There Is No End Here — 14
It has been seven days since I returned to this world. Hyungkesuni and I are still shut inside the mansion on the outskirts of the capital, though today we have simply been left to ourselves. The Kingdom of Anselus is holding Tisha's funeral.
Over three days the coffin will make a full circuit of the capital, and from there it goes on to the cemetery to be laid in the ground. There is, of course, no body inside. They could hardly have displayed the sight of a rift like a flower in full bloom, fixed there above a man's lower half.
That isn't the reason.
On the day I came back to this world, just about when I had finished speaking with the king, the black hole at the center of the rift suddenly widened. It swallowed every last scrap of what remained of the corpse, and then it vanished, together with the rift that had bloomed in empty air like a flower.
They asked whether I knew anything. I told them I didn't. And I truly don't. Passing out through a rift was a first for me, and so was a blessed person having this many children. So who could have known the rift would shrink again and suck the body in?
Ever since, though, my body has felt strangely heavy. At first I wondered if I was imagining it, but a week has passed and I am very heavy now. The fortunate part is that I moved so rarely to begin with that Hyungkesuni probably hasn't noticed. My guess is that it's something like a charging cord pulled from its socket. I can still bestow blessings without any trouble, so it ought to be fine.
What matters more is this. While Hyungkesuni writes away at her book, I have been wondering whether I might somehow fashion a proxy for the blessing — whether, if someone other than me were to bestow one, that person could receive a blessing themselves. Testing it would require the proper conditions, and under the present circumstances that is difficult to arrange. I have spent all this time giving the impression of someone thoroughly passive, and if I were to attempt something dangerous while the book is still unfinished, and the Kingdom of Anselus had a change of heart and issued an order to kill us all...
I wish Hyungkesuni would finish the book quickly.
In any case, the funeral is underway, so there is no blessing to bestow today. The whole of the Kingdom of Anselus is sunk in grief. Tisha's funeral began yesterday, which means it should end tomorrow. Until then, the timing is poor for getting anything done. I might add that they never sent for me, though the rites have been going on since yesterday. Priests of the Holy God Church have come in droves to conduct the ceremony, so of course it is only right that I wasn't called.
Tomorrow. Or the day after.
Once the funeral is entirely over, they will likely discuss my disposal, and then I will learn what is to become of me. Nine times out of ten my life will be in danger, but I don't particularly mind. If I die, I will probably just fall back down to the bottom. And if I die completely? Then I will no longer feel this cold boring down into the marrow of my bones, and that would be nice.
"When will the book be finished?"
"Don't nag."
Beside Hyungkesuni the papers are stacked nearly as high as the span from my fingertips to my elbow, and she is still writing. The volume really is enormous. Either that, or she is thinking about something else entirely. I can look straight at it and still have no idea what it says. If I consider the time it would take to put all of this into a person's head, and then the time from learning every bit of it to actually being able to use it, it will be a very long while.
If we did it here, that is. The experiment can be run somewhere else. I can make time flow differently, you see. It is like watching several movies at once. Open a number of screens and press play on all of them together, and time passes the same way on each. Pause one, though, and time stops there while the others run on. If I need to, I can change the speed at which it flows as well. Unfortunately, I can't rewind. If I could, I would be able to interfere with the past, so I understand why that is beyond me.
I can't disregard time, so there is no way something like me is a god. When people speak of gods, what they usually name is immutability and omnipresence. Immutability I could approximate somehow, by means of my power to regenerate. Omnipresence is impossible. I can watch many people at the same time, but I can't watch a single person across several different times. And yet they had the nerve to hang the name Outer God on me.
Anyway, this I can use. Read the book, and then experiment not here, but in another world. For now, at most one person in any given world receives my blessing. Which is to say it takes a long time before that person masters the art of summoning me. The odds of success aren't much, either. But the opportunities are numberless, and I have a great deal of time. So I wait for Hyungkesuni's book to be finished.
I hope that moment comes soon. The instant I have the summoning technique memorized, I experiment in another world at once. And if I am summoned, I need only bestow the blessing again from there.
It occurs to me now that, honestly, I don't understand how any of this is possible. It doesn't rise to the level of a god's art, but it is difficult to regard as a human one. Five screens, six, perhaps. Watching hundreds, thousands of people all at once — that's strange, isn't it? At times like these I feel that I have become something other than a person.
The cold is harsher than any such feeling. It keeps growing colder, without end. It isn't that I could endure if only it would stop; better to think of the pain as intensifying. There is no limit to it, and no end. Obtain even a little warmth, and the feeling fades, just slightly, and then the cold returns.
Yes.
That is why, for the sake of warmth, there is nothing I cannot do.
