Do as You Please
"…Do as you please."
"So, will you grant my wish?"
Cecilia's question was still. It did not waver, and it carried no lightness. It settled with the weight of a prayer long polished.
For a time, Cheon Hwi said nothing. He had been silent when his disciples' wishes came to an end as well, but this was a different silence. He sorted the thoughts tangling his mind, and then he spoke.
"…I will ask three things. Answer them in earnest, and I will answer your question in turn."
"Ask."
"Is this wish your true heart?"
Cecilia quietly shook her head.
"The Saintess's position matters more than Cecilia's, so I set the greater weight there."
"Then…"
"But if you ask whether it is the Saintess's sincerity alone, it is not. The Saintess wants to know you. Cecilia wants to know you better still."
Cheon Hwi had been about to answer, but the Saintess deliberately cut across him and finished what she meant to say.
"Ha! Very well. Then the second question."
He laughed as if he hardly knew what to make of her, and with that laugh he accepted the answer.
"Why didn't you make this wish while my disciples were here?"
No matter how he turned it over, he could see no reason she could not have asked while they were present. Wanting to learn of him in secret hardly held, not when she herself had said the Saintess's position weighed more. And if concern for the disciples had driven her to learn his identity, she ought to have asked while they were there to hear it.
Hypothesis after hypothesis rose in Cheon Hwi's mind, and still Cecilia said nothing for a long while. She bowed her head in silence and brought her fingertips together, as if performing a rite to separate conviction from feeling one more time. Then, slowly, she opened her mouth, shaping each word with care—not as the Saintess, but as Cecilia.
"Do you know of the Singularity, Lord Cheon Hwi?"
"I don't."
Singularity. He remembered. The first time he met Cecilia, she had asked whether he was one. He had let it pass then, taking it for the ravings of some mad zealot. He could not let it pass now.
"Spoken by principle, they are the beings who appear in the Book of Prophecy."
"I know nothing of any Book of Prophecy. But if a thing is set down as a book, the beings in it can hardly number one or two."
This was no prophecy tossed off in a single line. A record worthy of the name—a book of things yet to come—would have even the commoner passing in the street written into its pages. To that doubt, Cecilia gave her answer.
"A Singularity is not simply anyone who happens to appear in the Book of Prophecy. It is one who bears the fate of the world upon their back. One who can sway the future itself. That is what we mean by a Singularity."
So that is what a Singularity is.
What Cecilia wanted was for that past to be known to her alone. Whether she did not trust the disciples, or whether she feared someone might overhear, he could not say. Either way, a secret was better the fewer souls who held it.
"Good. That will do. Now the last question."
"Yes."
"Can you believe everything I tell you?"
"Yes!"
This time the answer came without a heartbeat of hesitation.
"Stories have a way of refusing to stop, once the mouth is open."
Cecilia gave a small nod.
And in that moment, the light in Cheon Hwi's eyes changed. He was neither playful, as he so often was, nor cold. Time itself seemed settled in those eyes, like a book left shut for ages, rustling open at last.
"Very well. I'll tell you. The story of the man I am."
"I was dead."
Cheon Hwi raised a hand. It was smaller than the hand of those days, and thinner—but it was not the hand that had always trembled, as if something were forever at his heels.
"There was nothing my sword did not cut. Grass and trees, stone, beasts, monsters—and a great many people."
Cecilia's eyes wavered, just a little. For a Saintess whose calling was to save lives, it may have been a story too heavy to hold. Cheon Hwi did not stop. The choice had been Cecilia's alone.
"…Why did you take up the sword?"
"Because if I hadn't, I would have died."
Cheon Hwi smiled. The smile was closer to sorrow than to laughter.
"In my previous life they called me the Number One Under Heaven, but I kept no disciples. Back then, my only aim was to grow strong by myself."
He blinked, quietly.
"But…"
"It was around the time I had sunk wholly into growing stronger that I met them for the first time."
At those words Cecilia's breath caught. Her eyes trembled, and a small but unmistakable ripple crossed her face.
"By 'them,' you mean…"
"Your guess is right. Hyeon and Seol. Those two."
"Then…"
"There were two more besides Hyeon and Seol, but I don't know where they are. I don't even know whether they exist in this world."
"…"
"My disciples believe I saved them. The one who was saved was me."
"Why…?"
"To a man for whom growing stronger was everything, they gave life a new meaning."
To grow strong for no reason at all. To live without ever tasting what it meant to be human. That could not be called living. Seen from where Cheon Hwi had stood, it was only natural that his disciples were salvation itself—why he had taken only them, and why he had cherished them so. They had given him a new aim, a new will. How could he have failed to hold them dear?
"…Even so, why didn't you tell them?"
