Happiness Cannot Be Avoided
"Intervening now, after all this time, would hardly be proper."
The Absolute. Inevitability. Destiny. Fate. All of it, useless.
I had seen an ending I could not stomach, and I had been able to do nothing while a story I loved closed on a lonely last page. I had no wish to sit through anything like it again.
A phantom thief is a phantom thief. What he wants, he takes—all of it. Whatever stands in the way is none of his concern.
Static snapped.
"No."
The crackle tore itself wider.
How stubborn you are.
"Let us talk for a moment."
I sat. No—I performed the act of sitting. Nothing was visible. Not my own shape. Not Dan Miryu, not Mi Soryeong, not Hong Yumin, not San-gun. Not even Heaven.
From the instant I intervened, the world hid its face.
Ah. Only the moon could still be perceived, and not in the way eyes perceive.
My ears ached. It was not language. It was a will, pressing meaning straight through.
"You granted mercy, you say?"
By rights they should all have died then. Their conviction had been so commendable that he had deigned to show mercy?
"Enough of the nonsense."
He simply hadn't been able to do it. The packaging, though, was artful.
"You speak as if you were some absolute authority."
At best, a power that walked with its shoulders squared across the East.
"Talking as though you handle fate itself?"
A crackle. A small bolt of lightning rose and wound itself around me. I could not even feel myself. Was Heaven any different?
"Am I to take this as a threat?"
He raised a hand. The lightning writhed, pierced the skin, and sank in. Pain followed. My mind split into tens of pieces, then hundreds. Every cell of my skin came apart, and the existence called I thinned until I could no longer tell who I was, or why this was happening, or whether I was still capable of thought. It was all a muddle. I seemed to be lying on a plush bed, and that plushness was Heaven's dominion.
In that moment, he meant to put me on trial.
"You already know."
Even speaking was not easy. My mouth did not feel like my mouth. My thoughts did not feel like my thoughts. I spoke anyway. I was a phantom thief.
"In the not-so-distant future, the earth becomes a hell."
Villains would run wild. Things worse than villains would run wild. Every sort of trash would stretch, yawn, and wake. And at the very end, beings would appear who did not so much as glance at proud Heaven.
"You are so fond of fate, so I will ask. When that time comes, can you stop them?"
He knew when a thing turned against him. Heaven was silent.
"An age of chaos is coming."
Heaven appears in the original as well. Hong Yumin had already proved that he existed, so of course he took the stage. So high a being, though, that his presence stayed faint all the way through Part Two. He did show himself in Part Three, the final volume—but the world by then was a shambles, and the Heaven who appeared was a hollow gangjeong, that puffed sweet with the center gone. All crisp surface. Nothing inside.
Heaven is great. He reads fate. He has laid an enormous hand upon human affairs. By station alone, those who stand above him could be counted on one hand. And yet, paradoxically, Heaven is bound to humankind.
"In peace, you are strong."
And the reverse.
"In an age of chaos, you are powerless."
War, in the affairs of people, leaves its footprints on the history of the world, from the smallest clash to the greatest. The Imjin War. The Sengoku age. The Three Kingdoms. The Hundred Years' War. The Crusades. The Persian Wars. The Napoleonic Wars. Wars beyond counting, and at the last the World Wars themselves. If Heaven had stepped into those wars, what then? Would the fate he loved so dearly have sat still and allowed it?
"You, who can meddle at best with petty groups and lone individuals—you presume to speak of fate?"
What he felt, I could not tell. My existence was still faint, and the lightning had not gone.
"Say something. Anything."
At that, Heaven sent a shaft of light down into the black world. Within the pillar, a faint mannequin approached.
"Outsider."
True language. The moment I heard it, my head felt ready to split.
"Not an outsider. I am Phantom."
"Then, Phantom."
"Yes. Speak."
"Can you change it?"
The mannequin asked in a voice with no feeling in it.
"Can you find salvation in an end already decided?"
This one. Did he already know everything?
"Eternity desires its own completion."
Forever.
"Can you stop the march of that omnipotence?"
"The question is the wrong one."
Forever? Impressive, yes. A substance that could do anything.
"First I have to decide what to do with the one playing games with Forever."
The final boss of the original. He was the real problem.
"He is mortal. He does not stand above eternity."
Impressive bastard. He had even swindled Heaven.
"Those who covet eternity never meet a good end. He will be no different."
"I wonder."
I did not bother to say more. Heaven stared at me, steady and unblinking—a gaze that held feeling and held none. A transcendent's eyes were different from the weight of them onward. Kneel. Beg forgiveness. The impulse rose of its own accord.
"It isn't important, so I'll let it pass."
I ignored it. For some reason I was sure that if Heaven had eyebrows, they would have twitched.
"You spoke of salvation?"
"I did. Have you a means?"
The faint mannequin poured out light. An absolute that seized the world.
