The title ‘Saint’ has now been changed to ‘Holy Maiden’. Thank you reader, Saisou, for the suggestion.
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The Advent of a Holy Maiden [Part 1]
There stood a Holy Maiden.
In the form of a still, young girl…
Jacob, a sailor, softly kissed the shadow of the girl who had nursed him.
And not only Jacob, but all the patients suffering from that hateful disease quietly gave a kiss of gratitude to the girl’s stretched shadow under the setting sun.
Jacob’s POV
No matter how much I begged, I still couldn’t get my hands on the medicine.
The sailors, who were hired by a mere small company in the large harbor, including me, all fell ill after the end of a long sail.
If a sailor, who was uneducated and only had his sturdy body as an asset, fell sick, his hard earned money would soon run out.
That disease was contagious.
The people who had chatted with me with a smile until yesterday started to distance themselves.
That disease was incurable.
My beloved family had lost their smile as we began to live every day in despair.
After my family lost its mainstay, we, who had never been affluent to begin with, immediately fell into misery.
Never having enough food to eat, I just slowly waited for my death.
I had given up on living.
There was no hope anywhere.
Only struggling, suffering, while waiting for death in pitch-black darkness.
…Or so I thought.
Suddenly, some men led by a freckled boy appeared and took everyone in my poor family to the Nobles’ District, which we had never set foot in, using an expensive-looking carriage we had never ridden before.
After we passed through a large gate, they guided us inside the mansion to a place with many clean beds.
My dirty body was cleaned, my old open wounds were treated, my starving stomach was filled, and both my physical injuries and wounded heart were healed.
I had only known it from the rumors that there was a Holy Maiden in the royal capital.
It was mainly spread among merchants, especially tailors, at first.
The people in the port city laughed it off, saying that it was not their first or second time hearing such a rumor.
But the rumor, which was supposed to go away in three days, still didn’t disappear after three days.
It was said that the news about the Holy Maiden had even spread in the commoner town and among the nobles. Moreover, the people of the slums, who had always made fun of such rumors the most, surprisingly also adored the Holy Maiden.
It was a stupid rumor.
If a Holy Maiden really existed, why didn’t she save me?
I know.
I was just venting my anger.
Of course, a Holy Maiden would not have the time.
A Holy Maiden couldn’t possibly have the time to save a poor, sick, and uneducated man like me.
That’s what I had thought.
“Jacob-san, I see that you can eat your meal without leaving leftovers now! Please have dessert too. We have oranges for today.”
The smiling Holy Maiden offered a whole orange to me.
That smile had gradually healed my body, heart, and that painful disease.
I heard that the little children who diligently followed behind the Holy Maiden were all slum children. Dressed in a white coat similar to what the Holy Maiden wore, the way the children worked looked the same as a well-trained nurse.
Dessert was always included in every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they even served us an afternoon snack at 3 o’clock.
The slum children had never touched our meals. I could not even see a shadow of the slum children who would punch, trick, or worse, kill, for a piece of bread in them.
