Is There Meaning? (5)
It wasn't as if I particularly wanted to leave any trace of myself on this world. I didn't care enough about this place to wish to be remembered as myself rather than as the Demon Knight.
In the same vein, I had no desire to earn empty pity by laying my circumstances bare. I knew full well—and all too easily—that any sympathy directed at me could prove lighter than the desires of those who only wanted something from me.
But what if speaking of my situation brought the Mountain Lord a precious clue?
What if I could shake the heart of someone who had no intention of killing me, yet might know something of use?
Then I could speak. I could speak more than enough.
I was a man who wanted to go home far more than I wanted to cling to my pride.
"So what yer sayin' is... have you gone completely nuts!? Even so, draggin' a soul from another world over here?! Demon or no demon, this crosses a damn line!"
Separately... isn't he getting a little too genuinely angry? I'd only figured he might look a bit shocked, or maybe toss me a scrap of pity along the lines of You poor bastard, tsk tsk.
"...I thought you hated me."
"That was when I still took you for Demon Vessel Number One!"
"I don't see how it's any different now."
"It is! It is different! Anyway, it is!"
Well, that tracked. The face Yukgui had shown me until now could be summed up as surly, prickly, disapproving, and outright hostile.
He simply lacked the power to kill me himself, and didn't possess the will to goad someone else into doing it either—so he'd left me alone. Personally, though, he had thoroughly disliked me.
"I swear, I just—I truly cannot believe this. What, you bring a soul from another world? A bet? You pullin' my leg!? It's not like the damage lands on you, is that it?! You're already gettin' called a demon, so who cares, is that it!? Just rotten to the core! Completely rotten!!"
Even now, I could still clearly remember the jabs he'd thrown my way—telling me to just eat porridge because my picky chewing put him off his food, or to lie down and sleep already because he couldn't stand the sight of me dragging myself around...
Hearing this string of sentences so completely at odds with those moments made the back of my head itch. How to put it—getting a reaction I hadn't expected at all left me feeling oddly sheepish for no good reason.
"And what about the original owner of that body! Call the demon a demon if you must, but what about that kid!!"
More importantly... isn't your voice getting a little too loud? At this rate you're going to wake everyone up.
I cast a quick glance around at the rising pitch of Yukgui's tone, half-afraid Sangun or the priests—some of whom had stayed near the cave mouth—might stir.
"Not havin' the guts to clean up your own demon mess and askin' someone else for help is fine. It's fine! But you should've at least picked someone from the same world, shouldn't you?! Why did it have to be a person from another dimension?!"
Fortunately—among the misfortunes—no one had woken yet. Yukgui's words only sounded loud to me; in truth they were probably no louder than a chick's peeping. Truly a blessing.
"And you! Youuuu are a problem too! Why are you shouldering all of this alone? You think if you just grit your teeth and wait, people will treat you right on their own?! You didn't say a word but somehow they'd just get it—did you really think it'd work like that! Are you a sucker?!"
Truly a blessing—except now the sparks are flying my way too, aren't they?
"Are you even listening to me, you thick-headed fool!!"
"...I am listen—listening."
The way he squawked until he couldn't take his own temper anymore and started whacking the ground around him was so exactly like my late grandmother that I only barely managed to smother the honorific that almost slipped out on instinct.
The small slip that came out in the process... well, he didn't seem to notice, so it probably didn't matter.
"Then why didn't you say anything!"
"Because even if I did, my situation wouldn't come first...?"
"That's...!"
No, but seriously—talking casually is hard.
The moment I poured my circumstances out, I rolled my eyes as the concept I'd been holding started to loosen without permission. Tap-tap. Yukgui, at a loss for words, smacked the rock as if to vent his frustration.
"...That's true enough."
He's going to hurt himself doing that.
I stared blankly at the surface of the rock where Yukgui had settled. There was a nest of well-dried reeds piled up, and soft moss spread beneath it—so why, of all places, did he have to smack right there? Didn't it hurt when he hit it?
"The weight of pity for one world and the pity for one life were always going to be different."
While I was thinking that, Yukgui hung his head gloomily. The head buried between his gathered flippers looked uncannily like a child squatting down with his hands on his knees.
"...So that's why you ran?"
"...Yeah."
A tortoise barely bigger than my palm looking like that was cute.
I was in the middle of that idle thought when I belatedly realized the conversation had gone completely off the rails. If the kids woke up now, that would be a problem!
"So? Your answer?"
