"There is... Something I'd like to confess, priestess."

"Yes, daughter. Mother Feriphia listens to your sins and forgives you. Now... Speak up."

"Y-Yes."

The girl seemed to be nervously fidgeting at the other side of the stall, but Suu couldn't see her through the small holes in the metal sheet. Whatever the girl was doing, Suu was both curious and about to burst into laughter.

As if trying to calm down her expectant smile, the girl spoke.

"Truth is... The other day I... I talked to a lady on the river side. She is the new owner of the village where I live. I don't actually know all that well how it works, but she makes sure that things are okay, together with her brother." The girl never raised her voice too much as she graced the topics of the conversation.

"Aha... Was she good-looking?" Suu shamelessly asked something like that.

"Good... Good-looking? I think she was, priestess..." The girl answered honestly. "She had pretty black hair and eyes. Some thick eyebrows too, like the ones mom paints on herself when she puts on makeup. She also has a really strong and sturdy body and her hands remind me of my father's."

"Ohoho. That seems like a good woman, indeed."

Suu nodded repeatedly as the girl described her in detail, a very satisfied look on her face.

"The thing is... I come to confess a sin that is related to her. Well... Two sins, actually, priestess."

"O-Oh?" Suu blinked in surprise. "... Well, don't hold back, daughter of mine."

"Yes. I might have... I mean, I ended up telling her something that I shouldn't have. About my father and about someone else." The girl's eyes scanned the inside of the booth as if trying to find a way out of her nervousness.

"I see. With what purpose did you do that?"

"Well... She said it was to help my father and bring him back, hehe." She slowly said those words in the middle of a giggle. "I know she can not do that, but it is nice to dream."

"To help your father, you say... Then this is no sin, daughter." Suu warmly smiled, placing her hand on the thin metal sheet. "Is telling the truth and saving your father a sin?"

"... You're right."The girl sighed. "I know the gods will surely help the lady on this one!"

Suu leaned back with a very pleased expression, pressing her boots even further on the priestess' face. There was a certain sense of satisfaction filling her body in that moment, maybe because she had discovered how Rii truly felt. Then, focusing back on the plan, she opened her mouth once again.

"Do you have something else to confess, daughter?" She was enjoying Rii's talk, but she needed to get to the knight as soon as possible. There was no time to hear the extended version of Rii's story, sadly.

"I've been thinking... Priestess, is it wrong for someone my age to like somebody else?"

"Eh?" Suu couldn't help but let go of a surprised gasp at that sudden question. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with liking anyone, daughter. Is it a youngling your age?"

"Hm, I don't think she's my age. You see, the lady I talked to you about, I think she's really cool!"

Wha—

The excitement could be felt in the girl's voice from the other side of the wall. Suu tried not to sound taken aback, but the sudden declaration made her feel unease. Especially coming from someone several years younger. Unease was soon replaced by amusement, which she made an effort not to show.

"Ehem. Oh, little one." Suu covered her mouth trying not to laugh. She still couldn't help letting out a small chuckle, however. "You seem to be mistaking admiration with love, but do not worry, it is a common mistake."

"Hmm... Is that right?"

"Don't worry, my child. Feriphia oversees your actions and is unbothered by them. You may leave, please call the next person inside."

"Yes! Thank you, priestess!"

The door opened and was slowly closed again.

Suu was left alone inside the stall while giggling to herself, feeling like she had been involved in a really big misunderstanding.

She pressed on the priestess' face and cast the spell again.

The door opened again. Suu readier herself and waited for the door to close, but before that, she heard a young man's voice.

"Shit, the scabbard got stuck in the pommel... Rii, help me out. No, no, wait! You're gonna tear it apart! Damn, I made this thing myself out of a boar's hide, you know? Dad, help me untie it! Ahhh, no, not like that! Shit... Well, it doesn't matter anyway."

Heh...

It wasn't until almost a minute later that the door finally shut closed, and the young man on the other side of the stall lightly cleared his throat. It didn't matter if she couldn't feel his aura at the moment, she already knew full well who it was.

"Yo. It's me, again. I don't know if you remember my voice, but it's all the same. I've got a few things to confess today, too."

Suu didn't dare risk it, and started using her cero-tier spell again to create the illusion that it was the priestess who was talking.

"Speak your mind, son of Feriphia."

"Alright. Where do I start? Ah, sure. You might have heard that a few days ago a pair of siblings became the lords of Seashore and all that, aight? Well, first of all, I've been wondering who is actually the lord, because it just seems rather strange that there's two people governing over the same thing, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure that's not how the Kingdom's hierarchy works."

"Alright. Odd, but not a sin."

