# Chapter 3 — The Evidence
The morning after a commission always felt like a hangover without the fun part.
I woke up on the couch — where else — with a crick in my neck and a dull ache in my right shoulder that I didn't remember earning. The Shade Hounds hadn't touched me. I was sure of that. But channeling divine light through your arms for eleven minutes straight had a way of reminding you that the human body was not, in fact, designed to be a conduit for the wrath of God.
I sat up. I stretched. Something in my back popped in a way that was either therapeutic or catastrophic — I chose to believe the former.
My phone was on the floor, screen still showing the gacha game. The three-star pull stared up at me like a personal insult. I picked it up, closed the app, and checked my bank balance.
280,000 won. Sitting there. Beautiful. Untouched.
I smiled. It was the smile of a man who had fought shadow monsters in an alternate dimension and was now calculating how many fried chicken combos that translated to. The answer was eleven, if I went with the regular combo. Eight if I upgraded to the large with cheese sauce every time, which I would, because I wasn't an animal.
The morning routine was the same as always. Shower. Vestments. Mirror check. The man in the mirror looked the same as yesterday — composed, clean, young enough to be mistaken for his own altar boy. No visible bruises. No cuts. No evidence.
Almost no evidence.
I turned my head. There, on the inside of my right wrist, just below the sleeve line — a faint discoloration. Not quite a bruise. More like a shadow stain, the kind you got when Hollow residue touched bare skin. It would fade in a day or two. It always did. But right now it looked like someone had drawn on my wrist with a gray marker.
I pulled my sleeve down. Problem solved.
I stepped outside. Tuesday morning. No mass today, but I had parish office hours — two hours of sitting in the small room behind the sanctuary, available for anyone who wanted to talk, confess, ask for advice, or complain about their neighbors under the guise of asking for spiritual guidance.
Mrs. Calloway was first. Her daughter was still sick — a fever that wouldn't break. I listened. I prayed with her. I told her to bring the girl by the church and I'd lay hands on her, which sounded medieval but was actually just standard First Light healing. Low-level stuff. The kind of thing any priest could do.
"Thank you, Father," she said, squeezing my hands. "You're such a blessing to this district."
"That's kind of you, Mrs. Calloway."
"My husband says you're the best priest we've had in twenty years."
"Your husband is very generous."
"He also says you look like you should still be in school."
"Your husband is very observant."
She laughed. I smiled. She left. I made a note to visit her daughter tomorrow.
Mr. Reeves came next. He didn't want spiritual guidance. He wanted to talk about the weather, which he did for forty-five minutes. I nodded in the right places. I said "indeed" and "quite so" and "the Lord provides" at appropriate intervals. Mr. Reeves left satisfied. I was not sure what he was satisfied about, but he seemed content, and that was the job.
A teenager came in after that — a boy, maybe sixteen, who sat down and stared at his shoes for a full minute before speaking.
"Father, is it a sin to hate someone?"
I leaned forward. "That depends. Tell me about it."
He told me. It was about his father. It was always about someone's father. I listened the way I'd been trained to listen — fully, without judgment, without rushing to fill the silence. The boy talked for twenty minutes. I said very little. When he was done, his eyes were red but his shoulders had dropped two inches.
"It's not a sin to feel anger," I said. "Anger is human. What matters is what you do with it. You came here instead of doing something you'd regret. That took courage."
He nodded. He didn't look convinced, but he looked lighter. He left.
I sat alone in the office. The morning light came through the small window. Dust motes drifted. The room smelled like old wood and candle wax.
These were the moments I never joked about. Not internally, not to the reader, not to anyone. The boy was real. His pain was real. And the fact that I could sit in this chair and be the person he trusted enough to talk to — that was not a performance. That was the reason I became a priest.
The fried chicken and the gacha pulls and the anime binges — those were the reward. This was the work. And the work mattered.
I closed the office at noon. I walked to the parish hall. Maren was already there, because Maren was always already there. She was organizing the supply closet, which she did with the intensity of a general preparing for war.
"Good morning, Father."
"Good morning, Maren."
She looked at me. I could feel the scan — the quick, practiced sweep of her eyes that checked for evidence of overnight degeneracy. Chip dust on the collar. Sauce stains. Dark circles from staying up too late. She'd developed this skill over the past few months, and she was getting terrifyingly good at it.
Today, I was clean. Vestments pressed. Face washed. No visible sins.
She seemed almost disappointed.
"The children's program supplies came in," she said, turning back to the closet. "I need you to sign the receipt."
"Of course."
I walked over. She handed me the clipboard. I took it with my left hand — a choice so deliberate it was practically a confession — and signed.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
"You're left-handing the signature."
"I'm ambidextrous."
"You are not ambidextrous. You told me last month that you can't even hold chopsticks with your left hand."
"I've been practicing."
"Father."
"Maren."
