Chapter 57
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 57
“Oh, looks like they’re holding an initiation ceremony.”
“Should we watch for a bit before we go?”
“Good timing. I was getting cold anyway.”
“Which cult is holding the event?”
“I think it’s the Sun Cult…”
“If it’s the Sun Cult, this should be worth watching.”
No matter the religion, initiation ceremonies were always open to onlookers, even those unaffiliated with the faith. After all, the more people gathered, the higher the chance of attracting a god’s attention.
“Thanks to them, we managed to grab a seat.”
“There are more people here than I expected.”
“Well, it’s hard to catch a god’s eye with just one or two people.”
Of course, Gio was the exception to that rule.
‘Though not every god is like you.’
Even though Gio’s true identity remained a mystery, it was now certain he was the host of some divinity. The constant addition of new variables only made things more confusing, but there was no reason to deny the facts laid out before him.
The Cha family had already moved to an area reserved for event officials. Scanning the scene, Yoo Seong-un offered Gio a seat at a table a reasonable distance from the bustling crowd.
“Shall we sit here?”
“Sure.”
Perhaps being too close to so many humans was chaotic, or maybe it was just a burden. Whatever the reason, Gio looked quite relieved as he sat down.
This made it much easier to talk.
‘Most of them are civilians, not Hunters. They won’t be able to overhear us from here.’
Yoo Seong-un quenched his thirst with a sip of water from the table before speaking.
“Can you wield divinity?”
“By divinity, do you mean a god’s authority?”
“You could put it that way. Or… think of it as a sort of license.”
“Ah, so it really is a license.”
“It’s… really a license?”
Though slightly puzzled, Seong-un quickly recovered.
“Well, that’s not a bad way to put it. I suppose you could view it as a god’s license.”
Divinity was fundamentally different from what was commonly known as holy power. Holy power was the strength a chosen human wielded with a god’s assistance. Divinity, on the other hand, was the godhood possessed by the deity itself, along with the authority derived from it. They were on completely different levels.
“…”
Gio, seemingly recalling something, spoke up.
“If you’re talking about a license, then yes, I received one.”
“…You received one?”
“I was his only believer, you see.”
“…”
Yoo Seong-un’s intuition flared.
‘Is this related to the blonde, blue-eyed Gio I saw back at Cheonggyecheon?’
He had suspected that whenever Gio’s personality underwent a distinct shift, his physical appearance changed as well. The memory of Gio’s hair turning platinum blonde—like a leaf changing color when dipped in water—was still vivid.
‘But since he’s so closely associated with water, I assumed it would be a god of the sea, a river, or a pond…'
For the sun to suddenly enter the picture was an intriguing twist. If Bisabeol were here, he’d probably feel the same way. Just what kind of story was behind all this?
“Receiving a god’s license… That’s incredible. It’s not something that usually happens.”
He expressed his admiration casually, but as far as Seong-un knew, it was completely unprecedented. No god would ever bestow their status upon a mere human.
‘Why would they do something that would only bring suffering to both god and human?’
Yet Gio’s voice remained blunt and matter-of-fact.
“He said he didn’t want to be alone anymore.”
“…The previous Sun God?”
“As his sole believer, I interacted with him, shared meals, and talked. As the time we spent together grew, he seemed to develop a fear of being alone like he used to be.”
“…”
“And then he gave me this license. He said he wanted to share what I see and hear, and that it was also partly a gift. Though it’s called a license, it doesn’t seem to be a physical object.”
Yoo Seong-un pursed his lips.
‘Should I call the previous Sun God weak, or is Gio just that extraordinary?’
It was probably the latter.
Gods were typically unique, solitary beings who didn’t feel lonely just because they were alone. Gio must have been the one to make the deity feel those emotions. In that sense, he truly was an extraordinary existence.
‘Besides, if he were just an ordinary human, the god wouldn’t have dumped such a burden on him in the first place.’
Following that logic, it made more sense that Gio was an existence close to godhood from the very beginning. That was why the Sun God had perceived him as an equal, felt loneliness, and gifted him his divinity.
