I'll Show You the Method
Pele.
Goddess of Hawaii, and goddess of fire. Daughter of Haumea, the earth goddess who created the Hawaiian islands, and a chief deity of Hawaii in her own right. By rank alone she was a being of such lofty station that she yielded nothing to the high gods of any other mythology.
That goddess was here.
"……Are you truly the goddess Pele?"
His waist bent of its own accord. The same back that had played the sly fool even before Heaven was, in this one moment, humble.
Pele said nothing. She was not angry, and she was not incredulous. She gave no reaction at all. Only the goddess's two eyes, set in the mural, blinked.
Sweat gathered in his palms. The silence was agony; if she had at least raged at him, it would have been easier to answer. He counted the weathered hatch-marks cut into the ruin's stone. When that tally ended, he counted the chips of rock. When even those were done, he counted the dust itself.
Tsssss.
In the cavern, the only sound was lava cooling.
He could not keep still any longer. He governed every muscle so as not to scrape her temper, let not a single drop of spit slide, and held his breath until it made no sound. Moving like that, merely lifting his head took an age. Had anyone been watching, they would have been frustrated enough to hit him.
His gaze came level. The goddess was there.
"……Lady Pele?"
A voice so small that a crawling ant would have seemed louder filled the cavern. Two lights of gold received it.
"……I offer my deepest apology for disturbing Lady Pele's peace. It is a sin my descendants must go on repaying, the impurity of a mere human who dared draw near a god."
The golden light was a judge looking upon a criminal. Pele was a goddess of fire, and yet her gaze held no heat—only a cold that could have frozen even the magma at his back. The cavern lay inside a volcano, and the air was hot; between the magma's blaze and the reek of sulfur, it was a place where even breathing came unwilling. But that gaze, that gaze, wrecked the working of his brain and drove his body down into a snowfield in the dead of winter. His insides were laid bare. The mask on his face became a meaningless ornament, and at feelings he had never known, his mouth trembled of its own accord.
"………."
He wanted to say something, anything, but the mouth that had never once rested came to a stop. The phantom thief stopped.
When the phantom thief's shell peeled away, what remained was a human dressed up as one. A young man who had come through elementary school, middle school, and high school, entered a university, and was preparing to step out into the world—someone's precious son, of an ordinary house and ordinary parents. A human of Earth who had fallen into the world of a comic.
The human took off his mask. Breathing grew a little easier. He straightened his back. The phantom thief who had been afraid was gone, and in his place only a human remained. An ordinary human looked a goddess straight in the eye.
The golden light turned red. Redder than magma, a warm light for guiding the dark welcomed the human.
"Child of Man, I permit you to meet me."
"The honor is mine. Goddess Pele."
The human bowed with due courtesy. The goddess was satisfied.
Rrrumble.
The cavern shook as if an earthquake had struck, and the magma overflowed with it. What had lain like a shallow lake swelled like a river in the monsoon rains and invaded the ruins. Stay as he was, and it seemed the whole of it would be swallowed.
The human lifted a foot. Magma clung thick and ran off it. By rights he should have burned. By rights he should have howled in pain. He did neither, and there was no need. This red water was the goddess's blood, her great and sovereign power. To sink into it was the same as being held in her arms.
The mural split to left and right, and magma entered the seam. Glug. Glug. Like a throat drinking water it had not tasted in ages, the gap gulped the magma down. What had climbed past his knees was eaten away and gone.
Thud!
The waiting ended. The mural opened fully, left and right. Beyond it was dark—so dark that even with his eyes on it, he did not feel he was seeing. Darkness occupied that place.
Step. Step.
An ember kindled. Lofty and sacred, a beautiful ember that received him with awe and with welcome. It grew, pushing the dark aside and making a path wherever it touched.
Step.
The footsteps of fire stopped. The fire that halted before the human smiled, bright.
"Aloha! Child of Man, I'll greet you properly."
The goddess Pele spun once.
"I am Pele. Daughter of Haumea, and elder sister of Kāne Milohai, Kamohaliʻi, Nāmaka, and Hiʻiaka. Who are you?"
The human put on a mask. Not the Smiling Mask, its grin torn all the way to the ears, but a mask wearing only a small smile.
"I am a phantom thief. An ordinary phantom thief, the sort one finds anywhere. Aloha, Goddess Pele."
Pele took the phantom thief's hand.
"I think we have a great deal to talk about! Let's go inside and talk!"
"Yes."
Pele led him. When the man and the woman had vanished within, the mural returned to its place.
Thud!
The cavern regained its former face.
The place I reached by following Pele was a room strewn with leaves. For all her epithet as goddess of fire, the chamber was dyed entirely green. A soft light falling through the open ceiling dressed the leaves in something holy, and yet, for a god's dwelling, it was a little too quiet.
Pele hummed as she sat where the light came down. She patted the leaves—paf, paf—and they answered with the sound of a cushion.
"Sit here. It'll be nice and soft."
I sat before her. The leaves were very soft, and the feeling of them cupping me was strangely addictive. Pele propped her chin on one hand, interest bright on her face.
"Child of Man, how did you end up here?"
