Baekyeon
“······?”
Everyone turned in confusion.
“······.”
A white-haired girl stood hesitantly before the doorway, her eyes fixed on Leon.
Leon sat on the edge of the bed and beckoned her over.
“Got something to say? Come here.”
The girl hurried closer on quick little steps.
Her snow-white hair had been neatly tied back — Aria’s handiwork, no doubt. Freshly bathed, she no longer carried the greasy sheen of her days in captivity, and the cheap makeup had been scrubbed away.
What remained was a young face overflowing with delicate beauty and pure cuteness. Her large, round eyes looked for all the world like a fawn’s.
“What’s going on?”
Leon offered a faint smile and bent down to meet her gaze.
Up close, her eyes held a strange, ineffable mystery. She had always carried an unusual air about her, even before.
“······.”
The girl looked away from him without a word. Then she fidgeted, glancing around at Hera, Aria, and Riel in turn — as if she wanted to speak with him alone.
Leon took the hint.
“Looks like she wants a word with me.”
“Yes.”
Aria and Riel rose at once.
“Huh? But I wanna stay with my little sister—”
Hera, who had sprawled across the bed in protest, was dragged bodily out by Riel. Everyone except Leon and Baekyeon filed out, and the door clicked shut behind them.
Leon spoke again.
“All right. Talk.”
“······.”
A moment later—
Softly—
The girl extended her hand toward him. Knowing she meant no harm, Leon did not pull away.
Her pale little hand settled over the back of his, which had been resting on his knee. A soft, warm sensation seeped through.
“······?”
Just as a question formed in Leon’s mind—
[······Ah, h-hello.]
“?!”
A voice resonated through his consciousness.
Hwegwangsim-eo······?
Having read his share of martial arts novels in his previous life, Leon recognized the technique at once.
This was nothing so crude as ordinary sound transmission. It felt as though pure will — raw thought itself — was flowing into him.
As Leon’s brow furrowed, another stream of intent arrived, shaping itself into words across his mind.
[I-I’m Baekyeon.]
A southern-style name, offered in introduction.
[Um, I startled you, didn’t I······. Let me help first.]
The instant Baekyeon finished speaking, a faint current of energy traveled up through the hand she held.
A corner of his mind tingled, and he felt their consciousnesses link together.
Only then did Leon understand how to answer her. Focusing inward, he sent his own intent flowing toward the girl — toward Baekyeon.
[Nice to meet you, Baekyeon.]
[You’re really good at this for a first try.]
Baekyeon’s eyes went even rounder.
[Impressive.]
Leon let out a dry laugh. He had expected she was no ordinary girl, but this ability was truly extraordinary.
Baekyeon spoke carefully.
[This is the only way I can communicate······ so please bear with me.]
[It’s fine.]
The situation was deeply unusual, but it was too early to bombard her with questions. There had to be a reason this girl had approached him while revealing such a power. Leon stayed calm and asked the most pressing thing first.
[So, Baekyeon. What do you want?]
[I······.]
Baekyeon gazed up at him with bright, earnest eyes.
[I want to offer you my life.]
Conversation through linked minds was nothing like ordinary speech. Far more meaning and will came through with every word.
So Leon understood precisely what that sudden declaration truly meant.
[In other words — you want me to own you?]
[Yes. I want to give you my life.]
Leon’s face tightened. Coming from a child like this, the words were deeply unsettling.
[I-I’m not a child.]
As if she had caught the thought that had flickered through him, Baekyeon spoke up.
[I’ve lost my power, so I look like this now and it’s easy to misunderstand······ but I’m old enough to······ well, not that old, but······ a-anyway, I’m not originally this young.]
[······.]
Watching her ramble so thoroughly, Leon figured this was going to be a long conversation.
He almost reached for a cigarette on instinct, then stopped. He couldn’t exactly blow smoke in a kid’s face.
She claimed she wasn’t a child, but her appearance was unmistakably that of a little girl.
Leon sighed and called to her softly.
[Baekyeon.]
[Y-yes?]
[Sit down here for a second.]
Leon patted the bedsheet beside him. Baekyeon hesitated a moment, then hopped up on her short legs and settled next to him.
Leon said,
[Start from the beginning. Explain slowly. First······ your identity. What race you are, where you came from, how you came by this ability — all of it.]
With Leon laying it out calmly, Baekyeon found her composure again. She swallowed hard, then began.
[First of all, I’m······ not an ordinary human. My mother was human, but my father was not.]
[A half-blood, then.]
[Yes. I am a half-human, half-beast born between a divine beast father and a human mother.]
A divine beast?
Leon blinked in surprise.
[As proof, if you look here······.]
Baekyeon lowered her head and swept her hair aside with both hands.
“Hm.”
Two small, adorable white horns emerged from where they had been buried in her hair. They were the exact same color as her locks, nearly invisible. He wasn’t sure why that counted as proof, but still.
