Shi En was deeply conflicted.
He looked at the corpse before him, his chest tight, not knowing what to do.
That corpse was his landlady—Mrs. Maru.
In Shi En's memories, Mrs. Maru had always been a kind old grandmother who took great care of him. Sometimes, when Priest Sion did not have enough money to pay the rent, Mrs. Maru would not press him for it. She would simply tell him to pay when he was less strapped for cash.
As an enforcement priest, Shi En earned a weekly wage of eighty Silver Li. A monthly rent of forty Silver Li was not actually much of a burden to him.
But—
During his enforcement work, Shi En was always softhearted.
Whenever he saw pitiful people driven to a dead end by life, or children forced to bear the guilt of their criminal fathers, he could never help using his own wages to support them.
As a result, although his weekly pay should have been enough for him to live quite well, Shi En often found himself in straitened circumstances.
That was why his landlady's kindness was more than mere goodwill—it had lifted more than half the burden from his life.
He had always been grateful to her.
In his eyes, his landlady had been a truly great and good person.
Until one day, when a colleague who had long been stationed in the confessional secretly told him that every weekend night, Mrs. Maru would enter the Radiant Church's confessional and softly recount the sins of her past.
That colleague could not go into detail because of his duties, but he did tell Shi En this: perhaps her present kindness was simply atonement for her past.
So, had Mrs. Maru committed some grievous sin in the past, and was her present