A/N: …hi? I'm not dead. ^_^' Universities think that Christmas holiday is the most opportune time for studying, with a belated Christmas gift of exams in January.

Important note: those who actually know their Bible are most welcome to point out if I've misunderstood something. I pick most of the reasoning from articles by various Catholic bishops, but there's a lot of room for human error when transcribing that from article to fiction. Please, guys: if you spot any blunders, help me correct them!

Special thanks go to the online Roman Catholic Catechesis, Catholic Education Centre, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought, for inspiration.

I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.

It will be quite different from your other subjects. You are required to learn, but above all you are required to grow; the only exam you need to pass is being convincing enough to be elected among the catechumens. They will want to see the signs of budding faith in you, see that you have already begun converting in heart, and that you repent in earnest and wish to change your way of life – and no pre-marital frivolities, of course. Absolutely inhumane conditions, if you ask me, so if you ever need relief I'll be happy to summon Carmilla for you.

Now, in order to be convincing you'd do well to begin as a searcher and grow by degree, so that they can observe your progress. Listen, inquire, and make it seem like you soak up every word. The sponsor I've secured for you is a trusting old soul; it won't be hard to convince him that your intentions are sincere. The parishioners might require more effort, but if the shepherd is convinced then the sheep are likely to follow.

Once a week Shiro took the tram to Southern True Cross Town, far off where the Academy was no more than a swollen zit on the horizon. He'd never really been to those parts, only knew what was said of them in that kids' rhyme he'd learnt long ago.

If you ever visit True Cross East, you'll be beaten blue at least
If you journey to the West, you'll see stuff you never guessed
If you're going to the summer South, all day long you'll stuff your mouth
But if it's to the wintry North you're going, you'll see the wealth of some is growing

Absolutely pointless. Like all kids' rhymes.

"And on the mountain at the centre of it all, reigns the mighty emperor in heaven's hall." The last line passed his lips in a murmur as he threw a glance at the Academy's silhouette in the distance. He knew what True Cross Town looked like from up there. Knew that the halls at the summit were indeed lined with gold and treasures. Kids' rhymes are funny sometimes. Full of things you don't pay real attention to until you're grown up.

The South was famed for its food markets. Just walking down the central market street had you feeling like you'd eaten a five-course meal, with all the delicious smells that beckoned from the diners and delis. It was a nice part of True Cross Town. Not the richest, but not the poorest: a bustling district, the one were you'd find tiny shops that had been in the same family for five generations or more, and still more families living all around the market street.

They were a small assembly of aspiring converts: three, to be exact. He mistook Mrs. Yamada and Mrs. Tsubura for childhood friends, at first: both were in their mid-forties, both dressed and talked the same, and they seemed to have the same hobbies. It turned out they'd never met before they joined the Gospel classes at the monastery, but since they were essentially the same being split in two bodies they treated each other like long lost sisters. It was fascinating, and just a little bit scary.

There quickly developed a cordial kind of disinterest between them and Shiro, as the age gap and lack of mutual reference points made their interactions too much like a mother asking her son about what he did in school today. Yamada and Tsubura had soon made it a habit to accompany each other to and from the Gospel school, while Shiro made it a habit to linger a while longer and talk some more with Father Hayashi.

Ah, yes. Hayashi. The old abbot in charge of the monastery was a man held together by sinews and faith – and possibly the knowledge that if he passed away, nobody would have the expertise to care for his beloved orchids. They occupied every window in the counselling room – except the ones with too much sun, that didn't agree with them at all, had to avoid too much direct sun – and Hayashi was already busy tending to them when Shiro found him.

"Staying behind today again, Fujiwara-kun?"

"The name's Fujimoto, Hayashi-sama." Fujiwara, he'd learnt, was the monk that was in charge of cooking for the monastery's inhabitants. "I have Thursday afternoons off", thanks to a certain someone in charge of schedules, "so, if I'm not bothering you…?"

"I'm your sponsor, Fujimoto-kun: I'm here for you to bother with anything that concerns faith and Catholic life", Hayashi reminded him while gingerly wiping an orchid's leaves with wet cloth. "That's all I'm good for, I reckon", he added with a sideways smile. "What young people do today and what young people did in my day are worlds apart. Was there something on your mind?"

"I was wondering…" Here we go, be a convincing candidate. "If God is good, and all-powerful: why is there so much evil in the world?"

"That's a question all humans pose to themselves at some point in life", Hayashi smiled. "The human heart is torn between good and evil, you see, and it's in our free will to choose which call to answer. God is all-powerful and infinitely good", he turned a pot so that the voluptuous, ultra-violet flowers faced away from the window and into the room, "and because He is infinitely good, He will not interfere with our free will to choose. Free will is the greatest gift God gave to man. Greatest gift of all."

"So humans decide to do evil things, and God just lets them?" That didn't sound like the best system. "Wouldn't it be more 'good' to interfere and keep us from harming each other?"

