Is This Possession or Reincarnation?
"Then I shall take my leave, Godfather."
After Julian left the room, his godfather, Hendel Nihilit, gazed out the window. He could see a small silhouette walking toward the annex in the distance. To Hendel, that small figure looked precarious. As he watched the boy’s retreating back, Hendel spoke.
"Butler. How long did it take for that medicine to be completed?"
"It has been two years, my lord."
"Two years..."
Hendel instinctively pressed a hand to his forehead. He remembered the nights he had spent submerged in ice water because fever-reducing potions had no effect. He remembered the servants who couldn't sleep because of the sound of his teeth chattering. It had all begun exactly after Baron Nihilit returned from his inspection of the south.
"Two years... If it had been even a little later, I would have joined my friends."
At those words, the butler’s hands trembled slightly. The butler remembered it clearly, too. At the time, the church’s healer had shaken his head. Whispers about whether they should start preparing a coffin had echoed through the hallways. It was the moment everyone had braced for the downfall of the Nihilit family.
Then, a nine-year-old child had appeared, clutching a black medicine bottle, and opened the door to the sickroom.
"When the young master brought it himself, honestly, I..."
"You must have been half-doubting. I was the same."
Hendel gave a bitter smile. He had been no different. Even as he was dying, he had thought, 'There's no way medicine made by a child will work.' At the time, he hadn't trusted Julian. He had only drunk it with the thought that he had nothing to lose. And that choice had wrought a miracle.
"...But that child didn't ask for anything even after I recovered."
A business proposal? That could hardly be called a reward. Since Hendel was the one sharing the profits, it was all gain for him anyway; it couldn't be considered compensation. Yet, as if Julian felt that was enough, he never clung to Hendel as a savior, nor did he ever seek a reward. Instead, the child had only one condition.
[Please sell it to the soldiers at half price.]
Hendel sighed quietly as he recalled those words.
"I suppose the blood doesn't lie."
Hendel thought of his friends, the couple who had passed away. Foolish friends who had entrusted their young son to him and headed to the front lines, claiming that the soldiers on the battlefield needed them. The couple who treated the soldiers never returned. And their child, not even ten years old, had created medicine for those very soldiers. He had even lowered the price of the medicine by reducing his own share.
Could this really be a coincidence? Could this character truly be a matter of chance?
"What did you see there, child?"
Two years ago. The child, while collecting his parents' remains, had seemed shocked by the soldiers he saw there. And upon returning, the child had lit a lamp and begun researching tree bark all night long. At first, Hendel had dismissed it as the child's immaturity. A nine-year-old who hadn't even learned the basics of alchemy creating a new drug? He thought it was a form of mourning ritual to soothe his grief. He figured the boy would give up once he was satisfied, so he had assigned an alchemist to assist him.
But when the child didn't stop after two weeks, a month, or three months, Hendel began to worry.
At the time, Hendel had sought advice from the alchemists assigned to Julian. But the answers he received were cold.
"His talent is average. No, to be honest, he is a bit dull. He lacks intuition. Usually, talented children realize, 'Ah, this isn't it,' and change direction when they fail, but this child doesn't seem to do that well."
"He’s the type who only turns back after confirming it’s a true dead end. Honestly, since it’s a child’s level of experimentation, the expenses aren't high, but if a full-grown adult did this, they might have ruined themselves."
Hendel’s heart grew heavy at those words. No talent. That meant there was a high possibility the child’s efforts would be in vain. While watching those countless failures, Hendel had indirectly urged Julian to give up. Failed products poured out because the concentration was wrong. Extracts that had to be discarded because of the stench. Ten, thirty, seventy times. Even the alchemists who had quietly cheered for the child left his side, saying they couldn't watch anymore.
Yet, Julian did not give up. Hendel got the impression from Julian that he was being chased by something. It was as if he considered curing the soldiers' illnesses his own mission. And the boy finally found the answer alone. By saving the life of Hendel, who had returned from his southern inspection.
