The Choice Has Been Delayed
"Hk— hk—"
Dan Chuyeon collapsed in a heap before the wall of Life he had only just reached. Na Wangrang and Mi Soryeong, hauled along at his side, tumbled across the dirt.
The sight of his mother and his friend caked in soil startled him into calling on his power. Plump beads of water gathered and closed around the two of them, and the dirt was drawn down into the water until bodies that had been filthy came out soft and clean.
"Haa. Haa."
Dan Chuyeon set his back against the wall. A faint thread of Life answered him, and without harming anything the wall was meant to do, he began, little by little, to recover a measure of calm in body and mind.
A boom split the distance.
"Kh—!"
Far off, a shock wave rang in his ears, and a blast of dusty wind shot up into the sky. Then came the long rumble of a building coming down. A modern structure raised to survive earthquakes folded like dry reeds beneath a fight between two people, and the bodies he had only just cleaned were coated in dust all over again.
"I have to move……"
He had no strength to stand. All he had done was run. Why was he like this?
He watched the battle through ragged breaths for a long while, until the roar that had gone on and on stopped, at some point, all at once.
"Did Dad win?"
The moment he decided the crisis was finally over, the color eased slowly back into Dan Chuyeon's face.
"Yeah. There's no way Dad would lose."
A superhuman who wielded infinite power, losing to some ordinary ability user — he could not easily picture it. But Nature's warning drove straight through the unready boy's mind.
"Kh—!"
The blow felt as if his skull were splitting, and Dan Chuyeon went down again.
"Wh-what — what just happened……!"
Past eyes that had fallen half shut, he glimpsed a fog crawling in like an earthworm. Nature whispered the fog's information into his ear.
"……Urk!!!"
The sheer mass of it doubled Dan Chuyeon over in a dry heave.
"I— I have to run……!"
He could not let that thing touch him.
Dan Chuyeon refined the Life within him. Vitality welled up through a body that had gone slack as a wilted snail. He spent every last bit of Life the wall had been feeding him and hauled the two of them up in his arms.
In that brief span the fog reached his feet. A sliver of it brushed his heel.
His flesh seemed to burn. Biting down on his tongue against the pain, Dan Chuyeon drove his feet forward as if he might pitch onto his face. What crossed the bridge of his nose was not the stale air of a battlefield, but exhaust, and the smell of trees.
"You're out."
Before he could even drink in the relief of being alive, the Phantom Thief was there to greet him.
Dan Chuyeon could not tell what was happening. He blinked, taking in his surroundings a little at a time, and only then understood.
"……You saw all of it?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"From the beginning."
Where did the beginning even start? His head was a tangle, but it hardly mattered.
"Why? Why……?"
"Why didn't I help, you mean?"
At some point the Phantom Thief had already taken Mi Soryeong and Na Wangrang out of his arms.
"An outsider does not step into a family's affairs."
"……And th-that's what matters? Even if that man is my relative, he came here to kill us. If it gets him his revenge, nobody else's life even enters his mind."
He felt betrayed. It was unjust. A relative he had never even known had swept a sudden headwind into a house that had been living well, and now even the people he trusted were keeping their distance.
"Mom almost died. Do you hear me? Mom. My mom……"
Dan Chuyeon let his voice break on purpose. He would never forget it for the rest of his life — the moment his mother was seized and driven to the very edge of death, and the people who still did not help, even then.
"How? How could you do that?"
One step later and the fog would have melted his body. Not his alone. His friend's, and his mother's with it.
"If you had truly been in danger, I would have helped. No one who came here wants to see you hurt."
Sword and Sipsado aside.
"Then you should have just done it from the start……!"
None of the rest mattered. What good was help that might come whenever? If he had kept the thing from happening in the first place, that would have been the end of it. However formidable a relative might be, he could not have handled an immortal, a god, a tiger, and the Phantom Thief.
"Yes. That would have been the end of it. You're quite right."
But.
"If you had received that help, history would have repeated itself."
Dan Chuyeon's breath caught short.
Eyes beyond the mask saw straight through him. He felt as if his whole body were being peeled bare under a bright light. Before this being, nothing could be hidden.
"Ask Dan Chuyeon to choose between a hard road and an easy one, and anyone would take the easy road."
"Even if a reward waited at the end to match the difficulty, most people still choose only the path that is comfortable for them."
"That isn't wrong. The easy road and the hard road each have their merits and their faults."
"But out in the real world, choosing the hard road does not mean the result you want will follow. It does not even mean you will succeed."
"There's a reason people say you cooked the porridge only to feed it to the dog."
"You can labor for a hundred days, carve a thousand days off your own life, and finally arrive at a conclusion."
