The Abyss, the Girl, and Lies (6)
Mother passed away on my tenth birthday. She had been a shaman who vanished while tracking the source of the Abyss that had begun to spread across the land long before I was born. The only thing left behind was the rumor that she had been eroded in the Great Cavity. In the end, she simply disappeared.
Father could not endure losing her. The man who had once thrown himself into his work no matter what horrors or Abyss outbreaks occurred stopped going to the office the very day she vanished and shut down his company. For several days he stayed home, drowning himself in alcohol, until he suddenly met a certain fortune-teller. After that, he began desperately searching for Mother. He went into the Great Cavity and did not return for days. When he finally came back, he declared that he would hunt the Abyss.
That was the day. In the end, Father was replaced that day.
From then on, he was completely changed. He looked only at the Abyss, hated only the Abyss, resented only the Abyss—as though his mind had been filled with nothing else.
At the time I felt something was wrong for a few days, yet somehow I came to understand. He had found the source of the Abyss. He had confirmed Mother’s death. That was why, I told myself, only revenge remained in his heart.
Because I wanted revenge too. I wanted to take revenge, madly, on the thing that had stolen my beloved mother. So I followed the replaced father who had gone mad for the Abyss, and I too began to lose myself to it. I trained as he taught me, built my strength, cultivated my spiritual power, received the Divine Instrument he gave me, and went to kill it.
But… the truth is, I never did it for Mother’s revenge. I never lived obsessed with the Abyss only to avenge her. I simply… I simply…
“That kid’s weird, let’s go…”
“Are you possessed or something?”
“Ugh, gross!”
I just… only wanted to be loved.
“I’m proud of you.”
I simply longed for that warm touch.
“Seha, look here~”
“Isn’t she pretty, dear?”
I just, just…
“Fath… er…”
I only wanted to go back. Back to the days when I could be happy without doing anything. I missed the times when Mother and Father, even if they rarely gathered together, would fill the room with laughter that never faded. I missed Mother’s voice, stroking me with hands full of love and promising that no matter how uncertain the future, we would always be together. I missed Father’s warm, broad palm that accepted and believed in me no matter how I changed. I missed walking hand in hand with them down streets bathed in sunset, returning home together.
Madly—so madly that reason itself seemed to wear away and rot. Just imagining a tomorrow without them made me feel as though I would collapse right then and there. Imagining a tomorrow without Mother, without Father—
“I hate monsters!”
“Hey, you’re the monster, right? You see monsters, don’t you?”
The world I had to face alone had always been cruel to me. Everyone treated me like a monster for seeing monsters and kept their distance; everyone was afraid of me. No matter how hard I tried to change, no matter how much I believed I could, all I could do was cover my eyes and laugh like a fool, pretending “I’m an idiot,” while inside I spilled nothing but empty, fake smiles that held not even a shadow of truth.
So for a while, after even Father left my side and I had nowhere to go, I simply wandered the streets. Even when it was time for school, I just walked outside.
I want to be loved. I want to hold that warm hand again. It was around then that a vague loneliness, a vague lack of affection, began to twist my young mind and breed wariness toward everyone.
From that time on, no matter who showed me kindness first, I would grow wary and keep my distance. Even when I reached out to someone I wanted to be close to, my actions—already twisted against my own wishes—always carried sharp, broken teeth.
In my world, hurting others was natural, so the words that hurt them came out naturally too. Only then would people not fear my strangeness. Even if the looks I received were contempt, at least they paid attention to me. If no amount of effort or smiling would stop them from seeing me as something frightening, then this way was better. I had already accepted it. There was nothing else I could do.
Yet no matter how hard I tried, no real love ever reached me. No genuine interest ever came my way. In the end, until the very last moment, I was alone again.
“…Seha.”
And then, the father I had longed for so desperately returned. A father twisted differently from my memories came back and taught me about the Abyss. Beneath that father who fought the Abyss so madly, I finally received the attention and love I had always wanted. I thought I had at last found meaning in this short life.
“…Can’t we stop now, Father?”
Truthfully, even then I wanted to stop. I wanted to leave all these painful things behind and simply stay together, just the two of us, continuing the ordinary life we had barely regained. Revenge no longer mattered. The more I learned about the Abyss, the more I realized it was nothing more than a natural disaster. Exhausted, I asked Father if we could stop—Mother had simply been in an accident.
I was still in agony over losing her, yet what I wanted far more desperately at that point was not revenge. Even while I missed Mother to the point of death and hated the Abyss, once I truly began to understand it, I tried to resign myself and accept it.
But he would not allow it. He scolded me.
“It’s not a disaster, Seha!! It’s something humans can erase with their own hands———!!”
Yes, in my heart I had already resigned myself, but when Father grew that angry, I could do nothing. I could only lower my head and say I was wrong, that I was sorry. I could only follow his hand and hunt the Abyss with all my strength so that he would not hate me again, so that he would love me again.
