81. Already…
Receiving what? How, exactly? Why was he beating around the bush like this? Rembrary stared at him, growing restless.
The King wrinkled his brow as he explained.
"Her voice doesn't come through. The message goes out, but she doesn't speak. That never happens between gods, you understand. Though I sometimes hear what sounds like noise in the background…"
Rembrary's face went pale.
"Is she not in danger?"
If she wasn't speaking, did that mean she was in no position to speak at all?
If she had simply been bounced out of a perfectly healthy world, he wouldn't be worrying like this. What danger could possibly threaten a goddess as mighty as Lady Redrin?
And yet, right before he had come here, Rembrary's world had been teetering on the brink. It had stood at the very edge of survival and ruin.
Because of that, the worst possible thoughts came unbidden. Rembrary imagined the absolute worst-case scenario, and unlike his usual self, his face turned ashen.
'Has the Demon King already reduced the world to rubble?'
Rembrary hurriedly pleaded with the King.
"Your Majesty. Could you not use your power to send me back to my original world?"
The King averted his gaze with an awkward expression. Even at a glance, it was hardly an encouraging signal.
"You cannot?"
Rembrary pressed him again.
Dodging the question, the King made some vague, evasive noise, feigning caution for no reason.
"Having me do it would be a problem. I told you, did I not? I must return at once. Please help me."
When Rembrary begged him yet again, the King finally answered out loud.
"Sending you back myself, with my own power, is out of the question. If someone from your side comes to take you back, that's another matter."
"Why?"
"Hm. It's a rather complicated matter."
"?"
"To put it briefly—because I can't be bothered."
Rembrary stared at him, dumbfounded. The man certainly looked lazy enough, but still. What was with that offhand answer?
"Otherworld Saint, it is not for the trifling reason you're imagining."
The King frowned.
"The situation is complicated."
He rose to his feet and began circling the room, hands clasped behind his back.
Meanwhile, Sa Gam-jae quietly poured Rembrary another cup of coffee.
The only sound in the quiet room was the faint clink of the saucer.
After a long spell of deliberation, the King sat back down across from Rembrary and explained.
"In truth, there's no need to explain any of this to you, Otherworld Saint. But I thought you might misunderstand—might take us for cold and callous gods—so I shall tell you."
"You were surprised when you first came to our world, were you not? That there was no magic, no divine power—nothing of the sort."
"Yes."
"As if such things could simply not exist. They did, once. We had magic, we had something akin to divine power, and Saints traveled the world receiving the reverence of humankind, serving as the bridge between gods and men."
"Truly?"
Then why was everything in such a state now……
"Demons, youkai, demon beasts, evil spirits—there were plenty of beings that threatened humankind as well. Then, some few centuries ago, the Saints of this world came to an agreement. They would sacrifice themselves to seal away the great majority of those beings."
"Pardon?"
"Evil and good are two sides of the same coin. When good collapses, evil inevitably collapses with it. The distinction between good and evil was, in truth, made by human standards alone—from the world's own perspective, good and evil are hardly more different than left and right. So no matter how thoroughly good suppressed evil, the world would keep spawning more of it. Put another way, if good were to vanish entirely, the world itself would step in and swallow evil whole—for the sake of balance."
"I see."
"In the end, the Saints of this world chose mutual destruction with evil. Since that day, our world has had no Saints, no practitioners of magic, no demon beasts or demons—nothing of the kind remained."
"Ah… ah."
Rembrary nodded along, mouth agape, then spoke up.
"But before I came here—I saw an evil spirit or demon beast with a cow's body and a ram's horns, walking on two legs. That was…"
The King let out a sigh.
"They weren't wiped out completely. Their numbers merely dwindled to the point of being unseen. But recently, the number of evil beings has suddenly swelled. You know of this, don't you?"
"I wouldn't know."
"I see. Do you know why?"
"I wouldn't know."
"It's because of you, Otherworld Saint."
Why on earth was he suddenly being dragged into this? Rembrary raised his eyebrows in shock.
"I have done nothing."
"You, with your mighty soul, came over to this side, did you not? And you brought something strange along with you when you crossed."
Rembrary was about to protest that he had done no such thing—then he remembered what had clung to Woo Yeon-woo's shadow, and his eyes went wide.
"With your arrival, the balance warped. Thanks to that, the evils this world sealed away are waking up one by one. There's… far more tangled up in it than that, but that's the short version."
"……"
"And now you want me to send you back to your original world? Even more evils would open their eyes. The peace that the Saints bought with their very lives would be shattered."
Rembrary pleaded urgently.
"But Your Majesty—if I do not return, countless lives in my world will die. They may be slaughtered wholesale because of the Demon King. No—they may have been slaughtered already. You say my goddess makes no sound at all. Please, if only out of pity for them, send me back."
"I regret it, Otherworld Saint, but I must put the lives of my own world first."
Shaken, Rembrary shot to his feet.
The King, utterly unruffled, made a request of his own.
"Coffee for me too. With milk."
While Sa Gam-jae went to fetch the milky coffee, Rembrary stood there the entire time, unable to suppress the storm churning inside him.
Things had only gotten worse. He had believed that meeting and speaking with this world's god might finally get him home—and instead he'd had it hammered into him, flat and final, that he could not go back.
On top of that, he'd now been told that something dire had likely befallen his original world. It was the worst possible outcome.
