Chapter 72
What am I supposed to do.
Someone has left me ingredients, and now I have to cook with them. The trouble is that I have no idea how any of this is meant to become something a person can eat. Wait—do I even know how to cook? I do, more or less, but nearly all of it is measured against memories from other worlds. The four men living here have never once cooked a meal and eaten it themselves, so the real problem is that I cannot tell what these ingredients are even for.
"Do you know how to cook?"
I asked it around evening, of the little girl an old woman had tossed at me with a curt order to use her as a maid.
The child shook her head from side to side. Whatever illness she carries, her face and her hands and feet are swollen tight, like looking at a bear's paw. Disease is common in a world like this. Even when some special power exists, it does not reach everyone. That was true of the world the Faded Man lived in, and it is true of worlds more advanced than his.
No. More than that—are they telling me to look after a child as well?
A thatched hut on the brink of collapse, food flung down without a thought, and a child on the brink of breaking, handed over as a maid. I can see the Heavenly Demon's petty malice in all of it.
Setting myself aside, what am I supposed to do with her? Take only her warmth? If she becomes a monster she will be cold, but at least she will not suffer. No—is that even how it works? I could make her a Harvester, but in her present state that would only drag the suffering out longer.
What am I really supposed to do with this child?
While I fretted over it, the tiny thing began fumbling with the ingredients, trying to make something of them. Her hands are swollen like a bear's forelegs, and her fingers barely move. I let her do as she pleased. By tomorrow the Heavenly Demon's mood might turn, and she might decide to take my head.
I am going to lose my mind.
I took the knife away. Those sad eyes looking up at me change nothing. What is not allowed is not allowed. Every memory I have of a kitchen says the same thing: strike them hard across the cheek first, then teach them never to grab a knife so carelessly. I understand the reasoning, but doing that to a child like this is too much.
That sort of lesson is for when you are raising someone born as a precious child. A girl like this ought to understand from words alone, shouldn't she? And from now on she will have to hold a knife, whether to cook or to stab someone. In this world, at least, the latter is probably the easier way to stay alive.
Or would it be better to make her a Harvester and shape her into a proper person? If I repaired her appearance and had her bear children, I could probably raise a great many descendants of Harvesters.
Hmm.
The Faded Man's memories are unexpectedly quiet. At moments like this they usually flare, as if someone had marked them in bright highlight.
Looking through the memories of the four Harvesters, I can see what the ingredients are used for, so I ought to cook them passably and eat. But there is no fire. The kitchen has nothing to start one with, let alone fuel such as firewood. So I twisted reality just enough, went looking for a pot to fill with water and set to boil, found it rusted all the way through, threw it outside, and made a new one. While I was at it, I brought dishes too.
Creak.
Perhaps I made a little too much of it, because cracks opened in the kitchen. A frail world. They are shrinking slowly, though, so by tomorrow they ought to have closed back to what they were.
Cooking, done.
I'll admit it turned into dog food, but I plated it and meant to carry it to the room to eat. The moment I stepped inside, the room was chilly, so I came straight back to the kitchen. The fire is still going, and it is warmer here. Feed the child first. Think after.
I lifted a spoon and tasted it. Not dog food—thick dog gruel. I had failed to judge the water. Tomorrow's me will do better, surely. I sat down any which way in the kitchen and ate with the child.
"What's your name?"
At my question she mouths something, lips opening and closing. No sound comes out. She seems to have vocal cords in her throat—is it the muscle? From the shape of her mouth, it is not that she never learned to speak. She became unable to. Faint light seeps from place to place across her body. Parasites. That is what this is.
But I cannot take her warmth the way it was taken from me. Take the warmth, and they will become monsters and tear their way out of her. Would it be kinder to take the warmth and let her die? Or should I make her a Harvester?
I thought it while I watched the child with her mouth full of slop.
Dawn.
Perhaps because there is water nearby, it is bitterly cold. A quilt rotting away lay in the room, so I left it and laid the child down beside the kitchen fire. I must have brought some strange flame, because there is nothing left to burn and still it will not go out. This isn't something dangerous, like nuclear power, is it? No. If it were radiation, she would already be dead. I might be fine either way. This child is human.
That aside, something interesting is happening right now.
