Hahaha!!!
"You've left your meal again today."
The woman in hanbok looked down at the table, where flies buzzed in lazy circles. Meat, fish, vegetables—a lavish feast prepared with every care for nourishment and health—and yet, uneaten, it had all become garbage.
She let out a thin sigh and went to the woman who did nothing but stare up at the sky.
"You've grown so thin. Won't you at least drink some water?"
She lifted the cup from the table. The moment the empty vessel rose in her hand, water slowly welled up to fill it.
"I have no need of it. Why do you keep bringing things?"
The woman, Hong Yumin, answered with eyes still keen and bright, for all that her body had wasted away.
"A person has to eat to live. You haven't taken a bite in days. I've been worried half to death."
"I have trained at fasting more times than I can count. A few days without food will not kill this body so easily."
Natural qi nested in Hong Yumin's eyes—a realm in which even breathing was made into cultivation, into a part of life itself. It was an art the woman in hanbok could never reach.
"Even so, you must eat. I'll bring the meal again. Please, even a single spoonful."
However transcendent Hong Yumin's flesh had become, it had begun as a human body. Without food and sleep, she could not live.
Hong Yumin's expression turned subtle, somewhere between sorrow and longing.
"......You look like her."
A short, murmured line. The woman in hanbok flinched.
Hong Yumin shifted her neck a fraction, as if surrendering something.
"Bring it, then."
"Pardon?"
The woman in hanbok thought she had misheard.
Hong Yumin let out a soft, breathy laugh.
"Suddenly I find I have lost the will to eat."
"Ah—no. I'll bring it at once."
She caught up her skirt and hurried off. Hong Yumin watched her until she was gone.
"Come out."
The moment the woman in hanbok vanished from sight, a cold voice cut the air.
"Forgive my discourtesy. I intended nothing by it."
Blood-mist billowed up from beneath the ground. It gathered, clotted, and took the shape of a bewitching woman.
Half her neck was simply gone, the bone laid bare. The Second Apostle brought her blood-red nails neatly together.
"It is no matter. I merely disliked being watched."
"I thank you for your mercy."
The Second Apostle gathered both hands as one and bowed at the waist. Hong Yumin looked thoroughly unimpressed.
"So. What is your business? I shall be eating soon. I would rather you finished quickly."
"The First Apostle has announced that the time has come."
"......The time."
Hong Yumin looked up. As ever, the sky was painfully clear.
"Has the hour you have all been howling for finally come?"
"Yes. So please, take care of your esteemed person."
"Very well. I shall pass word to that child."
"Thank you."
The Second Apostle turned her back, as if the errand were done.
"What is it you wish of Heaven?"
The question flew like a hidden blade. The Second Apostle's body went rigid.
"You prattle endlessly about Heaven's will and all that nonsense, but in the end each of you has a purpose of your own. That child. You. Every one of you."
"I...... I only wish to meet someone, one more time."
The Second Apostle did not turn around.
"A beloved? Family that left you? Or does it have something to do with that hideous neck?"
A neck torn entirely open, and still not a drop of blood fell. The bare bone seemed to sway in the wind.
"......All of it."
A flawlessly smooth hand covered the neck. Was she hiding the past? The flesh still clinging to the bone was shriveled, as if it had been burned. Not even a touch as lovely as a painted masterpiece could conceal it.
"A wretched fate."
"Wretched, yes. Not only mine. Everyone's."
"Do you think you can be forgiven?"
"No."
There was resignation in the word, and yet resolve had settled into it as well.
"You put off your regret and press on like a moth into the flame, knowing full well how it ends."
"Knowing, I became an apostle."
The Second Apostle bit her lip.
"I know what you think of us. We do not please you."
"Please me? I should like to tear your head off this instant."
Hong Yumin flicked her hand and drew out her long pipe. A wind rose. Grasses pulled themselves from the earth and, with a soft rustle, crumbled into powder.
"But there is no grave without a story. Seeing that child beside me, I have come to think a little differently."
"From seeing the Tenth Apostle?"
"Yes."
She exhaled, long and slow. Smoke poured out, and the past came with it.
"Did you place her there knowing?"
"......I do not know. It was the First Apostle's command."
"Was it? Then enough."
Smoke drifted out again, and the past was pushed aside by the present.
"To return to the matter—I feel a sliver of pity for you."
"......Ha."
Pity. She had lived a life that might warrant it, but she did not want to receive it.
"What wind blew you into saying such a thing? Was the Tenth Apostle so special?"
