Paradise

The Pseudo-Cult Leader stood before his believers, whose faith had been shaken.

As though the relentless barrage that had hammered him mere moments ago were nothing at all, he opened his mouth, his voice soft.

"I'm getting a sense of déjà vu."

Barely a few hours had passed, and yet so much had changed.

"Standing somewhere this high with a microphone in my hand, I almost feel like some distinguished scholar or dignitary. It makes me a little nervous."

What looked back at him were not eyes of faith, but eyes of doubt.

"Because of it, I even kept my words unusually brief just a moment ago — unlike myself. Perhaps that was better for you all."

With a light laugh, he continued.

"What I have to say is neither a rebuttal to the words that shook you, nor a confession of my sins."

"I intend to speak only of 'us.'"

He gestured to himself, and then to the believers, as he said it.

"Our journey, from the very beginning, was a frantic struggle to become 'superhuman.'"

His even, measured voice rolled across the Plaza.

"Let me say it again."

"From those days when, as if waking from a long dream, you could only dimly remember being yourself — down to this very moment."

From the day you realized you were you, until now.

"Our lives have been one long flailing to become better people."

Not once — not a single time — had it ever been otherwise.

"Superhuman. The knight astride the white horse. The iron man. The Übermensch. The transcendent one. The awakened one. And so on, and so on."

Names for "the better ones," piling higher as the eras passed.

He savored the words one by one, rolling each over his tongue, then looked out at his believers and asked, lightly:

"When do you think you became an adult?"

He told them.

I, for one—

"On a day when the weather was fine and my mood finer, I felt I had become an adult when I chose to walk instead of run."

I, for one—

"Drinking away the night until the small hours, I felt I had become an adult the moment it dawned on me that my parents no longer called."

I, for one—

"I felt I had become an adult when that Pikachu skewer I'd spotted by chance on the street — bought in a rush of pure childhood delight — turned out not to taste good at all."

The process of self-recognition that everyone carries within them.

"And so it was only after losing something we once held in the past that we became adults."

Only then would someone looking at us nod and say we'd finally matured.

Matured, is it.

Those who have passed through the process they call maturing — the process of becoming an adult — come to understand something:

"The process of becoming a better person, a better being, was never about taking up what you desired. It was a process of stripping away everything unnecessary."

"From our parents we learned what we must do and what we must never do."

"We entered school and learned right answers from wrong ones."

"At our workplaces we learned what made money and what did not."

"And on it repeats."

"Until this very day, your journey has been nothing but a desperate thrashing to become the better person the world wanted you to be."

He pointed at his own chest.

"If the things I have done count as brainwashing, then tell me — viewed broadly enough, isn't the process I just described a brainwashing of its own?"

He gave a shrug and turned to glance back at Han Guwon, who stood behind him.

"That is why I was impressed by the scientific and logical approach that man presented. Truly impressed — and so I offer him my applause."

Clap— clap— clap—

Applause like thunder, ringing out through the dead silence.

And for the first time, Han Guwon's expression slowly began to harden.

Dependent personality disorder. Learned helplessness. Countless terms coined to pin difficult, clinical names upon human emotion.

He pointed straight at Han Guwon and raised his voice.

"Those who have studied more and possess more always demand logic and evidence. Do you know why?"

"Because they hold more of those very things."

"They have always named us, classified us, sorted us apart. And in doing so, they proved themselves."

"With those names, they proved that they were the better beings."

"It doesn't matter whether you agree with the laws and rules they have named."

"We were simply measured, trimmed, and fitted into the frame they built."

Once more, he gestured to himself and to the believers.

"We cannot so much as dare to refute it."

"To dispute a diagnosis of dependent personality disorder, you must first know psychiatry and psychology. To criticize a politician, you must know politics. To speak of justice, you must know the law."

"To voice your own thoughts — to insist that what you think is right — you must, in the end, become better than everyone else."

"And does it end once you've become some renowned doctor or authority?"

"No. Step outside their field of expertise, and even they are just ordinary people."

"In the end, the finish line of the effort to become better must be drawn by yourself. But what do those of you gasping for breath, eyes fixed straight ahead, actually see?"

The wealthy. The brilliant. The beautiful.

"The ones better than you — still, impossibly, endlessly many."

"So what do you do? You run. You run until your breath gives out, all for the chance to run a little further ahead."

A long asceticism with no visible end.

He shouted. Gripping the microphone tight, the veins standing out on his neck, he shouted:

"Your whole lives! Your years! Your days!"

"No—!"

