The Goddess Who Feared Loss
Outside the city.
Tiamat came to a halt directly in front of the harbor — close enough that a simple stumble would have sent her nose into the water.
China, fractured from within. Japan, which had essentially become a theocratic nation-state.
Either of them would make a perfectly serviceable home for Tiamat in the days to come.
On her part, Tiamat turned and studied the figure who had followed at her heels, taking her time with it.
The season had arrived where the night wind cut cold against the skin.
Perhaps that was why.
Even at a glance, Park Woochan's attire made it clear his collar was buttoned tight against the chill.
His usual gas mask, with a coat layered over it.
And that gas mask, hiding his face completely without remainder.
At the untimely presence of that mask, Tiamat burst out laughing before she could stop herself.
Unchanged to the last, isn't he.
Granted, that was something to view positively.
Considering Park Woochan's notoriously difficult temperament, doubly so.
He was the kind of man who seized up the moment a monster entered his field of vision.
If even a mere avatar of hers could send him into that kind of tantrum, how much worse would it be with the real thing standing before him?
It was a familiar sight, in any case.
And therein lay the problem — or, if you like, the surprise.
Whether for the Association's sake or for practical reasons, either way, Tiamat was well aware that he had been striving ceaselessly to avoid making an enemy of her.
The gas mask was part of that effort too.
Which meant that Park Woochan, wearing that mask right now, had come here intending to hold a conversation with her.
And that was something Tiamat had genuinely never anticipated.
To be perfectly honest, she had assumed he'd come to fight.
Given the reactions Park Woochan usually displayed toward her, it was a perfectly reasonable conclusion.
Of course, it was true that Tiamat harbored a rather laughable misunderstanding about the man.
But Tiamat knew one thing with certainty.
That she was beautiful!!
Therefore, even if Park Woochan had truly fallen for her, it could only ever be because of her looks.
In a word: simple carnal desire.
Had there been enough time for anything deeper, perhaps things might be different.
But standing here now, Tiamat could hardly think otherwise.
And so.
Simple bloodlust — or, to keep a Constellation descended upon the earth from being shipped off to another country as a strategic asset.
She hated to believe it, but perhaps he'd even come at the Association's behest.
She had assumed Park Woochan had come here to take her head.
Frankly, it had left her a little flustered.
A conversation?
Why?
No — after all this time, now?
A ridiculous state of affairs, really.
The man in question quietly slumped his shoulders.
Whether he was denouncing the current situation or complaining about his own fashion choices, there was no telling.
But.
"So? Are you leaving?"
"Hm. I thought you had already agreed to this arrangement."
His mealy-mouthed delivery as he said it was comical beyond description.
It was a laugh too good-natured to be called mockery.
Park Woochan let his gaze drop for a moment in response to her laughter, then at last opened his mouth again.
"Why?"
"Did you not hear it yourself?"
"No — honestly, the timing makes that hard to believe."
Even granting that she'd said she would be a burden to the war between the two factions, something about it didn't quite sit right.
He'd never gone into detail, but considering Tiamat's own history, the same held true.
If she truly believed that, why would she have ever set foot in Korean society to begin with?
To survive?
Evading pursuit from both the Constellations and the monsters hunting her, until she grew attached to the place?
"I suppose one could say that."
"But."
To claim she no longer wished to burden this country because affection had bloomed — that was, frankly, far too late in coming to be credible.
And so.
"Let's be blunt. Is it because of me?"
"……Why would you say such a thing?"
"Because I have a guess."
With a sorrowful, regretful air, Tiamat spoke thus — and Park Woochan drove the wedge home.
"Because I killed that friend of yours. Kim Mincheol."
"Wait."
Just for a moment, Tiamat's lips parted.
But the mouth that had opened could produce no words at all.
Trembling, opening and closing again and again.
In the end, Tiamat let out a quiet sigh.
Those are not words I ever wanted to hear.
"I'm sorry."
"How can you say such a thing? How can you make me so utterly wretched?"
The goddess quietly wiped her face, again and again.
Yet the moisture that dampened her fingertips kept her feelings from drying out the way she might have wanted.
