Epiphany Festival
Premature birth, or a preemie.
A child born before thirty-seven weeks of gestation.
Because they came into the world before they had time to grow properly, weak bodies were the rule, and death was by no means rare.
Journey—Da-eun—had been one of those premature babies.
Born before she could even complete a month in the womb, she was placed in an incubator before she had ever truly felt her parents’ arms.
Fortunately, the tragedy of a lonely death inside that incubator never came to pass, but she never had a body as healthy as other children’s.
There were times she was laid up for days with a fever, and times she fell into a coma from respiratory distress.
Because her body had always been fragile, the Da-eun of those early years spent her childhood coming and going from hospitals as if they were her second home.
And when it was time for her to enter elementary school, she suffered a serious illness and ended up spending those years in a long hospital stay instead.
While other children made friends, fought, reconciled, and studied in school, Da-eun had to lie in a hospital bed and battle her illness day after day.
So she had no memories of elementary school or middle school, and no friends with whom to share whatever memories she did have.
Even so, she had been relatively fortunate.
Her family had been well-off, so they never had to worry about medical bills, and her parents never treated her frailty as a burden; they cared for her with nothing but love.
When she thought about families who broke apart from the strain of long-term caregiving or collapsed under the crushing weight of ever-growing hospital bills, Da-eun’s own life was practically blessed.
She knew that much herself, and yet…
“Still, there was something hollow about it that I couldn’t shake.”
Her childhood, stolen by disease.
The suffocating confinement of being trapped in a hospital.
The loneliness of having no one to share her memories with.
Even now, years later, those things still held Da-eun in a tight grip.
That was why she had started traveling.
She thought that if she went out into the wide world and saw and experienced many things, she might be able to relieve the frustration built up over those long years of illness.
Driven enough to learn languages and even push her way into college for it, Da-eun began traveling all over the place the moment she was old enough to do it alone, roaming from one region to another, from one country to the next.
It had only been possible thanks to the support of her parents, who had always felt sorry for the daughter who had been born weak.
She had been sickly since birth, and she loved traveling, so she went abroad a lot.
She had mentioned things like that from time to time, so her viewers already knew the basics, but Da-eun had never laid out her past in such detail before—never once until now.
Without thinking, Da-eun swept her eyes over the chat window.
She had just opened up about a past she had never spoken of before, and yet the chatroom remained silent.
Right. Of course.
She had already ended the broadcast before coming up this mountain.
The viewers had been screaming, naturally, but she had shut it down without leaving the slightest opening.
It wasn’t because she was embarrassed to talk about her past.
Haaah—
Da-eun exhaled deeply and looked at the girl standing before her.
Non Player Character.
Or NPC, for short.
The girl was not a player like Da-eun, someone who enjoyed the game; she was a resident of Silia Online, shaped artificially by the game company itself.
In other words, she was nothing more than a program made of zeroes and ones, thinking and acting exactly as the game company had designed her to.
Even knowing that Silia Online’s greatest strength was its AI, so advanced it couldn’t be compared to anything in the games that had come before it…
…I know that, but still.
Whenever she looked into the girl’s eyes, whenever she spoke to her, Da-eun found herself feeling as if she were talking to a real person.
At first, it had been curiosity.
Curiosity about digging into a raid boss that no one had ever conquered.
Da-eun had climbed this mountain driven by nothing more than that curiosity, and the moment she saw the girl, she had fallen for her completely.
“I’ve always wanted a little sister.”
Even Da-eun wasn’t sure when the feeling had begun.
She could only guess that, ever since she was very young, she had unconsciously longed for someone who could fill the void left by growing up unable to fit in with her peers.
Or maybe she had simply wanted to give someone else the love her parents had given her.
But she couldn’t say something like that to her parents, who were already busy nursing her, so her affection naturally turned toward small, cute animals instead.
Though given how often she was away from home, keeping one as a pet had never really been an option.
Then, one day, Da-eun found Kana.
“...I won’t deny it.”
Yes.
Da-eun had become obsessed with Kana because Kana seemed like someone who could fill her empty heart.
She confessed the emotions she had kept tightly hidden.
The truth she had wanted to bury forever because it was embarrassing to admit she had seen another person as a substitute meant to satisfy her own desires.
“But not anymore.”
As the time they spent together grew longer, and as she learned more about Kana, the girl began to look different in Da-eun’s eyes.
Her bluntness was no more than armor, a disguise meant to keep her from getting hurt again.
The way she tended her flower garden was her own way of remembering the benefactor and father she had lost.
She seemed to push people away, as if she had no interest in forming bonds, yet when someone kept pressing in, she revealed a weakness all her own.
If she truly hated people coming close, she never would have told Da-eun her name, never would have saved her from the several threats to her life, and never would have let Da-eun cling to her without ruthlessly batting her away.