Gapjae, returned to the Protectors, is standing watch. Of course, standing watch does not mean standing outside. It means sitting somewhere far finer than the house I am living in. The people actually keeping the watch are those ranked beneath him.
Anyway, someone remarkable has appeared before that Gapjae. The previous cult leader's daughter, they say. A person famous enough that all four Harvesters know her. She left the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult for a time, and it seems she has come back. Citing some reason or other, she is persuading Gapjae to let her enter quietly.
The Harvesters all believe the current Heavenly Demon treated her well, but perhaps the two of them are on worse terms than expected. She said she does not want the Heavenly Demon to learn that she has returned. Gapjae nodded and agreed.
He knows the rumor that the previous Heavenly Demon's disappearance was the current Heavenly Demon's doing. And three of them, Gapjae included, think of the previous Heavenly Demon as a good person. No—strictly speaking, four. Yes. Jeonyang thinks the previous Heavenly Demon was a good person too.
From what I can see, I doubt he truly was. Why? Someone who built a system for putting worms into human bodies could hardly be a good person, could they? This is not a system the current Heavenly Demon made. It belongs to the previous generation, or to a line handed down from even earlier.
Anyway, Gapjae tacitly allowed the previous cult leader's daughter to come in. He could have attached some condition, but he simply let her pass, then sat down in his post and giggled to himself. He must have some plan of his own. Once someone becomes a Harvester I watch them in real time, but unless they speak it aloud or write it somewhere, I cannot know what they are thinking. A shame. Of course I could read it if I tried, but I would have to decipher the countless firings of the bundles of nerve cells in the brain.
And how, exactly, am I supposed to do that? I can't. So I am simply watching Gapjae giggle.
Eunchun and Byeongil are asleep, and Jeonyang is sunk in the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, training in the place I saw yesterday afternoon. The Heavenly Demon waiting outside the training room is absurdly funny. Unlike when he threatened me, he is sitting in a woman's posture. Is confusion over gender identity a tragedy? I couldn't say. Honestly, I don't care about the Heavenly Demon either way.
I am more interested in the circle of shamans that summoned me. A method of summoning that has nothing to do with Yasle's. If I could obtain their memories, that would be wonderful… To manage it, do I need to make a few more Harvesters before I can reach a shaman?
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult is a group that worships power. Put another way, they will do anything if it means obtaining strength. Once they learn that a Harvester is granted great power, there will be no shortage of volunteers. Given what the cult is, the odds are high that a shaman is among them. That is why I have made it known that I am here. The two men who brought the food and left will spread word of me, because they are the sort no one bothers to silence, and the sort who open their mouths easily to anyone.
If someone dressed up to look important had carried it in, the Heavenly Demon would likely be treating me as a person of importance. Fortunately, I am almost entirely neglected. And while he was at it, he took his petty revenge on me.
Hehe.
That suits me. I was uneasy with how wary he was of me, but like this I should be able to move quite freely.
Oh—revenge reminded me. Who was it, back then, that had one of Choseol's eyeballs? I destroyed it, because I could break it. Before her body was made again, she was practically a living corpse. She had been raised that way from the start: the five senses sealed off completely, her mind sunk in hallucination by drugs, her bodily functions at the barest minimum. Nine times out of ten, she would have died before reaching adulthood. She was meant to be used before she became an adult.
A human sacrifice?
But after I combed the four memories, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult has no custom of human sacrifice. And Choseol's identity is a mystery to begin with. Memory takes on a shape little by little around the age of three, and by then Choseol was already being kept like livestock. Yet I see no one around her in a similar state. If there had been some use for her, they would have made several, but dig through Choseol's memories and there is no one in the same position. What's more, the time she was being raised was before Jung-ha rose to the seat of Heavenly Demon.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult itself resembles the Demonic Cult in the Faded Man's memories, but something far more dank and secret hides in the space between them. A circle of shamans almost entirely cut off from the cult. Something that possessed one of Choseol's eyeballs. An excessively vast structure raised upon karst ground. The relationship between the previous cult leader and the present one.
There are many secrets. Which means I have to work hard at building an automatic harvesting system, so that I do not fall away the way I did in the first world.
I'll do my best.