“…”
Of course, this only made Gio’s true identity even more of a mystery. If the Sun God had deemed him an equal, it meant Gio was simply another kind of god. At the very least, he was a high-ranking being capable of harboring divinity.
How was one supposed to define something like that?
‘Just what on earth are you?’
The more he dug, the more mysteries surfaced. He desperately wished someone would just appear and lay out the whole story for him.
* * *
The preliminary briefing proceeded quickly.
“It’s not taking as long as I thought.”
“Perhaps they’re on a tight schedule.”
“Could be. They need time to train the novice priests.”
A brief overview of the church hierarchy, the definition of a priest, how a priest should behave, what virtues were required… After a light explanation of what it meant to serve a god, the discussion moved on to the initiation ceremony itself, focusing on the training and benefits the novices would receive.
“Once you have finished speaking with your families, the novice priests will follow me. Any novice priests without guardians, please come to my side now.”
At the dark-blonde priest’s words, a few children hesitantly approached him. The priest, who possessed the rugged features of someone straight out of a fantasy film, took charge of the children. His distinctly Western facial structure and wavy hair were quite striking.
Although Western faces weren’t uncommon in modern Korea, his priestly aura set him apart. Gio’s gaze shifted from the head priest to the children gathered around him.
“It seems those children didn’t bring any family.”
“Well… while family is the most common form of human organization, there are far more people these days who don’t belong to such blood-related groups,” Yoo Seong-un said, as if anticipating Gio’s curiosity.
Gio, whose knowledge of humanity was somewhat abstract, likely believed that all humans formed family communities. But there were always exceptions.
“You see how most of those kids look particularly unkempt?”
“I do.”
“They’re probably Carnation Children who awakened as priests.”
“What is a Carnation Child?”
“I guess you could call them orphans who actively search for guardians.”
The city’s Outer Zone was home to the poor—the 4th-Grade Citizens—and a great many children who had been intentionally abandoned. Some even called the area a trash can for discarding humans.
“Among them, Carnation Children are those who advertise themselves on the streets to find a guardian to take them in.”
“They advertise themselves?”
“Yeah. A child who wants someone to take them in will hold a flower. Those in slightly better circumstances hold real carnations. Otherwise, they fold flowers out of tissues or paper… as long as it has the basic shape, the message gets across.”
The culture of ‘Carnation Children’ was born right after the Great Catastrophe, when orphans were being created in droves.
“The Great Catastrophe happened in the spring, and shortly after came Parents’ Day—a day when children traditionally gift carnations to their parents. So, the kids made carnations to honor their deceased parents, but they had no one to give them to.”
Adults, feeling sorry for them, began taking in the children holding colored paper carnations one by one.
“Seeing this, clever orphans who hadn’t even thought of making carnations started folding them and standing on the streets. That was the beginning of the Carnation Children.”
“Actually, I don’t know all the details either. It happened a generation or two before my time…”
“I see.”
“Anyway, starting from that, orphans who want to be adopted still prepare carnations today. Whether they fold them from tissues or colored paper, pluck wildflowers from the street, or scrape together money to buy a single real carnation… it all means ‘please take me in.’”
“It doesn’t sound like they go through proper adoption procedures. Isn’t there a risk of them being returned?”
“Of course there is. It’s a social issue mentioned in elementary school textbooks. Apparently, right after the Carnation Children culture first emerged, there was a huge uproar because so many kids were being sent back. It’s not like things have gotten any better now.”
No one seriously thought about adopting a Carnation Child.
“And that goes for the Carnation Children themselves, too. Right after the Great Catastrophe, people might have adopted them out of pity, to treat them like family. But now it’s more like… hiring free labor. That’s the general feeling.”
“…”
Gio couldn’t understand why he heard such shocking news every time he visited his hometown.
‘The world has become a terrifying place.’
If he wasn’t careful, he felt like he could get his nose sliced off with his eyes wide open. Literally.
“But couldn’t those children just be ordinary orphans, not Carnation Children?”
“Even if they’ve awakened as priests, temples usually only take responsibility for Carnation Children.”
“Why is that?”
“Because they make for good labor.”
“…”
Where had children’s rights gone?
