The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (2)
Lee Jun sat still in his chair for a while.
Because it made no sense.
"What calamity? Did Kyle switch careers to fortune-telling or something?"
"He didn't tell me even that much."
Lee Jun rummaged through his memories.
A calamity?
What could possibly qualify as a calamity?
No, wait—there were plenty of calamities. Every monster, every single gate that opened was a calamity in its own right.
And yet… nothing serious enough for Kyle to say that. Not that he'd ever heard of.
'Something that happens after I die, then.'
The point at which Lee Jun had died in his previous life.
Roughly ten years from now.
If there was a calamity that came after that point…
'But then why… why did I never hear anything about this in my last life?'
The past couldn't have changed.
History had flowed identically right up until the moment Lee Jun regressed, after all.
Events after the regression could diverge, sure—but Kyle died before then.
"Jeanne, when did Kyle tell you that?"
"Three months before he died… so, the year before last."
Kyle died in November of '23, so… sometime between late July and early August, then.
That was… a long time ago.
Meaning the regression had nothing to do with it.
"When he told you that, did he leave anything else? Some condition for telling me, maybe?"
At the question, Jeanne nodded.
"If you ever did something out of character. He said to tell you then."
"Out of… character?"
"Yes. He didn't specify exactly what kind of action, but he said to tell you if you ever did something that wasn't like yourself."
A behavior unbecoming of me.
Something… not like me?
"…Is this about me saying I'd retire?"
"That's right. You always said you'd protect people until the day you died. Retiring out of nowhere—it was strange."
"Technically I'm still doing hunter work, so—"
"Still. We both know how hard you worked to build the Association. There's no way you'd just drop it like that."
"……"
Fair enough.
Objectively speaking, Lee Jun was not a man who would step down from the Vice-Chairman's seat.
At least, not yet.
He would step down on his own once he judged the system stable enough to stand without him—but Korea's hunter infrastructure was still on shaky ground.
Granted, he'd retired precisely to shore it up… but setting aside the whole regression business, it was, undeniably, an abrupt decision.
'In my last life…'
The Jeanne of his previous life.
Before long—very soon from now—she would die.
So that was why the message never reached him.
"I… understand, for now."
Lee Jun's head was a tangled mess.
Reassemble Arcana.
It was too sudden.
Fewer than half of them were even alive anymore.
He'd given the idea some thought back when Evrah brought it up… but that was literally all it had been—thought.
And after gathering them, then what?
Gather them to do what, exactly?
'Preventing… their deaths…'
He'd resolved this before. This was the promise he'd made to himself.
At the very least, the ones still alive right now… he didn't want them to die.
That was what he'd believed.
But now, face to face with it, the fear crept back in.
If he couldn't stop it.
If they died in front of him again.
Could he…
bear it?
"Oppa."
"……"
When he came back to himself, Jeanne was right in front of his face again.
She stared straight into both of Lee Jun's eyes.
He met her gaze in silence.
Blue eyes.
Expressionless… but clear.
"I would like you to read my tarot again. It's been a while."
"…Tarot?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I wanna see Hyung read tarot again too!"
"Your readings always came out weird, Jun."
"But you were always the best match out of all of us!"
"That's true, but…"
The triplets suddenly seized the mood and started chattering amongst themselves.
Siara and Timothy babbled away while Jeanne quietly watched them.
A familiar sight. One he'd seen countless times before.
'Can I… face my comrades again?'
Could he overlay the memories of that time onto them?
In front of his very eyes.
His comrades, dying—
'…Screw that.'
"Whew…"
Lee Jun let out a long, deep breath.
When his mind got tangled up like this… doing this always helped him settle.
In combat, in daily life, it made no difference.
A few doctors had called it a form of compulsive behavior tied to his PTSD… but honestly, he didn't know. At some point it had simply become habit.
Too late to fix now.
"Alright. I'll read them for you. It has been a while."
Jeanne smiled gently, as if satisfied with his answer.
No doubt that, too, was a learned smile… but for the Lee Jun of this moment, it was more than enough comfort.
He pulled the tarot cards out of the drawer.
And at the same time, switched off the soundproofing.
Not that the soundproofing mattered much—it was insurance, really.
The room was already well insulated by default; he'd only asked the Director of Technology to install the extra layer just in case.
'Maybe I was worrying over nothing.'
No wiretaps or tracking devices had turned up on the detectors either.
Apparently, whatever it was hadn't followed him all the way to Korea.
"Okay. What kind of reading do you want today?"
Lee Jun dropped down onto the floor in front of the bed as he spoke.
Jeanne lowered herself to the floor as well, quietly.
No pretentious table, no ceremonial mat spread out between them.
Bare floor.
Nothing suited them better.
"Been a while since we did tarot."
"It really has. We haven't all gone into a gate together since then."
The two dolls resting on the bed flopped forward and peeked out, heads only.
Creatures of cloth and cotton and simple plastic had no such thing as expressions, and yet somehow, a look of expectation seemed to radiate from them.
This was the realm of sensation, not fact.
"Yoanna, what kind of fortune are you gonna ask for?"
"Money luck? Health luck? Or maybe… romance luck…?"
"Siara, what if it comes out saying you're about to fall in love?"
