Deleted Scene Drafts: Ophelia Bedroom Visit (Patreon)

(So I talked a bit in the discord about adding back in some scenes I'd originally cut from early in the story due to worries about the pacing, along with a lot of other revisions. I thought I'd share my progress on that with you guys. Here's the first one-- Su visits Ophelia before being sent to Zeno to see how she's doing.)

I arrived at her door, the second on the right, and knocked.

I heard the sound of something being shuffled around. "...come in," a quiet voice spoke from the inside.

I opened the door. Inside was a room pretty much identical to my own, save for the fact the window was in a slightly different position. It had the same double bed, and same dresser, the same desk - the only disparity was the picture on the wall, which for some indecipherable reason seemed not to be a normal painting, but rather a poster for a graphic novel or animated drama. It depicted what looked like it was supposed to be an alien planet - complete with gigantic mushrooms and weird, bug-eyed deer creatures - along with a cast of interestingly-dressed characters. The title was displayed in bold, red print at the bottom, but it was written in Inotian characters, so I couldn't read it.

It wasn't in poor enough taste to be outright embarrassingmbarassing, and I was enough of a nerd that it wouldn't have bothered me regardless. But still, it stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the high-brow, traditional stylings of the lodge. It felt like someone had to have put it there by mistake.

Ophelia, for her part, was kneeling down at the side her bed. To my slight surprise, she was already dressed, absent her usual shawl; she'd evidently made a quick recovery. As I entered, she begin rising to her feet.

"A-Ah," I said, hesitant. "Sorry, I hope I'm not interrupting something..."

"No, not at all," she said, with a gentle smile. "I was just finishing my Shuila."

I scratched the side of my head. "That's the morning prayer, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right..." she replied, her smile growing slightly more troubled. "But I wasn't able to do it at the proper time today, after what happened, so..."

I blinked. "Oh. Right, obviously." My face flushed a little with embarrassment.

Ophelia was a follower of Principism, the reformed version of the long-combined Ysaran and Inotian Pantheon - what were today referred to as the Dying Gods - and the most influential religion in the modern world... Though it was technically second to Atarism, the dominant faith of Rhunbardic culture, in sheer numbers of followers.

I know essentially nothing about theology, but my understanding was that it was platonic in character. It held that there was a single, absolute God, and that all lesser gods, plus everything else in the universe, were merely 'emanations' of Him; imperfect echoes of some divine singularity. This was the so-called Divine Principle that the faith was named after, and the idea was that if you behaved properly - that is, by following two sets of texts called the Isagoge and the New Temple Hymns respectively - you would become a closer mirror to the divine, which determined whether you cultivated an immortal soul to be reunited with Him in death, or if you'd be sloughed off like a sort of spiritual detritus. For this reason, the faith's symbol was a loop, representing universality, with a single downward shaft to a circle in the center, representing the root of all things. Their temples were designed in a similar shape.

That was the high concept stuff. The more day-to-day parts seemed, from my perspective, to be along the same lines as all religions, which is to say getting really weird about women, the human body, and homosexuals.

...okay. I might be showing my bias. Principism had survived the collapse and remained culturally relevant (unlike Atarism, which still preached that it was spiritually profound to burn animals alive and fuck your sister) because it had managed to balance popular appeal with cosmopolitanism. The faith emphasized education - half the schools around the Mnemonic were founded by them - and civic virtue. And unlike the faith of the Dying Gods from which it descended, it was mostly decentralized, so it could adapt better to local cultures.

As to their rites, I only understood the basics. They held services at night. You had to fast for 3 days upon converting as some form of self-purification. They gave free food and water when you attended a service, and cut a strand of hair from everyone at the end. There was just one goat sacrifice a year at the solstice. And they had two prayers: The Suila, the morning prayer where you thanked God, and the Sigu, the evening prayer where you petitioned Him.

I'd met lots of nice, reasonable Principists, Ophelia among them. But I hadn't grown up around religion at all, and it was definitely that. So I sometimes felt a little uncomfortable talking to her. It wasn't that I didn't respect her beliefs. I just, y'know, didn't know howto respect them.

...uh, don't interrogate that statement too much, please.

"Um... Is there something you need, Utsu...?" Ophelia asked with a puzzled expression, after I'd spent about 5 seconds staring into the middle distance.

"Oh," I repeated, adjusting my glasses. "Ptolema asked me to check in to see how you were doing."

You idiot, my self-consciousness immediately scolded me. Don't it like you're just on an errand! Now she won't think you give a crap!

But of course, Ophelia just smiled warmly, moving to sit down on her bed. "That's very kind of you," she said, taking a breath. "I'm feeling... Better, I think. Still a little dizzy and queasy, but that's all."

"Have you been seeing any strange colors or lights, or having trouble with your balance?" I inquired.

She laughed musically, holding a finger to her mouth. "Utsu, we're in the same class... I know all the symptoms to worry about, too."

"S-Sorry," I said, rubbing my cheek. "I didn't mean to be condescending..."

She shook her head. "No, it's alright... I appreciate your concern. And thank you for having taken care of me. It's hard to believe that, if it hadn't been for everyone working together, I could have died."

I'm not sure I would have gone that far, but she was certainly very lucky to have recovered to this degree in such a short time. The Power could vanish injuries that would have taken weeks to heal in the New Kingdoms Era in seconds, but just a tiny bit of injury to the brain often still put people out for days, if not worse.

I tried to smile back, not quite meeting her eyes. "It's no big deal. I mean, I didn't even really do anything for you, personally... It was mostly Seth and Kam who tended to you. They had me treating Balthazar."

She furrowed her brow. "Who?"

"The... The person who, uh, triggered the event," I clarified.

"Oh." She glanced downward, her face growing a little troubled. "I see."

I bit my lip.

Ophelia sighed slightly, looking back up and re-asserting her smile. "Well, even so, you kept me out of harms way. Thank you, Utsushikome."

"Really, it's no big deal," I repeated, then paused for a beat. "So... Do you think you'll be able to do your presentation?"

She stiffened a bit. "I'm not sure yet. I'm feeling-- Well, very tired, if I'm being quite honest." She held her arms around her chest. "I sort of just want to crawl back under my covers and into a ball."

"Well, this whole thing is the Order's fault for their shitty management in the first place," I said, before feeling slightly awkward. It felt somehow immature to cuss at Ophelia in a one-on-one conversation. "So I don't think anyone would blame you if you decided to sit things out."

"Maybe you're right..." she spoke softly, with a hint of apprehension. "But you know how the academy can get. Even when we have a good excuse, they don't like it when we skimp on work we're supposed to do."

I hesitated in how to respond. She was definitely not wrong. The silly ranking system for our grades was one thing, but the primary reason the Exemplary Acolyte's Class existed in the first place was as a publicity tool. We were there to act as ambassadors for not just our home nations, but for the academy as an international institution and Old Yru itself. Keeping your numbers up wouldn't save you from being booted down to their accelerated doctorate program.

...well, unless you were a certain someone who was already such a success that being around was more a favor to the academy than the reverse, but that was neither here nor there.

Ophelia seemed to pick up on my hesitance, giving me a tired look. "Do you mind if I tell you something, Su?"

"Sure," I said, wondering where this was going.