"Yes, I know." Kei seemed to move, because his sword got hit into something. "But listen, those fucks really piss me off. Especially the guy, who seems to have some sort of gold-creating-bag of fuckery that doesn't stop spitting gold coins and he keeps trying to solve everything with money. The other day a kid got a scrape on his leg and he placed a gold coin on the wound. Can you believe that? Worst thing is, the kid actually stopped crying, so the douchebag attributed it to the coin. Do you know what actually made him stop crying? The fact that he had suddenly become fucking rich at eight years old!"

He slammed the inside of the stall.

"Okay, seems exaggerated, but go on. Try to reduce the swears, miss Feriphia doesn't like those."

Suu knew Kei wasn't lying, but she didn't want to confirm or deny any information she was given.

"Right. Well, anyways, I've been getting into drawing as of late, so I drew the faces of those two lords and pinned them on my room's door, and I haven't stopped throwing darts at them since. It's like, covered in so many darts that it looks like wasp mating season, you know?"

"Now there's a sin." Suu perplexedly reflected on Kei's violence as she took a retrospective look into her actions the days prior, trying to find something that could have made Kei hate them so much.

"Talking 'bout wasps, the other day I was hunting monsters and found these gigantic black caterpillars just feasting on the corpse of a pig. I killed them and cut their head off, tho."

Kei started to ramble about completely inconsequential matters.

"Did you dispose of the corpses?" Suu flinched in disgust as she heard of Kei's story.

"Not really. I have their heads in my backyard and I gave them little name tags. I use them for target practice. They're labeled Suu and Thom, just in case you were wondering."

"Alright son, I think you're having a rough week and you should take a long rest." Suu sighed and slapped her cheek. "You're absolved of your sins, so you can go and bury those things, for fucks— for the mother's sake."

"Aight, going then. Thank you, as always."

The door closed on the other side, not before Kei masterfully hit his sword around the whole stall, somehow, and stuck himself in the door's pommel yet again.

After a short moment that felt like an eternity, steps came from the outside and the next person entered. This time, there were no mistakes or little quirks in the process.

"Good morning, respectable priestess."

A mature and collected female voice was this time's participant, a voice that sounded alluring and soft, enough that it made Suu feel calmer after Kei's nonsensical ramblings. If the family was going in order, it was most probably the mother's turn to confess.

"What is it, my daughter?" Knowing this, Suu had made her tone sound equally as serious as the woman on the other side to avoid dissonance in their intentions.

"Priestess, I have been finding myself troubled as of late. I have committed grave sins and... I'm not sure how to atone for them. Do you think mother Feriphia would hear them and forgive me in your stead, oh servant of hers?"

What a polite way of speaking... This is definitely Rii's mother, their voices do sound pretty alike, huh.

"Speak your mind, please." Suu muttered.

"I pray that dear mother Feriphia forgives me, priestess, for I have... I have laid with another man who is not my husband."

Suu frowned deeply as she called upon every piece of her strength, refraining from letting go of a heavy sigh. It wasn't because she thought that what this woman had done a horrible thing, since her thoughts were far from judging that behavior. She was actually mad at the woman coming to confess a sin that did not exist in the first place.

"Was this from your will, daughter?" Although it a question that would probably raise some flags, Suu couldn't completely hold back her emotions in such a situation.

"... No, priestess." The woman gave a negative answer. "I did not have a choice, but I know it was wrong. I am deeply remorseful, and I am ashamed of wronging my husband and the eyes of Feriphia. I have broken my wedding vows, I do not deserve to be married, but I love my husband and I don't want to go away from him."

Suu bit on her lip and stopped herself from clicking her tongue. She was pretty sure that she would have slapped this woman if she had her in front of her.

"I'm sure you did it because you were driven into a corner. You do not need to worry about it, my daughter. Feriphia has seen you and your actions, and she forgives you. There is no need to tell your husband yet, but come next week, and I shall instruct you."

Suu felt like she was wasting her magic energy, but also that sending that message to her was necessary to avoid any conflict further down the road.

"There is actually something else I wish to confess." The woman said.

"What is it?"

"There is another sin I committed that night, priestess, for which I know that I need to be absolved. When I laid with that man, my rage overtook me for minutes at the time. I like to weave, so I keep a sharp pair of scissors on my nightstand for when I need to get rid of any loose strings. That night, I thought of sticking the scissor down the man's throat, and I fantasized about a hundred ways to spill his guts on my sheets. If it wasn't because I feared the future of my children, I would have done it without a shred of doubt."

Suu leaned back and sighed, at a loss for words and ideas to continue. Her real emotions were the same as the woman's, and she was already planning on ending the baron's life, to begin with. However, if she said something that went against the teachings of the Feriphian church, her disguise would surely be busted.