Leon twirled a finger in a go-on gesture.
[I see. Keep going.]
Baekyeon continued.
Her mother, she said, had been an extraordinary shaman.
Where the continent had mages, the southern continent had shamans.
Magic and shamanism were fundamentally different arts.
Magic was formed through mana and formulaic constructs. Shamanism borrowed power from spirits through sacrificial offerings.
Magic was generally more convenient and more powerful — but shamanism could accomplish mysterious, impossible things that magic never could.
That was why every inexplicable feat performed by the people of the southern continent tended to get lumped together under the single word “shamanism.”
[My mother, Taehye Shinnyeo, was one of the three greatest shamans in the entire East. She had clearly transcended human limits — she once turned a mountain into a lake, and called down storms in the middle of a drought. There wasn’t a shaman alive who didn’t know her name.]
Not a trace of exaggeration or bluster colored Baekyeon’s thoughts.
Not bad.
Then her mother had been a truly formidable woman. She had unmistakably surpassed the ranks of ordinary humanity through the art of shamanism.
And that mother of Baekyeon’s had met a certain man.
[Baekseollok······. That was the name of the divine beast who was my father.]
From the name alone, he sounded like a white deer divine beast. Naturally, he would have been a far higher-order being than the Hwasinjo Leon had encountered before.
Taehye Shinnyeo and Baekseollok. A shaman and a divine beast.
Somehow the two had fallen in love, and the child born between them was Baekyeon.
······But.
[After giving birth to me, Mother grew weaker and weaker.]
Baekyeon’s mother, with her supernatural gifts, had divined the future of the newborn life she had brought into the world.
The future she saw for Baekyeon was blanketed in calamity. Every single misfortune was dire enough to threaten her life.
Baekyeon’s mother would not stand by and watch. She truly loved the child she had carried and borne.
To save Baekyeon, she poured every last shred of her shamanic power into driving those calamities away.
But the price of defying heaven’s design was that her own life force drained away with each passing day.
[I······ didn’t even know until a year before she died.]
Her mother had hidden her decline from Baekyeon — hidden even the fact that she was keeping her daughter alive by shouldering those calamities herself.
Only when Baekyeon’s own growing shamanic skill let her see that her mother was dying did the truth come out.
Of course, by then it was already too late. Her mother was on her deathbed, and there was no hope of recovery.
[Mother······ took on every calamity in my place. For me.]
Baekyeon’s telepathic voice trembled without restraint. The thick guilt, grief, pain, and regret she felt came flooding through along with it.
Leon gently wiped her tears with his sleeve and asked,
[And your father?]
[I barely remember him. He ascended not long after I was born.]
[?]
From her rough explanation, it meant that — as befitting a divine beast — he had departed for a higher plane more suited to his nature, leaving Middle Earth behind.
Leon’s brow slanted.
······? What a complete bastard.
He’d abandoned his lover and child and just left? And when that lover was dying to save their child, he hadn’t even shown his face.
Baekyeon smiled bitterly.
A bitter smile. It was an expression that did not belong on a child’s face, and the dissonance was jarring.
[He’s a divine beast, so his values and way of thinking are probably very different from a human’s. He may have loved my mother — but not the child she bore him.]
[······.]
For a while neither of them spoke, and Leon’s sleeve grew wetter still.
Leon clicked his tongue.
Love or no love — if you father a child, you take responsibility. Or at the very least, you look after your own woman properly.
[I’m sorry. I won’t cry anymore. Right before she passed, Mother told me something. She said she had driven away most of the calamities laid upon me — but one remained. She called it regret.]
[And that calamity is what got you sold into slavery.]
[Yes. I tried to drive it off the way Mother did, but I failed — and lost most of my spiritual power in the process.]
Stripped of her strength, she had been even less able to resist the calamity. Being seized by slave traders and handed over to a continental auction house was the result.
And just before she was to be sold like merchandise, the Hwasinjo had gone berserk, Leon had come for her, and Baekyeon had been rescued — that was the story up to now.
Baekyeon’s thoughts poured into him like flowing water.
[If it weren’t for you, I would have burned to death in that prison, or been dragged off by the merchants and sold into slavery all over again. That would have been a life worse than death.]
She was almost certainly right. The original story had never mentioned the young slaves trapped in the auction house. Left to the original course of events, the Full Moon staff at the auction would probably have simply carted the merchandise away.
[Mother taught me many things. And the value she held most sacred was gratitude. I believe the same.]
[······.]
[I have received a debt of gratitude so great that even giving my entire life would not be enough to repay it.]
Her unshakable resolve sank deep into his chest.
[I swear upon my mother, upon the heavens, and upon every spirit of heaven and earth that I will devote the rest of my life to serving you.]
Baekyeon’s tear-bright eyes looked up at Leon.
[So please — give me a chance.]