"And for someone else, that same distance is a single day."
"The world is a terribly unfair place."
"A high school student is young. A teenager who ought to grow up sturdy on a parent's love. The darkness in a household, the fate of the world — those are things he is in no position to notice, and no position to care about."
"At that age, what hardship is there beyond friends, schoolwork, and the future?"
"But that isn't Dan Chuyeon."
Not a high school student. The proper noun, Dan Chuyeon. The difference was enormous.
"Since when is Dan Chuyeon an ordinary high school student? He has fought fanatics, played with a god, and he is the disciple of an immortal…… List it all, and there would be no end."
What came home to him was this: he was not a high school student, but a person in his own right. He did not simply need someone else's help.
The Phantom Thief's eyes sank, and in them Dan Chuyeon felt something cold. Not an adult scolding a high schooler. The gaze of someone watching a fork in fate, the way a reader waits to see what choice the hero of a comic will make.
"Shall I help you, Dan Chuyeon?"
The Phantom Thief asked it gently.
"I know it's hard. I know it hurts. You've done as much as anyone could ask. You may rest now."
The manner of a moment ago was gone. A soft spring wind reached out a hand, and honey brimmed over from it. Covet that honey, and today would be easy, and tomorrow warm.
His wounded mother came into view, and his friend with her.
Right. Hard things ought to be finished quickly.
Before there were more wounds. Before there was more pain. A heart that was not wide ought to be filled with love, not scars.
"I……"
Dan Chuyeon slowly reached out. Ease was waiting.
Then the ground shuddered, a deep rolling boom.
Something had gone wrong with the barrier.
At a noise like space itself cracking, Dan Chuyeon turned. The wall of Life that had stood so firm was gone. In its place was a barrier split with cracks.
"Huh……?"
Through the split he saw a silhouette falling, scattering blood as it dropped. The moment he recognized it, Nature whispered.
Save him. Now.
"Dad!!!"
He kicked off with a bang. Following Nature's lead, Dan Chuyeon burst forward and vanished into the barrier.
The Phantom Thief followed the protagonist with his eyes and muttered.
"So the choice has been delayed."
A pity. It would have been better to get a definite answer here.
"I hope you will not choose lightly."
Because you are the protagonist. Even if the world changes, even if I am here, that fact does not change.
"May your choice reach all the way to the you at the very end."
The Dan Chuyeon of the original chose only the comfortable road, the violent one. At the end of a path he chose and chose again, certain that he was right, he destroyed the original.
"I don't know whether that time will come again."
If it does — together with Forever—
"What is this……"
Dan Chuyeon looked at Dan Miryu, collapsed on the ground. His father lay bleeding with a hole the size of a fist punched through his chest. The man who had seemed as if he would never fall greeted his child in ruin.
"So this is what it was."
Before him stood Dan Miryong, drenched in his father's blood. Life blazed, brilliant, in Dan Miryong's hand.
"Ah. Yeah. Look at this. Some guardian."
His eyes stayed hollow, but his body was recovering by the moment. Not a trace remained of the flesh the evil dragon had devoured.
"Give it back."
Dan Miryong flicked a glance at the greenhorn coming on alone. The boy must have thought himself terribly angry. The sight of him striding over was rather funny.
"You're far too late."
"Give it back."
"Calm down. Don't get heated."
Dan Miryong's foot rose over Dan Miryu's face.
"Ought to take your beloved dad's corpse away in one piece, shouldn't you?"
"……"
Dan Miryong was exhilarated.
At last. This moment is here.
How long he had waited. How much gall he had swallowed.
The moment he had wanted his whole life.
The Stone of Resurrection is in my hand. It's over now.
Breaking the Dan Clan was only a matter of time.
But.
He has to suffer exactly what I suffered.
It would be a shame to end it like this. He had been through hell. A little amusement was surely allowed.
"Mind yourself. Who knows? I might spare you on a whim."
Of course he had no intention of sparing him.
"Not going to talk?"
A long, grinding crunch. Dan Miryu's cheek was crushed underfoot.
"Not even keeping your face straight? That's how little love you've got."
He hung the necklace around his neck. More energy flooded him than when he had only held it in his hand. A sense of omnipotence rose. It felt as if he could do anything.
"……I'll give you a choice."
"You're in no position to be offering choices……"
"One."
A clean snap. The world went quiet.
"You will restore my father, return the necklace, and get out."
The world looked at Dan Miryong. Dan Miryong looked back at the world.
……Fuck.
What he had thought was finished was not finished. The rapture had not lasted five minutes.
"Two."
The Child of Nature.
"You will die by my hand. Right now."
The world at his back, he passed sentence on a mere human.