Climbing to the Very Top - 3
The next day, I had decided to spend the day playing with Soo.
From today the preliminaries were over, and the promotion matches for the main bracket would begin. On a day like that, the Heavenly Demon was busy. Everyone else was busy too, of course. Gapjae and Byeongil were both competing—Gapjae burning to climb higher, Byeongil just as fierce about keeping the place he already held. Jung Jaewoo attended only as escort to the Hall Master of the Heavenly Palace, and Wolje Hall never showed its face at these matches to begin with.
Complaints?
No one in the Heavenly Demon Cult bore Wolje Hall any grudge. A hall master had no business with Wolje Hall, stuck as it was at the very bottom, and anyone ranked lower than that simply went missing. They were processed into living sacrifices for the Blood Stasis Esoteric Sect, hauled to the meeting point with the Jie Cult, and dropped in with a splash. That was how the place had been run: damp, furtive, and quiet.
It occurred to me that I might have to learn a method like that myself. A false faith of just the right size, one from which warmth could be drawn. I set the thought aside for later. No one would be coming in the daylight today, so I set about a thorough cleaning.
"It's a rare day off. Do we really have to clean?"
"Yes. This is when it has to be done. I'll teach you one thing at a time."
My head was full of the memories of cleaning specialists, Joanna chief among them. When it came to how a place ought to be cleaned, I knew the work cold. Unlike food, cleaning did not change from world to world. So instead of simply putting her to work, I taught her as we went, and Soo and I scrubbed the little house with everything we had—how to lift a stain, how to store clothing so it would last, all the small household knowledge a life requires. There was a great deal that might be needed someday. Better to learn as much as one could.
Because the things that truly needed learning, I had not been able to learn. How to speak with people. How to tell, inside a conversation, what may be said and what must not. How to be wounded and stand back up. How to wrap someone else's wound. All of it gathered under the name of being fit for other people. Unless a society was a little further along than this one, you could not get far alone. Even if only so they might keep giving me warmth, I wanted them to live a long time.
There is that saying people are always trotting out, isn't there? Die young and become a hero, or live long and become a villain. The Heavenly Demon, and I, and the people of the Heavenly Demon Cult—none of us were well equipped to learn ordinary social grace. So I ought to teach them ahead of time the things they would have to learn later.
Thinking that, I cleaned the whole house from top to bottom. And by the time we finished, under a sky flushed red, a single figure stood before the fence that had all but fallen in.
A guest had come. A woman in clothing that had once belonged to the Heavenly Demon Cult. Goo Mil-mil.
They were the clothes the Heavenly Demon had worn once, then left in a corner and never put on again. Remembering the way those hands had handled the cloth, I had thought there was some lingering attachment in it. Seeing the person now standing in front of me, I more or less understood. The Heavenly Demon must have had thoughts about Goo Mil-mil.
"Welcome, Miss Goo Mil-mil."
At the greeting, her face went utterly startled.
"You... you're the child who was here back then?"
She had finally remembered. I had changed so much that it would have been hard to notice.
"Who?"
Soo sprang down from the roof. I had sent her up to tidy it a little; whether she had finished, I couldn't say.
"The person who gave us the medicine that drew the worms out of your body. Remember?"
"Oh! That person from back then! Wait—weren't you a grandma?"
Soo stared at Goo Mil-mil in open surprise. There was less gratitude on her face than I had expected. Mostly curiosity. I indicated the wooden porch, and Goo Mil-mil stepped inside. She came up to the house and made to go into the room.
Hm?
Ah. Right. That was the proper way of it. Ordinarily a guest was shown into the room.
"It's better if you don't go in."
"Because the house is old? I don't mind that sort of—eek!"
The moment she opened the door, a yelp escaped her. It was ferociously hot in there. Pleasant in winter, miserable in summer. That was no empty courtesy. Stay inside for long and you would genuinely die of heatstroke. Dumbstruck, Goo Mil-mil pointed into the room.
"Were you planning to steam yourselves to death?"
"The kitchen connects directly beside it. A flaw in the structure. Winter is one thing, but summer is difficult."
"You can't even step inside."
I indicated the porch again. Goo Mil-mil nodded and sat.
"Soo. Fetch some water."
"Choseol, we've only got one gourd in the whole house."
Now that she mentioned it, we had never used separate cups. Leaving the water jar near the furnace mouth was convenient enough: the residual heat warmed it slowly, so there was no need to boil it apart from that, and strangely enough nothing ever took hold in the water. Tinker with it a little and I could probably build a steam engine, but a fire that never went out would stand out far too much, so...
I would have to go myself. I sat Soo down in my place and went into the kitchen, then out the back door. I picked up two stones from the ground and twisted them.
Cups, finished.