"Your very minutes and seconds!"

"All of it was nothing but tempering — forging you into someone better than the next person!"

"And so I ask you!"

"Were you ever truly happy?!"

Having lost your laughter, your heart no longer lifting at bright sunshine or a fresh breeze — those days spent agonizing over more money and a brighter future.

"Was it happiness — a life spent turning, colorless, as one more cog in society's machine, just like everyone else?!"

He asked them:

"Fighting over grades, fighting over wealth, fighting over ever more beautiful spouses! The days spent proving, again and again, that you were a better person than everyone around you!"

Were you happy?

As if the world itself were growing up, you shed everything you had decided was unnecessary.

And now, with happiness lost—

"What have we lost next! A world has come where the good are the ones pointed at and sneered at! Where anyone who does a good deed is mocked as a fool!"

The perceptions stacked up by those the world itself had certified as "better."

"Do not pretend you have figured everything out and declare that humans are selfish, that humans are unstable!"

The world's frame—

"That frame — the one that craves nothing but the superhuman — never fit those who were good!"

You are the victims.

Victims swept away by rules the world itself had made.

"Never again wound yourself because of those who have more than you!"

He shouted, his eyes sweeping across the believers.

Lose yourselves in it — and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠agree.

"Never again abuse yourself for failing to fit into a frame someone else built!"

Remember the days you hung your head for failing to get into a good university. The days your pride bled because you couldn't land a good job. The days you bit your lips, hollow with emptiness and jealousy, scrolling through feeds and videos. Remember the days that could never have been absent from your lives — and hold them up to the light!

"The nights you clung to one small light in the thick darkness. The nights when nothing reached you but the distant wailing of the dead. You heard my words there!"

The round circle of white light.

The days you healed one another's wounds and aches there. The days you reclaimed the peace and happiness you had lost.

And there, he had told you—

"Being ahead of others is not happiness!"

"Fighting everyone around you and lording it over them is not happiness!"

"And what the old world kept telling you, over and over — that is not happiness either!"

The days that made you weep and struggle were never happiness.

He clenched his right hand into a fist and thrust it skyward.

Then he roared:

"Hear me, O my brethren! O serpents! O world!"

Pseudo — a word meaning "seemingly so, yet not." That which looks almost identical on the surface, yet is fundamentally something else entirely.

"If you revile us for being different from the world that was—"

He slashed his fist downward and roared:

"Then this place shall gladly be the land of the pseudo-cultists!"

He raised a finger to the sky once more.

"And if you deny me — me, who fights to reclaim what was lost—"

He stabbed a finger hard against his own chest.

"Then I will gladly be your Pseudo-Cult Leader!"

He hurled the microphone away and gave voice to a full-throated roar.

"In this collapsed world, we shall raise the law of the good!"

"We shall build a nation of the good!"

"Rise! All of you who groaned in pain!"

Rise.

"Rise! Cast off the shell of the superhuman, and rise as human beings!"

Not as failed superhumans — rise as the complete human beings you already are.

"Strip away the lies that blinded your eyes! Open both eyes wide — and look behind you!"

At his pointing finger, every head turned.

"Behind every crown stands a guillotine! And without a guillotine, no new crown can ever be worn!"

The longer his words rang out, the sharper a vague shape became against the empty lot.

To the believers — wavering deeper and deeper — a single figure grew vivid and clear.

"Take back your lives! Reclaim the lives that were yours and yours alone!"

And there stood a guillotine.

Without pausing for breath, hammering the words out in rapid succession, he shouted:

"With your own hands, kill the brainwashing and the lies that bewitched you! Pass judgment on every falsehood that ever made your lives a misery — right here, on this very ground, now that goodness itself has become an outdated sentiment!"

In the believers' eyes, a blade drank in the sunlight and fell.

Something's neck was severed, and the blood came flooding out.

"Let the red blood of the past soak into this new earth! And from it, let a great white tree be born!"

In the believers' eyes, the thing that had looked like a guillotine slowly withered away.

And in its place, a tiny sprout broke through the soil.

The sprout swelled larger and larger, shaking the very ground.

Rrrrrrumble—

At the phantom roar — as if the earth itself were truly quaking — every believer started and stared at their cult leader.

He spread both arms wide and cried out:

"The roots that shall spread through all the world shall be named 'Happiness,'"

Rrrrrrumble—

The tree, its roots spreading wide, climbed ever higher.

"And the tree that shall reach the very end of the sky shall be named—!"

At last, gazing up at the tree grown tall enough to touch the black dome, he whispered:

"...Salvation."