She also didn't know what a priestess would say in a situation like this, which had made her slightly nervous.

"I see." She made time to come up with something in the spot. "For this sin, you need to atone. But... Hm, yes, it won't be in sacrifice. Mend your ways and do good, help somebody who's in need. Mother Feriphia has seen your actions and understands your situation. From now on, do your best to spread light, and the mother will hear your prayers."

"Yes... I will see you in a week, priestess."

The woman exited the stall, letting Suu finally sigh with a little more peace.

If her thinking wasn't flawed, then the one to come next into the stall would be the father of the two kids, the husband who's family had slowly started to be torn apart by the dirty schemes of the baron.

Without waiting even a minute, the door opened again, and that familiar aura drenched the wood of the stall. Suu had memorized it well back at the castle, so she was sure that the person sitting on the other bench was that knight.

"Good morning. I see this booth is small as always, priestess." A hoarse and manly voice said those words as if shifting in his seat. "It's been quite the rough week. I'm glad I can come and seek the light of Feriphia in this place."

"Do you have anything that you wish to confess, son?"

"Yes." He nodded. "I killed a man the other day."

Those tragic words came out, but his voice didn't change in the slightest. It felt like he was looking at the ground as he spoke, since the sound was muffled enough for Suu to misunderstand some of his words.

"It was an order from my boss. That day was my turn protecting him, and we were going out towards the outskirts of the city. A man... threw a stone at him."

The weight of his words resounded in Suu's small heart as the whole cabin trembled from the grievous gargle in the back of the man's throat. It was the voice of someone who was extremely tired, and at the same time, looking for a shred of optimism in the bottom of his heart.

"Anyways... I recognized that man." The knight scratched his head with a hand. "I recognized him because... a coworker of mine had killed his child past month. We were in a skirmish with a few gang members, and a kid got in the middle. My coworker did not care about the collateral, he simply stuck his weapon in the kid's neck and tossed him aside like one disposes of a chicken's bones after eating it."

The man sniffed, but it didn't sound like he was crying. No, it as more like he was trying to make space between his sentences so Suu could process all of what he was saying.

"Uhm... I killed that father two days ago. And my boss told me to throw the body into the river, but I couldn't. I searched for the unmarked grave of his son and buried him beside it. Of course, I... I knew where it was because I was the one who buried his son, too. I want to ask for lady Feriphia's forgiveness, and... I wanted to ask her to have that family in her heart, and let them join again in her river of light."

Suu felt a wrenching pain in her gut as she heard the man's story. What a cruel twist of fate, that the man with the biggest heart has to be the one to do the dirtiest job. She thought. Biting down on her lip, she managed to recover her composure, and got closer to the wall.

"They say..." Suu whispered with her own voice, pushing her feelings through the thin metal sheet. "They say that the gods put the biggest challenges to their bravest soldiers. But you... don't need to go through all of this."

"Heh..." The knight chuckled lightly and covered his chapped lips with his hand. "I knew I felt two auras inside the stall, my senses haven't gotten rusty after all."

"So you can feel me... Knights are truly amazing." She tried not to sound like she was mocking him, as those were her genuine feelings which she wished to transmit. "I'm glad you know I'm here. It makes things easier."

"You were that day at the baron's office, you bought Seashore with a gross amount of money. I couldn't forget such an aura, never in a hundred years." The man said. "Rii has told me you're a good one, and I will trust her."

"So you do listen to your kids..."

"Yes... They're the only thing I want to listen to, every day, every week." Predsman placed his hand on the wall, pain surging up in his voice. "There's nothing more precious than them in my life, and there's nothing I love more than them. My wife and my children are my reason to live and my reason to work, even when I have to keep going back to do all of that shit I don't want to, I..."

"You're a good man, Predsman." Suu warmly smiled, but the knight on the other side of the stall could not see her. "I hate to see you and your family being torn to pieces... All because of that asshole in fancy clothes that does not know when to stop."

"Don't dare say you understand me." The man sniffed, this time a certain trembling to his voice. "I am a knight. I am not poor, but I am not a great noble. I still have to fight every day of my life to make an honest living. I still put my fucking life in the line, and that's never enough! Never enough for that piece of shit. I can't even come back to my wife anymore. I can't take them to trips. We can't go into the woods to hunt. I'm... I'm sure I'll never get to see my son grow up into a strong and valorous man, and I won't see my daughter become a beautiful and strong woman."