Deep down I had known for a long time that this was not real love. Yet I knew better than anyone that if I did not have even this, I would never receive anything resembling love anywhere else. For someone like me who had once been strangled by everyone’s fearful gazes while utterly crushed beneath the weight of terror, there was no other choice.
So in the end, I arrived here.
“……”
In a life where I had learned almost nothing properly and had been abandoned again and again before I could even make proper friends, I still wanted to be loved—even by this twisted father who at least showed me some interest. For me, who had starved so terribly for the warm, gentle love I had once known, this was the only escape from a rotting world, the only refuge.
That was why I had asked Father for the Divine Instrument myself, to avenge Mother. I attempted revenge to receive greater affection, greater love from him. And at the end of it all, my conclusion was this… To die miserably, more miserably than anything else. Following Mother and Father, I too would die a lie, my already rotten life dressed up in falsehoods.
“……”
The thought that treating others harshly would make them pay attention to me had been the best struggle a child like me could manage. I believed that if I acted that way, I would look like someone who possessed something more. I had read it in a book—people who have things tend to have ugly personalities. But now… now I’m just sorry. I truly possessed nothing. Not even family, not even that love. I was nothing more than an empty shell hovering at the edge of humanity, neither lie nor truth.
Now, now I just… simply…
“Snap out of it, Lee Seha———!!”
At that moment, I forced my heavy eyelids open amid the noise and felt someone holding me.
“Ugh……”
“If you lose consciousness you’ll die, I’m serious, it’s not a lie!!”
My head felt so heavy it might fall off at any second. Everything spun before my eyes and the Abyss’s whispers rang loudly in my mind. Yet somehow, her voice alone cut clearly through the noise.
The one holding me—the once-weak Divine Dragon’s attendant—
“Your body……”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing!!”
Half her body was already eroded, more than half her neck swallowed by darkness, and the Abyss was already bubbling up past her jaw. Even so, she kept her eyes wide open, gripping a shard of pale-blue blade as she fought.
Faced with her, I—who had already given up and accepted death—began to cry uncontrollably while looking at her. Thinking this was the final chance granted by the Creator God before death, I began to reveal everything I had hidden until now. After all, everything would have been a lie anyway.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I, I……”
And all of this had happened because of me, someone who had always seemed like a lie. Because of the massive accident caused by the false me. The reason this once-weak girl had to sacrifice her entire body, the reason the Divine Dragon had to face the deep night without reinforcing the seal…
“Be quiet. It’s not over yet, Lee Seha.”
Yet even as she embraced my false self tightly, she refused to give up. Though still being eroded, her eyes still held a brilliant blue, and those blue eyes glared at the Abyss continuously rising from the pond. Before I knew it, I realized that the degree of erosion in my body was not much different from hers. My body was already this heavily eroded; even if she saved me, unlike her or the Divine Dragon, I was only a fragile human. So even facing her unwavering will, I believed there could be no hope left for me.
But she immediately raised the brilliantly shining pale-blue blade shard in her hand.
“Hold onto this. It’ll block the erosion.”
Suddenly handing it to me, she dragged my collapsed body and laid me down in a distant spot. Though she kept staggering, she forced herself upright as though she could not afford to fall.
“You…!”
At her absurd appearance I forced my own dizzy body up to look at her. She began walking straight toward the writhing Abyss inside the pond and shouted.
“You’re not a false person, Lee Seha.”
Her shrine-maiden robes fluttered wildly in the headwind stirred by the Abyss.
“You’ve never once lied to me. Your entire life has been real.”
She suddenly snatched a fragment of the Abyss flying toward her and began eroding her own body with it.
“I———”
I could not understand it in that instant, yet as I watched her, my gaze stolen completely, I felt an inexplicable elation and pull.
“I’ll make it so!!”
No matter how much she struggled, she clearly could not win against the Abyss. In the end, the only hope—the Divine Instrument—had been a lie, and my life itself had been a lie. Even though we, having lost all hope, would never be able to suppress the Abyss that had already broken through more than half the seal and would all be eroded anyway, why was it that watching her stride forward made me feel, however faintly, that even I—who had been destined for falsehood—might be able to seal it again?
At her voice, which declared she would affirm me to the very end even if it meant sacrificing herself completely, I began to feel an inexplicable pull, a pounding in my chest.
“Hic……”
Just as the bitter tears I thought would never flow again threatened to spill once more, she tightly squeezed the Abyss fragment she had seized and spoke in a low voice.
“If it’s now, there’s no helping it……”
And at the same time—
“Because there’s no helping it———!!”
Crushing the Abyss fragment and tearing at the air as though ripping apart a shattered pane of glass, she began to draw out an ominous greatsword. Though more than half her body must have been eroded, she began to move even more violently, more savagely, and for some reason her blue eyes gradually began to take on a violet hue.
“What on earth… is that……”
From the greatsword of unknown identity, countless masses of malice and darkness dripped down in thick drops.