"She is. The world has always turned on shared soil, shared schooling, and shared blood."
Smoke kept rising. The future could not be seen.
"......Then, trusting in that bond, will you cooperate with us?"
"Would I? You ask a meaningless thing."
She had not expected otherwise. The Second Apostle smiled bitterly without meaning to.
"Pity is only pity. It is the same as watching those television appeals that parade starving children and beg you to give—sentiment hawked for coin. A faint scrap of human nature."
"A faint scrap of human nature...... Living so long must be why I can feel the profundity on you."
"Mocking me, are you? You are not so devoted as you pretend."
Tap. Tap. Ash fell from the pipe. A present not yet in bloom, and a past already gone, sank together into the earth.
Hong Yumin put the pipe away and drew out something entirely new. The Second Apostle, still turned away, did not see it.
She opened it. Twenty sticks, neatly aligned, stuck their little ends out. She shook the thing; one popped free, and she set it between her lips. A snap of her fingers lit it.
What spread was not the pipe's fragrant smoke, but a dull, unpleasant reek. The smell caught the Second Apostle truly off guard.
"......A cigarette?"
"Yes."
It was not long, like the pipe. Short, and urgent. It burned the lungs however it could and forced a satisfaction out of them.
"......I did not know you smoked."
"A new challenge."
Exhale after exhale. Though it was the first time she had opened such a thing, she drew the smoke in with practiced ease.
"Tsk. Sold in the market, so the taste is foul. Nothing but filth and poison—a thing made to kill people."
She burned through one in a flash and set a fresh cigarette between her lips.
"Well. As junk goes, it is not so bad."
"......Is that all you meant to say?"
The Second Apostle could make no sense of it. She had expected some weighty pronouncement, and here the woman was, idly smoking.
"When you speak with someone, look them in the eye. You have not the bearing of one who listens."
The Second Apostle did not turn.
Hong Yumin paid it no particular mind. She knew this was the woman's limit. Smoke traced an afterimage on the air.
Hong Yumin prophesied. Not the prophecy of a god—counsel drawn from human insight and long experience.
"A god will prophesy, and the heroes of the age will gather. Shake the world all you like. You cannot succeed."
"......I should like to say that you are wrong."
The Second Apostle's tone rose.
"The world will stop us? Impossible. The Heavenly Road will open, and we will reach the heavens above. That is fate. That is Heaven's will."
"Even if the Heavenly Road opens, it will be the same. You will achieve nothing of what you desire."
"That—!"
A long draw. Then the exhale.
"We shall know when we arrive. Do not put too much faith in a god's prophecy."
Hong Yumin laughed, loud and long. The smoke shook wildly.
"What is so funny?"
"Do you think I am carrying on like this merely because I believe a god's prophecy?"
She shook her head.
This child does not know. A god's prophecy may at times be despair and nightmare, yet beyond that it is a blessing without equal.
Despair and nightmare—
because they unfold, in the end, only within a god's common sense.
"You ought to beg. Beg that it happens just as the prophecy says."
The Second Apostle remembered. The masked man who had gone on walking his own unhurried steps, even through the apostles' bombardment. The First Apostle had warned them. That man was the hardest trial among the ordeals of the Heavenly Road.
"You believe in him? This time will be diff—"
"Do you know why I spoke of pity for you?"
A hard blade sheared the words clean off. Its edge leveled at the Second Apostle's neck.
"Because, of all people, you made an enemy of him."
The blade whispered. Offer your neck now, and it would be easier. Surrender.
"Give up. Or pray for the hour the prophecy named."
Otherwise—
This is why I pity you.
The blade drew back a step and waited for a choice.
"......I will take the counsel to heart."
Ting.
A brutal hand shattered the blade, and it became dust.
"But nothing is finished. We will burn this very body and rise."
"Is that the choice of all of you?"
"Once one has become an apostle, it is a choice one must bear."
"I see."
Then—
"I will go once I have finished my meal, so get out."
"......Until we meet again."
The Second Apostle's body slowly vaporized into blood, then vanished without a trace.
Hong Yumin tossed the half-smoked butt to the ground.
"......I smoked quite a few."
Twelve ashes lay scattered where her foot brushed them. Ironically, the same as the apostles' number.
"The meal! I've brought it!"
"Aye. I am coming."
With a wind she sent the smell away, and the ashes with it. They vanished without a trace.
Only the butt, its ember still alive, left the faintest sense of itself hanging in the empty air.