Promise (2)
"So that's why you want to write a letter?"
"Yes."
Nina dipped her head in a small nod.
"If I tried to say it out loud, I'd be too embarrassed to get all of it out. But in a letter, I think I could write down every last bit of how grateful I am to you, Saintess. Not a single thing left out."
"And what is it you want to write?"
"The things you've done for me. All the things I'm thankful for."
She counted them off, folding her fingers down one by one.
"The first time I washed in warm water. The first time I ate bread until I was full. The first time you called me by my name."
Her voice trailed off, and she ducked her head, shy.
"The truth is... if I said it to your face, I think I'd just start crying."
In that instant, another life rose up in front of me: Kang Jinhyeok, alone in a moldy semi-basement room. Mail had still found its way to him. Demands for the overdue rent. Warnings that the power and the water might be cut. Notices that the lease was about to expire. But not a single page had ever been written by someone thinking only of me.
Nina and I were alike. Abandoned by our parents, welcomed by no one, we had spent long years curled small at the edge of the world, where nobody bothered to look. There was only one difference. Nina had had Elysia, who reached out a hand to her. Kang Jinhyeok had had no one. I envied that, a little. And yet, strangely, it didn't turn to jealousy. I only hoped she would never again let go of the warmth she had fought so hard to hold.
"Nina."
"Yes, Saintess."
"I'll see to it that you learn to read and write."
Nina's eyes went wide.
"Really?"
"Before we leave, and on the road to the capital, I'll make sure you can study whenever there's a spare moment. And once we reach the Academy, I'll look into finding you a proper teacher."
"Then... just a moment."
She hesitated, then drew a folded sheet of paper from inside her clothes.
Crooked, unpracticed lines wandered across the page.
"I've been practicing every night. Could you... tell me if I wrote it right?"
"What did you write?"
"Your name, Saintess."
My heart dropped. To my eyes it was nothing but a meaningless pattern.
"I wanted the very first thing I wrote to be your name."
Nina held the paper out, bright with pride. For a while I couldn't say a word. She said it was my name. I couldn't even tell whether the letters were right.
"Saintess?"
"You... wrote it well."
In the end, that was what I said. A shy smile spread over Nina's face.
"Hehe. It's only a name for now, but someday I'll give you a finished letter. I promise."
"All right."
I closed my hands around her rough ones.
"I'll be the first to read it, and I'll tell you exactly what I think."
The moment the words left my mouth, I froze.
Ah, shit... I slipped.
Read the letter and tell her what I think... when I don't know a single letter?
I said I'd teach her, and if it turns out I can't even read the thing... she's going to get suspicious. No question.
I could already see it: Nina holding out a letter she had written with all her heart, and me standing in front of it, frozen, unable to make out a single word. Cold sweat slid down my spine. Worse, if anyone learned that the Saintess could not read, it might not end as a simple case of lost memory.
"Saintess?"
Nina tilted her head.
"Why did your face go stiff all of a sudden?"
"It's nothing."
I snatched my smile back into place.
"...I was just thinking it might do me good to study the basics again. From the very beginning."
"You too, Saintess?"
"Yes."
"But you already know how to read and write so well."
My chest lurched. I held my expression as steady as I could.
"Even the things you're most used to fade, if you go long enough without using them."
"Do they?"
"And if you studied all by yourself, you might get bored before long."
I piled on the most plausible reason I could find.
"It'll be much more fun if we study side by side."
"Then... I get to study together with you, Saintess?"
Nina's eyes sparkled.
"That's right."
"Really?"
"Yes. But we'll both be starting from the beginning, so we'll have to work hard. Both of us."
Nina nodded and nodded, then opened her mouth with care.
"Then someday... you'll write me a letter too, Saintess?"
The words stuck in my throat. Promising to write a letter when I still couldn't properly read a single character was more than I could honestly swear to.
"That... might be a little difficult."
At my answer, Nina's shoulders sank.
Ah.
The look on her face made me sorry, for no good reason I could name.
"No—I don't mean I can't write you one. Just wait a little. I will. I promise."
"You really will?"
"Yes. I promise."
Her smile came back at once, bright and a little bashful.
"Hehe. Then let's bet on who finishes a letter first."
...So it's a contest between two complete beginners.
Cold sweat ran under my skin, but I kept a smile worthy of the Saintess and nodded.
"All right. But you aren't allowed to cry if you lose."
"That goes for you too, Saintess!"
In an instant the corners of Nina's eyes flushed red. She blinked several times, as if holding the tears back, and then she smiled the way a child smiles when she has just been given the whole world.
"It's a promise, Saintess."
Nina held out her little finger. I didn't hesitate. I hooked mine around that small one.
"I promise."
Even after we let go, Nina stared at her own hand for a while.
"Hehe. That already makes three promises... But, Saintess."
"What is it?"
"When do we start learning? You said you'd teach me even before we leave..."