"If I might—"
When Rembrary spoke in a low voice, the King cut him off without even waiting to hear the rest.
"Going to the other gods would be useless. This was not a decision I made alone."
"…That decision was made by the gods, then?"
"By the Saints. But in the end, that is how the Order was established. We are not happy with the situation either. But to overturn the Order a second time would bring chaos beyond imagining. When the world falls into chaos, countless lives are lost. That is precisely why we uphold it."
Rembrary bit his lower lip, agonized, and changed tack.
"You said that if your gods' power sent me back, the Order would break and chaos would follow. Then what will you do if I simply raise an even greater ruckus here—tear the Order apart myself? If I stir up more chaos than crossing between dimensions ever would?"
The King snorted.
"Try it, if you think you can. You'll only be the one to suffer for it, Otherworld Saint."
"Do you mean to set grim reapers like Gam-jae on me and have me captured?"
"Otherworld Saint. How do you suppose the Saints of this world killed themselves? Even for a Saint, taking one's own life is no simple matter. And there was never just one or two of them—did every last one of them truly consent to mutual destruction?"
"I wouldn't know."
The King's smile turned colder still.
"Not every Saint agreed to perish alongside evil. The majority did. But in the end, they all died. Why do you suppose that is? Did the Saints kill their own comrades?"
"Did they?"
"Close enough."
"!"
"There were humans who aided the Saints' sacrifice. Those humans formed an organization, and first they killed every Saint who refused the sacrifice. Then, afterward, they killed the Saints who had agreed to the pact as well."
Rembrary's eyes widened. To him—who as High Priest had received the love and respect of all people—this was something he simply could not comprehend.
"That organization survives to this day. Still holding to their old mission, they hunt down and destroy evils—and Saints—that are newly born or newly awakened."
Sa Gam-jae added quietly from the side.
"In the last hundred years, organizations opposed to that one have emerged, and as they splintered into factions protecting Saints, factions borrowing the power of demons, and so on, everything has grown considerably more complicated."
The King rested his chin on his hand, snorted, and spoke to Rembrary with open mockery.
"You ask what happens if you go around disturbing the Order? In this world, killing Saints is considered a way of protecting it—so they will come looking to kill you. And in turn, those who would worship you and use you to subdue them will come flocking as well. You're an idol, aren't you? Such a profession—and it seems your face has been sold off completely. Isn't that just the perfect set of conditions for getting caught?"
Rembrary sank into a complete sulk.
Watching him, the King let out a sigh and murmured bitterly.
"The Saints are dear to us as well. I take no pleasure in seeing them die so meaninglessly. That is why the grim reapers, burdensome though it is, remain in the human realm themselves, searching for Saints."
The grim reapers originally commuted from the Underworld, Sa Gam-jae hastily added.
"In any case, that is how we found you first and brought you here, Otherworld Saint. If a Saint of this world were to die wrongly, or you—an otherworld Saint—were to die by mistake, the problem would only grow worse. Since your divine power follows a different path than our Saints', there was some confusion at first over whether you were false or true, I'll admit."
"Then bringing me here was…"
"The intent was to tell you to go home. Failing that, to advise you to stay quiet. But the ultimate purpose was to protect you."
And yet you cannot send me back. Utterly dispirited, Rembrary sat staring blankly into space.
Blaming them outright felt unfair—they clearly had their own circumstances. It was a cold thing to say, but just as Rembrary worried for his own world, they were merely worrying for theirs.
And yet he was in a bind. What they wanted and what he wanted hinged on Lady Redrin herself crossing over and carrying Rembrary home. Lady Redrin gave no answer. Rembrary had no power to move between dimensions. And the gods here insisted that if they intervened, things would spiral far out of control.
To the deliberating Rembrary, the King issued a warning.
"The point of my words is this, Saint: it is not that you must never fully wield your power. Using it sparingly, bit by bit—I won't object to that. But do not use too great a power. Do not let humanity learn of your true identity, or of the true extent of your strength."
"Where's Yeon-woo? Still no contact?"
Jong-woo asked frantically. Jungseo answered, "No," and checked his phone.
It had been an hour since Woo Yeon-woo vanished. An hour without contact was barely enough to call someone 'missing,' but regardless—it had been a full hour of silence.
In the meantime, the internet had erupted.
It was because of five photographs posted thirty minutes earlier under a [BREAKING] tag.
One photo of Woo Yeon-woo running toward the falling Lim Yu-han. One of him catching her. One of him holding her in his arms, scowling up at the sky above. One of Lim Yu-han standing alone. And one of Jungseo speaking with Lim Yu-han while Woo Yeon-woo looked upward once more. Five photos in all.
The reporter who had taken the first photographs titled it thus:
The article seemed to have been thrown up in a hurry—the body text was extremely short, and its content barely differed from the headline.
It said only that Woo Yeon-woo had caught Lim Yu-han as she fell from the terrace garden.
At first, readers fixated entirely on 'Lim Yu-han's suicide attempt' and 'Woo Yeon-woo's rescue,' chattering about nothing else.
But as time passed, two entirely different things became the real talk of the town.
One: Woo Yeon-woo kept scowling as he stared upward at the sky.
The other: Lim Yu-han, who had fallen from the sixth floor, and Woo Yeon-woo, who had caught her, both looked completely unharmed.
Those two things.