There Was So Much We Didn't Know
"Nice weather. The sky's clear."
Dan Chuyeon had brought Dan Miryong out in a wheelchair and was walking the path near the house. A few passersby flicked their eyes at Dan Miryong—pity, sorrow, relief, scorn. Cheap looks, thrown at a cripple who was nothing but a neck. Strangers who only watched.
"Maybe we shouldn't have come out. I thought nobody would be around."
"...Then go back."
"Don't mind them. We're out anyway. Might as well walk the whole loop, don't you think?"
Dan Chuyeon said it as if it meant nothing at all.
Is he trying to be considerate? No. He probably was. Young. Pity, for an enemy? In a struggle there were only the living and the dead. Just what you'd expect of a hothouse flower. And he, beaten to a pulp by that very flower, had been the ridiculous one. I worked for it. For revenge. From the day he lost his mother, he had turned it over every single day without fail, revenge nested inside revenge, honing a dull blade until it was sharp. I gave my whole life. That life was never repaid. Empty. And empty...
"Hey. Look over there."
"...What."
Dan Chuyeon pointed at the fountain in the middle of the lake.
"See the cat? It came to drink from the fountain, got sprayed, and bolted. Cute, right?"
Mrrraaow!
A cat soaked to the skin came up to Dan Chuyeon and shivered hard.
"Aigoo. Did the fountain scare you? Hang on, I'll dry you off."
Nature's fire and wind mingled, and a warm breeze rose. The cat's wet body dried in an instant, its fur standing stiff.
Meow.
The cat shook itself once and rubbed its face against Dan Chuyeon. He stroked its back.
"Whoa, look at that fur. That's not a cat, that's a ball of fluff."
Mrow.
Sensing his discomfort, the cat cried once and vanished into the bushes.
"Tsk. Did I let it show too much?"
"..."
"Isn't the cat cute? Mackerel tabby, and for a stray the face is pretty clean. I kind of want to take it home."
"..."
"Think the cat would hate it? The house is so full of San-gun's presence it might pass out. Oh, right. You don't know San-gun, do you?"
"..."
"You might have seen him, I'm not sure. San-gun's the tiger who looked after my master. Nothing less than a Heavenly Tiger, chosen by Heaven itself, and a divine beast. Strong, and cute."
"..."
"I sparred with San-gun once, way back. Man, I really thought I was going to die. He barely flicked his tail and my body got heavy, I could hardly breathe. My legs were shaking so bad I thought I'd piss myself, you know?"
"..."
"I decided it then. Tiger versus lion, the tiger wins every time. A lion's worthless shit, and a tiger's a god-tiger. It wasn't like the fear you feel toward a person. A presence different from birth, the gap between species! Homo sapiens, stamped into the DNA, screamed it. Run. You couldn't win if you died trying."
"..."
"I wanted to run. But it was a spar, right? You can't just run. Even if I did, he'd catch me. And if I ran, Master would've hung me upside down, so I choked it down in tears."
"..."
"And the result? I learned that choking something down in tears is actually very easy. At least that leaves you your human dignity. How do you lose to a tail? I'm not lying. I really couldn't beat it. You'd understand if you fought him."
"..."
"Of course I was still green then. I didn't even know what the Five Phases were, or that I could harden my body. Sss. If I'd at least known the Five Phases, maybe I'd have won? Or maybe I'd still have lost?"
"Stop."
"I wonder how it would go now. I could probably draw out San-gun's full strength, right? I've gotten pretty strong myself, so it ought to be a good match. Talking about it makes me want to try. When we get back from Japan, I should ask. Just imagining it, I'm nervous."
"Stop!!!"
"I'm in the middle of talking, and you're raising your voice..."
"Shut up, please! I don't care about your past or some tiger you keep at home! How long am I supposed to listen to this sickening bullshit—!!!"
Hah. Hah.
The wheelchair stopped with a squeak.
"Feel better, now that you've yelled?"
"You call that..."
Damn it...
Whether this bastard talked or not had nothing to do with him. It had simply been so loud that it boiled over.
"Anger looks good on you. Much better than before."
"What?"
"There are a lot of busybodies around me. They keep talking about you."
Dan Chuyeon came around in front of him and met his eyes. Clear, transparent green eyes looked straight at him.
"They say you keep thinking nothing but negative thoughts. That you can't stay still for a minute, or even a second."
The green thinned. A color that could not be named pushed the green eyes aside.
"I want to die. I want to kill myself. I don't want to live. It's hard. It hurts. Why do I have to end up like this..."
Hidden thoughts, laid out one after another. They kept coming without end, like oil being pumped.