Her eyes glittered with expectation. A moment ago she had been fighting tears, and already she was alight at the thought of studying. It was a little cute.
"Tomorrow would be best."
"From tomorrow?"
"You don't want to?"
"No! I do!"
Nina shook her head hard. Then, like someone who had made up her mind, she clenched both fists tight against her chest.
"I'll study hard. Before we reach the capital, I'll try to write more than just your name."
"You don't have to rush."
"But we only have two weeks left."
"Two weeks? Ah..."
I echoed her without thinking, and Nina tilted her head.
"Yes. You leave for the Imperial Capital of Aeternia in two weeks."
Right. The ambush... I got so caught up talking that I forgot it again.
"I heard it takes about five days to reach the capital."
She said it while looking at the empty basket beside the bed.
"I'll pack plenty of snacks for the road. Egg tarts don't keep, so I'll bake them fresh the morning we leave."
"You're going to make them again?"
"You said they were delicious."
Nina smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"And when we get to the capital, you have to come to the market with me. We said we'd look at dresses."
"I remember."
At that, she smiled wide. The smile was so bright that I felt certain I would see it again, over and over. No matter what happened, I would be the one to protect it.
Even after Nina gathered the empty plates and the basket and left the room, I stayed where I was for a long while. On the desk lay the sheet of paper she had left behind.
Crooked lines. If no one had told me they were letters, I might have taken them for a picture some child had doodled for fun. But Nina must have lifted the pen again and again to make those marks. The bled ink and the strokes drawn over and over showed the effort plainly.
"Elysia."
I spoke the name on the paper under my breath. I could say it. What I could not do was tell which letters it was made of. A strange thing, truly—to live in someone else's body, to be called by her name, and still be unable to read that name.
I opened the desk drawer. A quill, a bottle of ink, and clean paper lay neatly inside. I picked up the quill, and with my eyes on the letters Nina had left, I carefully traced the first stroke.
Scratch. The nib dragged across the paper, far too loud in the quiet. The first stroke went crooked from the start. The second ran too long. On the third character the ink pooled in the middle and bled until the shape was hardly recognizable.
"Harder than I thought."
In my previous life, writing had been too ordinary to notice. Modern South Korea had compulsory schooling, and the forms of its letters and the rules of its grammar had all been set neatly in order. I wrote comments on my phone, left curses on internet boards, and sent texts promising the date by which I would pay the overdue rent. Not once had I been grateful simply for knowing how to read and write.
Now I was worse than most children, copying shapes without knowing what a single one meant. After failing again and again, a mark that faintly resembled Nina's finally took shape on the page. I set the two sheets side by side. Her hand was clumsy. Mine was far worse.
"At this rate, who's supposed to be teaching whom?"
A hollow laugh escaped me. I didn't put the pen down. I drew out a fresh sheet. Once. Twice. Three times. I traced the same characters over and over until my wrist ached.
There was no way to know whether it was truly the name Elysia. Nina might have written it wrong, and I might have been copying her mistake right along with her. Even so, it didn't matter. What mattered now was not the exact spelling. When Nina finished her letter, I had to be able to read it. I had promised. I had said I would be the first.
"...I have to learn this. No matter what."
It was no longer only so I could pass the entrance exam. If I was going to read the first letter Nina would ever write me, I had to learn the letters of this world. I took up the quill again. The deeper the night grew, the higher the stack of failures rose along one side of the desk. I chose the sheet that looked the least hopeless and set it carefully beside the one Nina had left.
The same name, written by two different people. One was letters set down while thinking of the original Elysia. The other was the first writing ever learned by me, the one who had become her.
A promise to walk the market together in the capital. A promise never again to forget the things Nina had told me. A promise that someday we would place letters written in our own hands into each other's keeping. It had only been a short conversation, and already the things I had to keep had multiplied. And yet, strangely, they didn't feel like a burden. I was glad. Making a promise with someone about the future—even counting every year I had lived as Kang Jinhyeok—was a first.
I believed I would see Nina's smile again, as many times as I wanted.
Until now.
Until the First Tragedy: In Progress
What stabbed at the tip of my nose was not the sweet scent of egg tarts. It was the raw, sickening smell of blood.
How had it come to this?
"...Nina?"
A shattered carriage. Earth scorched black. The corpses of knights and magical beasts sprawled in every direction. And in the middle of it all, Nina had fallen.
Pink hair soaked through with blood. Eyes that had lost their focus. A small basket nearby, egg tarts scattered around it.
With trembling hands I gathered her body into my arms. She was still warm. That only made it harder to believe she was dead.
"Get up."
There was no answer.
"We were going to learn to read together."
I shook her, and there was no response at all.
"You said you'd write me a letter."
Only then did I see my hands. They were covered in blood. All around us, traces of pure white radiance remained—melted armor, earth split open, corpses charred black. Every one of them a place my holy power had swept through. I looked from my hands to Nina, and back again.
"...I..."
I couldn't breathe.