A crack ran through the empty air, visible only if you looked closely. I would have to ask the Heavenly Demon for some proper tableware. Thinking that, I lifted the lid of the jar—hot enough—and scooped two cups of the clear water inside, then carried them straight back to where Goo Mil-mil and Soo were waiting. Some of the memories I carried said that here one was supposed to bring such things on a tray, but we did not live well enough to worry over that, and Goo Mil-mil did not look like someone who would expect much of a place that was poor at a glance.
When I came out with the water, the two of them were already talking. It was only whether Soo's body was all right now. Soo answered stiffly, in formal speech. The fortunate part was that she had learned from the Heavenly Demon how to treat an adult, so the conversation went carefully, without turning awkward. She had acquired the bare minimum of social grace. That was a relief.
"Here."
"Thank you. But you two—why are you alone in a place like this? If you can, wouldn't it be better to go to a village?"
It sounded like a casual question, but her face said otherwise. She was watching me and Soo with great care as she asked. Leaving herself room, perhaps, so that if either of us flinched she could sweep the whole thing aside as if it had been nothing.
"No. We can't go back and eat worms again."
"Ah. Yes. Of course."
Life in the Heavenly Demon Cult meant living with worms parasitized in the body. For Soo, who recoiled from the worms themselves, it was a cruel place to live.
"Somewhere else, then... it would be hard to live, I see."
Goo Mil-mil's gaze drifted, almost idly, to Soo's hair. Yes. Right now, a Harvester was an evil demonic head in Murim. In that place full of monks, the moment Oh Myung-sung became a complete Harvester, they had driven him out. There was a good chance they could tell a Harvester from anyone else. If we ever left, perhaps I would make that place my aim.
Anyway. Back to Goo Mil-mil.
"You came to hear about Oh Myung-sung's mutation, didn't you?"
"Yes. That's right. You said you knew about that state. Does that mean you know about that Heaven-Defying Demonic Qi?"
Mm. Now that I thought of it, they had used that proper name here and there, back at the place with the monks.
"What is Heaven-Defying Demonic Qi?"
"You don't know? It's a power only the Heavenly Demon was ever meant to use. An exceptionally wicked demonic qi. Even my father never learned what it truly was, in the end."
Goo Sung-yong had never told Goo Mil-mil about the traces Eunjae left behind. So she did not know precisely. And yet a name that ominous had been fastened to me. Rather accurate, really.
Well then. Time to lay the reasons out, one by one.
"First—the reason Oh Myung-sung changed is that he used the Star Absorption Art."
A blade shot from Goo Mil-mil's hand at once. No. It started out, and stopped.
"What are you?"
Soo's hand had halted a hair short of Goo Mil-mil's carotid, an instant before killing intent burst. I raised a hand and stopped them both.
"Now, calm down. Soo. The martial art called the Star Absorption Art brands you a public enemy of all Murim merely for having learned it. It's only natural that Miss Goo Mil-mil would react sharply."
Soo frowned, but when I waved her off she pouted, took her hand from Goo Mil-mil's throat, and drew her sword from a good distance away.
"In a single year, you've become a tremendous master."
Goo Mil-mil stared at Soo in astonishment, then slowly sheathed her own sword. It had only been last year. She had looked inside Soo while clearing the worms out, so she understood at once.
"She has a good teacher."
I deliberately swallowed the words the Heavenly Demon. Instead I shifted the subject.
"Oh Myung-sung stole it from the one who uses what you call Heaven-Defying Demonic Qi. If that's why he mutated, can you understand?"
At that, Goo Mil-mil narrowed her eyes and said no.
I see. Then it was time she heard the truth.
"I portion myself out to people. Whoever receives me has every wound healed, grows cleverer, grows stronger, and their hair turns purple."
Goo Mil-mil looked at me as if the words would not fit together. Only after a long while did she barely manage to understand what I had said.
"You... you're the Heaven-Defying Demonic Qi?"
She had understood.
"Is that what you're going to call me?"
I gave her the question back. Demonic qi that rebels against heaven. One could see it that way. I meant to explain the contract to her. Soo cut across me faster than I could.
"Choseol isn't something like that!"
Soo shouted it. She came to me, wrapped her arms around me from behind, and leveled a dulled blade at Goo Mil-mil.
"She's my benefactor. She's my family. Don't you call her that."
Somewhere along the way, Soo's formal speech had vanished too. A cool wind passed, wrong for the season, and Goo Mil-mil took the posture this world used when offering a greeting.
"I apologize. Young Miss Soo."
Soo stared at her a moment longer, then put the blade away. She let out a small sigh and pointed at me.
"Not to me. To Choseol, please."
Back to formal speech. Well, Goo Mil-mil was an adult in any number of ways. A couple of years older than I was, even.
"I'm sorry. Young Miss Choseol. May I call you that?"
I nodded.
"Yes. I don't care what other people call me. Anyway, let's go back to the story. Miss Goo Mil-mil, I'll tell you what you want to know."
And I returned to Oh Myung-sung—hoping, as far as I could hope, that this story would shake the Heavenly Demon Cult to its roots.