Soo's Jianghu — 20 (End)
The Heavenly Demon didn't come today. From morning on, the Jukgan Hall Master had reported that Oh Myung-sung and Goo Mil-mil were on their way, and preparations were already underway to receive them. Oh Myung-sung ought to have been slipping in quietly behind Goo Mil-mil, who knows this ground well — and yet every step of it was leaking out. Strange.
And there was one thing more that didn't sit right. If it were the Heavenly Demon, I would have expected the two of them removed before they ever arrived. She simply let them come. Reasoning from the memories of when the Heavenly Demon was a man, that is what should have happened. What she was thinking now, I couldn't tell.
It was the Heavenly Demon who killed Goo Mil-mil's father. That there had been no clash was strange. If they met, it wouldn't be odd for something to happen. A great incident was preparing to break over the Heavenly Demon Cult.
Not that the cult had been quiet until now. There had been plenty of movement inside it.
Gapjae. In the end he laid the whole of his skill bare and demanded a higher seat. He wasn't demanding it blindly, though. He said he would wait for another contest to settle the rankings, the sort the Heavenly Demon had convened before, and until then he did his own work in earnest.
Byeong-il, meanwhile, was grinding his own hall under pure violence. Sanseok Hall — a hall bound up with the mines. Mostly it was where criminals were handled. Criminals by the Heavenly Demon Cult's measure, of course. Worms were driven into their skulls to ruin their minds, and then they were set to digging silver in the silver mines.
The hall's chief officers refused to recognize Byeong-il, and they refused to divide the wealth that came out of the place. A silent protest, in short: we will not accept you as Master of Sanseok Hall. But Byeong-il had been a believer of the Heavenly Demon Cult, and a skilled one — skilled enough to have held a Guardian's seat. He went to the officers who resisted, asked whether they would submit, and killed the ones who refused.
In principle the halls stand independent of one another and do not interfere, so even that would not ordinarily have been a problem. The problem was that Byeong-il killed too many. Among the dead were people dispatched from other halls to control the worms, and when they died the worms in the criminals' heads ran wild. More than half of those working the mines died. Which is to say, output fell, and people borrowed from other halls died along with it.
Yes. A serious problem. And so Byeong-il was a breath away from being politically cast out of the Heavenly Demon Cult. That was Byeong-il's situation.
And, just as I hope of people, the Guardian of the Cheongung Hall Master was thinking of going further. On the surface he remained loyal to the Cheongung Hall Master, but behind that he was quietly looking for another road. The place he was reaching toward was Jigwan Hall. As Gapjae had done, he was angling for a tie to it, and he had a reason. Jigwan Hall was where they produced the elixir that made you stronger simply by swallowing it. Wolje Hall's techniques had gone into it, of course.
Yes. That's right. Techniques that had flowed in from Daegon's side. That didn't make the Jigwan Hall Master a man of the Jeol Cult, or of the secret sect of Eohyeol. He was closer to an elder — a master who had given his body to the Heavenly Demon Cult for a long time. To put it plainly, the Jigwan Hall Master was the cult's elder in charge of the medicine that makes people strong. So anyone with something brewing, or anyone who wanted to climb, seemed to seek him out.
But the Cheongung Hall Master's Guardian wasn't trying to climb inside the Heavenly Demon Cult. He was trying to obtain an assignment that would let him go outside. Because Jung Jae-woo, Guardian to the Cheongung Hall Master, had realized as the Harvest came that the worm inside his body was gone, and he was thinking of leaving the cult.
Every one of them was after something different.
In Sim-won, Master of Wolje Hall, was similar to Byeong-il. He too was going about killing his own subordinates. His reason was different. People who had mutated so far they were a breath from becoming monsters — he was disposing of them. I had told them to run, and it seemed they had chosen to stay in the cult. They couldn't have seen Daegon die. Was it because they saw the Heavenly Demon return, and understood who had won? If that was his choice, I ought to respect it. I was hardly in a position to tell him to do otherwise, anyway.
I did want to praise him. Why? Because most of the people he killed were the ones who had used a special technique when they summoned me. Not all the information had come together, but if I sorted it carefully, there was a chance I could decipher the method of the summoning. Rummaging through memories is like fitting a puzzle: the more pieces, the clearer it becomes where to look and what to find. If I worked at it, I might be able to draw out the technique I needed.
Anyway. Taken altogether, the Heavenly Demon Cult was in profound disorder. And into that came Oh Myung-sung and Goo Mil-mil — those two, meeting the Heavenly Demon. What, I wondered, was going to happen.
"It's this hot, and you're sitting in front of the fire doing what?"
I was sitting by the hearth, staring blankly into the flames, when Soo came over without bothering to hide her boredom. She had waited for the Heavenly Demon, received the little note the Heavenly Demon sent, and run off to play, calling it free time — and with nothing left to do, she was sick of it. But Soo, who always clung to me, stopped several paces off and studied my face in a peculiar way. Sounding me out, it seemed.
Ah. Come to think of it, yesterday had been a little strange. I never thought I'd be laughed at by a beast that had merely turned into a monster. Right. Once you're dead, you don't need to be cold. Unlike me, who cannot die.
"I'm thinking, just for a moment, about what to do from here."
"What to do? About what?"
I rose and took Soo out onto the veranda. Just then the Heavenly Demon was heading off alone to meet Oh Myung-sung and Goo Mil-mil. The three of them would meet at the edge of the forest. I could see whatever happened through the Heavenly Demon's eyes, so I had no particular thought of going there myself. I would make dinner with Soo, clear it away, and sleep.