Gravekeeper, the worst raid boss imaginable, idol of Silia Online, master swordsman, the empire’s sworn enemy, and more besides…
She had plenty of titles attached to her, but in Da-eun’s eyes she was only a single, honest child who didn’t quite know how to be honest.
A child who longed for human warmth, yet feared the pain people could bring and so kept herself hidden.
That was Kana as Da-eun saw her.
From what Aaron had told her, Kana had a miserable past, so that was probably part of it.
And because of that, Da-eun felt sorry for her.
She wanted to take this child’s hand and let her feel warmth.
She wanted to make that blunt little face smile.
Just as her own parents had done for her long ago.
“Could you believe one thing, at least? That I really do like Kana.”
Just as she had overcome her own illness, she wanted this little girl to overcome her wounds and live on.
Smiling, Da-eun reached into her inventory and took something out.
“Kana, can you hold out your hand?”
“...”
An silver bracelet she had bought in Ordo—plain, with no special ornamentation, but possessing a strange charm because of that very simplicity.
At the time, Da-eun had debated whether to buy a necklace or a bracelet, but she remembered that Kana wore a black choker around her neck and chose the bracelet.
It would have looked odd to give her a necklace when she already had a choker.
She had meant to hand it over then, but the uproar that followed had made her miss her chance, and it had remained tucked away in her inventory ever since.
Taking Kana’s hand, Da-eun slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.
“There!”
Still holding Kana’s hand, Da-eun inspected it from every angle and broke into a bright smile.
“Yep. I knew it would suit you. My eye for these things never fails, does it? ...Though I guess it might just be because you already have a great body to work with.”
Honestly, was there anything that outfit couldn’t pull off?
It looked like she could wear rags and still make them work, so there was no way a bracelet like this wouldn’t suit her.
“I wanted to give it to you back in Ordo, but somehow it turned into a parting gift….”
Ah, but just so you know, this isn’t me saying you should take it and withdraw the whole thing.
Da-eun hurriedly added that in case Kana thought she was trying to bribe her.
“I just want you to remember that there was someone like me.”
Until Da-eun’s long, long story finally came to an end, Kana had stood there in silence, saying nothing at all.
Whether she was actually listening or simply letting the words go in one ear and out the other, no one could tell.
But Da-eun was certain Kana had heard every word.
“...”
“...”
Now that night had fallen and even the once-noisy streets had quieted, now that the lights lining those streets had gone out one by one.
Even the moonlight had been swallowed by clouds, leaving Kana’s face shrouded in darkness.
Perhaps intoxicated by the magic of the night, Da-eun, still tightly holding Kana’s hand, spoke impulsively.
“You know. I can’t tell you everything, but the truth is, I came not from the continent across the sea, but from a place beyond that—somewhere very, very far away.”
Flinch.
A tiny reaction traveled through the hand Kana was holding.
The residents of Silia believed that players like Da-eun had come to the Ardina Continent from the continent across the sea under Edel’s guidance.
That was probably why Kana had been startled—because she had thought that was true, and now she had heard that it wasn’t.
Da-eun made her guess.
“...I know.”
“Huh, wha—what? You know...?”
“...”
Da-eun was surprised once by the reply from Kana, who had kept her mouth shut until now, and twice by what it meant.
But only for a moment.
Regaining her composure almost at once, Da-eun smiled bashfully.
“No one else seems to know, so Kana really is smart.”
She must have known because she’d been to the continent across the sea before.
That was how Da-eun chose to dismiss Kana’s answer.
“This is a secret, but my real name back home isn’t Journey. Thinking about it, Kana told me her name, and I never told her mine, which isn’t fair, is it? So I’ll tell you too. I-I mean, I probably don’t have much right to talk about keeping secrets after I just broke one, but….”
She lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Shin Da-eun. That’s my name.”
If we ever meet again someday, would you call me by that name then?
Just then, the clouds parted, and moonlight once more fell upon the two of them.
Bathed in that pale light, Kana’s face held a look of pitiful sorrow Da-eun had never seen before.
...Ah. So that’s it.
Only then was Da-eun able to put a name to what she felt.
It was not sympathy, nor pity, nor merely simple affection.
It was all of them woven together into attachment.
She was certain that, no matter how long she lived, she would never be able to let this child go from her heart.
Swish.
Kana reached out.
A small hand touched Da-eun’s cheek.
The very place Kana’s sword had brushed that morning.
Each time Kana’s fingers touched the wound, a faint heat tingled across Da-eun’s cheek.
But she didn’t even glance at her health bar.
Instead, when Da-eun looked up again, the clouds that had hidden the moon were gone without a trace.
After gently touching Da-eun’s wound for a long while, Kana turned her back.
One step, then two.
Slowly moving away from Da-eun, Kana turned back once more.
The girl’s tiny lips parted.
* * *
“So. Have you made up your mind?”