The tears poured from the man's cheeks as he sobbed and covered his mouth. Suu's eyes became wet as well as she did her best to push back her feelings— a grown man's tears were harder to see than a kid's, after all. She thought she would not have any more opportunities, so she swallowed the knot in her throat, gathered her courage, and raised her voice.

"Predsman..." Her fingers gripped the metal sheet, making it twist as if about to break down. "What do you think would happen if... the baron was murdered tomorrow?"

"That is..." The knight halted his rambling and scoffed. "That is not something I can think about, missy."

"you can."

Suu pushed her hand against the sheet. It broke out of its encasing, falling on the knight's boots without making a sound.

The knight opened his eyes wide as she saw the girl's fingers, all wounded and callous, covered in scars that a noble would never dare show. Seeing her face through the newly-made hole, he saw those thick eyebrows that showed the image of a brave warrior instead of a royal's contempt-filled gaze. He felt a connection in his heart that he had not felt before, like a helping hand had suddenly been extended towards him, trying to pull him out of a deep and putrid well.

"Knight, I will help you. I only need your cooperation. But first, tell me. What would happen if the baron were to die tomorrow?"

"If the baron..." The man blinked rapidly and touched his beard in thought, pondering about the girl's inquiry. "He would probably be replaced by his son. He only has one heir."

Replaced? Suu seemed to have fallen into disarray. If he is going to be replaced by someone of his same blood, what is the point of this assassination...? Was the king not thinking of this, or—

Suu was suddenly enlightened.

She felt something had crossed her mind in an instant and it had made more sense than anything she had thought about before. What if this was a two-team mission? There was the possibility that Thom was issued this mission because Miel was testing how well he could act in a situation in which he had to work with another team without communication.

Did they have a time limit, then? And if they did, how long did they have to complete the mission? Would something happen if they didn't make it in time, or would they be simply fired?

Although she was uncertain of the finer aspects of it, she was now slightly more relaxed thinking that the possibility of a dual assassination was real, and not that they had been thrown into a mess without a back-up.

"I see." She said. "Would it make you more comfortable to be under the heir's reign instead of the father?"

Predsman looked down trying to find an answer, but it didn't seem to come across. His thoughts wandered slightly for a few seconds, before he raised his hand and sighed.

"I understand what I get from this... But, what do you get?"

"Isn't it simple?" Suu smiled. "There's a probability that I and my brother are elected to be new barons if the past one is deceased."

"A power struggle, then." Predsman sighed. "I guess that's fine too. But, missy... I don't think I can do it. The risk is just too much for me to bear. It is true that... I am not in the best position at the moment, but my family, they live a happy life that I could never throw to the trash for my own benefit. If living without me means that they will grow up healthy and fine, then... I'm willing to make that sacrifice."

"Predsman..." Suu touched the back of her neck, as if trying to say something that made her extremely uncomfortable. "While it is true that your family is not hungry or needy for shelter, are you sure they are happy?"

"Hm?" The man's brow tightened considerably and his eyes turned soft at that provocation from Suu's side. "W, What do you mean...?"

"If you don't wanna take my word for it, it is okay. However, there are a few things that I need to tell you. If after hearing them you still do not wish to cooperate, I will accept responsibility for whatever you choose to do with the information you obtained here today, even if you wish to snitch to the baron and get me and my brother killed. Are you okay with that?"

The knight's breathing accelerated. He started to rub his hands together as he searched inside his brain for an acceptable answer, looking left and right in the wooden lonely stall.

The pain in his gut and the sweat accumulating on his forehead, however, had impulsed him to move his head forward, sticking it close so he could hear what Suu had to whisper.

The girl sighed in relief and placed her hand on Predsman's ear. Then, she slowly and softly began to tell him everything that she had heard from Rii and from the man's wife, hoping that her passive skills and the ring on her hand would help her in convincing him.

During the moments in which she was telling the man those things, his face went through an incredible variety of expressions. From anxiety to worry, then sadness as he heard of Rii's poems and her cooking, surprise when he heard that Kei also missed him dearly, and finally— a fiery red color covered his face as he heard of what the baron had done with his wife.

The man gripped the wood so hard that the bench started to crack and fall into pieces, his big arms powering the incredible rage he was feeling at the moment. Tears also started to well in the edge of his eyes, and although he had tried to suppress it, his aura was strong enough that Suu could compare it to Chamgue's, and it had begun to lightly choke her as well.

When she was finished speaking, the man leaned backwards, a more relaxed look on his face. His bloodshot eyes still adorned the murderous visage under his eyebrows, but now, there was resolve and determination scribbled with blood between his eyebrows.

"You said you had a plan." He twisted his lips and spoke up with a grouchy voice. "How am I gonna take out that fucking bastard out?"