The Weight of a Name
Identity is more important to humans than anything else.
Take Wakanda, for instance. Why did that fictional nation become a cult favorite among Black people?
Because it made them feel proud just by existing? Because Black Panther looked cool?
Well, those reasons probably played a part. But the real draw was that Black people have historically shallow roots.
In Korean terms, they lack the unbroken chain of history stretching from Gojoseon all the way to the present day. In reality, written records left by Black civilizations are far scarcer than those of other cultures, and few state systems lasted more than a few centuries.
That’s why they went wild for Wakanda.
A superpower that monopolized the miraculous mineral vibranium and possessed technology far beyond any other civilization wasn’t just a comic-book country. It became a stand-in for the history they never had.
The movie butchered it, but whatever.
That’s how much identity matters to people.
And for Jin, that identity was his name.
Jin Evernight.
A precious identity he had bought with every last credit of his 35-million-credit fortune—blood, sweat, and tears included.
It was the first footprint, the first root, left by a vagrant who had nothing to prove who he was in a strange city. He still kept his ID at home like a family shrine. Its value lay in simply existing, not in how often he used it.
So to Jin, his name was far more than a forged identity. It was something precious. Which was why Prision’s words made him frown.
“That is my name. Got a problem with it?”
[It is? Well, it must be. Otherwise the contract wouldn’t have formed in the first place······]
“What the hell are you talking about? Cut it out.”
Jin’s face was growing increasingly puzzled by the looping conversation when Prision suddenly spoke again.
[W-wait. I’ll contact you again later.]
The voice cut off abruptly.
“This fucking bastard—”
Jin raged at the thief who had sucked up his mana and vanished. Even the constellations weren’t spared; for a while, a small commotion echoed through his mindscape.
But that only lasted a moment.
“Agh, whatever.”
Getting angry wouldn’t solve anything. Right now, that wasn’t what mattered.
Jin flopped back onto the bed. Hands clasped behind his head, he stared at the ceiling for a long time before slowly closing his eyes—whether from sleep or not, he didn’t know.
The long day was finally over.
Somewhere in a rainbow-hued realm.
A man sat with his eyes closed as if deep in thought. His appearance transcended the mortal world; even the faint twitching of his eyebrows was beautiful, like a painting. His name was Prision.
In the spirit realm he was known by the blasphemous title of Pretender.
Prision himself found the name deeply unpleasant. After all, “one who pretends” was only how others saw him. He genuinely believed himself to be a king.
The audacity to freely borrow the authority of an actual Spirit King who ruled the same element—perhaps he was simply an idiot. Either way, it proved just how eccentric and overwhelmingly powerful an ice spirit Prision truly was.
At this moment, that same Prision was chewing on his lower lip.
“How…?”
The bewildered murmur hung in the air. After wearing a grave expression for some time, he began calmly retracing his tangled thoughts.
It had been a perfectly normal contract.
Normally, a contract between spirit and human began with revealing one’s true name. Jin had even used that spell—the sealed oath he and the head of the Marjie family had once sworn. It had manifested again across time.
As the contracting party, Prision had been granted the right to adjust and twist the framework to his advantage.
That alone should have put him in a favorable position. On top of that, the human who had been blinking cluelessly was blessed with mana?
So of course Jin had been completely swindled. Legendary blessed mana was an extremely rare resource even to a high spirit like Prision.
Prision had exploited Jin’s lack of talent in spirit arts, planning to absorb his mana under the pretext of balancing the contract without violating causality. The 50% commission that would make even a used-car salesman slap his forehead came from exactly this scheme.
Excited at the thought of growing stronger, Prision’s mood lasted only a moment. Then he realized something had gone terribly wrong.
What was this?
The share that should have rightfully returned to him through the flow of causality had instead tilted toward the other party. He had only just noticed.
In other words, the contract he had thought was normal contained a massive flaw.
······Had Jin lied about his true name? No, that was impossible!
A true name was the ultimate identity that defined a being’s very self—an inscription carved into the soul! Fabricating one was fundamentally impossible, and even if someone tried, the contract itself would never have formed.
