[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure] God Lets Her Eat Two Balls

Leonella Falcone is sixteen. She isn't a nun and has never taken vows.

She sewed her own black robe and cut the collar from an old tablecloth.

She had lived in a church in Naples for nine years. She polished candlesticks, stole cookies, and had two scoops of ice cream every Thursday.

One day, the door to the church confessional was ajar.

A Japanese manga artist went inside, then tumbled back out, frightened by the ghost story on the other side of the screen.

Nella stepped out from behind a column, clasped his wrist, and said, "You smell of death. You will die. Then there will be reincarnation. Again and again, until you fail."

Afterward, he came to see her every day for four days. On the fourth day, at the docks, he unclipped a pen-shaped earring and fastened it to her left earlobe.

He said, "I'll write to you. In blue ink. Because your eyes are the color of the sea in Naples."

Then he boarded the ship.

Life in Naples went on.

The priest gave her a little money, and she left the church, heading for the old town by another dock.

She often went to buy ice cream near a school. One day, she happened to find herself standing in line behind a boy.

The boy ordered a double scoop of pistachio and chocolate, just like her, then reached into his pocket and found he had no money.

Nella paid for him.

Later, she discovered that this boy named Giorno Giovanna drank his coffee without sugar but paired it with a piece of chocolate pudding, and could even fit his ears into his own earholes. They started going to that dessert shop together every Thursday. Sometimes they went on Wednesdays too.

Nella didn't think much of it. It wasn't easy to find someone in Naples with the same taste in food.

He didn't tell her whether he was a student or something else, and she didn't ask.

Naples had an unwritten rule: Don't ask about what goes on in the underworld. She'd known that since childhood.

But some things come whether you ask about them or not.

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The things God never told her, Naples would.

Theme: Suffering never spares anyone, but she never spared suffering either