I looked up at the sky. It was darker than usual. Evening was close, yes, but the clouds were packed solid, as if rain might fall at any moment. I hoped it wasn't an omen that something was about to happen.
Ah. That's right. There was something I ought to tell Soo beforehand. The Heavenly Demon already knew, and if Soo heard it later and asked why I'd never said a word, that would be awkward. And shutting her out would be wrong, wouldn't it? I sat her down in front of me.
"What's wrong?"
Soo looked uneasy. I told that uneasy girl what was coming.
"Soo. In four years, I'm leaving this place."
"Huh?"
Soo's eyes went wide.
"Where are you going?"
She rushed in and caught the hem of my clothes. Was it really something to be that shocked about?
"Outside the Heavenly Demon Cult."
Somewhere full of people, if I could manage it. Somewhere I could bring a Harvest into being.
Soo looked at my face, then glanced around.
"Isn't here enough?"
"It's enough for living. But there's something I want to do, so I'm going to leave."
Soo folded her arms.
"Yeah, but Master's here too, and wouldn't it be really dangerous for just the two of us to go out? I learned that if women wander around by themselves, bad things happen easy."
Well, the world being what it is, there are plenty of people who aren't moral. Oh Myung-sung had even caught a man they called a lust-fiend. And lust is difficult to peel away from a person. But there was something Soo had misunderstood.
"Soo. The one leaving is me. Alone."
Soo's eyes grew enormous.
"No — why. Why are you doing this? What happened all of a sudden? Did I do something wrong?"
Oh. Soo was speaking formally. She looked up at me as if she might cry. The face of a puppy that had been thrown out.
"No. You haven't done a single thing wrong. You're growing up so well — what could you possibly have done wrong?"
"Then why are you saying you'll leave alone?"
Even if she asked, four years from now Soo would still be a child, and taking her into a dangerous place didn't sit right with me.
"Even in four years, you'll still be young. If I leave, the Heavenly Demon will look after you. So when time has passed and you're grown, that's when you should do what you want. Not stay alone in a remote place like this."
Soo came toward me with a face on the verge of tears. And, hesitating terribly, she carefully took the very end of my hem. She had always come running without a second thought, and now this.
"Do you have to go?"
Soo's voice trembled. Where had I failed to get this across? It wasn't that sad a thing. This.
"I'm not saying I'm leaving right now. Soo. Four years ahead of us. There's plenty of time left. We've only lived one year together, haven't we? We'd have to live the time we've shared four times over. When that day comes, you might be the one telling me to hurry up and go."
Soo shook her head from side to side. Tears were dropping, one after another.
Hm. Had I said it too soon? No. At her age now — was this already late, or was this the age for crying over parting from a friend? I remembered girls growing a little faster. Or maybe it was only because the only people she ever met were the two of us. A lack of social sense. What was I actually supposed to do about that. Nothing for it. Even if her social sense was a little lacking, all I could do was give her enough strength to live.
And as it happened, this was a moment in which strength could be cultivated. Because after the Heavenly Demon met the two of them, no fight broke out. If the Heavenly Demon was there, Soo would grow stronger too.
Right now. After meeting Oh Myung-sung, the Heavenly Demon — astonishingly — had invited them into the Heavenly Demon Cult. When Goo Mil-mil asked what she was scheming, the Heavenly Demon answered that she no longer had any interest in the seat of Heavenly Demon. And she was coming back to the cult with them.
Only after hearing Oh Myung-sung, as they walked, ask the Heavenly Demon about his own condition did I realize something. Whether the trouble was the white skin and the purple hair, or whether the ones who could tell what I was from some piece of me were kicking up a fuss, I couldn't say. Either way, they came right out and called them demon heads. Soo was caught in that too.
Once I went out, there would be a great deal to settle. I was turning over how to explain it when a faded memory suddenly drew up a single word.
Hug.
Thinking I ought to show her the word — the one that means to hold someone — I caught Soo's arms the way the memory went and drew her in. Choseol was no longer bone-thin the way she had been last year. She had put on proper flesh and grown into a properly tall woman, so being held would be hot, but it shouldn't be uncomfortable.
"Don't think of it as a parting. Think of it as the time coming when you have to stand on your own."
"Why? Can't we just go together?"
Oh — she had slipped back into casual speech. That was better.
"I want you to grow a little more."
If I could.
Why was that. All of it was warmth. Even if Soo were to die all at once, I would surely only think that I had gained some warmth, and forget.
"Learn from the Heavenly Demon, and from other people if you can, and become strong. Very, very, very strong — until you're a Soo who can do whatever she wants."
Someone had called me an outer god. Someone had called me an evil god. Someone had called me a monster. And this child had said I was a person. Only that much. I would take in a wish of exactly that size.
"Then this world is yours. In this world's way of putting it..."
Yes. There was an easy expression. The word a faded memory had thrown out the instant it heard Soo's name. As it happened, that word fit perfectly.
"Putting it how?"
Soo lifted her face from my arms to ask. Her face was caught against my chest, so I could only see half of it. The sad look was gone now. Good, for turning her thoughts another way. A hug.
"They say this world we're in is called the jianghu. So, the way you looked at me and saw a person, I'll speak the way a person would."
And I took both of Soo's cheeks in my hands and said it.
Folded into it was this: become a free human being, one who can do, wholly and entirely, whatever you wish in this world. In the faded memories, dozens of moments glittered — a man roaring with laughter.