Therefore, the name Jin Evernight had to be the means by which that human defined himself.
Then why?!
Why did even the share that should have gone to the mediator have to be spent on that guy? Did he have two true names or something?
Prision’s expression darkened rapidly. He had thought he was the one holding the collateral, but he had been the one collateralized. Completely and thoroughly.
If he wasn’t careful, he might end up providing free service for the rest of his life.
“Ah.”
And so, at this moment, the Pretender who aspired to the rank of Spirit King tightly shut his eyes.
He could only hope that the thoughtless human would never seek him out again.
Time passed.
The longer Jin remained holed up, the more strange rumors began to spread quietly within the family.
They said the Bingbaek’s life hung by a thread.
Even so, that was still the tame version. In some circles, terrifying whispers already claimed the Bingbaek had become a soul that would never return.
Now that the family head had locked himself in the training hall and refused to emerge for over two months, some were even suggesting that Solbein was using seclusion as an excuse to hide the head’s death.
Of course, Solbein flatly denied all such speculation. The few remaining elders, and even the head’s wife, worked to quell the baseless rumors.
Among them, the busiest was Katrina.
She attended important family meetings in her father’s place and worked both inside and outside the family to calm the anxious factions. Her face grew thinner by the day. Her already pale skin, so white that veins were faintly visible, had become so translucent it looked almost transparent—
The young bloods of the family who secretly harbored feelings for her had taken to saying, without a shred of tact, that the Ice Flower now carried a frail, delicate beauty.
In truth, there was no such thing as “frail beauty” or “melancholy charm.”
It was simply that a pretty person looked like they were in pain.
Katrina had never once treated those who gossiped behind her back as human beings anyway. As always, she passed them by without so much as a glance, her expression cold.
At the center of the group openly ignored stood Akers—Katrina’s former fiancé, to be precise.
Even though the engagement had already fallen through, he still believed that because Solbein’s political foundation was weak, she would eventually come back to him. His eyes followed Katrina as she walked away, growing distant.
Before long, his face twisted in shock.
At some point, Katrina had quickened her pace with light, cheerful steps and linked arms with someone approaching from afar.
A miracle—you could see his expression just from the back of his head. That smile she had never once shown him! The one that should have been his!
What enraged him even more was that the person monopolizing Katrina’s attention looked thoroughly annoyed.
As if thinking, Here she goes again, yet making no move to shake her off.
Throb.
Akers found himself clutching his wrist without realizing it. The phantom pain returned just from looking at that handsome face. A low, suppressed voice slipped out.
“How could she… with some bottom-feeder outsider······ without a shred of integrity.”
True to the heir of Belgrant, who revered pure blood, his gaze toward both the outsider and Katrina, who had given her heart to such a person, was anything but kind.
Jin, who sensed the presence from afar, spoke.
“That guy keeps staring at us.”
“Ignore him. Just ignore. Don’t give him any attention.”
At Katrina’s firm reply, Jin raised an eyebrow.
“Got it.”
“By the way, did you come to meet me?”
Katrina tilted her head, her face still resting against his shoulder. She had just finished another suffocating meeting when she spotted Jin walking toward her from the opposite side. She had been so happy to see him—perhaps even more so because of the irritating Akers nearby.
Jin blinked. Meet her? He hadn’t even known a meeting was happening. He had simply been wandering the estate grounds for a walk when he happened to enter Katrina’s radar.
“Nope?”
Katrina’s eyes narrowed slightly at his answer. Then her eyelids curved into crescents and a soft smile bloomed on her lips.
“Liar.”
Having reached her own conclusion, Katrina turned her head forward again.
Jin didn’t bother correcting her. Instead, he recalled the request from the elderly healer he had grown close to over the past few days.
These days, Miss Katrina was living a life where even ten bodies wouldn’t be enough. Please, if possible, stay by her side and lend her your strength······ and so on.
So lending her an arm or two was no big deal.
