Chapter 88
Only after draining the bowl did the Heavenly Demon seem to notice she had been sweating. She looked down at clothes plastered to her with it. When Soo had hesitated and started to slip free, that hand had circled strangely through empty air, as if to catch her. I found that amusing.
Is a person's warmth actually warm? It has not been long since someone precious to her died. They say that if someone stays beside you through a hard time, the gratitude lasts. Not that I set Soo on her with any such aim, of course. I was only reading the behavior after I had seen it. I don't watch people the way some strategist would, certain that if I do this, they will move exactly as I intend. I know only how people think in general. I cannot predict any one of them. I wish I had a tremendous intellect. Or, failing that, some special gift for brainwashing. I have neither, so I improvise.
"Are you a little calmer now?"
The Heavenly Demon set the bowl down and dressed again. The clothes were still damp, and her face twisted in open disgust. Well, who wants to put on something soaked through with sweat? But what else is there? Walk around bare from the waist up and you're a pervert. A pervert. She fidgeted with her collar, looked at me, and spoke.
"Is that why you want warmth?"
Oh. Mmm. Well—yes. It resembles the feeling of cold, but in essence it is nothing like it at all. If she has felt even a little of that, then she has caught me playing games with the word warmth. Excuses in my head, a twist of wording, talking in circles, a straight face. Several methods occur to me. I have spoken only the truth, so I don't need to keep track of what came before a lie or after it. Moments like this really do convince me the choice was the right one. Anyway.
"Yes. It's cold, isn't it?"
At the question, the Heavenly Demon nodded slowly. Beside me, Soo threw her arms around my waist and squeezed. No—not that kind of warmth. A hug doesn't do anything. Soo.
"To the bone."
Her expression was terribly complicated. Somewhere in it, I found the part that pitied me. Oh? Pity? That means she felt for me. Why? Isn't she supposed to take me for a monster that craves warmth only because it thinks it might freeze to death?
"How are you still in your right mind?"
What? Does she think of me as a person? Did she believe me when I said I was human, and sympathize from there? I can faintly see an opening. I have to choose my words with care. What should I do? Well... It is maddening, this head that cannot produce an answer on the spot. Nothing for it. I'll speak by the rule. Only the truth.
"I went mad a long time ago."
Only the truth, then. I begged them to let me live, and then I begged them to kill me instead—begged and begged, without end. I had no body, so I could not even wear out. I begged forever. By the time a light at last showed in the sky, the faded man's memories were nothing but dust. Whether that much time truly passed, or whether there was simply no phenomenon by which to guess at time and it was not, in fact, so long, I don't know. Escape from reality? I tried. I probably even tried to make another self. But my body is not human. Even if I wanted to set myself aside as someone else, there was no one there but me, and the cold. However much stress I took on, a brain would not break. I had no brain to break. Above all, the cold was too cold for any escape. And to ease it, I became capable of anything.
"Even so, you don't have to pity me quite like that."
Thank you. Truly. So she sees me as a victim. Strictly speaking, I am one. But I became a perpetrator. To obtain what I want, I will do anything. Anything. So when an opening appears, I use it.
"How does it look to you, Heavenly Demon? Can you tell why I can't use my power?"
She closed her eyes. Not because she wanted no more of me, but to set her thoughts in order. Then she opened them, and took the answer into her mouth.
Poetry again. Difficult to interpret. What is she even saying? Could she not answer a little less literarily? I put on a face that demanded an explanation, and she looked back at me with open contempt, as if to ask how anything with a head like this was still alive. It was the same face the man in those faded memories wore when some adult older than he was started in on the flat earth. Is this the sorrow of an ordinary person stranded among the literati?
"If internal energy—if qi—is the foundation this world is built on, then you are a rule that denies it. A rule that says it is not there."
In short, she means I cannot use it because I am what I am.
"But Eunjae uses it perfectly well. So do the others."
"Which is why it is so viciously destructive. This is not mere power. It is a law that negates all things in the world."
She stopped all at once. Then her face changed, as if something had come clear.
"Ah. So that was why he said he had seen the end of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. At the time I thought he had made himself a martial god, and grown arrogant."
With a bitter look, the Heavenly Demon raised her hand and stared down into her palm.
"He was right."