"Would it, really? If you take a moment to think about it", he dusted off his hands and proceeded to the next orchid, "would you want a life where all you could do was act according to a higher power's will?"

He hadn't meant that God should interfere in everything, that would be- …whatever. Be a convincing candidate. That's all he had to do.

"I never thought of it like that… but… you're right." Rule of duality? Yeah, he could run the rule of duality. That and free will – that would look good. "If we're not given the option of doing wrong, we can't do what's right", he pondered aloud. "That's what free will is all about. If we can only do what God thinks is right, we're not doing what's right at all; we're just puppets doing the only thing our strings allow us to do." …bonus points for personal experience? "Use what you got. It's not like it doesn't fit the subject."

"That is one way of putting it, I suppose. No one can claim to be truly righteous if there is only the right option to choose – is that what you mean to say…?"

He nodded. Right and wrong: simple words, ones that inhabit in every language known to man. Simple, but nonetheless deceptive. One man's right is another man's wrong, no? So if right isn't always right, and wrong not always wrong… how do you know?

"If… you did something", Shiro ventured, rolling his unlit cigarette idly between his fingers, "and you intended to do good but things turned out bad: did you do a good or a bad thing?"

"Very good question, Fujimoto-kun, very good question!" He didn't know how old Father Hayashi was, but old enough to repeat things twice and forget that everyone's hearing wasn't as poor as his own. "There's three things that determine if an act is good or bad: the object the act concerns, the circumstances surrounding the act, and the… the intentions behind the act. And, of course, the object the act concerns. If one of these three is morally evil, then the act itself is morally evil. Are you planning on lighting that?"

"What? No – force of habit. Sorry", he excused, and added something reminiscent of a smile for good measure. "Am I getting you right if I think that good intentions and special circumstances don't matter, if the act itself is considered evil?"

"That's it, Fujiwara-kun. No matter how good intentions one has, such as stealing to feed the poor, an act like stealing is always a sin by God's law."

Come on, there had to be mitigating circumstances! Regret, repent; wasn't that what the Church taught? Repent and the Lord will forgive? There were always exceptions to every rule, with the right circumstances!

"Say you thought you were doing the right thing", he postulated, admiring the old, dark book cabinets in the room without really seeing them. "You were helping someone with some minor task that didn't seem at all harmful, and you just wanted to be a good friend, and then it turns out that small task you were helping with was part of something much bigger that was downright horrible?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Fujiwara-kun! It seems I didn't grasp your question correctly. I'm getting old, I suppose. You see, there are three things that determine if an act is good or bad." Shiro was about to inform him that he'd explained that already, but halted at the abbot's next words: "But before that, there are two requirements that must be met if an act is to be judged as good or evil in the first place. It must be performed out of free will, and with full knowledge of what one is doing. Now, if you were just helping a friend, and didn't know that friend was intending to do evil things, then your action cannot be judged by moral law."

It could have been the afternoon sun crouching down to peek in through the windows, but the room suddenly felt a bit… Yeah, that was probably it. Autumn sun through the window. Didn't Hayashi sometimes complain that his study was too bright for orchids?

"Uh, another thing I've meant to ask…" Shiro resumed distractedly. "Why are there demons?" Noticing the surprise on Hayashi's face, he decided on a recap in case the old man had forgotten: "I'm in exorcist cram school, as you know. I know demons are real. I know Satan is real. What I don't get is why. Why create something like that? Why would anyone want that in his creation?"

Mixing honest interest with feigned was a sure way of seeming more authentic, just like twisting truth was a more convincing way of misleading than telling downright lies. Samael was a good teacher. In the worst sense of the term.

"Has Igarashi-sama touched upon the subject of angels in your schooling?" asked the abbot, and gingerly tied another supporting hoop around a stem heavy with bright yellow and cerise flowers.

"Angels are God's servants and messengers, and one of them was supposedly a bad apple and rebelled", he summarised. "What I don't get is that we have demons around us all the time, every day – and you never once see any angels. Why all the demons and no angels? How can we know that angels exist, and that Satan used to be one?"

"Through God."

The old abbot had a grandfather smile. The kind of smile that has friendliness pouring in torrents from every wizened wrinkle it puts in the skin; the kind that makes you love wrinkles, 'cause they're like visual happiness. He motioned him to take a seat at the table, and seated himself on the opposite side.

"The Holy Bible is how He tells us about our origins and our future, and about the other inhabitants of the world we live in", he explained, in a voice as thin and crinkly as himself. "Some angels rebelled against God, before the Great Flood purged the world, and as punishment they were cast out of heaven and became demons: and their leader was Satan, who was the most powerful of them. So you see, the existence of demons in itself is proof of the existence of angels, even though we see far less of them. Why we see more of one and less of the other", he turned his palms up on the table in a gesture of excuse, "only God knows."

There were times when God bore an eerie resemblance with a demon. The whole knowing-everything-but-acting-mysterious-and-testing-you-without-telling-you behaviour was a description that would fit just as well for Samael.