It was not a story easily believed. Told to ordinary people, every one of them would have called him mad. But the one speaking was Cheon Hwi, and the one listening was the Saintess of the age, chosen by God. In truth, a Singularity might come from another world, or remember a past life, and possess any number of gifts besides. From the Saintess's place, then, the tale was not wholly absurd.
Standing there, Cecilia could not understand why he had said nothing. Even if those who had lived it could not believe him, the telling would have given them a thread by which to grasp why he acted as he did. And Cheon Hwi might have set down some small part of the weight on his heart.
His answer left her thinking entirely behind.
"Because I was sorry."
He was not a man who bared violent feeling at any time, and yet while he spoke those words, his face seemed to hold a sorrow beyond all telling.
"My disciples died trying to take the Heavenly Demon. In the terms of this world, a being who sits where the Demon King sits. They died hunting him."
Cecilia closed her mouth and slowly bowed her head. The feeling that passed through her eyes—was it guilt, or was it apology?
"I should have stopped them. I was arrogant. I had climbed to Number One Under Heaven, and I never imagined I would fail to protect even a single one of them."
He set his gaze far off, as if looking toward some point in the empty air that no one else could see.
"By the time I understood how vain the seat of Number One Under Heaven truly was, my disciples had already… gone ahead of me."
A silence passed.
"Did all of them die?"
Cecilia asked it in a low voice.
"Yes. All of them died."
In that instant the air went hard. A quiet unrest colored Cecilia's face.
"And I was born again into this world. It may be the sport of something called a god. It may be meant to make me look upon the end of the karma I sowed. But…"
Cheon Hwi closed his mouth for a moment, and at last opened it again.
"This life, at least, I wanted to let them live. Even if I spill more blood. Even if I earn anyone's hatred. My disciples, I will not lose again. The same tragedy will not come twice."
Slowly, he closed his eyes.
"Believe it or not. That is your freedom."
Those eyes turned back to Cecilia.
"This is my past, and this is who I am. Is it answer enough?"
Cecilia answered quietly.
"Yes."
"Then I am glad."
"Are you all right, Lord Cheon Hwi…?"
He smiled for a moment. It was a smile that seemed, only now, to belong to a living man.
"You carry a past like that, and not one person has ever understood it. Are you truly all right?"
"If I told you I wasn't, it would be a lie. But that isn't something a child like you ought to fret over."
"Even so—!"
"This comfort, I would rather hear from my disciples than from you."
An answer keen as a blade, and a cruelty to match it.
Cecilia steadied her breath, then lifted her head. Unlike the quiet light of a moment before, her eyes now held something that meant to see straight through.
"You want to hear those words from your disciples…"
"Yes."
Cheon Hwi's reply was short. He did not look inclined to go on. Cecilia did not retreat. Quietly, she drew a deep breath, so her fingertips would not tremble.
"…And if your disciples cannot say them?"
His brow shifted, just slightly.
"What do you mean."
"If those children never come to know the true heart you have hidden, then they will be set in danger again without ever understanding the heart with which you mean to protect them."
Cheon Hwi laughed. This time it was scorn.
"And so? You mean to tell them in my place?"
"Yes."
A firm answer, with no hesitation in it. Cecilia went on, quietly.
"I am the Saintess. I was taught to absolve human sin and to cradle human wounds. And yet, if I cannot even tend the heart of the person standing beside me, then I am neither the Saintess nor Cecilia."
Cheon Hwi gave no answer.
"Lord Cheon Hwi."
Each time she spoke his name, she called it softly, as if gently erasing something, a little at a time.
"A person needs a proper rest. Only then, no matter what comes, can they find the strength to rise again."
"…"
"And…"
Cecilia gathered her breath. This time there was no Saintess in it, no duty, no Church—only her own voice.
"Please prove to me, as well, that you are someone who can be comforted."
The last of her words trembled slightly. Her gaze did not.
For a moment, a long stillness passed. In that gap Cheon Hwi lowered his eyes and glanced at Cecilia's small hands. They were not hands set down beneath the heavy name of Saintess. They were hands a girl named Cecilia had closed of her own will.
"You…"
His voice came out low.
"You are a truly troublesome person."
Cecilia smiled—a small, quiet smile.
"Yes. I am a troublesome person."
Cheon Hwi shook his head. But along his brow a color had seeped in, far less cold than at the start.
"…The words I wanted to hear from my disciples may already be too late."
"Even so."
Quietly, Cecilia laid her hand over his once more.
"I'll see that you hear them, even now. I… can do that."
Cheon Hwi's eyes held her, still. Something in them, like ice left long to settle, seemed—if only a very little—to be melting.
"…Do as you please."
It was small, and yet it was a clear permission.
Cecilia nodded, quietly. In that moment something heavier than the lines of a prayer, and warmer, seeped in between them.