Thinking about it, how lonely must she be to cling to someone like him?
“By the way, you are eating properly, right? Every time I see you, it looks like you’re losing weight.”
“······Does it look that way to you too?”
“Yeah. Your eyes are sunken.”
“Hmm.”
“Want some frozen food?”
“Sure.”
The conclusion was a little odd, but since their hearts were in sync, that was enough.
They headed to the workshop.
Jin pulled out a mountain of frozen meals and began heating them in the microwave with practiced ease. Katrina watched him with a faint smile, then glanced around.
“Where are Broph and Bagmar?”
“Hibernating.”
“Still?”
“They must’ve been exhausted. They worked hard.”
The two engineers, who had nearly turned into zombies while deciphering blueprints day and night, were currently catching up on all the sleep they had missed. Broph, who was old enough to have grandchildren, groaning in exhaustion made sense, but Bagmar—whose body was made of steel—powering down completely was unexpected. Was this fatigue imprinted on the soul? Either way, the two had been hard to spot lately.
“······I see.”
“In my opinion, you should sleep like that too.”
As Jin spoke, he placed the thawed meals on the table one by one. He tore open the steaming bags with a flourish and gestured grandly.
“Eat this first. Then go to your room and get some rest.”
“Okay. I will.”
The two began their meal. For a while, only the sound of chewing filled the workshop.
Jin was the first to speak.
“So what was today’s meeting about?”
“Same as always. Father’s situation, and the assassins.”
“Nibraks skipped again today?”
“Yeah. That’s why the atmosphere was even worse. I wonder what Elder Mateus is thinking······ Still, we did get some results.”
“What kind?”
“The aircraft that crashed, the destroyed tanks, and the cyborgs. The defense contractors suspected of manufacturing them are all different.”
Katrina swallowed the meatball in her mouth.
“Nemesis Industries, Arctech Dynamics, and Zeros Company.”
Naturally, these were all names Jin was hearing for the first time. He nodded along, and Katrina continued smoothly.
“And all of them participated in the Eternal Dawn project in the past.”
“Huh?”
“Doesn’t that seem suspicious even to you?”
It certainly did. The Eternal Dawn project had been the spark that ignited the clash between the corporations and the family—two giants. Any defense contractor that had directly participated in it was more than qualified to be called an enemy of the Marjie family.
Still, something felt off. Jin’s brow furrowed unconsciously.
“It is suspicious. But it’s too suspicious.”
Katrina nodded.
“I think so too. It feels like someone’s trying to exploit the Marjie family’s hostility toward the corporations. Of course, plenty of people disagree.”
After all, the models had not only had all their data deleted but had been so heavily modified that their original forms were unrecognizable. They had already gone to great lengths to hide their identities, so there was no need to drag things out with complicated theories!
······Katrina added that there was a hardline faction making exactly that argument and let out a soft sigh.
“In truth, without Ruger’s advice, we wouldn’t have been able to trace those models’ origins at all. The fact that they hid their identities so thoroughly means their words might not be wrong.”
“Really?”
Jin clicked his tongue. Twirling spaghetti onto his fork, he muttered,
“Should I sit in on the next meeting too?”
“Huh?”
“I know the other faction elders don’t look kindly on me and told me not to come anymore, but it’s fine. I don’t care about that stuff anyway. Who knows? Maybe we’ll figure something out if we put our heads together.”
Maybe his status window would react, too.
Come to think of it, that thing had casually revealed the lost verses of the Eternal Dawn before. Maybe this time it would drop a hint about the real culprit’s identity. Jin couldn’t help but hope.
Katrina’s fingers fidgeted.
“I-if you do that, I’d be really happy.”
She was about to add, Just having you beside me is enough······ when—
“Miss!”
The workshop door burst open. A frantic voice accompanied by a gust of cold wind made both Jin and Katrina turn their heads at once.
“What’s wrong?”
Katrina’s face had already gone blank. At the same time, the elderly healer shouted without even catching his breath.
“Th-the Eternal Dawn has returned!”