Chapter 10. Stubbornness and Arrogance (15)
It was only for a moment, but I saw a silhouette.
There had been quite a lot I wanted to say if I ever actually saw it.
Why it had sent me to that world. Or what it had wanted to accomplish by sending me. Why it had to be me, of all people.
Ironically, at the moment I was praying, I had already vaguely realized those things.
Because only if I had been here—only if I had been in that place at that moment—could I have saved those people.
Because if I had been the Saint from the novel, I couldn't have done something like that.
People's thoughts are all similar, yet different. No matter how similar someone's disposition may be, that slight difference in thought can produce vastly different outcomes.
If I had moved even one day later. If I had pushed back the timing of my false prophecy by a few more days.
Then everything would already have been too late.
—No.
But that thought of mine was soon denied.
—No matter how much it is a being others consider God, it cannot see that far into the future.
Then why?
If there had been someone with a disposition similar to mine, surely among them there must have been someone kinder than me. Someone more devoted, more self-sacrificing.
—Which is why it was you.
The voice said.
—Because you were someone who, even while doubting things, even while thinking you couldn't trust other people, would resolve to act purely by your own judgment.
"...Well, it seems I was looked upon quite favorably."
I muttered quietly.
"I just did it with the mindset of defying whoever was judging me."
My parents in my childhood had been people quite devoted to a certain religion. When I was young, I had lived thinking that was just how things were.
As I got older, I simply came to realize that I lived differently from my friends.
There was a place I had to go regularly. I had to go there, pray, and study.
There were many things I wasn't allowed to do. Because they were violent, because they were suggestive.
I hated all of it.
No matter how much they told me not to do it at home and cleared it all away, in the end I would meet my friends at school and hear about things.
How fun the nighttime dramas were. How fun these things called games were.
Well, not that every religious household lived like that. It was just my family.
Strangely enough, since I was born into such a household and was, frankly, a philistine, I wanted to do all the things the other kids talked about. I wanted to read violent comics, and I wanted to watch the anime adaptations of those comics. I wanted to play shooting games, and I wanted to watch movies with anti-religious content.
I rebelled many times, and my parents tried to turn me back into a good child however they could.
In the end, everything fell apart.
"So, it was rebellion."
The path I walked was my own form of proof.
I wanted to show that even after doing all of that, even after enjoying everything there was to enjoy, I could live perfectly fine, adapt to society, and get along far more flexibly than they did. I wanted to show that everything they had said was wrong.
.......
The voice paused for a moment.
—If it had merely been rebellion, you could have been far more destructive than that.
And it denied my words.
—If that was all it had been, then at the very end, you...
My final moment.
Was there a reason that could deny everything I had said?
But I couldn't hear those words to the end.
My hand hurt a little.
Suddenly, air filled my lungs, and I felt all the strength drain from my body.
The white light that had filled my vision went out in an instant. My whole body ached as if I had been beaten. No, maybe I should call it muscle soreness.
My legs were numb... Honestly, if I only considered those sensations, a moment ago had been far more comfortable.
But.
If I had just stayed there forever, I wouldn't have been able to see Ria like this—looking like she was about to burst into tears at any moment.
"...Ria."
I called out to Ria.
Ria held me without a word and stood up from her seat.
"...Did the fight end well?"
"...It ended well."
Ria answered through tears.
I hadn't meant to make her cry.
I felt something running down the back of my hand. I wasn't sure what it was.
Ah, my eyelids are heavy.
I wanted to grasp the situation a little more, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be easy. Well, I always used to fall right asleep after pouring out that much energy.
Every time Ria took a step, the people around us hurriedly cleared the way. Just like the way the old Bible described the Red Sea parting, people split to the left and right and made a path.
Ria walked that path without a word.
"I'm glad."
That was all I said.
And in the end, I lost the fight against the water demon.
*
I didn't feel like I had slept for a long time.
It was like after doing extremely intense exercise—for example, when you can't refuse the elderly department head at your first workplace when he says, "Let's all go hike a mountain today," and you get dragged along and climb Daecheongbong Peak on Seoraksan over two days without sleeping, and you finally get home and collapse onto your bed.
You just close your eyes and open them, and somehow more than ten hours have passed. That kind of situation.
A sleep that wouldn't be strange to compare to a literal "blackout," without even a single dream.
Honestly, I didn't feel refreshed at all. Going by sensation alone, it felt like I had just blinked. I would have preferred to have at least a short dream.
"Ugh."
On top of that, my body hurt. I couldn't tell exactly where it hurt, but anyway, it hurt terribly all over.
Aha, so my whole body hurt so much that I couldn't pinpoint exactly where the pain was.
Figuring out the cause didn't make me particularly happy.
Still, I frowned and tried to get up somehow—
Poke.
Someone pressed down on my shoulder with their hand.
With everything aching, I couldn't resist that force and just collapsed back onto the bed as if falling.
"Ria?"
The only person who would be beside me was Ria.
Uh, no, I mean, it's not some romantic thing. In the first place, Ria was my escort knight, and ever since the convent, she had always stayed right beside me and guarded me whenever we went outside. Even in the Dwarf Kingdom we shared the same room, so it was only natural.
"......."
But Ria didn't answer me at all.
For some reason I got a little scared, so I turned my gaze—
Ria was staring down at me, expressionless, without saying a word.
"...R-Ria."
I answered, a little frightened.
At the moment Ria had last looked back at me before leaving my side, I had felt an inexplicable chill run down my spine.
The feeling of someone absolutely furious looking at me.
"Hey."
Ria called to me. Not by my name like usual, but in a tone like some thug calling over a loser.
Going by appearances, I probably looked more like the thug. No, that didn't matter at all right now.
"You. Did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That Holy Power could harm you."
"......."
What could harm what?
Holy Power? A Saint?
That was the first I'd heard of it. Nothing like that had ever appeared in the novel's setting.
Ah, of course, there was a legend that the Saint had sacrificed herself to protect the world. It had actually happened, but there was no precise record of that moment. Even if it had been filmed, Holy Power itself wouldn't show up on video.
So no one knows whether the Saint wiped out all the Magical Creatures and died of exhaustion with her body never found, or whether she truly "turned into light" as some believers claimed. Honestly, I thought the latter was a bit strange too. The Church also thought so, which was why they were still searching for her remains.
As I made a bewildered expression, Ria grabbed my hand somewhat roughly.
Before I even had time to feel embarrassed, Ria thrust my hand in front of my face.
"Gah!? W-wait a second!?"
And naturally, with my whole body suffering from muscle soreness, that dealt a massive blow to me. This hurt. Immensely.
But Ria was relentless, as if making me look at the back of my hand was an urgent matter that needed immediate handling.
"What in the—"
But I had no choice but to stop mid-sentence.
My hand was wrapped in a bandage.
And beyond that bandage, a faint red glow was seeping through. Since I didn't feel that kind of wound, the bleeding seemed to have stopped for now, but the traces from when it had bled at the time the bandage was applied remained fully intact.
"......."
"So you didn't know."
"What is this?"
I said that and tried to unwrap the bandage with my other hand—then soon realized that hand was also wrapped in a bandage.
Ria, her expression still stiff, unwrapped the bandage from my hand for me.
The back of my hand, at a glance, didn't look much different from usual. But in the very center of that white hand, very small, there was a slightly sunken scar, as if it had been pricked by a needle.
A mark so small that if anyone called it a "stigma," everyone would laugh.
But—
"From that small wound, a tremendous amount of blood flowed. Enough to defy common sense."
Ria said that with a calm expression.
"......."
I couldn't answer her.