She set down the box she was holding. She turned to face me fully. She had the expression — the one I'd catalogued internally as Maren Face #4: *I know you're lying and I'm deciding how much energy to spend proving it.*
"Show me your right hand."
"That's an unusual request."
"Show me your right hand, Father."
I considered my options. I could refuse, which would confirm her suspicion. I could show her the hand, which would confirm her suspicion. I could create a distraction — knock something over, fake a spiritual emergency, claim I heard the voice of God telling me to leave immediately.
I showed her my right hand.
She took my wrist. She pushed the sleeve up. The shadow stain sat there on my skin, gray and damning, like a receipt I'd forgotten to throw away.
Silence.
"Communion wine?" she said.
"I was going to go with 'ink stain' this time, actually."
"This is Hollow residue."
"Is it? I wouldn't know. I'm a simple parish priest."
"You took a commission."
It wasn't a question. She said it the way you'd say "it's raining" — a fact observed, not a theory proposed.
I didn't answer. She was still holding my wrist. Her thumb was resting just below the stain, and I could feel the slight pressure of her grip — not angry, not gentle, just firm. The grip of someone who had decided she was not letting go until this conversation was finished.
"Was it dangerous?"
"Shade Hounds. C-rank. It was like taking out the trash."
"You have a bruise forming on your shoulder."
"How do you —"
"You've been favoring your left side since you walked in. You signed with your left hand. You reached for the clipboard with your left hand. You opened the door with your left hand. I've been watching you for four minutes."
Four minutes. She'd been building a case for four minutes. I was being prosecuted by a woman who organized supply closets for a living.
"It's not a bruise. It's a — muscle thing."
"A muscle thing."
"From sleeping on the couch."
"You sleep on the couch every night."
"It was a particularly aggressive couch night."
She released my wrist. She reached into the supply closet and pulled out a small first-aid kit — the one she kept stocked for the children's program. She opened it. She took out a roll of bandage wrap and a small jar of something that smelled like menthol and disappointment.
"Sit down," she said.
"Maren, it's really not —"
"Sit. Down."
I sat down on a supply crate. She pulled my sleeve up past the shoulder. The bruise was there — a mottled purple-green thing the size of a fist, probably from the recoil of the second smiting bolt. I hadn't even felt it during the fight. Adrenaline was a liar.
She applied the ointment. Her hands were efficient, clinical, the same way she did everything — no wasted motion, no unnecessary tenderness. But she was careful. She didn't press too hard. She wrapped the bandage snug but not tight.
Neither of us spoke.
When she was done, she put the kit away. She stood up. She looked at me with an expression I hadn't catalogued yet — something between Maren Face #4 and something else. Something quieter.
"You could have told me," she said.
"You would have worried."
"I worry anyway. At least if you told me, I could worry with accurate information."
She picked up the clipboard. She handed it back to me.
"Sign it again. With your right hand. The left-handed signature looks like a toddler wrote it."
I signed it. It hurt a little. I didn't let it show.
She took the clipboard back. She turned to the supply closet. She resumed organizing with the same intensity as before, as if the last five minutes hadn't happened.
But she'd left the first-aid kit on the counter instead of putting it back on the shelf. Within reach. Just in case.
I noticed.
I didn't say anything.
That evening, I was back on the couch. Hoodie. Sweatpants. Tablet propped against the pillow fort. A new anime — this one about a guy who gets reincarnated as a vending machine, which sounded stupid and was stupid and was also somehow the most compelling thing I'd watched all week.
My shoulder ached under the bandage. The menthol smell had faded but not disappeared. Every time I shifted position, I caught a faint whiff of it, and with it, the memory of Maren's hands — quick, careful, saying everything her voice wouldn't.
I opened the delivery app. Fried chicken combo. Large. Extra crispy. Cheese sauce. Cola.
I deserved it. I'd been a good priest today. I'd listened to Mrs. Calloway. I'd endured Mr. Reeves's weather report. I'd helped a boy who was angry at his father. I'd been interrogated by my own deacon and survived.
The chicken arrived in twenty-six minutes. Two minutes faster than the estimate. A blessing.
I ate it on the couch, watching the vending machine anime, shoulder aching pleasantly under the bandage that Maren had wrapped with hands that were not gentle but were careful, which was better.
I said my evening prayers at the altar, kneeling in the hoodie, chicken grease on my fingers, bandage peeking out from under my sleeve.
"Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for Mrs. Calloway and Mr. Reeves and the boy who was brave enough to sit in that chair. Thank you for the commission money and for fried chicken and for Maren, who is terrifying but who also keeps a first-aid kit within reach. Please watch over the 7th District tonight. And Lord — the new banner. I haven't pulled yet today. I'm saving my crystals. I'm being strategic. I think you'd be proud of that. Amen."
I made the sign of the cross.
I went back to the couch.
The vending machine anime was stupid. The chicken was perfect. The bandage was warm.
Tomorrow I'd be Father Elias again. But tonight, I was just me — a little bruised, a little fed, a little known.
And that was more than enough.