Children Resemble Their Parents
A few days passed.
Seol-ah spent those days in the small room beyond the door Lee Hwabaek had painted onto one side of the earthen wall, calling it the "guest room." She had watched an entire room spring into existence on a dirt house before her eyes, and she had decided not to be surprised by it anymore. She got by on a few strips of dried jerky from her pack. Even watching the man paint bowls of white rice and eat them right in front of her, she never once brought herself to ask for any.
Seol-ah observed Lee Hwabaek. She needed to learn the true nature of his power, its conditions, its weaknesses. But no matter how many days she watched, only one conclusion emerged.
This man truly knew nothing but painting.
He woke in the morning and painted. When he was hungry, he painted food and ate it. When he was bored, he painted again. No martial arts, no ambition, no interest in the affairs of the world. Painting, painting, painting. That was all there was to him.
Then one day, Seol-ah suddenly found herself wanting to test him.
"You said you could paint anything, didn't you?"
Lee Hwabaek, painting out in the yard, answered without lifting his head. "Not anything. I paint what I've seen."
"Even things you've never seen?"
"That's harder. I can rough something out, but it won't come out real."
Seol-ah thought for a moment.
There was one thing she wanted to test. It would measure the limits of his power — and, honestly speaking, she was simply curious. How would this man paint it?
"Can you paint people?"
"People? Sure."
"Even people you've never seen?"
Only then did Lee Hwabaek stop his brush and look at her.
"Who?"
Seol-ah hesitated, then spoke. "...My father."
Having said it, she was a little surprised at herself. Why her father, of all people? Anyone would have done.
"How am I supposed to paint someone I've never seen?"
"That's what makes it a test. If you can't, just say you can't."
Lee Hwabaek studied her for a long moment. "...I have no idea what your father looks like. But—"
He spread out a fresh sheet of paper.
"I'll try painting from yours. Children resemble their parents, after all."
I studied this woman's face.
To paint something, you have to look at it. For a long time, and in great detail. The shape of her eyes, the bridge of her nose, the corners of her mouth — and everything lying beneath them.
Seol-ah, was it? There was something strange about this woman's face.
It was honed to an edge. Her gaze, her posture, even when she smiled there was a tension in her that never quite let its guard down. A face like that isn't made overnight. Only someone who had been hunted and hounded for a very, very long time would end up wearing one.
...Huh. That face — I feel like I've seen it somewhere before.
No, never mind. Another stray thought.
I picked up my brush.
I had to paint this woman's father. A man I'd never laid eyes on. But it wasn't as if there was no way at all. A parent lives in a child's face. Beneath those sharpened eyes of hers, there had to be someone who had passed them down.
As my brush began to move, a face rose up.
It was a strange experience. I'd never seen the man, and yet my hand knew where to go, as if I were copying a face I'd known for years. I surrendered myself to that feeling.
An old man's face spread across the paper. Deeply carved with wrinkles. Strong-looking, yet somewhere beneath that strength, worn down. And his eyes were worried about something. Something far away — something very precious.
"There."
I set down the brush.
It had come out reasonably well, I thought. For some reason my hand had flowed freely the whole way through. A face I was painting for the first time, and it felt like an old acquaintance.
"Something like this, maybe? Well, the real thing could be different—"
I looked up, and stopped mid-sentence.
The woman was crying.
As the painting took shape, Seol-ah's expression had hardened.
The father she knew was the Heavenly Demon. The devil of the heavens. A being who could freeze a man solid with a glance and take a life with a flick of his hand. A calamity wearing a human face, before whom the entire Demonic Cult trembled.
She had assumed Lee Hwabaek would paint that father. The majesty of a demon god. That overwhelming terror.
But that was not the face emerging on the paper.
An old man, deeply lined. Yes, his face was strong. But beneath that strength was something she had never once seen in her life.
He was weary.
And the old man's eyes were worried about something. Something far away, something precious, worn thin with anguish because he didn't know how to protect it. Those were not the eyes of a demon god.
They were the eyes of a father worrying over his child.
She didn't even realize she was crying. Only when her cheek grew wet did it dawn on her — oh. I'm crying.
It couldn't be. The father she knew was not that kind of man. He had seen her only as an heir, as something to discard if weak and use if strong. There had been no affection. She had believed that. That was why she had left.
And yet this old father in the painting was worrying over his daughter.
Could it be — could it possibly be that her father had once worn a face like this too? Somewhere she had never seen. Beneath the mask of the demon god, had there always been this exhausted, anxious old man? A man who knew his daughter was ambushed night after night, yet who, because he was the Heavenly Demon, could not run to her and hold her—
The moment the thought reached that far, the tears came pouring out.