At last, the goddess opened her mouth slowly.
Because there was nothing else she could do.
At the same time, she thought.
Why, of all moments, was he asking her such a question in a situation like this?
Her own voice, sniffling thinly, sounded pathetic to her own ears.
"It's…… hard to deny, isn't it."
She had known it in her head.
During that incident, the one at fault had without question been Kim Mincheol.
If anything, Park Woochan had shown the man in question a degree of leniency that bordered on excessive.
It was a fact even Tiamat could not help but concede.
But.
Emotion was never something that cut so cleanly down the middle.
Hatred — toward Park Woochan, who had personally struck off Kim Mincheol's head — she did not feel it.
She would have no shame left at all if she went that far.
But.
Regret. Grief. Wailing sorrow. Loss.
Such emotions had piled up, layer upon layer, in the depths of Tiamat's heart.
And.
This time, they had exploded.
It was only natural.
If Korean society was to be swept up in their scheme going forward, the goddess had precisely two choices.
One was to leave of her own accord, out of consideration for the harm Korean society would suffer if she stayed.
The other was to reinforce Korean society's strength with her own power instead.
Creating hunters, blessing them, bolstering the Association's might.
Tiamat had the power to do exactly that.
In other words, with the two options in perfect equilibrium as they were, some new weight was needed to tip the scales — that was what it meant.
And.
In this particular choice, the final drop that tipped Tiamat's heart had been one thing only.
The very emotions she had just spoken of.
Which meant.
"……Heh heh. What a goddess I am — utterly undignified, through and through."
Tiamat had been afraid.
Afraid of the pain of loss.
Afraid of the sorrow of losing.
Afraid of the deaths of the children she had cherished so dearly.
If even Kim Mincheol's end — one with a just cause behind it — hurt this much.
Then what of.
Unlike Kim Mincheol, whose case she had been forced to give up on, their lives — dying without a single reason at all.
How crushing a burden would the weight of human lives prove to be?
The successor who bore the name of the great goddess of wisdom feared exactly that.
……Though in truth, it was nothing more than willful blindness.
Tiamat leaving this country would not make them abandon their scheme.
If anything, the odds that she would hear of the children's deaths through rumor alone only grew larger.
Yet Tiamat had thought that would be preferable.
On that day when she had been left with no choice but to turn Kim Mincheol into a monster with her own hands and let him die.
Just as on that day — rather than witnessing, before her very eyes, the deaths of the children she had sheltered, at the hands of kin wielding the power and authority that had flowed from her.
No — compared to having to watch the children die right in front of her, as things stood now.
That was why she had tried to run.
Had the denizens of Mesopotamian myth heard of it, they could not have held back their laments.
The god and monster who had once torn apart her own kin, offering up her very life and death, at the end of a war wagering her species' fate.
Tiamat, grown weary of the war between Constellations and monsters, had fled to the human world.
And now that same woman was blinding herself to the welfare of the human race and behaving in exactly the way she once had.
There was irony, and then there was this.
"So — I beg you. Grant me this request."
"No. Wait."
"Close your eyes to this, just this once."
She spoke as though she were ready to kneel then and there, and it was Park Woochan who found himself thrown off balance instead.
"Perhaps…… perhaps I should never have descended to this world at all."
"What are you talking about……"
"Perhaps it would have been better never to gain the power I hold now. Or perhaps it would have been better never to have been born."
Tiamat meant every word of it.
She would have gladly returned to being the ignorant beast she once was.
Back then, survival had been the greatest question facing a goddess who did not yet bear even a name.
Why had the gods and monsters tried to return to the surface?
Why had the monsters raged so against the Constellations who had reduced them to beasts?
She had come to understand it in her bones.
That was how sweet the fruit she had tasted on the surface had been — and how poisonous, beyond all of it.
To a young goddess living only to survive, the civil war between the two races had been utterly incomprehensible.
And so she had run away.
And.
On this land, she had known countless meetings.
She had met pure faith. She had learned for the first time that such intoxicating joy existed.