Others might not know, but to Hendel, this miracle never felt like a coincidence.
"Butler. Come to think of it, I didn't give up for seven years."
It had been seven years. Every year on the anniversary of his friends' deaths, Hendel would take leave and head south. He scoured the monster territories, dug through the collapsed debris, and flipped through the rosters of the bodies that never returned.
"Until I found them... I never intended to stop. No matter what people around me said."
"..."
"And yet, I told that child to give up."
Self-mockery lingered on Hendel’s lips. "Looking back, it’s shameful. I considered my own stubbornness a conviction, while I considered the child’s stubbornness mere immaturity."
His fingers, leaning against the window frame, subconsciously scratched the wood grain.
"Perhaps... I was the one who was exhausted."
Looking back, the Hendel of those days had been slowly wearing away. The southern trips returning empty-handed every year. The sympathetic gazes. The advice to 'let it go now.' All those realities piled up, and at some point, Hendel had become sensitive to 'things that don't work despite effort.'
Was that why? The sight of a child without talent staying up all night and repeating failures overlapped with the image of himself struggling in the swamps of the south.
"As you know, I don't believe in gods."
"..."
"Of course, gods exist. Otherwise, there would be no way to explain the miracle of holy magic. But if those gods truly cared for humanity... it shouldn't have taken seven years."
The gods couldn't possibly not know how many people they had saved in the empire, or how faithful they were. They were people worthy of receiving an oracle. In Hendel’s view, the couple were people who deserved that much.
"At the very least, the gods shouldn't have left them in that swamp for seven years, even if they couldn't prevent their deaths."
But the treatment the couple received was miserable.
"That’s why I didn't pray to the gods even while I was hovering between life and death. Likewise, I didn't believe in an afterlife."
"My lord..."
"But you see."
In Hendel’s eyes, looking out the window, Julian’s back was no longer visible. But he still stared in that direction.
"...Their child saved me. With what he saw in that land where his parents died."
Hendel thought. If that child hadn't continued the will of his parents who cared for the soldiers, if Hendel hadn't tried to find the couple's bodies for seven years, if Hendel hadn't taken that child to that demonic place, if either of them had given up as people around them suggested—would he even be alive right now?
"I still don't believe in an afterlife. But... for once, I think this was a gift worthy of those friends."
The butler could not answer. He only wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Hendel pretended not to see the butler and shifted his gaze to the documents on his desk. Outside the window, the lights were turning on in the annex warehouse. It seemed the eleven-year-old child had begun researching something again tonight. Hendel simply cheered for the child’s efforts quietly in his heart. Talent was a word that no longer mattered to him.
***
Meanwhile, at that moment, Julian was...
'Come to think of it, is this possession or reincarnation?'
As soon as he arrived at the annex, he was wrestling with a dilemma he had recently encountered. A homework assignment he had put off for years while focusing on developing quinine. It was a concern about his own identity, one he hadn't been able to reach a conclusion on even once.
'Hmm... I definitely have memories from when I was a baby.'
He remembered having a fever for a week before his first birthday. As the fever subsided, his memories of his past life began to clear. The problem Julian was agonizing over was that part. The standard for reincarnation is having memories from the moment of birth. But as far as he knew, medically, memory capacity develops from around 12 months onward.
Infantile amnesia. According to this theory, long-term memory itself cannot be formed before the myelination of the hippocampus is complete. That means even if it were reincarnation, there is a possibility that he couldn't remember because his brain was underdeveloped before 12 months...
'Then am I possessed or reincarnated?'
Julian rubbed his chin and pondered. Of course, nothing changes whether it’s possession or reincarnation. But since he had accidentally started worrying about it, Julian wanted to find the answer out of sheer stubbornness.
'Damn it. I should have read at least the first sentence somehow.'
For several days after that, the light in Julian’s room didn't go out until late at night. The butler’s eyes welling up with tears as he watched this was just a bonus.