The father who had been an object of fear her entire life became, before a single painting, for the first time, someone she missed.
...No.
She hastily turned her head away.
Her mind snapped back into focus. What am I doing right now? Crying over one painting? The young mistress of the Demonic Cult does not waver over things like this.
She scrubbed roughly at her eyes with her sleeve. She hurriedly smoothed her expression, struggling to return to that cold, indifferent face as if nothing had happened.
"...It's not bad, the painting."
She fought to keep her voice from trembling.
"Painting a person's face to this level. You're useful after all."
Right. That was what this was. Not emotion — verification. She had merely confirmed that this man's power could paint not just people, but even the heart of a person he'd never seen. She had simply measured his usefulness.
That was what Seol-ah told herself.
And even as she repeated it, her eyes kept drifting back to the painting. The gaze of that old father would not leave her.
I watched the whole thing in silence.
The way she tried to hide her tears and fussed over how the painting wasn't bad and all that.
I didn't know what her story was, but clearly things were bad between her and her father. Really bad.
I didn't press. Everyone has things they can't put into words, and I've never been fond of poking into other people's business. Instead, I quietly added something small in the corner of the unfinished painting.
To the old father's hand, in the painting.
A single small lantern.
The kind of lantern left burning so that someone far from home won't lose the road back.
I don't know why I painted that. My hand just went there.
"All done."
I pushed the painting over to her.
"Take it."
That same night, in the Demonic Cult.
The Heavenly Demon sat alone at the summit of the great hall.
It was a seat with all the world beneath his feet. On this night, on this entire continent, no one sat higher. Master of the Demonic Cult. The devil of the heavens. Before his name, the whole martial world held its breath.
Tipping back his wine cup, he thought of nothing at all.
Half a year had passed since his daughter left. He had paid it no mind. She had walked out on her own two feet; whether she lived or died on them was her affair. He had dispatched the pursuit squads as a formality only. If she was caught, so be it. If not, so be it.
Truthfully, after a few days he had scarcely thought of her at all. The cult was vast, and there was much to attend to. Even with his only bloodkin vanished, the world had turned on without a ripple. He governed the cult, drank alone, slept. With his daughter or without her, those days were identical.
Tonight was such a night. Empty of thought, he was simply drinking.
That was when it happened.
From the far edge of the night sky, a small light rose.
At first he took it for a firefly. But it was too far, too high for a firefly. From somewhere distant beyond the mountains, a single small lantern was drifting through the dark sky. No one had released it, apparently — it simply floated, as if carried on the wind. And yet somehow it drifted as though headed somewhere.
The Heavenly Demon could not take his eyes off the light.
For no reason he could name, something in his chest ached.
This was a heart that had felt nothing for half a year. His daughter's departure, the silence from her — he truly had not cared. Or so he had believed. And then that one small lantern reached down into the bedrock of all that indifference and touched something. Something he hadn't known was there.
That light looked, so much, like a lantern left burning for someone who had set out on a long journey. Don't lose your way home. On a dark night, when the road disappears, just follow this light.
Those who lit such lanterns were, most often, parents remaining at home, waiting for a child who had left.
The Heavenly Demon remembered a long time ago.
When the child was very small. Before she was the young mistress, before she was the heir. There had been a child so fearful that she could not sleep unless a light was left burning in her room at night.
He used to stand outside her door until she fell asleep. He could not go in and hold her. The Heavenly Demon's daughter had to be strong. She had to overcome her fears on her own. And so he would simply stand in the corridor, watching the light in her room until it went out, then turn away.
The child never knew. That every night, there was a father watching the light of her room from outside her door.
Night after night, assassins came for that child's bed. He knew it, and he did not intervene. Overcome it yourself and you will grow strong, he told himself. That was the path that was best for her. Under that justification of raising his daughter to be strong, he was never once a father.
And the child left.
It was only natural. Who would want a father like that at their side?
The Heavenly Demon opened his eyes again.
The small lantern was still drifting through the night sky.
"...Where is that child, now."
The Heavenly Demon asked quietly.
From the darkness, a single shadow sank soundlessly to one knee.
"...The Young Mistress's whereabouts are still unknown."
"Find her."
The Heavenly Demon's voice was low, but something long-suppressed bled through it.
"For now... do not harm her. Do not bring her back either. Simply... confirm that she is safe. Where she is, and how she lives."
"...As you command."
The shadow vanished.
The Heavenly Demon looked up at the night sky once more.
The small lantern had drifted far out of sight by now, indistinguishable from the stars. It flickered as if it might vanish at any moment, and yet it shone on, in its place, to the very end.
He gazed at it for a long, long time.
Never learning where that lantern had come from.