The Child Who Could Not Abandon the One Who Gave Her First Love
They say a child cannot abandon the one who first gave them love.
Even if that person were to abandon them first.
“…You made me like this.”
She looked around in bewilderment, like someone lost, and finally met my gaze. She said it.
The golden eyes that once shone so brightly had somehow become wet. Whether from the cold or from crying, I could not tell. Her light pink hair, damp from the rain, clung to her cheeks, and the once-pure white robes of the Saintess were now stained with mud and dark crimson.
The most noble Saintess in the world no longer looked holy.
It was only natural.
The place we fled to was not a paradise, but an abandoned stable.
The spot where the Savior—the one who was said to have been born in a stable—had once brought God’s will.
In the painting hanging in the Holy Empire’s grand cathedral, the stable had been depicted as a beautiful space.
Warm light had descended upon clean straw, and angels and shepherds had knelt before the newborn Savior.
Yet nothing awaited us there.
Instead of warmth, a cold wind seeped through the rotten wood, and the damp straw carried only the stench of animals. One wall was cracked and dried with old filth, and there was no candle to melt the body, let alone an angel to bless the Savior’s birth.
Where the doctrine had been beautifully adorned into a holy sanctuary, all that waited for us was a dirty, pitiful reality.
“Me?”
I asked without realizing it.
“Yes.”
She continued without even managing a smile.
“Sage-nim.”
Sage-nim.
She still called me that.
The Empire had branded us heretics. Because the Saintess of the Holy Empire—the one who served God—had come to feel something for a woman, the mercy and salvation she had given her entire life had become lies.
I, too, had become no longer a Sage.
Only a witch who had corrupted the Saintess, and a criminal who had stolen what belonged to God and fled.
Yet she still called me Sage-nim.
As if that name, that title, was something so precious it could not be taken from her.
Like it was the only thing in the world that belonged only to her.
How had things come to this?
Was it my fault?
Truly my fault?
With me, I could not know.
I had simply given the crying child a name. Held her hand and taught her how to survive. I had left her without hesitation, thinking she had grown enough to stand on her own.
I had only wanted her to be happy.
Even though she had taken everything from me, the one who filled me again had only wanted her to be happy.
Yet the child could not abandon the one who gave her first love.
For me, it was merely a warmth that had passed by.
For her, it had become a homeland she could never return to.
“You made me like this.”
Her words struck my chest again.
Yes.
She had reminded me.
That it was me who had made her that way.
I had taught her love.
And then I had left without even receiving it.
Only to return later and push her away, under the excuse that she had not endured the loneliness and remembered nothing.
Thinking that since she was strong, she would be fine after becoming the loneliest person in the world.
Yet secretly, every time she smiled at me, I had felt relief.
Expecting that she would need me, now I had become someone who could not take even a single step without her hand.
The crime of making her the loneliest person in the world was mine.
The crime of making her the happiest person in the world was also mine.
So I would bear it.
That she had come to love me.
That I could not live without her.
I would walk with her as a sinner, carrying all of it.
“Iria.”
At the sound of my name, her face twisted.
I wrapped my muddied hand around her cheek. It was a filthy hand to touch the Saintess’s face, yet she did not pull away.
Instead, she leaned her cheek into my palm.
That single small movement revealed the fact that there was no going back.
We had run.
We had shattered the relationship allowed by God, cast off the names Saintess and Sage.
Even in the place where we had fled, abandoning everything, salvation had not been waiting.
We had run to a place where neither God’s blessings nor anyone to forgive us remained.
Yet the two of us remained.
We removed our wet robes of the Saintess and black robes and laid them on the straw. With them, we set aside for a moment the names Saintess and Sage, the relationship of savior and the saved.
Face to face, naked as the moment we were first born into the world.
Her body was cold.
My body was no different.
We borrowed each other’s body heat to endure the cold. We kissed, pulled each other close, and confirmed over and over that the other was still there.
There was nothing there.
Only the dirty straw, the stench of animals, tears that had spilled without restraint, and the ragged breaths of the other.
Yet it was a place more honest than any confession.
There, for the first time, we had chosen each other without asking permission from anyone.
That day, in the abandoned stable of a cold winter that we had fled to, I had savored the spring that had not yet come for us.