Soo's Jianghu
The next day.
I put on the stiff-woven clothes someone from the Heavenly Demon Cult had brought the night before, and set out with Soo for the place where the funeral was being held.
It was not the Cult's main hall. The funeral was to take place in a village that stretched in a long line west from the main compound.
One thing nagged at me. For more than a week, Gi Jacheon, Hall Lord of the Heavenly Palace, had not shown himself. From the way he had been moving, I had expected him to make contact at least once.
Was he timid, or merely careful in his thoughts? Or perhaps the sight of the Heavenly Demon had broken something in him. Even if others grew stronger by becoming Harvesters, he must have started to wonder whether any of them could ever defeat the Heavenly Demon. A fierce wish to win might have granted them an ability with a real chance of victory, and yet, old as they all were, none of them rose to the challenge. They were perfectly willing to use their own subordinates as test subjects, just to see how strong they might become. If it was for the sake of power, they ought to have chewed poison itself. In the end, the fact that they had knelt to the Heavenly Demon told me how low their expectations were.
I was still turning that over when, before I knew it, we had arrived in a village where white cloth was strung from house to house. From somewhere far off, mournful music drifted faintly on the air. All I had to do was walk toward the sound.
"Choseol, what's this?"
Soo looked around as she asked, her face still plainly saying she didn't understand.
"Decorations to honor the dead."
I swallowed the rest of it — that they were also a display of authority. Even I knew better than that. To show a child a reality this harsh and tell her that this was the world would be nothing but incompetence. I had failed to protect a child's illusions precisely because I lacked the strength to protect them. And if someone insisted a child must know the world and shoved it in her face, that person was a fool.
They lay ruins down as the blueprint of the future, then hope a different world will come of it. Those same people are always the ones who turn around and blame everyone else, insisting they showed the children reality and that the children who failed to keep up were the ones at fault. Put ruins into the design and expect a splendid building to spring out of them, and you are either without intelligence, or you wanted a world like that from the start.
But people are not without intelligence. So it can only be that they want a broken world. Only then can they exploit a broken child who doesn't know what she ought to do, and take whatever they desire.
I won't do that.
Even if I show a child a beautiful future, those children will not take my place from me when they grow. It is the ones who lack power who fear that children will grow up and steal their seats. Only people like that fret over their own futures and turn the ground they live on into ruins.
Hehe.
I'll see the peak.
It feels good when your Harvester can do whatever they please, doesn't it? A Harvester will live as they like, kill the enemies who stand in the way, and send that warmth to me.
I once imagined covering the whole world in Harvesters, but I learned in the first world that I must not. So if I want a great deal of warmth, I have to make strong people. If I could receive the warmth of living things killed not by guns or blades but by bombs, then I would have to make a Harvester of whoever can press the button on a nuclear bomb.
Several ways of earning warmth come to mind. But reaching that point means clearing a great many obstacles. I'll step over them one by one. There is plenty of time.
Thinking all of this, I took my place with Soo among the people of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
Looking around, I saw not a single person in mourning. If anything, they spoke of the dead Jeonyang in the smallest of voices, and none of it was kind.
"The Heavenly Demon's favorite concubine ran wild committing atrocities and died. Good riddance."
"Why hold a funeral like this for scum like that?"
"Better off dead."
Whispers of that sort ran through the whole ceremony. The interesting part was that no one cursed the Heavenly Demon. Survival instinct still lingered, it seemed; every time someone cursed Jeonyang, I caught them glancing his way. If they were going to do that, they would have been better off not cursing at all.
I covered Soo's ears and stepped forward. So long as the Heavenly Demon was close by, I didn't think she would hear the ugly words. I parted the crowd and made my way toward the heart of the funeral.
The hall lords of each hall stood ahead of us, and in front of them the Heavenly Demon came into view, dressed in pure white. His stark, pale blue skin only sharpened the contrast with the white. Whether it was the age we lived in or the faint yellow still clinging to the cloth, he drew the eye more than anyone else there. And before him, the Hall Lord of Wolje Hall wore an outfit that looked exceedingly cumbersome, reciting incantation-like lines that prayed for the repose of the dead in the manner of the Heavenly Demon Cult.
I realized then that the music I had heard since entering the village was coming from either side of the platform where the coffin had been raised. Several people in the dress of Wolje Hall held instruments, and winds, strings, and drums wove together.
So this world had music too. I had thought that people who did nothing but fight would have no interest in such things. As if this were its moment, the faded man's memories glittered, insisting that the art of music was one of the true fundamentals.
No.
What was that obsession with martial arts tales, anyway? Strictly speaking, everything here was mixed together, and there was no guarantee the world matched the one those memories knew. By that logic, the Heavenly Demon ought to have died the last time. Then Gu Seongyong would have climbed back into the Heavenly Demon's seat, ruled as a tyrant, and died a sudden death. But it hadn't gone that way, had it? So the memories weren't worth much.
I had seen plenty of stories about people who mistook themselves for knowers of the future and fell because of it, and yet I couldn't understand why the memories refused to connect in that direction. Irritated, I pressed down the recollections that were especially loud in this second world.
Soo and I stood quietly and watched the long, long funeral.
The last road.