"I couldn't fight the impulse, so I dove at Halemaumau. I was swept under the magma, and that is how I met you, Goddess."
At my words Pele burst out laughing.
"Puhahaha! Diving into a volcano! Oh, this one's a find! Even Maui couldn't pull that off!"
The room trembled faintly with her laughter.
"Ahaha! It's funnier because it's true! I felt something that didn't belong and hauled it in—and that was you!"
Pele wiped the fire beading at the corners of her eyes.
"You were the one who pulled me in?"
"Probably! Unconsciously, though."
"Unconsciously? Were you asleep?"
"You could see it that way. Well—not sleep. A seal."
Do not smile while dropping something that shocking.
"A seal?"
"Ah. I was sealed. For quite a long time."
Loneliness settled into the fire.
"I've forgotten since when. I don't even know why. When I woke, I was here."
A goddess of her stature, sealed. The shock of it landed hard.
"……Did you wake because of me?"
"Right. I felt a danger off you that prickled the back of my head."
"But I'm an ordinary phantom thief."
Pele looked appalled.
"Doesn't a phantom thief die if they dive into magma?"
"They do."
"Then why aren't you dead?"
"Because I am a phantom thief."
Pele clutched her head.
"I went to all that trouble stripping it off, and that wasn't it?"
"Stripping what off?"
"Forget it. Don't worry about it. Honestly…… I barely managed to make you seem human."
"I am human."
Pele bonked me on the head.
"Don't talk back."
"Understood."
A god wants it. What am I supposed to do?
"Anyway! Child of Man, tell me your story. Everything you know and everything you don't!"
"Are you not the mistress of Kilauea? You ought to know better than I do."
Pele was a goddess of the volcano as well. The volcano was her domain. How could she fail to know what happened here?
"What did you hear me say earlier? I was sealed. I only just woke, so I don't have a scrap of power."
She snorted.
"And somehow the seal isn't even fully undone. I could die of irritation."
"For all that, the way you speak is modern."
The age a goddess had lived through ought to have been ancient. Yet here we were, conversing fluently in English.
"It's probably because I took in the humans of Hawaii while I was sealed."
Pele scratched her head.
"My sense of self was thin, so this must be what came of soaking up whatever drifted by. That's why my personality and my looks aren't what they used to be."
"Hmm……."
She was right. The Pele of the mural had been a grown woman in full, but the Pele before me was about the age of a high-school girl.
"Anyway! That's enough about me. Right now, start with your story."
"Understood."
From the beginning, I explained in detail how I had come to Hawaii.
"……And that is how it happened."
The long account ended. The light in the ceiling had become starlight long ago.
"……."
Having heard all of it, Pele's face was empty. If a person erased emotion completely, would it look like this? The expression itself was gone. She had become a doll with nothing but features hung on it.
"Pele?"
In that wretched air, I watched her carefully. The lively girl had died.
"………How dare they."
Fire entered Pele's eyes. No—the whole room was swept up in flame.
"How dare they……. Vermin. They harmed my children?"
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Fires struck one another and ground out a chilling scrape of teeth, as if giving voice to the goddess's heart.
"How dare they! How dare they! A pack of cultists, of all things! Do they even know where this is!"
Fwoosh!
Fire ate fire, and that fire ate the next. After dozens of repetitions, the fire had become magma.
"I cannot forgive them!!! I cannot forgive them!!!"
Rumble.
Stones dropped from the ceiling.
"Please calm yourself."
"You think I can? These are wretches I wouldn't feel clean about even if I ground them up and drank them this instant!"
Pele's body turned to magma, and the magma reshaped itself into a mature woman.
"Can you leave this place?"
"………."
The pressure of an enraged goddess was tremendous, but I was a body that had stood before the true Heaven. I was not so lightly swept aside.
"Anger is fine. Let us be realistic. Didn't you say you had no power at all?"
"You think I don't have even that much?"
Well. She'd probably cook them with a little finger.
"There is a god behind Ilshikgyo."
"Some petty god!"
"He is no petty god."
The Eclipse God's station was by no means low. That remained true even with Pele for an opponent. I told her who he really was.
"……………!!!"
Pele's eyes flew wide. The shock was so great she could not close her mouth, and before I knew it she had returned to the shape of a girl.
"You cannot do it alone."
"………If that one is the opponent, nothing I do will matter."
"The Eclipse God is not at his full strength either. That must be why he sent believers to Hawaii."
And if we leave him as he is, he will get what he came for.
"Is there a way?"
"Please wait a moment."
I asked her leave.
"Where are you going?"
"I'll show you the method."
I knocked on the wall.
"Please open a way. I'll be back shortly."
"………Don't you run."
"I won't."
A path leading out opened.
And a little later—
"Here is the method I prepared."
Beaming, I had brought the entire party.
"………."
"………."
Dan Miryu and Mi Soryeong had gone rigid. San-gun whimpered. Dan Chuyeon fainted outright.
"Haaaa………."
The corner of Hong Yumin's eye twitched.
"………Fuck. I never should have sent you."
"Tee-hee!"
"You son of a bitch………."
Hong Yumin drew out her long pipe and took a pull. The sky showing through the ceiling had never seemed so worthy of her resentment.