The Cowardly Baby Saint Sees Ghosts - Chapter 85

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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# Chapter 85.
The Pope’s breathing had grown shallow, labored.
The battlefield around us remained a chaos of unfinished carnage—the moans of the wounded, the urgent pounding of feet, the chaos of shouts bleeding into one another—yet my eyes saw only one thing: the blood that would not stop flowing from the Pope’s body.
The noise around me faded like white noise, never quite reaching my mind.
“Please, Your—Father, no—Dad, just hold on a little longer, please, please—”
“Diane.”
The Pope called my name. His voice was so faint I had to lean close to my ear just to hear it.
“Don’t speak. Conserve your strength, I beg you……”
“It’s all right. Never mind that. Diane……I have something to tell you.”
He laughed with great difficulty. Watching that laugh, I felt something I couldn’t quite name rising in my chest.
* * *
Even as consciousness grew dimmer and dimmer, my mind remained strangely clear.
My body’s sensations were slipping away, yet instead, memories from long ago surfaced with vivid precision.
It was the memory of the day I first met her.
When I first saw Diane, she was small and thin.
A frame far smaller than children her age, skeletal arms and legs. But what I remember most, what I cannot forget, was the light in her eyes.
There was not a trace of the curiosity or innocence a child that age should possess.
Only wariness filled those eyes—the look of someone always ready to flee.
That day, the documents handed over to me from the Temple contained a brief record.
Malnutrition from abuse. Old scars scattered across her body.
Reading that file, I felt a genuine anger I had not known in years.
What kind of adults could do such things to a child so small?
Because she had been hurt so deeply, approaching her was difficult at first.
Even at mealtimes, she would not eat, no matter how much food I set before her, if she sensed someone watching.

So I would simply place a single candy on the table in silence and withdraw. It was a method I had learned from Liam, the only person she seemed to trust.
I said nothing in particular. I waited for her to reach out on her own.
For the first few days, the candy sat untouched.
I worried more than once that perhaps I was doing something wrong.
But I did not give up. Every day, at the same time, I left a single candy.
After several days, the candies on the table began to disappear one by one.
I was secretly delighted at this discovery.
It was a very small step forward, but it was enough.
Months passed like this.
“This…this tasted really good. Thank you.”
One day, Diane spoke to me first for the first time.
In her hand was a single lemon candy.
The moment I heard that small voice, I felt something like electricity run through my entire body.
“Indeed. I am glad to hear it.”
From that day forward, Diane began to open herself to me, bit by bit.
We walked through the Garden together, and sometimes spoke of trivial things.
Gradually, the wariness faded from her eyes.
There was a night when Diane had a nightmare and woke up crying in the dark.
I heard her crying and ran to her without hesitation.
She startled when she saw me, but unable to stop crying, she reached out her hand toward me.
That moment, holding that small hand—I have not forgotten it even now.
“……Yes, I…I was dreaming about the past.”
That was all Diane said, and she said nothing more.
I did not press further. I simply stayed by her side through the rest of the night.
The next morning, Diane had fallen asleep leaning against me.
After that day, Diane often knocked on my door late at night.
Always clutching the Rabbit Doll that Liam had given her.
Sometimes there was a particular reason. Sometimes there was none.
Each time, I would stop what I was doing and listen to whatever she wished to tell me.
Even if it was something trivial, the mere fact that Diane was opening her mouth to speak to me was a source of deep joy.
She would chatter on about her day, coming to interrupt me during my duties, and yet it never bothered me.
Rather, I found myself thinking how much it sounded like birdsong.
Once, Diane asked me something.
“Why do you care for me like this?”
To that question, I paused for a moment, and then answered her honestly.
‘I just… wanted you to be happy.’
At some point, whenever I saw Diane, my heart would ache in the strangest way.
If I found something good, I wanted to give it to her first; if I saw something beautiful, I wanted to show it to her.
Not as the Temple’s Saint, but simply as a child—I wished for her to be happy.
‘I see now. I love this girl as if she were my own daughter.’
It took me a very long time to understand that truth.
But once I did, that feeling became undeniably clear.
I found myself genuinely hoping she would never be hurt, that she would receive nothing but kindness from the world—at least from me.
And so, from that day forward, I always carried Lemon Candy in my pocket.
So that whenever, wherever she struggled, I could give it to her.
I believed that one small sweet was the surest token of love I could offer her.
* * *
“Diane.”
The Pope called my name again.
His trembling hand fumbled inside his robes, trying to pull something out.
“Just… just a moment!”
“I must… pass this on…”
The Pope’s fingers finally drew something from inside his garment.
As his hand tilted, shaking, Lemon Candies wrapped in yellow paper spilled out in an endless cascade.
One, two, three.
The candies that had filled his pocket poured endlessly onto the floor and across my lap.
Without counting, there had to be at least several dozen.
I was left speechless at the sight.
“How long… have you been carrying these?”
“Always. I’ve kept them in my pocket, so that if you ever… struggled, I could give them to you.”
Tears welled up at those words.
All these candies were a testament to how long, how steadily, he had been thinking of me.
Every morning when he changed clothes, he must have carefully packed each one of these sweets.
Without fail, every single day, ever since I first set foot in the Temple.
It was almost funny. The truth was, I did like candy, but not so much that I ate it every day.
I preferred cookies and macarons, actually.
But this earnest Pope, guided by nothing but Liam’s single suggestion, always carried nothing but candy with him.
And that, too, broke my heart.
“I don’t need this. Not these things—I need―”
My voice crumbled completely.
“I need a father.”
“Please…”
The Pope’s voice grew fainter and fainter.
“Please… could you think of me as your father?”
Those words shattered my heart entirely.
“Will you love me?”
In all my life, no one had ever begged for love from me with such desperation.
If anything, it was always I who feared being loved, who kept my distance from people.
“Don’t say such things. Of course I do—I already love you. So please, come back to yourself.”
“Thank… goodness.”
The Pope murmured those words and closed his eyes completely.
Strength drained from his hand, and it fell limply among the scattered Lemon Candies.
“No, no, no!”
I grasped his body and shook it desperately.
My voice tore through the air in a scream that would not stop. Even Liam and the knights nearby stood frozen, unable to utter a single word before that anguish.
Some of the knights turned away, swallowing their tears.
“Your Holiness.”
A priest approached carefully and spoke.
“At this rate, survival is unlikely.”
At those words, I felt I was about to lose my sanity entirely.
“No. No, that can’t be!”
With trembling hands, I placed my palms over the Pope’s wound.
I didn’t know what to do or how to do it. I only knew that I had to save this man—that thought consumed every corner of my mind.
I wept and began to draw everything from within myself.
My fingertips trembled, my vision blurred, but I could not stop.
Losing this person was something she could not even imagine.
“Please…….”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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