Chapter 29: Practicing Doing Nothing is the Hardest Thing

A few days after the festival.

The Adventurer’s Guild’s “Mental Health Counseling Window” had transformed into a terrifying pandemonium.

“Nagi! I brewed tea! I held back all day yesterday, so you’d better drink every last drop!”

“Lise, low-caffeine herbal tea is more appropriate for him. To fill the void of a single day, I thoroughly adjusted the components. Now, drink it without leaving a single drop.”

“Onii-san! Can I give you a biiiig hug to make up for not seeing you for a day?! Or maybe I should massage your shoulders?!”

Bang, bang! The counter was slapped, and from the right, left, and behind, three completely different waves of terrifying pressure surged toward me.

The Ladies’ Agreement’s “Once-a-week No Nagi Day” had certainly brought me one day of complete peace.

However, the rebound was horrifying.

Having obtained the indulgence of “I held back all day yesterday,” the girls were swarming me today — the day the ban lifted — letting their pent-up dependency and monopolistic desires explode all at once.

My HP, which should have fully recovered from a day of rest, was being shaved away by the second. For every bit they had restrained themselves, the “weight of a single day’s” worth of accumulated longing — now finally unleashed — had skyrocketed…!

“Please take turns! And I’m working, so don’t cling to me!”

Suitably dodging their three distinct appeals and crying out as I furiously moved my pen —

Creeeak…

The heavy guild doors slowly opened.

The one who appeared was a beautiful woman clad in pure white clerical robes, her silver hair swaying.

It was the Church’s Saint, Serafina.

The moment she stepped inside, the air in the guild fell dead silent. It was completely understandable — it was normally unthinkable for a high-ranking member of the clergy to venture completely alone into an Adventurer’s Guild full of roughnecks.

“Nagi-sama. …May I ask you to listen to my story once more?”

Showing no signs of caring about the surrounding gazes, Serafina walked straight up to my counter and asked quietly. The same perfect smile from the day of the festival was plastered on her face, but a certain helplessness, like that of a lost child, bled through.

“Of course. This is the Mental Health Counseling Window, after all.”

When I nodded, I heard disturbing voices from behind me: “I have a bad feeling about this,” “It seems our matters of concern are going to increase,” and “There aren’t any open seats left~!” — but I gently covered my ears and guided Serafina into the small room.

＊　＊　＊

I closed the door, served warm tea, and sat facing her.

“So, how did the homework go?”

The homework I assigned during our last session — “Do just one thing that isn’t for anyone’s sake.”

For someone who had lived exclusively for others, it was supposed to be a simple task serving as the first step toward finding “her own happiness.”

However, Serafina kept both hands wrapped around her cup and looked deeply downward.

“…I am so sorry, Nagi-sama. I… could not do it.”

“You couldn’t do it?”

“Yes. …At first, just as you said, I thought I would take a walk simply for my own sake.”

Serafina began to speak, her words coming little by little.

“I secretly slipped out the back door of the church and walked through the city. But while walking, I spotted a child who had fallen from a cart and scraped their knee. Before I knew it, I was administering healing to that child.”

“Well, I can understand not being able to ignore an injury right in front of you.”

“That is not all. Afterwards, I went to the market to buy sweet pastries for my own sake. …But I noticed the gazes of orphans watching me from a back alley, and I ended up distributing every last one to them.”

She gripped the hem of her clerical robe tightly.

“In the end, over these past few days, I was unable to take action ‘for my own sake’ even a single time. Whenever I try to consume something just for myself, I am assaulted by an intense guilt and anxiety.”

Serafina’s shoulders were trembling faintly.

“‘A defective product like me is not allowed to enjoy something for herself.’ ‘I have no value unless I save people.’ …Such voices echo in my head, and it becomes hard to breathe. So I have no choice but to save someone again in order to calm my heart…”

I listened quietly until she finished, then let out a single sigh.

Even in my past life, I had seen cases like this countless times.

“Serafina-san. Are you aware that you are ‘dependent’ on saving people?”

“…Dependent, you say?”

“Yes. It is the same as drowning in alcohol or gambling. You are using the act of helping people as a ‘self-soothing mechanism’ — both to confirm your own reason for existing and to erase the anxiety in your heart.”

Serafina widened her eyes, looking completely caught off guard.

What she had believed to be unconditional love and noble faith had just been pointed out as nothing more than a dependent behavior for self-defense.

“That is why you experience withdrawal symptoms when you try to live for yourself. You’re terrified — feeling that if you don’t help people, you’ll simply disappear, aren’t you.”

“…I am terrified. The thought of my emptiness being exposed is… frightening.”

“It’s alright. If you are empty, you just need to slowly start filling yourself with things you like, from now on. Practicing doing nothing is very difficult. There is no need to rush.”

When I told her that in a deliberately calm voice, Serafina relaxed her shoulders just a little and stared intently into my face.

Deep within those empty eyes, it looked as though a very faint light had settled.

“…Nagi-sama, you are a mysterious person.”

“Mysterious?”

“Yes. Normal people accept my healing as a matter of course and leave nothing but words of gratitude behind. No one pays any mind to the fact that my heart is broken.”

Serafina leaned forward, gazing at me.

“But you were different. You noticed my abnormality, stopped me, and asked about my own happiness. …Just how much of a burden are you carrying in order to stay so close to the hearts of others?”

Her gaze moved over the dark circles permanently etched under my eyes and the slightly hunched line of my back.

“Nagi-sama. You look terribly exhausted.”

“…That’s not true. I just refreshed myself the other day.”

“No. You are trying far too hard to be sincere to everyone. You are whittling away your own body to take on the pain of others.”

She was spot on.

Even though I had secured one day off a week, I was taking the full brunt of the three girls’ dependency, which had only grown heavier in rebound. At night I had to be mindful of Luna’s surveillance network, and now I was trying to step into the heart of the Saint sitting in front of me. Even if I was driven by the trauma of my past life and the atoning thought of “I can’t overlook them,” my mental and physical fatigue was, at the end of the day, constantly dancing on the razor’s edge of my absolute limits.

Serafina gently took my hand.

It was a white, cold hand.

“Nagi-sama. Is there anyone supporting you?”

“I’m… fine on my own.”

“That will not do. If you wear yourself down like that, someday you will break as well.”

That “perfect smile” surfaced on Serafina’s face once again.

But it was not the empty smile she directed at her believers. It was a smile carrying a terribly dangerous heat — like someone who had found a clear “target” and become absolutely convinced of their reason for existing.

“I understand. I shall heal your exhaustion.”

“…Excuse me?”

“Doing something for no one’s sake is still too difficult for me. Therefore… from now on, please allow me to pray for you and to support you.”

Cold sweat trickled down my spine.

This is bad.

The vector of her self-sacrificing dependency — her compulsion that she “must save people” — had just turned completely and entirely toward me as an individual.

“No, I really don’t need any heal—”

“You must not hold back. You are someone who ought to be saved.”

Serafina gripped my hand firmly with both of hers and smiled, gentle as a merciful goddess — radiating a pressure that refused to take no for an answer.

A person deprived of their object of dependency will unconsciously seek a replacement.

Recalling the basics of psychology from my past life, I held my head internally.

It seemed the empty Saint had resolved to fill her own heart by “saving me.”

From outside the door, I could already hear three distinct voices making a racket: “Isn’t this session going on too long?!”

It looked like my peace was going to be shaved away from a brand new direction starting today.