Rising to the Highest — 8
I carry a drink into the room and find her already settled in the very best seat. The deeper winter grows, the more that finest place presses itself against the kitchen wall. There isn't even any smoke, now that I think of it. Then again, the lack of fuel was strange from the very beginning, so I let it pass.
"What brings you here?"
When I ask, Goo Mil-mil gives me a bitter smile.
"Isn't that rather too blunt?"
"Humanity has a custom for that sort of thing."
I know that, of course. I simply have no reason left to make a good showing in a place I've all but lost interest in.
"You do say strange things."
"Choseol's body is human. What sits inside it is not."
I've decided to spill every fact worth knowing. That I am not a person is, surprisingly, an important point, and while I'm at it I mean to leave behind what ought to be remembered. She was emptied out so steadily from such a young age that she has no self at all, so it would be hard to call this something she truly wanted.
"Do you know the name Eunjae?"
At the question, Goo Mil-mil nods without hesitation.
"Anyone who does not know the Martial God's name is no person of the murim."
"Choseol is Eunjae's granddaughter."
Behind me, Soo stares with a thoroughly startled face. Ah — she must think I'm someone who holds an important place in the Heavenly Demon Cult.
"Her granddaughter? No, but... as I understand it, Eunjae's line was cut off."
She truly looks as if she never knew. All she seems to have heard is that some misfortune befell them and they vanished, and that is only because Goo Sung-yong never explained anything about Eunjae to her.
"When Goo Sung-yong came, there were eleven of them in all. Choseol's parents, her brothers and sisters, and even her uncles and cousins."
At the sound of her father's name, Goo Mil-mil's eyes go wide. She must never have heard it by any other path, either.
The chance has come, so before it grows any later I tell her what needs to be spoken in Choseol's voice.
"He killed every one of Choseol's family, took her away, and made her a laboratory animal for digging up Eunjae's secrets."
And that is exactly what happened. Wolje Hall and Jigwan Hall — with the help of at least those two, she was being refined into elixir.
"After that, the seat of the Heavenly Demon passed from Goo Sung-yong to the present Heavenly Demon, and the Heavenly Demon decided to use Choseol for Jeonyang's sake."
Perhaps she has guessed that what follows is a thoroughly revolting story. Goo Mil-mil's face twists.
"From the records Eunjae left behind, the Heavenly Demon learned that he had contracted with something, and brought that something here. To call it forth, he prepared the child bound most closely to it — a child named Choseol — and placed that something inside her."
"Ta-da."
I point at myself.
"It's me."
You understand what that means, don't you?
At my words, Goo Mil-mil's pupils tremble.
"Why... why tell me this?"
Well, yes. From a certain angle, it does come out of nowhere. Goo Mil-mil doesn't know yet. Outside the Heavenly Demon Cult, even now, a power called the Murim Alliance is preparing to invade, and they will try to erase me and my harvesters no matter what it costs. Even if the Heavenly Demon Cult wins, there will be losses. War never decides in advance who dies. So I said it while I still could.
Now, then. I ask a second time.
"What business brings you here?"
Goo Mil-mil blinks again and again, as if trying to take in what I've said.
"You aren't pleased that I came."
"I don't feel anything about it. I only hope, in a small way, that you might turn out like Oh Myung-sung. But shouldn't you know Choseol's story? I'm using Choseol's body. I have at least that much loyalty."
It could also be called groundwork, raising her regard ahead of time in case she moves as Rebecca did after I'm gone. Rebecca seemed to go wandering through my memories. Will this one do the same? Will she be swept away, unknowing, into cold recollection? Or perhaps, after I leave and before I wake again, the body will vanish completely. The ones coming now seem likely to burn everything until not a single corpse remains. Even so, preparations ought to be made beforehand.
"What are you, exactly?"
"I have no need of a name, so I don't use one. Only when I come out into reality like this do I borrow the name of the body."
People call me by all sorts of names, and none of them please me. When she asks what I am, I answer with the matter of names on purpose. There is no identity I can give her. In truth, I'm still searching for my own.
"Yes. I see. So you don't mean to answer."
Goo Mil-mil lets out a small sigh.
"I heard that you bestow blessings on people, and I came looking."
After a brief pause, she gives her reason for coming. In other words, someone asked her to find me.
"A villager, then."
"Yes. They couldn't come to you themselves, so they sought help from someone like me."
"Oh?"
"I've never stopped anyone from coming here."
"Since last year, this place has been forbidden ground. No one can go there. Don't tell me you didn't know?"
Shock.
The reason no one comes has revealed itself. Why, of all things? Since when?
Just in case, I rummage through the Heavenly Demon's memories and retrace every scene I've watched, but I never forbade it. Wondering whether it might be In Sim-won's doing — he is the one watching me — I look his way as well, only to find that he merely agreed when the Heavenly Palace Hall Master asked him to keep people from going there.
Ah. So it was the Heavenly Palace Hall Master.