If Hyungkesuni were to do me harm, I truly don't know how I would treat her. If she writes me a proper book? Then Hyungkesuni goes free. I said that if she wrote the book, I wouldn't take her warmth. I keep my promises.
For there to be a contract, there must at least be the trust — whether through law or through power — that this person cannot lie. If I lie, what little trust I may or may not possess drops below zero at once. Which is to say that if I lose the trust I barely have to begin with, no one will even attempt a contract with me. A drizzle soaks you through, don't they say? Lie in a single world, and what comes after that? I've done it once already, and there are so many worlds anyway. So what am I to do if every world ends up that way?
Cutting open the belly of the goose that lays the golden eggs is a fool's act. However viciously painful the patience may be, if you are fated to starve without those eggs, you clench your teeth and endure. So I take my precautions in advance.
"Hyungkesuni."
"What."
Irritation seeps through her voice. Probably because I go and poke at her whenever I get bored.
Hehe.
You're doing very well. Be irritated, just like that, and come to see that even when you are, you're perfectly fine. Until the thought occurs to you that whatever you do is all right, I will torment you — and when you show a negative reaction, I will do nothing at all.
I will have to calibrate it, of course, so the stress doesn't drive her mad. People who torment others are often unaware that they are doing it, and one has to be careful. It is especially so when intelligence is low. The faculty of thinking from another person's point of view requires more intelligence than you would expect. It is like a dim animal that sees itself in a mirror and cannot recognize the reflection as its own.
The cognition to distinguish oneself from others. The foresight to imagine the consequences of one's own actions. The empathy to think from another's perspective. None of them are possible if intelligence falls short. Someone not particularly clever, like me, would find it hard to look at a person and analyze them on the spot. But I have an anthology of masterpieces: unhappy people. Happiness is scarce, they say, while unhappiness is without number. The one most resigned, most sunk in despair, might well be called a masterpiece.
Using that, I examine Hyungkesuni's condition with great care. And all the while — poke, poke. Then she grows irritated, and angry. But if I don't grow irritated in return, her sense of danger will drop. And that is what keeps things comfortable after the book is written.
What if she has a change of heart and goes on acting to interfere with my being summoned? The contract exchanged two things: the writing of the book, and my not taking her warmth. If, after producing a proper book, she does as she has done until now — killing the blessed and trying to prevent my summoning — I have no power to stop her. I must not torment her so badly that she decides she will ruin me even if it kills her. But if I do nothing, and she begins to move in order to prepare countermeasures against me, I will regret it.
So I stay pressed to her side, smiling brightly, now and then poking her cheek or her ribs, and tell her to write faster.
"A temper this impatient — how on earth did you last the past half year?"
In the end she bore down on her pen until it snapped, then glared at me and threw the question back. The look of oh no that crosses her face the moment the words are out is extremely funny. So I decided to state the perfectly reasonable position.
"I was called into the middle of a cult that kills people to summon a god of death. Did you think I could have been at ease?"
At that she stares at me with a face that says, What the hell is this little monster babbling. Well — I understand. I do. Even so, I told Hyungkesuni before that I was human once, didn't I? I have a human way of looking at things, too.
"In the end you deceived Yasle and stole his knowledge, and you have the nerve to say a thing like that. You think I'm going to fall for it?"
"When have I ever lied?"
"Lying is a human privilege."
Not especially. In truth, plenty of animals mimic how they look in order to deceive other animals. I don't bother saying so. If I did, I would be confessing that I had deceived someone. Instead, I'll jab like this.
"The one who put the name Outer God on me was you, Hyungkesuni."
I say it once more.
All of it is your fault.
Hyungkesuni frowned. Then she opened her hand, flung away the shattered pen she had been gripping, fetched a spare, and went back to writing the book.
Silence.
She wrote for a long while before she spoke.
"What are you plotting this time?"
A proper question. Of course. Hyungkesuni is a coward, but she isn't a fool.
"I'm making a plan that will let me obtain more warmth. I'm still very cold, you see."
So I explained it as it truly is. From beginning to end, my purpose has not changed. In the days of the Future Hope Church I kept silent, because it was dangerous not to; now it is all right to speak, so I speak. And far away, in the royal castle, I watch through the king's own eyes as he meets a man called the high priest of the Holy God Church and talks over how I am to be handled.
I don't think I will be able to remain here much longer. I'll have to bring Hyungkesuni around a little faster.
I laid my hand over hers. She doesn't flinch anymore. There is a kind of training in which you subject a puppy to stimuli over and over, so that later, no matter what happens, it meets them with dull indifference.
Hehe.
"But I told you I won't take your warmth, didn't I?"
Hyungkesuni raised her hand in an obscene gesture, then set her pen moving again.
The desensitization training is a success.