She had met compassionate love. She had learned for the first time that one could care for a being so unlike oneself.
She had even met a sluggish, creeping desire. In that heart which harbored such filthy feelings yet still strove to speak rightly, she had learned what love was.
But.
"I cannot bear any more than this."
"Is that not so?"
It had been only one parting. Only a single farewell.
And already, the goddess's heart was in tatters.
Even in the very moment she struggled to mend her wounds, the mere thought of the losses yet to come froze her heart solid, time and time again.
And so.
"Otherwise — then take my life with your own hands."
That was what the goddess said.
Even the monster who had once howled at the edge of extinction for the sake of survival had found pain beyond a certain point unbearable.
If dying could simply put an end to it, she thought even that might not be so bad.
And above all, it was a fair offer for Park Woochan as well.
He was a man who had always been forced to suppress any intent to kill, for all manner of reasons.
Not a bad parting gift, all things considered.
And in truth, it was.
Thud — the instant he heard those words, Park Woochan's body flinched of its own accord, and he had to force the reaction down.
Tiamat's gaze as she watched him remained terrible in its calm.
She means it.
There was no other conclusion he could reach.
At the same time.
The crushing weight now pressing down on Park Woochan's shoulders was exactly that look in her eyes.
If there had been even the smallest lie in it, he would have swung his sword then and there, and called it good.
He would have executed that shameless goddess — the one who dared spew falsehood even in a moment like this — until nothing remained of her neck but bone.
But presented with this, somehow, drawing the blade felt wrong.
'……No.'
Park Woochan shook his head, denying his own impression.
If that had been all there was to it, he would have attacked without a moment's hesitation.
Frankly speaking, he wasn't the type to agonize over such things when dealing with monsters.
So if one insisted on naming the emotion currently holding Park Woochan's shoulders down — that was what it would have to be called.
Conscience.
'I had no fucking clue.'
That Tiamat had been carrying thoughts like these all along.
It was only natural he hadn't.
Because he had never cared in the slightest.
To put it crudely — a monster's problems were a monster's problems.
Why would any of that be Park Woochan's business?
The problem was that, in the present circumstances, Park Woochan was not exactly a bystander.
To put it bluntly — he was the one who had killed Kim Mincheol.
He felt no responsibility for Kim Mincheol's death, and no regret over it either.
That bastard died because he deserved to die.
However.
Park Woochan could only say that because Kim Mincheol had died as a monster.
Which is to say — because Tiamat had intervened.
So that Park Woochan would never be tormented by the petty guilt of having taken a human life.
Tiamat, mistaking the reason for his hesitation in that moment, had elevated the man into a monster just before his self-destruction.
In other words, the reason Park Woochan could now live free of any conscientious pangs over killing a man was entirely thanks to Tiamat.
She had lent her own hand so that the goddess would be the one to kill her own child.
The burden of the heart that Park Woochan should have carried had been transferred onto Tiamat's back instead.
And the effect had been certain.
Until now, Park Woochan had never once imagined she might be shouldering a burden like that.
And.
It was Tiamat's silent devotion that drove the words out of Park Woochan's mouth now.
"Hey."
"Have you made your decision?"
"……Yeah. I have."
"Then — I ask that it not hurt."
"Cut the crap."
"……I beg your pardon?"
Tsk. The sound of a tongue clicking came faintly through the gas mask.
He still wasn't used to this, apparently — situations like this one.
And yet.
Where in all the world was there a mother for whom killing her own child had ever become routine?
It was his turn to shoulder the burden this time.
Which meant.
"What if — what if nobody has to die at all. What would you do then?"
"……What?"
"I'll protect them."
"The people of the Association you cherish and care for so dearly."
"Or the Korean Association itself."
Having declared war on them outright, he had no intention of resorting to petty schemes anyway.
He had planned to sabotage their plot openly from the very start.
And so.
"If that's what you're asking of me."
"No — wait, what are you suddenly—"
"Then will you stay in this country?"
Park Woochan.
For years upon years he had lived as a hunter, called by that grim epithet — the Butcher.
On this day, for the first time, the man attempted something called consideration — for a monster.