That wasn't something he said to Father Hayashi, of course. Instead, he rested his elbows on the table where he sat, and rested his chin on his clasped hands.

"I still don't see why the rebellious angels were allowed to remain. God must've known they would only make matters worse on earth: there must have been some reason he kept them, and let the angels play a more secondary role."

"Ah: you seek purpose", Hayashi smiled warmly. "That's good, that's good. See this flower?"

Yes. Dracula chimaera. Rare species of orchid. Native to the Andes. Hayashi told him every time he stayed after Gospel school. The flower itself was a mottled red and white with loads of weird hairs sticking out, and only three petals: why the abbot liked that mutated splatter of dog vomit better than his other orchids was beyond Shiro.

"God created this flower with just the right smell to attract bees; and bees He created to be drawn to the smell of this flower. Bees have hairs on their hind legs for the sole purpose of carrying pollen away from this flower; and this flower has pollen created specifically to stick in the hairs of bees. You see? Everything fits together", he confided softly. "Every little thing in God's creation fits together with the whole, in the great weft that we're all part of. Subconsciously, we know this."

Father Hayashi's wizened fingers tapped lightly at the cassock's heavy fabric, above the heart.

"That is why, all our lives, we seek meaning. When we see every day how everything fits perfectly together like this, we assume there must be some higher purpose behind it all: and that purpose is God. When we feel our hearts longing for meaning, they are responding to the Lord's call. He is the meaning and the truth, and in accepting Him into our lives we find our place in the great whole of His creation; just like the bee was created to seek the smell of the flower, we were created with a desire to seek God. In Him, our hearts find their purpose, and our souls their peace."

He could have scoffed at it all. Not only is it frustrating to get an answer to a question you didn't ask, but higher purpose? Shiro had never been the kind to think there was such a thing. Not for individual humans, and not for humanity as a whole. That everything in the world connected perfectly was a result of evolution, if you asked him.

But he couldn't deny that Father Hayashi did seem at peace. It was something Shiro had noticed the very first time he met him. There was a something around him – around everyone at the monastery – that he could only describe as the opposite of the sensation demons gave off. Demons were chaos, desire, impulse; this was... stability. The presence of someone who simply was... at peace.

Because God had shone his light on them? Because belief gave them strength, whether or not the God they believed in actually existed?

"May I ask you something, Fujiwara-kun?"

"Fujimoto", he corrected reflexively, and nodded to indicate that he may.

"My bad: Fujimoto-kun." Hayashi's runny old eyes settled on something slightly above Shiro. "Pardon if I'm too intrusive, but is that really your natural hair…?"

Shiro's hand went to his hair, an automated motion, as if he wasn't sure either.

"Yeah. Bad genes, early greying."

"The Lord works in mysterious ways", he chuckled. "It's the most awful thing to say, isn't it? That we have no way of telling what God intends, and that what happens to us might be part of a greater plan, but it might as well be chance?" He shook his head, still wearing his grandfatherly smile. "Would you like to stay for dinner, Fujimoto-kun?"

"Huh?"

"It's my task as sponsor to show you the ropes of Christian life, isn't it? And you have more questions on your mind, I'm sure. Would you like to join us…?"

"Yeah, that'd be really nice of you."

The sponsor I've secured for you is a trusting old soul; it won't be hard to convince him that your intentions are sincere.

A/N: The perfect mutualism/parasitism between the world's organisms is used in the Roman Catholic Catechism as evidence of the intelligent design by a supreme divine entity, so even though the flower-and-bee simile is pretty lame I thought something like that would fit.

Playing with the layout of True Cross Academy Campus Town
Which is the full name that I usually shorten down, because a) it's too damn long and b) seriously, all that was built because of the establishment of the academy? 0.o Well, it makes Mephisto fit better into the role of emperor… Anyway, it struck me that the layout of the town, with the districts named after the four compass points, allows for a fun parallel to the shitennou, the four heavenly kings that represent the compass points in Japanese Buddhist tradition; and the fifth compass point, the centre, would of course be represented by the Academy itself.

- Jikokuten rules the East, representing spring, water, strength, and the colour blue.
- Zōchōten rules the South, representing summer, fire, prosperity, and the colour red.
- Kōmokuten is the Lord of Limitless Vision (with a third, all-seeing eye) and rules the West, representing autumn, metal, awareness, and the colour white.
- Tamonten rules the North, representing winter, earth, wealth, and the colour black. (The fifth district of True Cross North is the low-income one shown right before the Impure King arc, so I thought that, well: maybe there's wealth in the North, but not for everyone.)
- Taishakuten (帝釈天) is the Lord of the Center, and rules over the four kings from his "second heaven", which is situated at the top of a mountain... 天 is fun, because it's the same kanji that's used in the Japanese rendition of "Samael": 砂漏天. 天 means either sky, heavens, or emperor.

And a tiny nod to dear old Wu Cheng'en.