A terrible silence settled over everything.

And then, one by one, everyone clasped their hands together again.

Eyes closed, heads bowed, they chanted the only truth they knew.

Salvation.

Kiiiiik— THUD—! The weights of the balance scale tipped hard to one side.

The cult leader lifted his head — and a brilliant pillar of light surged up above him.

BOOM—! BOOM—!

As fireworks burst bright in every pupil's reflection, the Plaza itself began to slowly melt away.

Han Guwon vanished, and with him the guillotine and the white tree.

Everything faded, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠only the fireworks embroidering the sky remained to adorn Guro-gu.

BOOM—! BOOM—! Amid the endless fireworks, more messages printed themselves one after another.

Before I could even take in the new stat, a pillar of light slammed down into my body.

FWAAASH—!

Radiating a brilliance brighter than it had ever shown, my body began to drift slowly upward.

As I rose through the sky above Guro-gu, two gems popped into existence before me — the Stone of Duplication and the green gem from my inventory.

The green gem drank in a fierce light and shot off toward somewhere below.

Arriving at the ground — as if it had found the spot it wanted — the gem blazed bright and melted away.

The scattered particles of light wove themselves into a familiar gate.

I smiled at the sight of that immense, magnificent gate.

Then, suddenly, I remembered the words inscribed upon the gem.

The most unforgettable act of salvation this district had ever witnessed.

BOOM—! BOOM—! As the fireworks kept bursting, the black dome that had shrouded Guro-gu was dissolving away.

The two figures that had adorned the sky scattered into bright particles and drifted down.

The believers, seeing light particles descending like white petals and the Gate of Salvation standing open below, stared with their mouths hanging agape.

No. This isn't the end.

With a playful grin, I tapped the blue gem — the Stone of Duplication.

I had already decided long ago exactly how I would use it.

Responding to my gesture, the Stone of Duplication flew to a mountaintop overlooking the city.

There it flared bright — and duplicated itself into the object I desired.

FWAAASH—!

A Level 1 Cult Leader Statue now stood upon the mountaintop.

Seeing the Guwon Cult's holy relic for the first time in ages, I couldn't help but smile.

Then, looking down at the city, I shouted:

"Behold — and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pray!"

A dazzling beam of light shot from my right hand, aimed straight at the statue.

VMMMMM—!

As if answering the beam striking its chest, the Cult Leader Statue drank in the radiance.

Level 2. Then Level 3.

The statue, growing more colossal by the moment, spread its arms wide.

Its growth complete, the Cult Leader Statue gazed down upon the city in all its holy, sacred majesty.

From the statue's benevolent head, a sacred barrier spread outward.

I spread my arms exactly as the statue did.

Looking down at the believers gazing up at me, hands clasped, I cried out:

"The light of salvation shall always be with you!"

"AAAAAH—!"

Amid the swell of awe and choked sobbing, a brilliant gem settled into the statue's chest.

FWAAAAASH—! The wave of light rippling out from the gem merged with the white petals still drifting over the ground.

The modern apartment blocks, the office towers, the buildings — all of them began to change.

Block by block, Guro-gu transformed into a city of white, saturated through with religious character.

My theme.

And the city's theme.

Faith.

Even I was surveying the city with unfamiliar eyes when a new message appeared.

"C-Cult Leader...!"

Before I could even close the message, a familiar voice rang out.

"AAAAAH—! Cult Leeeeaderrrr!"

Seeing the man pouring out that desperate cry — the yearning audible in every syllable — I nodded with benevolent grace.

THUD—!

"AAAAAAAH—!"

Behind Park Yeongho — speechless, on his knees, lost in awe — walked out the faces I had been longing to see.

The family of the Sanctuary, arrived through the Gate of Salvation.

Among them, Seong Gaeul's eyes darted busily.

A city of such pristine, beautiful design that it was impossible to believe this had ever been the old Guro-gu. The new two-way Gate of Salvation they had just passed through. And the colossal statue of the cult leader enthroned upon the mountaintop.

Ding—!

At the status message — the first she had ever laid eyes on — she flinched, her whole body jolting.

Startled, she lifted her head — and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her gaze found the man she hadn't seen in so long.

He was smiling brightly, right at her.

"AAAAAH—! Cult Leeeaderrr! Cult Leeeaderrr!"

"We believe! We belieeeeeeve!"

Beneath him, the believers flocked to him just as they always had.

A soft chuckle escaped her, and she answered his smile with one of her own.

Thank goodness. You haven't changed a bit, have you.