The Saintess and the Villainess

Chapter 21

Truthfully, the past couple weeks had been really hard for Anne.

From early in the morning until late at night, the church kept her busy with various ceremonies and events. Mostly she just had to be present and say vaguely saintly things or perform some sort of small ritual role, but it was still exhausting because she had constantly be in character as the Saintess. And she couldn't afford to make too many mistakes—she had already pushed her luck with the whole "cutting her hair and wearing men's clothes" thing.

Then there was the social aspect. Some of the events were internal church events, but some of them were public facing, and for whatever reason the Crown Prince kept showing up for all the public events. That was mostly fine. All he ever seemed to want was for Anne to greet him and chat with him with meaningless things, and he didn't really seem to notice if Anne was a bit rude to him, so it didn't take too much energy to keep him happy. Anne could basically turn off her brain when she was with Prince Sebastian and it didn't really matter.

Much worse was the fact that Grand Duke Marshal keep showing up.

Every time Anne spotted him approaching her, she'd make some kind of excuse to slip away. But keeping an eye out for him was putting her on edge constantly, and she'd claimed bathroom emergencies once too often and now Eva was talking about adjusting her diet to help improve her digestion...

I know he was the original Anne's love interest, she thought to herself, but why does he have to be everywhere? I don't want to get involved with the man who killed my precious Corvina in the original story. No way! Maybe it's silly to hold a grudge for something someone hasn't even done yet in this timeline but I don't care. I don't trust him.

But regardless of any specific complaints, the main issue was that, when it came down to it, Anne just wasn't well suited to being this busy. In her previous life she'd purposefully chosen a low stakes career that wouldn't require her to work any overtime. She was a good worker, and she didn't mind being around people, but ideally she wanted at least a few hours a day to just sit by herself and maybe read some novels and otherwise do nothing. That was how she recharged.

The only way she was able to keep up with this schedule at all was because Eva kept her promise to help her through it.

Eva took care of all the peripheral requirements for the schedule—transportation, meals, even Anne's outfits (all with pants, not dresses)—so that Anne basically didn't even have to think about them. It meant that Anne didn't have to spend her energy on anything other than the essential duties of the Saintess. She didn't have to keep track of anything or make any decisions, she just let herself be ushered around by Eva all day.

Thanks to that the busy schedule was exhausting, but survivable.

Still, no matter how tired Anne was, she couldn't stand just immediately going to sleep after getting home from work. She needed to take at least a bit of time doing something that wasn't work related or she really would lose it.

So she started making Agis hang out with her a bit in the evenings before bed. They mostly just talked about random things or played a few rounds of cards, but the fact that Agis hated the church (and humans in general) made him refreshing company after a long day dealing with self-important church people.

One night nearly two weeks into this new ridiculous schedule, Anne was laying in bed tossing a ball up in to the air repeatedly while Agis sat on a chair nearby doing some maintenance on his bow.

"Hey, have you been following me around?" asked Anne curiously.

"You can't tell?" said Agis in a smug tone.