Chapter 9.6

Hearing the sound of the slightly slanted door opening, Seishin knew he had been waiting impatiently. 

"Good evening," said a smiling childish face which Seishin looked attentively at. 

"....What's wrong?"

Nothing, Seishin shook his head. It was a complicated feeling, being self conscious of his emotional dependance now on a girl young enough to be his daughter. 

"You're depressed again aren't you? What happened this time?"

"Toshio and I.... well."

"You two had a fight? What trouble you cause," Sunako said with a laugh.  Indeed, Seishin smiled bitterly. "Did Doctor Ozaki attack you again?"

"Not quite," Seishin forced a smile looking towards the empty altar. With some hesitation, he summarized the situation. 

"I know. Toshio isn't me. Toshio is doing good by Toshio's own thinking, so even if that isn't the best by me, I don't have the right to condemn him. ....But." 

Seishin lost sight of the words to come after that.

"You're angry?"

"Saying no wouldn't be very honest. Yes, I'm angry. Why would he do such a thing, I think. I know myself that I don't have any right to be angry. But I can't overlook it. In the end I attacked him, and am sick with myself for having attacked..." In fact, Seishin said casting his gaze to his own palm. "I think that Toshio is more normal. That's right, I'm just as you said, sentimental. Toshio says that I'm an idealist. I think that's exactly right. I'm more of a singularity. Toshio is more obvious. If you asked who was more in line with the majority, Toshio is more with the majority than I am, and from that vantage point, what I say is too pure and immature. So it's true, I really have no right to criticize Toshio. And yet I ended up attacking him."

"And so you are depressed over that and came here, then."

Seishin tilted his head. 

"I wonder if Muroi-san wants to be a martyr?"

"If I do?"

"Yes. One who offers themselves up to God in sacrifice, you want to become such a person. But you cannot see God. ....As to why, it is because you have been abandoned by God."

Seishin gave a wry smile and shook his head.

"No? But, that is how it looks to me. Muroi-san really is a romantic. as if you want to carry out an absolute justice, an ideal. An absolute justice or ideal would be another name for God, wouldn't it?"

"Aa.... Right. Yes, it would."

Sunako nodded. 

"Muroi-san wants to be one who is loyal to God, don't you. There is an illness spreading in the village. If you abide by God's will, the spread of the disease will be in check, it is the right thing to do to save the people of the village. That is why Muroi-san is cooperating to do so. You are the same as Doctor Ozaki in wanting to save the people of the village. But Doctor Ozaki is not as much of a romantic as Muroi-san."

Seishin stayed quiet watching Sunako's face. 

"It isn't only Doctor Ozaki, I think you could say that of all people, though. Anyone would think that if a disease was spreading, they must stop it, wouldn't they? But among them, there are people who would take any means, and also people who, even knowing what the just thing to do is, would be cowardly and take actions to protect themselves. They want to preserve their safety, and so they will handle the disease from a distance at which they can be safe. They cannot do more than that. To other people, they may wish to carry that out as their meaning in life, or something like that perhaps. If so, their own will and pride take precedence. A distance at which those don't conflict. That is how they align their priorities.

But, Muroi-san wants to offer himself up to a single absolute God. You cannot bare not to be loyal towards an absolute justice. There cannot be anything prioritized above God. ---But, what is absolute about a God that none but you hold faith in?"

"Aa..." Seishin buried his face in both hands. "That's it exactly."

"Muroi-san believes in God, doesn't he? I think you want to do ministry by him. You wish to be diligent enough to sacrifice yourself. But no one else believes in the God that Muroi-san believes in. Each time you affirm this, Muroi-san comes to know that there is no God, that it is nothing more than the values you choose to abide by---nothing more than one set of values, of which everybody has their own. That is not Good. Each time Muroi-san loses sight of God." Sunako laughed lightly. "That is why Muroi-san comes here when he is down, isn't it? You resonate with somebody who could this place. You want to believe in God, to sacrifice yourself to it, and yet you cannot find God. Together with that altar."

Seishin looked up at the altar. The altar with an emptiness where the God it should have enshrined would be. 

"Even though you know that God should be in place there, you don't know what kind of God to enshrine. God drawn out by your own thought, is an ideal idea but because it is only your own, it doesn't merit the title of God. But on the other hand, something that other people throughout the world indicate, while it may gather the faith of a great many people, is an impure idea, and after all it doesn't look to be worth the name of God."

"....That's right."

"Even though you are a servant of God, that God will not make an appearance before Muroi-san. That is why Muroi-san feels that he has been abandoned by God."

Seishin nodded. "....That might be the case."

Sunako tilted her head. "Is it difficult to hear this, I wonder? I will be pleased if you can forgive it as a child's simpleminded cruelty, but. ---Therefore, Muroi-san wanted to die?"

"Therefore?"

"Because there is no God in this world. Because he won't show himself before you."

No, Seishin shook hishead. "That isn't it, I don't think."

"You don't think?"

"Mm. ....I don't know. To tell the truth, I don't know my moyive."

"That can't be."

"Really," Seishin said with a  bitter smile. "I am an extreme idealist, and those ideals are only my ideals is something that I think I grasp. It's probably true that I see shades of that part of myself in this church." But, Seishin said looking up to the altar. "To tell the truth, I don't believe in anything absolute. I think it would be nice if there were something, but I know that there isn't. If there were any one value that were absolute, it would only be the result of sorting them and regulating them into order. And a regulated result, an ideal raised up to absolute status, isn't worth talking about as an ideal. I'm more of an idealist than you're thinking." 

Sunako gazed at Seishin as if shocked. "It seems that way, doesn't it."

"Therefore, that isn't it. It wasn't because of something that can be simply reasoned out like this, that can be expressed in words..."

It came from somewhere deeper within. Separate from the part of ruled by knowledge and logic and words, a completely different part suddenly rising, stirring Seishin up. That, which he could only call by the word 'motive.' 

"I think it's mysterious myself. ...I wonder what on earth I was thinking then?"