"Revenge is over. Life is vain. Everything I suffered meant nothing. Give me another chance. Kill me..."
Out they came. On and on, until the oil ran dry. Digging, and digging—growing damp, pooling, rotting, weathering, filled with nothing but negation.
His oil. Oil made because a pressure called pain had been applied, and applied again. No use for it, and hateful to hear. Futile thoughts from the bottom of him. And those thoughts passed from eye to eye.
Feeling? Would there be any?
Dan Miryong snorted. That he thought of nothing good showed in his face from the start. His brow was creased, his pupils empty. His focus could not catch so much as ordinary dust, and his ears were ornaments. His tongue was nothing but a tool for swallowing spit, and his teeth were a device whose only statement was a shut mouth. Any sound that happened to escape was dull and thick, like a voice that had breathed in a coal mine's dust and heat, like the screech of metal when a building goes up. It had less life in it than a dead man's last words, and was harder to hear than a drunk singing in the street.
More a dead man than the dead. More a zombie than a zombie. A living corpse, a ghost that lived because it had failed to die. That was Dan Miryong now.
The innermost thoughts Dan Chuyeon was reciting? Even a child playing on the slide behind them could have done something so obvious. This was nothing impressive. It was the very picture of a petty, foolish little man.
You want to do even that? The stress of living beside an unpleasant companion must have piled up. You want to vent, but you feel awkward doing it to a cripple, so you thought you'd crush me with words? Go on. Do it. That's your limit. You moron.
"The moron would be you. You moron."
He flinched. Nature's eyes looked into Dan Miryong. Stillness settled. Even the air held its breath, and the grass of the park lay down.
"You're probably wondering why I'm saying this. No—not wondering. Finding it ridiculous."
Hah.
"Dan Miryong. You're a son of a bitch. That's a label you'll have to wear until you die."
"What a great sage has deigned to appear."
Dan Miryong sneered.
"You think the labels I've worn number one or two? Stick on one more and there isn't even room for it."
Fatherless. Rootless. Uneducated. Mass murderer. Killer. Lizard. Experiment. Brat. Trash. Cripple. Filth. Every one of them a label Dan Miryong had worn through his life.
"Happy? Did sticking your nose in turn you into something?"
Unbelievable.
"If you're going to do it, pick one. Feel guilty, or hate me."
"I didn't do either."
"You didn't? I had no idea!"
Nature's eyes deepened. A color no color could express. Nature that held nature within it. Dan Miryong's dead senses bristled. For a moment it felt as if his body had returned to what it had been.
"Honestly, I don't really know what kind of life you've lived."
Contemplation took hold.
"...Oh. I get the gist. Run through human experiments, a knife in the heart. And nightmares on top of that, your mother hounding you."
"..."
He bit his lip. It was nothing to be surprised by now. The man could wield the authority of nature. Knowing the past on top of that was hardly...
"The truth is, you never even wanted revenge, did you?"
"..."
Fuck.
"Pushed, and pushed, until you dove off a cliff. Complicated..."
"Kh—!"
He shut his eyes. Dan Chuyeon let go without lingering.
"Tell me someday. Your story."
"That will never happen."
"That's fine too."
Only—
"Drop the wanting to die. I'm tired too."
"That's your problem."
"Yeah, yeah."
Dan Chuyeon pushed the wheelchair. The two men circled the path without another word.
"Found it."
Papers and books lay scattered everywhere. From between a laptop and a smartphone left on at random, Dan Miryu closed his fist.
"You found it?"
The archive of the Dan Clan. In that place which held everything except whatever it happened to lack, the head of the clan and the lady of the house had at last found what they wanted.
"Is that all of it?"
"Unfortunately, they didn't keep proper records back then."
Dan Miryu drew out an old diary. Hidden with desperate care, lest someone see it, the secret journal was seeing the light for the first time in decades.
"We'll have to look into other places based on this."
"We should. Good. Shall we take a look?"
Dan Miryu read the diary together with Mi Soryeong.
......
The diary crumpled with a crack.
"This is insane."
"This can't be..."
Mi Soryeong swayed under the shock of the truth.
"Is this—is this right? How could a person..."
"There was so much we really didn't know."
Dan Miryu put the diary into his bag. It was precious evidence, and a record.
"Call Phantom. He might know something."
"All right."
Whenever the words he had seen in the diary returned to him, Dan Miryu ground his teeth.
Father. Just how far did you go?
Another of Dan Hocheol's crimes, one Dan Miryu had never known. It was a stride taken in pursuit of godhood, unworthy of the name Life's Guardian. The sin of trying to create a human being.
It was Replication.