"Then… I'll punch Jun."
Why would I get punched, you little brat?
You're the one drawing the cards.
But sadly, Lee Jun's silent grievance never reached them. The two dolls went on chattering to themselves.
And Jeanne, letting their banter wash over her, turned to Lee Jun.
"Please read it the way you always do."
"The usual?"
"Aw, boring."
The two dolls looked visibly disappointed at Jeanne's words.
Lee Jun, on the other hand, found himself intrigued.
"You're not sick of the expedition reading? There are plenty of others, you know."
The expedition reading.
Tarot could divine all sorts of fortunes—love, money, business, health, exams, and so on. But this particular spread, first devised by one of Arcana's astrologers and perfected by Lee Jun, they called the expedition reading.
He'd lived without thinking about it for so long… even that word felt like something dug up from a distant past.
"I have a feeling we'll be entering a gate again soon, somehow."
"So now you're clairvoyant too?"
"I wish I really had an ability like that. It would be convenient."
Precognition of the future.
It certainly would be convenient.
Where the next gate would open, whether some disaster was brewing, what Liberation would be up to, and where.
How nice it would be to know all of it in advance.
Then, suddenly, he found himself wondering—if Jeanne really did have such an ability, how would she use it?
Her way of thinking was, after all, rather… unique.
"If you really could see the future, what would you want to do with it?"
"Is that possible?"
"I said if. I wish it were real too, honestly."
"I see. What a shame."
Having said that, she gazed at Lee Jun's hands as they handled the cards, thinking for a moment.
Then she spoke.
"If it were me… hmm. I'd want to know in advance whether it would rain the next day."
"Rain?"
"I forget my umbrella a lot."
"Well, you do have a habit of leaving things behind."
France wasn't quite England, but it saw its fair share of rain.
The global climate had been wrecked ever since the gate crisis began, though France had remained largely unchanged—only its rainfall had grown.
"Don't those two look after you pretty well, though?"
"They do, but in the end, Yoanna has to manage on her own."
"She can't stay our adorable baby sister forever, you know."
Lee Jun chuckled at their answers.
Still as close as ever, those three.
And so, chatting away, he sifted out the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana from the deck.
Then, with a deft flurry of fingers, he shuffled and fanned them out face-down before Jeanne.
"First, one card."
Drawing a single symbol card.
Just as he'd done for Seo Yoon, this was the time-honored Arcana opener.
The symbol reading was simple.
The cards followed their numbered order in a cycle—after 21 came 0 again. Drawing the card that symbolized yourself was daikichi—great fortune. Within three positions before or after it, chuukichi—moderate fortune. Within six, shoukichi—minor fortune.
Any distance beyond seven spelled misfortune.
And if the gap was exactly eleven… daikyō. Catastrophe.
For example, Lee Jun, symbolized by card 0—the Fool—would draw moderate fortune on a 3 or a 20, minor fortune on a 17, and catastrophe on an 11.
Last time, the Fool—Lee Jun's own symbol—had come up in a single draw, and Seo Yoon, having no symbol card of her own, had needed no special explanation.
Not that this spread needed much elaborating anyway. It was remarkably intuitive—devised precisely so they could squeeze in a quick check before an expedition.
"Go on. Pick one."
Jeanne's symbol card was number 17—The Star.
She studied the fanned cards with great care, then selected one.
"Shall I flip it?"
"Your call."
The most important thing when reading tarot was for the reader to exert no influence over the querent's choices. The freer the selection, the better.
Flipping the card herself, turning it around instead, or even asking Lee Jun to flip it for her—every one of those actions became part of the reading.
And Jeanne chose to turn the card over herself.
The card that emerged was—
"The Devil."
She studied it for a moment, then held it out to Lee Jun.
"Does this mean I'm going to meet Mr. Diabolo?"
"That's reading it way too literally."
The card Jeanne had drawn was number 15—the Devil.
Reversed, at that.
Not that orientation mattered in a symbol reading, so he let it slide.
Most people associated the devil with negative things, but in tarot, the Devil card actually tended to read positive more often than not.
Well—except in love fortunes. There it was unambiguously bad.
"For the symbol reading, that's moderate fortune. A gap of two."
"That's wonderful. The best I've ever drawn."
"To be fair, your previous best was a 14."
Admittedly, a 14 was moderate fortune too, and so was a 15.
But still… it just felt different.
Honestly, weren't all these readings something you did for the feeling anyway? It all came down to how you chose to think about it.
"Shall we get to the real thing, then? The expedition reading."
Lee Jun spread the twenty-two Major Arcana out in a single line.
"Draw five."
The exact same method he'd used for Seo Yoon before.
Time to see what this one held, too.
Jeanne deliberated over the row of face-down cards.
"It's been so long, my hands are shaking."
"You're full of it."
"But I'm sure most people would be trembling right about now."
So she said, yet her hands pulled card after card in smooth, unbroken succession.
Once the decision was made, there was no hesitation in her touch at all.
And then.
"This is…"
"Is something wrong?"
"……"
The spread was… bad.
No—serious.
Something was wrong. Jeanne's luck had never been this rotten.
"Then let's… start with the interpretation."
Forcing down the stiffness in his voice, Lee Jun laid his hand on the cards, one by one.