"I've thought this for a while, but you really do talk without an ounce of manners, regardless of your situation."
"……."
"And you never even said clearly what your question was."
I'd pressed him for an answer so we could move on. And I'd been hit with a fact.
Right—Yukgui was a being who had lived for thousands of years. Compared to that, I was a green kid who hadn't even reached fifty.
It was a little strange that someone who wasn't even human would cling so hard to human etiquette, but it was more than enough reason for him to take offense. I stole a careful glance at Yukgui's face.
"I would like to know if there is any means... other than sealing... that can conceal Demon Energy."
I had a feeling he'd give me an answer even without the honorifics... but raising my speech a little wouldn't hurt. Now that I'd already revealed a fair amount of the truth, keeping up the rude act was a chore of its own.
"...There's nothing you can use."
More than anything, I wanted to.
I listened to Yukgui as if I'd just undone a button on my shirt. Whether the single honorific had soothed his mood or not, he spoke more kindly than before.
"You'd have to seal it, or kill the demon, or crush it completely with overwhelming power, or convert the Demon Energy into mana—but if any of that had been possible, you wouldn't be here in the first place, would you?"
"Purification is..."
"No good. Purification only works when the demon has been separated from the flesh and the original being is still alive. As you are now..."
He considered for a moment, then offered an analogy.
"Say you've got a sack of flour with one apple inside. When you take the apple out, you're not likely to damage the flour. Not unless the apple gets crushed in the process, or it was already crushed to begin with, or it's been sitting in there far too long."
I immediately grasped the gist of what he meant. So... I was the sack of flour that had held an apple for far too long?
"But you—you're more like someone who dumped an old apple and a crushed apple into the flour and then sprinkled in a handful of dirt for good measure. There's no way to separate out just the flour anymore."
No. It was worse than that.
"Then...?"
"Honestly, by this point I figure even killing the demon would be a problem. You—that is, the body you're using right now—have been bound to the demon for far too long. To the point you're no longer in the category of human. To be frank... well."
So if the demon died, this flesh would die with it.
I quietly waited for the words that would follow, pressing down on the growing tangle in my gut.
"Ah—wait, wait. Could that be why?"
Yukgui suddenly let out a soft exclamation.
"……?"
"I was wondering why they'd go out of their way to drag in a soul from another dimension... but if it's that, it makes sense."
"...Must I offer another answer in exchange?"
"No, that's fine. Well—it'd be nice if you did, of course, but I'll answer this one free. Strictly speaking, you're a victim tangled up in this world's affairs."
If he was going to answer without another trade of questions, that was a relief... but what on earth could it be to make him act like this? I waited quietly for him to speak.
"But before I tell you, I've got a couple of warnings. First—this is only my guess, so it could be wrong. Though I do think the odds of it being right are high, anyway. Second—once you hear it, you might regret it."
"...Is it that serious?"
"Ah, well. The content is one thing, but the act of hearing it itself is the problem. Some things, you're better off not knowing, right? Once you know, there's no going back."
The grace period granted before the main point felt like a harbinger of the misery about to arrive.
"So. Do you want to hear it?"
"……."
But was I going to flinch back from that warning and withdraw? Was I going to keep stumbling around blindfolded because I was afraid of the unknown?
"I'll hear it."
I didn't want that. I didn't want that at all.
I had already struggled enough. If it had come to this, I'd rather know and regret it. I was sick of wandering without knowing a thing.
"Alright. If you're ready, that's enough."
My tightly shut eyelids felt needlessly hot.
"The reason the demon and the original owner of the body went out of their way to pull in a soul from another dimension was probably to aim for the Concealment of Ignorance. It's a kind of loophole that uses the rule 'cognition proves existence'... but it's a law that doesn't apply in this world, so beings belonging to this order can't use it even if they want to. You need a being who belongs to that other order—someone like you—for it to work."
"...May I ask for a more detailed explanation?"
"Mm. Sure. It's a bit of a hard concept for a human."
Yukgui gently stroked the underside of his mouth with a flipper, the way a human might stroke their chin, and peeped softly.
"This rule is... exactly what it says. If you don't perceive something, or refuse to, it ceases to be. If you don't acknowledge a god, that god does not exist; if you decide a demon does not exist, the demon vanishes. Of course there are finer points—like more widely shared beliefs taking priority, and so on..."
"...I don't mean to pick a fight, but when I first woke up in this body, I didn't know there was a demon in it. Why, then, did the demon not disappear? Was that also following one of those finer points?"