The Heavenly Demon committed every face around him to memory, so when our eyes met I lifted Soo's hand and waved it with my own. Our faces had been stamped. I had done the bare minimum required of me.
A funeral where most of those present hated Jeonyang — I wondered whether that didn't feel unpleasant for him. Still, this was surely the finest funeral the Heavenly Demon knew how to give. I kept poking Soo, who stood there looking bored, and held our place until the rite came to a close. The moment it ended, the crowd suddenly began to move.
Following them, I came upon people whose faces said, plain as anything, that they had been dragged here by force, flinging paper spirit money before Jeonyang's coffin. So this was the custom of the world. I had been fretting that I had none, but partway along they passed it out for anyone to take. I did as the person ahead of me did, and then we slipped away from the place that resembled an incense altar.
They weren't serving food. If we simply went back, could we eat something to serve as both lunch and dinner?
I was turning that over when Soo tugged at my sleeve, once and then again.
"What is it?"
Soo stretched out her hand and pointed. I followed her gaze. Someone was selling food — though calling it food was generous. It wasn't meals, but fruit cut up and sold like a snack. Well. We had come in the morning and stood there until long past noon. Of course she was hungry.
The problem was that I had no currency. I knew, of course, what money this world used. I simply didn't have any of it.
"Give me!"
I ought to have been glad to see her fussing the way a child does.
Hmm.
"I'm sorry. I don't have any money."
"But Choseol's amazing."
Did I look that way? All I could do was run when someone hit me, or break a glass bottle. And when I thought of the pleasure of a bottle shattering, I wanted to do it again.
Not yet. I was all right. I could endure. If it went on a few more times, though, I honestly thought it would turn dangerous. Rather than drawing up a future, I felt I would smash the world for the sake of the present.
I was certain that if anyone learned what I did, reaching other worlds would only grow harder. So I must not do anything that breaks a world, even if it meant being driven out of this one. I can crush a world beneath my weight. But if that world does not call me, I cannot go there. I would have to look up from beneath the surface of the water. Smash a world like a fool and harvest its warmth on the spot, and I would never rise into a world again.
So I endure, as I always have. Endure, and endure, and endure once more. And if, in order to endure, I deliberately feed the feeling I have now —
Yes.
I am terribly ashamed.
I don't have the money to buy a child anything. I'm sorry I'm so useless!
I gripped Soo's hand tight.
"Once I earn some money, Soo can buy it."
Ah. Soo's face changed into one that looked ready to cry.
No. Um. What do I do.
"Here. Take this."
Wondering what was happening, I turned my head. The man selling fruit was chuckling as he held out a small piece to Soo.
"We can't buy any."
"It's all right. Today's business is ruined anyway. Liquor will sell better than fruit like this. What's already peeled will just have to be thrown out if I leave it, so you two eat."
As he spoke, he glanced toward the place where the funeral was unfolding.
Of course. Holding a funeral for someone whose death made you glad left a bad taste.
I got to my feet. Beaming, I caught Soo's head — she was busy popping the sweet fruit into her mouth — and bowed it along with my own.
"Thank you."
"It's nothing. Sisters? Faces I haven't seen around here."
"We started living somewhere to the north a little while ago."
At that, the man's expression went stiff.
"There? There shouldn't be anyone living there anymore. And I've never seen kids like you in that village."
I studied him. Skin deeply weathered by the sun. Deep scars along his arms and legs. Feet badly blistered, and fingers missing several joints. I could roughly tell the place he occupied. He belonged to those pushed out to the margins, and from the way he spoke, he was someone who had lived in that ruined village.
A person who has lost something precious and is still trying, somehow, to go on living has value. I had meant to put this off a little longer. This was a good opportunity.
I pointed at the wounds.
"Old wounds."
"Huh? Yeah. That's right. Because I survived that day."
He scratched his head, looking uncomfortable. The joints of his other hand were swollen. I glanced at Soo, happily putting fruit in her mouth with no thought for anything else, then looked back at the man and spoke.
I had a justification. What I needed was a performance easy to understand.
"I received a kindness. So I'll return it as a contract. If you want a better reality, answer me."
On the surface, it sounded like returning goodwill with goodwill. In truth, I was not binding the man with goodwill at all. It was the opposite. Those who hold goodwill are bound to be caught by malice, aren't they?
"I will give myself to you. In exchange, later, once you have finished settling everything, I will take all that you possess then. How does that sound?"
The man blinked at me, his face saying he didn't understand, and when I held out my hand he took it with a reluctant look.
"I just have to say yes, right?"
Yes. That was enough.
The man's face cracked, and from within it pure white skin pushed free. His hair dyed itself purple. I lifted his hand so the people around us could see it clearly. Fingers that had not been there a moment ago grew back into place.
"Yes. Congratulations on your recovery. This is the goodwill you gave me, returned to you."
What had been returned was not goodwill, but malice.
The man stared at me in a daze, then quietly drew his hand back and touched it again and again. Only after confirming that the other hand, too, had become whole and clean did he drive his forehead to the ground in a bow.
"Thank you, Heavenly Maiden!"
He was not the only one. People who looked at me lowered their heads. I watched them, and I smiled.
Hehe.
It was time to expand my influence.