended she hadn’t.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
The more time I spent with her, the less my nights ended with nightmares and sedative.
Sleep came easier when my days were full of something other than staring at ceilings and waiting for fate to notice me again.
Her presence helped.
I hated that I knew it.
I hated that I wanted it.
I came anyway.
“At this rate,” I said one afternoon, watching her inscribe a containment sigil on the floor, “I’m going to like this place.”
She didn’t look up.
It was her presence. That I liked, not this place.
“Is that so,” she said.
“Mm,” I said. “It’s not what I expected. Just paperwork and light manual labor. Very boring holy experience.”
She finished the line.
Set the chalk down.
Straightened.
Then turned to face me properly.
Up close, with no altar, no staff, no robe, no backdrop of disaster, she looked… smaller.
Not physically.
Just… here.
In a room.
With me.
“Do you want me to be terrifying, Han Si‑woo?” she asked.
The way she said my borrowed name made the room feel a fraction tighter.
“Depends,” I said. “Terrifying in which way?”
She held my gaze.
“So don’t you regret agreeing?” she asked.
“The work?” I said. “No.”
“Me,” she said.
That was new.
I could have joked.
Dodged.
I didn’t.
“Not yet,” I said.
Something in her eyes loosened.
Not much.
Enough.
“Good,” she said.
She turned away.
Her shoulders dipped, just a little, once she thought I wasn’t watching.
A strange, heavy warmth pooled unpleasantly in my chest.
I’d felt it before.
For someone else.
Somewhere else.
[࿐𝄞𝄢℘]
“Promise me,” I had told her then, on a rooftop that no longer existed. “If I forget, you’ll find me.”
She had smiled sadly.
“Of course,” she’d said. “You’re very hard to lose.”
Static swallowed whatever else we’d said.
I blinked.
Back in the office.
Back with a different woman, drawing a different sigil, in a different world.
I rubbed my eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked without turning.
“Fine,” I said. “Just… déjà vu.”
“Of what?” she asked.
“If I knew that,” I said, “it wouldn’t be déjà vu.”
She didn’t press.
She rarely did.
She had the patience of someone who knew the universe liked to repeat its jokes.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
We were closing up when she asked.
I’d gathered the last of the loose pages she’d scattered over the day and stacked them in what I considered a reasonable approximation of order.
The windows showed a city dipping into evening.
Gold on buildings. Blue shadows. The distant glow of traffic.
Normal.
I slung my bag over my shoulder.
“Going,” I said.
“Where?” she asked.
“Home,” I said.
She glanced up at that.
“Are you taking care of those flowers?” she asked. “Are they blooming well?”
“The blue ones?” I said. “Yes, they are blooming really beautifully.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
I didn’t ask what she meant by it.
I didn’t want to know.
Her fingers tapped once on the desk.
Stopped.
“Han Si‑woo,” she said.
Her tone had shifted.
I turned.
She was standing now, hands flat on the surface, knuckles pale.
For the first time since she’d turned up at my door, she looked… uncertain.
Like she was about to step into a battlefield she hadn’t mapped out.
“That sounds ominous,” I said. “Should I sit?”
“If you wish,” she said.
I stayed standing.
She exhaled.
“Han Si‑woo,” she called again.
I looked up from gathering my things.
“Yes?”
“There is…” She paused. Her eyes moved to the window, then back to me. “There is a place I want to go.”
Her hand tightened around the edge of the table, then loosened.
The room felt smaller.
“For what?” I asked.
Her eyes met mine.
For a moment, there was something raw in them.
Sadness.
Longing.
Hope.
Then it smoothed out.
“To see something,” she said. “Will you accompany me?”
I should have said no.
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