Book 1, Verse 37

Vivian stood there looking at me in silence. The wind was absent as we made eye contact.

“Shinko, you… you don’t know me. You don’t know what I was like.” She said sharply.

“Vivian, I know you were a thief!” I shot back. “All I’m saying is that you didn’t need religion to change!”

Her mouth opened.

Elisa and Niels looked at each other, then at me.

Vivian’s eyes narrowed at me and she shut her mouth. She took a few slow, somber steps towards me. Her voice cracked and shook.

“Shinko. You’re wrong. You’re so wrong it hurts.” She reached under her cloak and pulled out the same knife she’d brandished the first time we met.

I held up my hands and took in a deep breath.

This was not what I was expecting; at all. My stomach felt constricted.

“Vivian, I don’t understand why you’re so upset about this!” I said slowly. “I-I thought you’d be glad to hear this!” I explained myself as calmly as I could.

“Glad?” She spat out the word.

She stepped towards me, her head looking down at the ground and her knife in her hands. As she did, for a brief moment I thought I was looking at death incarnate walking towards me.

I took a step back.

“Why would I be glad to have my meaning ripped away? Why would I be glad to hear you, the person who told me that I was forgiven, go back and say that it didn’t matter?” She said weakly.

I looked back at Elisa and Niels; they both seemed confused by what they were hearing. I turned to face Vivian again.

She was gone.

I felt her standing behind me with the flat side of her knife pressed down against my shoulder. I shivered.

My eyes closed as I thought.

Vivian was falling for the garbage I’d told her about religion hook, line, and sinker.

Why?

She was smart and resourceful; powerful too.

She had to know that it was all just worthless ramblings made by people desperate to give themselves meaning.

I felt the breath leave my lungs.

Meaning was a nice thing to have.

A few nights ago, she was the one who had calmed me down while I was panicking about meaninglessness.

Now it was my turn to calm her down about meaning.

I opened my eyes with restored confidence.

“Vivian, just because there’s no greater power granting you meaning doesn’t mean you don’t have one.” I said without moving.

She still had the flat of her knife pressed on my shoulder. I continued.

“You can make your own meaning. Live your own life.” I took a deep breath. “You’re free. You’ve always been free. You just needed to know about it.”

I felt the knife lift off my shoulder.

“Shinko.” She said calmly.

I started to turn around, but she put her hands on my shoulders to stop that from happening. Her grip was tight.

My muscles tensed.

Her hair fell onto my shoulder as she lowered her head so that it was next to my ear. I didn’t turn to look at her.

“Is that right? I make my own way? Do what I want?” Her voice was dripping with spite and pain.

I didn’t respond.

“I already tried that.” She said quietly. “I tried that every day I was a thief. But I didn’t change. I couldn’t change. And do you know why I didn’t change?”

She put her head against the back of mine.

“Because I didn’t want to.”

“Vivia–”

“I hated myself. I hated what I did. I hated hurting people for a living. I hated waking up. I hated sleeping. I hated the church. I hated the thieves’ guild.”

Why wasn’t she listening?! I took advantage of her weakened grip and pulled myself away from her. When I did, she stumbled forward and nearly fell, but didn’t.

She looked up at me, her beautiful blue eyes looking like broken sapphires with bloodshot cracks.

Elisa and Niels didn’t say anything.

And I didn’t either.

“I hated my life.” She said, empty. “But I didn’t change it.”

“B-but you wanted to change!” I shot back.

She stood up straight and looked down at me like I was saying something insane.

“If I really wanted to change, I would have changed.” She held the knife in her hands and looked at it, tears falling onto the blade. “People do what they want to do.”

She looked at me.

Her face was contorted into a weeping smile.

“And I didn’t want to change.”

Silence.

Impossible silence.

What was I supposed to say?

I hadn’t told her any of those things.

Where was she getting all of these insane ideas?

I stood in silence as I contemplated what had happened to Vivian.

She broke first.

“But then… you showed up.”

I looked her in the eyes, shocked.

“The strangest priest I ever met.”

I was not a priest.

“And you told me–” She started laughing.

Laughing.

Why the heck was she laughing?!

“You told me, when we met, after I threatened you–” She started smiling, even as tears kept flowing freely.

She was terrifying me. She wasn’t moving any closer; she wasn’t even holding the knife anymore as it fell to the ground.

Oh no.

“After you, you knew I was a thief and that I broke into your church to steal from you, you told me something I’d never heard before!” She was beaming.

I recognized this speech.

No, it couldn’t be true.

It couldn’t be happening.

I desperately didn’t want to be right.

Everything Vivian was saying sounded like something John would say; and not just any one of his platitudes–this sounded like his most dangerous one. The one he said was the most important.

“You said that God had mercy on me.” She said, her brilliant eyes sparkling like the ocean.

I felt faint.

“Mercy! Forgiveness! That God cared about me!” She was practically dancing.

I hadn’t said those last two to her directly! Where was she getting these ideas?!

I turned to look at Elisa and Niels.

They had gone farther up the trail, leaving me practically alone with Vivian.

“And it felt like, maybe, if I couldn’t change on my own…”

She was radiant.

“God could change me.”

She looked down at me, and any anger she had at me was gone, instead replaced with…

Disappointment? What the heck?! Why was she disappointed with me?!

“Shinko, I can’t go back to what I had before.” She looked at me, and her voice cracked. “And I don’t understand why it sounds like you want me to.”

I looked up at her.

My pale face turned red.

My grey eyes narrowed.

My neck tensed.

I dug my nails into my hands and grit my teeth together as hard as I could.

“Because it’s all fake, John!” My mouth twitched as I stomped towards her. “It’s all fantasy! Fake! Garbage! Worthless trash with no basis in reality! Life is meaningless! So what?! Get over it!”

I looked at Vivian, and I felt something that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Pity.

“But fine! If you want to believe that stuff and waste your life, see if I care!” I flailed my arms as I walked over to her.

The shadows around the edge of my vision seemed to grow darker as I got closer and closer.

My footsteps were heavy as I approached.

“You know what? If you’re really willing to fall for all that tripe, you deserve it!”

My field of vision narrowed until I could barely see in front of me.

“Because all it does is prove something I suspected this whole time!”

The only source of light was the sunlight that was shining around Vivian.

“You’re an idiot!”

I stood there, pointing my finger at her face.

She still had tears coming from her eyes.

Good.

Maybe that’d make her think rationally about all this.

John would be proud of me; I’d almost managed to convert someone and I wasn’t even actually in the church.

That proved how dumb his religion was; someone who doesn’t even believe in it can convert people to it.

“Shinko!” Vivian suddenly shouted and pushed me to the ground.

I felt the dirt of the path dig into my back as I landed.

My eyes went wide as I saw a black blur slam into Vivian and send her sprawling to the ground.