Yes, of course. Jung Jae-woo, who served as that hall master's Guardian, was certainly one of the important Guardians — which is only another way of saying he was one person among many. He was hardly in a position to hear everything the Heavenly Palace Hall Master did. If something appears that can suddenly produce a person like the Heavenly Demon, restricting it is hardly strange. The cult's headquarters itself is under the Heavenly Palace Hall Master's management, so if he declared the place off-limits — a place where someone close to the Heavenly Demon stays, at that — the other hall masters would have understood.
I had thought it was only Wolje Hall tormenting me. It seems they were not the only ones.
"Let's go at once. There's someone hurt, isn't there?"
I rise from my seat. She looks at me as if I'm strange, but as if I would ever let a chance to make a harvester slip away.
"A load he'd stacked while working collapsed and crushed his leg completely. You can heal that?"
So that's what she's asking.
"Didn't you see how the Heavenly Demon was healed?"
"No. Honestly, I still don't understand how a man became a woman, or whether it's even the same person."
Is that so?
I cross Goo Sung-yong's memories with Oh Myung-sung's for a moment. Ah. Of course. Eunchun used the Heavenly Demon Divine Art and held them off for a little while, but died beneath Oh Myung-sung's Absorbing Star Great Art. Then, preparing for the next attacker, they looked outward. Beyond their sight, Goo Sung-yong went down below. A short while later, people suddenly moved and ran toward the shattered building. They must have sensed a qi I cannot feel. And they watched a vast black-violet beam erase Goo Sung-yong.
Which means they saw it after the Heavenly Demon had already revived.
"It is the same person. Go and see for yourself, and you'll know."
Goo Mil-mil's hesitation is brief, and her decision swift.
"Let's go."
So the two of us step outside. Partway through the door I stop and look back.
"Soo."
"Uh — yeah?"
"There's no need to watch anyone's mood. Just do whatever you yourself want to do."
She still wears a face that hasn't understood a word of what's been said. She's probably never thought about a monster that climbs into another body and rides it, so it's only natural, and fear fills half that expression. I leave the choice with her — follow if she wants, and if she doesn't, then don't — and walk on with Goo Mil-mil.
"You raise her rather harshly."
The moment we're out the door, Goo Mil-mil speaks.
"Do I?"
"I'm an outsider, but that child heard as well that you aren't the original Choseol, didn't she? Couldn't you have been a little gentler?"
Gentler...
"Miss Goo Mil-mil. Shall I treat her gently?"
I ask it with real puzzlement.
At my words she stares straight at me, then looks away.
"I'll leave it. Just now, I feel as if I'm standing before a gate of hell that must not be opened."
Really — monster or not, isn't that much too harsh? Then again, it may be because I unfolded Choseol's story the moment she arrived. But this story had to be told someday. I never thought of it in the first world, but I learned from Rebecca. If I can, it's better to do the things Choseol rightfully ought to have done. We do seem to be mixing, after all.
A brief silence falls.
Then, all at once, Goo Mil-mil calls to me.
"Choseol. Young Lady Soo is coming."
So she decided to follow after all.
I nod to show I understand and go on ahead. Soo is faster than I am anyway — by a great deal. Before long she joins us. I think she's only following, and then she suddenly catches my arm and stops me.
"May I ask just one thing? All this time... has Choseol been Choseol?"
It's strange to hear her speak so formally, but if the whole thing sits wrong with her, I suppose she might. I nod.
"Yes. The owner of this body never had a self to begin with. She was raised not to think, so she was alive, and yet dead."
When I explain it fully, Soo frowns, then nods.
"Yeah. Then that's enough."
Back to her usual way of speaking.
I can't tell what she's thinking, but she urges me on, so I start walking again. Once we reach the village, we head straight for the place Goo Mil-mil leads us.
Of course, not long after we enter, In Sim-won joins us as well. Goo Mil-mil's face tightens at the sight of him, but he offers only a single sentence.
"I have no intention of interfering with Lady Choseol's actions."
Goo Mil-mil looks at his hair, wears the expression of someone who understands, and guides us on.
The western outskirts. We arrive where the houses grow steadily more wretched and groans carry on the air. A thick smell of medicine fills the place, and people lie everywhere. Most of them have rashes or scratches of that sort, but one is different. A man soaked through with sweat, one leg gone, lies there, and beside him a woman of about the same age tends him with a face sunk in grief.
She notices me first and starts in surprise; then she sees Goo Mil-mil at my side, scrambles to rise, and staggers and falls.
"Th-the Heavenly Maiden? And the Holy Maiden!"
I go to the man's side and sit him up.
"What are you doing to the patient! Sit him up like that and the blood will come pouring out!"
Someone I take for a physician comes running from behind. The leg was cut away and the wound never closed properly, so left like this it will burst. I speak to the man.
I know that whether he has fainted or is dying, so long as he lives he will certainly hear these words, and will certainly be able to answer. He agrees, and I pour myself into him.
The man swells, then turns hard as porcelain, and as he crumbles bit by bit a man emerges from within. His hair has turned purple and his skin is pure white, but it is that same man. He startles and looks his own body over again and again, then notices me and tries to drive his brow into the ground, so I catch him by the shoulder and stop him.
"You showed me goodwill then, so there's no need for a greeting."
He is one of the villagers who once took me outside. The goodwill turned to malice.
Well. What can you do.
His luck was bad.