"Ah, no. That's just because the worlds are different."
"...In what sense?"
"So what I'm sayin' is... the loophole itself activates thanks to 'your soul,' but because the demon belongs to a different order, the rule doesn't get reflected perfectly."
I took in every word and thought.
What is he even talking about?
"How am I supposed to explain this..."
As if sensing my frustration, Yukgui tapped the ground with a flipper.
"Your world is one that uses cognition as the definition of existence. Ours isn't. That's number one."
"Yes."
"And following the rule I just mentioned, anything you don't perceive ceases to be. Ours doesn't. That's number two."
"Yes."
"So now you're left with a contradiction like the unstoppable spear versus the impenetrable shield, right? That's exactly where the Concealment of Ignorance is born. A Concealment of Ignorance that both doesn't exist and does."
"...You mean it seems gone, but it's still there?"
"Exactly. Until you perceive it, it ceases to be. But it hasn't vanished completely. You're just acting as a screen, pretending it isn't there."
Only then did I feel like I was starting to understand a little.
"...But even when I was completely unaware of its existence, someone still sensed Demon Energy from me."
And if what Yukgui said was true, then why had my first meeting with the Inquisitor taken the form it had? Back then I'd only thought of the demon in my right arm as a character setting—I hadn't believed for a second that it actually existed. So why had the Inquisitor still sensed Demon Energy from me?
"That's because of the difference in rank. You used the rules of a world, sure—but the one using them is still just you, a single soul. If that completely concealed a Great Demon, that would be a problem in itself, wouldn't it? Honestly, I'm more surprised you managed to hide it this well."
His follow-up more or less resolved my question. It wasn't as if I had no complaints left, but if that was how the world's laws worked, there wasn't much I could say.
"Anyway, that's not the important part. It's become almost certain they brought you here to use the Concealment of Ignorance. You may not realize it, but... after hearing what I just told you, your body has drawn another step closer to the demon. If you don't rein it in, you'll be detectable from a hundred li away."
"...That is not welcome news."
"I told you. Once you know, there's no going back."
Damn it. It was nice to have my curiosity answered, but having that answer turn into poison was enough to drive a man crazy. Was this right? Could I really make it home?
"...Then is it possible that the being who dragged me here never explained anything to me for that very reason?"
And then, suddenly, I thought of the system that had never once added a single word no matter how I begged. I turned that unnatural silence over in my mind.
Until now I'd written it off as some cruel, selfish, cold-hearted bastard who enjoyed screwing people over... but maybe even that silence had a reason?
"The odds of that are high. You think he'd dump a mess without explaining a thing and then ask someone else to clean it up? If that's really what he is, that bastard deserves to get beaten to death."
"...I see."
I exhaled through a crushing sense of frustration. What emotion was woven into the unraveling threads of my breath, even I couldn't tell.
"So that was why."
But one thing—one thing I was sure of...
Among the harsh labels I'd been pinning on whoever was hiding behind the system, the accusations of coldness and ruthlessness were ones I might have to take back.
In other words, if after everything was over I ever got the chance to speak with him—and if he had truly wanted to tell me but held back solely for my sake—oh, of course the method of caring was so completely, utterly wrong that I still wanted to curse him out. Shit, how is kidnapping someone and sealing your mouth shut to the end supposed to be for my sake? If he really cared about me he shouldn't have brought me here at all, or at least asked for consent, that son of a— if he had held back for that reason... then at the very least I could reclassify him from "selfish, cruel, and cold-hearted piece of shit" to "still selfish, but he did try to think of me even if the method was completely fucked."
Only if the chance ever came for the truth to come out.
"...Don't tell me you're feeling sorry for the bastard who summoned you?"
"I'm not that much of a sucker."
I simply... if the person who switched the tracks to save five people came and apologized to the one who was sacrificed, I would say that I understood the choice.
And understanding and forgiveness are separate things.
Of course they are. My life has been thoroughly, properly fucked—why should I have to forgive him? Even if he saved five people, I was the one who got sacrificed.
Sacrifice only has value when you volunteer for it yourself. A sacrifice decided by someone else isn't a sacrifice. It's a living offering.
"I'll beat him half to death."
Therefore that bastard was going to get hit. No—he was going to get the shit beaten out of him. As I just said, understanding and forgiveness are separate things.
"Good. That's more like it."
In the meantime, Yukgui shrugged his shell at my firm reply.