Rising to the Highest - 4
Goo Mil-mil watches me without a word. Behind me, Soo has her arms wrapped around my shoulders, leveling a hard, unyielding stare at her.
Seated between the two of them, I begin with the subject she most wants to hear.
"Miss Goo Mil-mil. If you are hoping he will return to his original self, give it up. That cannot be done."
Her face tightens at my words.
"Why? If what you did was give yourself to him, could you not simply take yourself back?"
Perhaps that would work. I have never actually taken it back, so I cannot say what would follow. But I have no intention of taking it. After all the trouble I went through to make him a harvester? Explain that plainly, and I would meet a blade. So I will keep strictly to the facts, and lay the fault at their feet.
"This is a contract, Miss Goo Mil-mil. Under what circumstances did he make that contract with me? Have you imagined what would have happened if he had not, that day?"
Goo Mil-mil sinks into thought. Then she seizes on a single fact, and her expression slowly hardens.
Yes. The day Oh Myung-sung contracted with me, the two of them were dying in Aksa Gorge at the hands of Yu Jo-yeong, the alliance chief who had bound five bands of swordsmen into one. Goo Mil-mil in particular was in grave danger, and Oh Myung-sung took a terrible wound trying to save her. With their defeat plain to see, he contracted with me in order to live. He was already at death's door, clutching at straws, spilling words toward the power inside himself—but that was enough for me to make contact. In an instant I closed every wound and cut Yu Jo-yeong down. From the moment he survived, though, Oh Myung-sung was the man who had slain an alliance chief. He went to a place crowded with monks, hoping somehow to turn the matter around, only to be branded a demon at the gate and driven out onto a long road of flight.
And if he had never contracted? Both of them would most likely have died in Aksa Gorge. With luck, Goo Mil-mil might have lived, but she knows how unlikely that is.
"The choice was yours."
Soo contracted in order to live, and so did the Heavenly Demon. It is nothing more than the result of a contract. Every light that despairs all the way to the bottom of the depths is the same. When one's own strength can do nothing, when the body will no longer move, when truly nothing remains but to die—and still one does not wish to die—that is when I make a contract. People who simply accept death and resign themselves, surprisingly, do not despair deeply enough to reach the place where I am. A person falls to the very floor of despair when the will is still there, and yet no means left will carry them any higher.
"So he can never go back to the way he was?"
"No. To begin with, it isn't even certain that I could."
I don't understand myself. I don't even know why pushing me into someone makes them stronger. I have a faint guess, but nothing has ever been made clear.
"Do you want to go back? Do you want to return to before the contract and pretend none of it happened?"
Press too hard, and their hostility will climb too high, so I put the weight on the moment they chose. Goo Mil-mil falls silent. She knows it too.
Hehe.
"Those who know already know this, Goo Mil-mil. A person I have been pushed into once cannot have me pushed into them again. It means that making a second contract while gravely wounded is impossible."
When that time comes, die quietly and offer up your warmth. Better not to say that aloud.
Goo Mil-mil points at Soo, pressed against my side.
"So that child contracted with you as well?"
"She was on the verge of death."
Back then the Heavenly Demon was still an enemy, and I had no idea what would happen if it came out that I had met her. If they discovered I had drawn the worms out of her body, there was a strong chance I would be killed. So I contracted in haste, to erase the traces. And because of what he witnessed then, it is very likely the Heavenly Demon became a harvester. At the very least, he saw the wounds close with his own eyes. I never imagined I would become a woman.
"So that was when. You contracted with the Heavenly Demon there."
Ah. Then she must have seen the Heavenly Demon rise again and kill Goo Sung-yong.
"Yes. It was the Heavenly Demon who called me into this world."
"Called you into this world?"
Goo Mil-mil asks it with a puzzled look, and beside me Soo glances up, a question of her own on her face. The Heavenly Demon never told them that far. Ah. Right. There is a way, here, to keep them from questioning my power too deeply.
"It seems some remnant of a contract with Eunjae still remained. Originally, I am a cold sea, lying still and pooled far below."
Goo Mil-mil is very likely to know the name Eunjae. But this woman has never been to the dwelling of Eunjae that Goo Sung-yong and the Heavenly Demon entered—at least, not so far as those two know. A power that already existed in the past has never been verified, and yet it gives the illusion of being acceptable. That is why the customs of the past do not vanish easily. Because a thing has been done since ancient times, people trust it without a thought. Because they do not know its substance, they look only at the facts of the past and trust those.
"The Martial God...!"
Startled, just as I expected. And from her face alone I can tell she believes she understands, when in truth nothing at all has been revealed.
"The Martial God had hair the same color as yours. Don't tell me he became the Martial God because he contracted with you."
Ah. I need to be clear about this. I shake my head.
"No. He rose to the seat of Martial God purely because he did well. Even when I give myself, most people swing that power around until they meet a greater power and die."