"Should that means prove empty—"
A god, in the truest sense of the word. A god put a question to me.
"I will take that life as the price."
Of all the things to live long enough to see. Back on the Earth I came from there had been gods as well, but I had never once gotten tangled up with them. Look at me. Moving up in the world.
"A price……"
And yet.
"What is it you still think you can demand of me?"
I tore the lightning apart. I took my existence back. I sang myself free of Heaven's dominion.
"I am a phantom thief."
Bondage and control. Dominion and oppression. None of it works on me.
"The only one who can catch me is someone who wants to catch me."
A phantom thief's proper rival ought to be an eccentric detective who shoots at a wall because he is bored. A police officer with a sense of duty. Some unlucky high schooler, at most.
"That isn't you, is it."
Judgment and arrest are different things. Vastly different.
"……"
I had slipped his control, and still Heaven did not stir. He watched as if he were looking at something inevitable, and he did not move.
"How strange."
Only a small remark.
"Now, now. We aren't here to fight, so let's leave it at this."
I clapped, and drew his gaze back.
"Your answer?"
Heaven pressed. I faced him with a bright, easy smile.
"Is there even such a thing as salvation?"
Salvation. Salvation, was it. Truly an awkward business.
"I've never thought about it. Not that nonsense."
What I wanted was simpler. To change a few things I did not want to look at.
"A phantom thief is not a hero."
This one had the wrong idea.
"You shouldn't ask a phantom thief a question like that."
If it were a matter of stealing something, perhaps. Otherwise, no.
"Then I will ask again."
Rude as I had been, Heaven did not grow angry. He asked once more.
Steal. Steal, he said. Honestly. I was a rookie who had not even managed to send a Calling Card, and he wanted me to steal the apocalypse? Well. He knew exactly how to hook a man. To someone who asked so fine a question, I offered my very best manners.
I pictured it. Writing the Calling Card. The moment I stole the apocalypse. My spirits soared. The world changed. In a world dyed black, the mask deepened, and the moon swelled.
"……Hmm."
For the first time, the god stirred.
"I have heard your answer."
"Thank you for being satisfied."
Heaven's body began to fade.
"I'll be taking San-gun with me."
"Do as you please."
"You have my thanks."
I bowed my head. Before he left, Heaven looked at the moon, and the moon looked back at Heaven. Between them passed an instant as long as eternity.
"―――."
"―――."
With that brief exchange, the world recovered its light.
"Hm?"
Dan Miryu looked around.
"Something happened just now, didn't it?"
There had been something. He could feel it stirring under the surface of his thoughts.
"The Stone—why?"
The Stone of Resurrection had opened of its own accord. Dan Miryu closed it and scratched his head.
"Strange."
"Miryu?"
"Yeah?"
He hurried to Mi Soryeong.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
Mi Soryeong seemed to feel none of the unease herself. She only worried over him as he kept glancing about.
"I think it's over."
"What is?"
"Look over there."
Dan Miryu looked, and saw Hong Yumin laughing and crying at once as she clutched the tiger.
"……Didn't he ascend?"
He had gone up so grandly.
"Heaven must have shown mercy."
Mi Soryeong watched Hong Yumin with warm eyes, dabbing at her own tears.
"It fills my heart."
"Uh…… right."
Dan Miryu was dazed. It had all ended in the blink of an eye. If the good is good, then let it be good……. He decided not to think any further. Today alone had already overloaded his head. Haa. My head hurts……. From a battle out of myth to a being on the order of a god. He had never imagined the world was hiding so many secrets.
"Mr. Dan."
Phantom came up beside him.
"Phantom?"
For some reason the phantom thief looked light.
"We may have a problem."
"What? What kind?"
Dan Miryu's face crumpled at the news on his phone.
"Don't tell me all of it was caught on camera."
"It would seem so……."
Phantom looked away. A ringtone sounded from Dan Miryu's pocket.
"……Hello."
"……Get over here."
Oh, Heaven help me. At the hard edge of Hwang Seokgu's voice, the world went black before Dan Miryu's eyes.
"……If you'll excuse me."
"Of course."
Phantom watched him go, shoulders slumped, and then looked at Hong Yumin, stuck to San-gun like a cicada. San-gun looked profoundly uncomfortable. It was a good sight.
"Where to next……."
Everyone had been through enough. They needed a vacation.
"And I'll have to acquire that, too……."
Dan Chuyeon was on break as well. Good.
"Maybe I'll suggest Hawaii."
And while he was at it, he could settle the ones over there.
"Ah!"
He had forgotten to fix it.
"What should I put in there……."
The pen moved. A stroke, and another.
"This will do."
The end of a long, long fate was sealed. The story of the girl and the tiger met, at last, a happy ending.
"Nice."
"……So it is over."
Someone murmured it, sadly.
"I do not know if I shall ever be able to end mine……."
The melancholy someone fell asleep. Light, entering softly, gleamed across someone's scales.