“…Don’t look at me like that. It’s scary when you judge me with your eyes. In the first place, 4th-Grade Citizens, who are left behind without any proper welfare, are rarely hired by regular businesses. Unless it’s for some back-alley manufacturing.”
“Is it hard for 4th-Grade Citizens to get regular jobs?”
“To begin with, 4th-Grade Citizens carry a nasty stigma of being ‘pests who crawled into the city without means and just squatted.’ Not everyone is like that, but they’re generally seen as lacking the will to work.”
“…”
“Even if you pay them proper wages, their efficiency is low, and the public looks down on them. Unless a business wants to get cursed out by its customers, no one wants to hire them. That’s how bad the perception is. It’s because they enjoy the city’s protection without putting in any real effort.”
Companies that hired 4th-Grade Citizens faced public backlash. People would ask why they were giving opportunities to parasites who did nothing but idle around like bedbugs, trying to leech off the city.
“In the same vein, just because a slum child awakens as a priest doesn’t mean a temple will automatically take them in. They have a low chance of being chosen by a god, and temples don’t have the luxury of taking in slum children while enduring public criticism. That’s the context.”
“They’re very calculating.”
“Unlike other 4th-Grade Citizens, Carnation Children prove their willingness to work through their ‘carnations,’ and because they’re still young, the public isn’t entirely hostile toward them. So, unless they’ve already been chosen by a god, any ordinary awakened orphan standing in a place like this is highly likely to be a Carnation Child.”
“…”
Gio made up his mind.
‘I’m going to watch the initiation ceremony and then bolt right back into the frame.’
What a harsh world. It was so terrifying and depressing he could barely stand it. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel sympathy, but Gio was just an adult who had aged without the resolve to single-handedly overturn such societal norms.
Wishing for the world to become a warmer place, Gio looked around. Although his intention was merely to distract himself, his mind grew peaceful much faster than expected.
“…”
“What is it? Do you feel a connection because you’re both of the Sun God lineage?”
“I was just thinking that the warmth feels nice.”
For some reason, he felt welcomed.
“Especially that divine statue…”
“…”
“……?”
He was certain his eyes had just met those of the statue shaped like a goddess.
Gio blinked twice.
‘What is this, a ghost story?’
His decision was swift.
‘Nothing happened.’
He decided to write it off as an illusion.
“The divine statue is magnificent,” he said.
“I feel like there was a weird pause just now, but I’ll let it slide. As a mere human, I have no desire to get caught up in the affairs of gods.”
“Thank you.”
It wasn’t that he understood Gio’s discomfort, but as a mere human, Yoo Seong-un grit his teeth and actively ignored the miracle unfolding before his eyes. He was, after all, a member of the Collector Guild.
Seong-un had definitely seen it too. The blatant gaze that had poured down the moment Gio praised the temple’s atmosphere and the beauty of the statue. Seong-un had never felt such a direct gaze from a god before.
‘Please, perform these miracles when I’m not around.’
He didn’t want to be involved in the slightest.
“It looks like our dear Cha family is having a conversation. Why don’t we go join them?”
“Sure.”
Thus, the two of them ignored the god’s gaze with every fiber of their being, but the priest who served her could not do the same.
A priest was staring at the two of them with wide eyes as they made their way toward the Cha family.
‘We’re screwed.’ Yoo Seong-un thought to himself.
The dark-blonde priest was clearly a high-ranking official hosting this event. To be present at such an occasion, he had to be one of the priests serving closely under the Bishop. In other words, he was someone who couldn’t possibly fail to notice where the Sun God’s gaze was directed.
“…”
“…”
A strange tension hung in the air.
“…”
With a look of sudden realization, the blonde priest gave a faint, respectful bow in their direction. Perhaps due to his striking features, the gesture appeared exceptionally sacred.
Yoo Seong-un understood the meaning behind that bow.
‘He figured it out.’
It seemed the priest had realized Gio possessed divinity.
“Gio.”
“Yes, go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Should we head back now?”
“If you think that would actually solve the problem.”
“Probably not, right…?”
Yoo Seong-un suddenly wanted to clock out.