That is why, even when I send my memories, they fail to build a foundation capable of calling me. It isn't that no one acts wisely. Such people soon grow content with their station and live out their days. Even so, since I stopped detonating myself and began pushing myself in to make harvesters, I have watched hundreds of people. Almost none of them died satisfied, believing they had lived a happy life. Death from old age is rare. For one reason or another, they are killed partway through. So I know I was right. Give them power without demanding any particular price, and even if I say nothing, they walk toward ruin on their own.
My faded memories say as much, and so do the writings left here and there by the learned of the world. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yes. It means that great power ultimately becomes a great evil.
Of course, not everyone becomes that. The most extreme counterexample I know is Tisha. He overturned it, and died properly old. Exceptions certainly exist. But they are like defective goods. And even those defective goods gave me a great deal of warmth, because sometimes there are enemies who cannot be stopped unless someone dies.
Human beings live more by feeling than by reason. No matter how right and good the other person may be, many will hate anyone who kills someone inside their own fence—even when anyone can see the dead deserved to die. From a mechanical point of view, it is neither rational nor reasonable.
"I only give myself. Everything gained afterward belongs to that person alone."
A line drawn in advance, so that no one can turn and call me the villain.
"Choseol. Then what is it you gain?"
Goo Mil-mil has put her finger on the advantageous part. Of course. A contract means that each side exchanges something important. Because there is profit.
"The end. We contract that, after death, I will take everything they have accomplished up to that moment."
In truth, all I take is the warmth. That is simply how I wrote the terms. People drew from them the notion of a god of death, and I made use of that. It took so well that everyone and their neighbor became a harvester. My, I was truly happy then. I thought the whole world was flowing exactly as I wished. Who could have known a glass bottle would fail to endure it, and shatter?
"How cruel. You would take everything they accomplished until then? You mean that every life lived after contracting with you belongs to you."
That is true enough. From that moment on, I am always watching.
"So have I done wrong?"
I have not. I want warmth, and they need the power to change reality. It is a fair trade. To be blunt, it is a fraudulent contract—at least in nations where human rights are written into the constitution. But this is not such a place.
"Or do you mean to say it was wrong to want the power to break the danger before them, even if it meant mortgaging the future?"
"You, who already received that benefit?"
I slip a quiet rebuke in as well. She will understand. The question accuses her of raising a double standard after she has already taken everything there was to take. An ordinary person would brazen their way out of it here. They would insist it was not what they wanted, and condemn me all the same. I am myself, and you are yourself. But unfortunately, a good person finds that difficult. And so, when the final accounts are settled, they sometimes gain a far greater profit than those who act selfishly. It simply isn't easy to see, is it? A foolish person cannot even calculate it.
"And at the end, what is it you do?"
A wise person asks again, in order to learn what they do not know.
"When they die, I take the warmth a person holds. That is all."
Since we are already connected, there is in fact no need to go and find them. I know the contract passes on to their children, but I have no intention of saying so aloud. I have spoken the truth. I never said I would speak all of it. I know this because my head is not good enough to remember everything and arrange the board. Force it all in, and something will surely twist somewhere. Rules exert tremendous power when they are kept.
Goo Mil-mil stares straight at me.
"In the end, all I have learned is that this thing you call a contract cannot be undone."
Then Soo tugs lightly at my clothes. I meet her eyes to see what she wants, and she hesitates, fumbling for the words.
"Then... does Choseol want to go back to the place where Choseol was?"
"No."
Ah. The answer comes out with surprising speed.
"There's nothing there. I'd rather be here."
I say it while patting Soo's back, and then I wonder if I spoke too soon. Wait until a more rebellious streak comes over her, though, and it feels as though a great crack would open in her heart. I said it while we were not yet close, because saying it too late seemed as if it would be too great a shock. We may have grown rather close—close enough for her to declare, without the slightest hesitation, that I am family.
Aigoo.
This, too, is my mistake.
I turn my gaze back to Goo Mil-mil. It is rude to drift into another subject in the middle of a conversation. She looks at me, and at Soo, and a strange smile touches her lips.
"Yes. I think I understand the two of you."
Saying it would be rude to stay too long, she rises. I see her off, and then something occurs to me, and I speak on impulse.
"Miss Goo Mil-mil."
"What is it?"
"I want to remove the worms inside the people of the Heavenly Demon Cult."
A human being who is not free finds it difficult to bring about a great incident. And when that happens, the warmth decreases as well.
"So do I. But let us take that talk more slowly. Night is coming, isn't it?"
A faint goodwill comes through in her tone. I know she would hate the worms inside a person's body; she carries, close against her, a medicine that can draw them out. A year has passed, but I still remember her saying then that she hated them. Within my faded memories, I adjust what one might call affinity.
I bid Goo Mil-mil farewell as she goes, then turn to Soo.
"Let's have dinner."
"Yeah."
Soo nods without a fuss, and together we head for the kitchen.
And so, once again, a day slips by.