She closed it into a fist and lowered it again. From the way she spoke, I think she has worked out that I am dangerous. I only ran a brief experiment to take the measure of my own power. How did things roll out like this? Isn't it terribly unfair? How am I supposed to talk my way through it? While I was still fretting, she stepped up in front of me. There was no killing intent. She looked at me instead with an expression so clear it was strange.
See? I don't know why she wears a face like that, but it always ends this way. Still, this I can answer without a lie. No—this is an opportunity. I'll load the answer with so much information it saturates. I'll pour out the truth until she forgets the question she actually needs to ask. I put my whole sincerity into it.
"I don't want the world to fall. It's the opposite. The world ought to grow larger. I want people to go where no one has gone, to reach what no one can reach, and to press on—far away, beyond the sky, out into infinite space."
Only then will people kill more people. Once they pass a certain number and become figures on paper, values on a screen, they go numb. They slaughter countless human beings without ever feeling that they are killing anyone. Numbers paralyze. A murderer kills only a single person, but someone in power kills hundreds, thousands, and has no awareness at all of killing people. Not because that person is a psychopath. Because it was only a number that changed, not a person, and so it cannot be felt. I like people like that. They are the ones who will bring me warmth. Day after day they will exploit those who have nothing and dry them out until they die, and in killing so very many they will give me warmth. The ideal talent, come harvest. For that, there must be more people. Past the billions. More still. Until what one sees is no longer people, but only numbers.
"The world must not be destroyed. Never."
What happened to the first world must never happen again.
"Yes. You don't lie. Lies, at least, you don't tell."
With that, the Heavenly Demon looked up at the sky from the kitchen. There is no wall at all on the western side, and only a small door to the east, so a single step carries you outside. She had been gazing upward. Now she lowered her head.
"I'm worn out today. I'll head back early."
She started off, stopped all at once, and looked back.
"It is impossible for you to use qi. Well then. Goodbye, children. I'll see you tomorrow."
One last line, and she goes. The faded man's memory dragged up the word teabagging. What is this picture of some child sitting down and standing up in place, over and over? In the first world this memory hardly stirred at all. In the second, it surfaces nicely.
I saw the Heavenly Demon off and turned to Soo. I wonder what this child made of our conversation.
"Soo, what do you think of what the Heavenly Demon said?"
The tiny girl, who comes only to my waist, hardly paused before she answered.
"Choseol's weak. Poor thing."
A fine warrior's temperament, peeking through. But she seemed to have more to say. She came closer and hugged me.
"It's okay! Soo's gonna get strong and protect you!"
She heard the whole conversation, and that is what she says? Isn't there something a little more... else? I know she's clever. I've watched her talk with the Heavenly Demon.
"But why am I Choseol, while the Heavenly Demon is Master?"
"'Cause Choseol's weak?"
She stabs me with the plain fact at once. Wherever did she learn that? Then again, this world respects the person who teaches you martial arts. It isn't strange that Soo would follow the custom.
"Then how come Choseol calls Master the Heavenly Demon? Her name. That's not it."
She's asking that? While the Heavenly Demon was teaching the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, names came up. Soo learned Jung-ha's name then, too, but the day passed over it, and I hadn't known the question was still sitting with her. This one, though, has an answer.
"When we exchanged names, she introduced herself as the Heavenly Demon. To me, that is her name."
I explained what I was, and she—he, back then—called herself the Heavenly Demon. It will not change. Why? She obtained her wish, and I obtained what I wanted. So from here on, too, she is the Heavenly Demon. Soo stares straight at me.
"You're just being petty 'cause she wouldn't tell you her real name, right?"
Hehe. I lifted a finger to my lips. Soo looked at me as if I were hopeless.
"No chest, and the heart's small too."
It is true that I am nothing but height, while the Heavenly Demon is tall and full-chested besides. If Choseol's age were an adult's, I might feel differently, but reckoning the timing, she is around fourteen. The height, out of all proportion to those years, comes from the alterations to the body. They must have raised the child bound up near the ceiling, in something close to weightlessness, so that only her height stretched. Had this body walked out before I entered it, it could not have walked at all. There was no muscle fit to hold it up. She was bred, and cruelly. More than that, listening to Soo, there is one thing I can tell.
Might this child truly be a born fighter?