Soo's Jianghu — 14
In the end, all that remained was a request that I wait four years.
And with it lingered that unpleasant sensation of a place that ought to hold something, standing empty. I feel as though I have lost my way on a vast, boundless sea. I am that sea, so perhaps there is not even a path.
I can worry all I like. Time flows on regardless. When the sun sets, Soo and I make dinner together, and when night comes we sleep out on the wooden veranda, taking in the night air. When morning returns, I catch hold of Soo and tell her the stories I know. Most of them dress justice and morality up in dreams and hope. The rest are only a few scraps of simple common sense.
Arithmetic I kept truly basic. She loathes doing anything with numbers, so there was no helping it. I am neither her parent nor her teacher, and if Soo does not want to do something, I do not make her.
Soo speaks to me casually and calls me by name. At the very least, it is clear she does not see me as a parent. And as far as I know, Soo's family is still alive. She was not cast off by them, either. Every child living around the Heavenly Demon Cult is taken by force. Once they reach a certain age they are dragged to the cult, put through indoctrination, and have insects injected into their bodies. Soo knows that lies beyond anything a parent can stop. So perhaps, rather than treating me like family, she simply treats me the way she used to back at the main hall.
Whether she means to return to her family's arms once she is grown, I could not say. No—there is the matter of the Heavenly Demon. Soo may not be thinking what I suppose she is. It would not hurt to ask.
"Soo. Do you miss your family?"
The summer room is far too hot, so we spend nearly all our time on the veranda. At my question, Soo, who had been lying plastered to the boards and complaining of the heat, lifted her head.
"Why?"
Her face asked why I would bring up something like that out of nowhere.
"Don't human children want to see their parents?"
That is how I understand most people. Even in an age when the old family-first order has largely come apart, brothers and sisters may drift away, but the bond between parent and child is not so easily cut. Thinking in the ordinary way, then, would Soo not miss her family too?
But Soo glanced around once, then asked me something else.
"What about you, Choseol?"
"Choseol's parents are both already dead."
The previous cult leader had seized Eunjae's descendants in an attempt to unravel the secret of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. He had, in fact, come very close. The art Eunjae wielded had been a matter of fighting by using me. And since she had asked about Choseol, not about me, I told her of Choseol's circumstances. I have no idea what became of the parents in those faded memories, from the time when I was a man.
"I see. Guess I'll have to meet them someday. Yeah."
A strangely cold attitude.
"You don't particularly want to see them? You remember your parents, don't you?"
"I remember. That's why I don't want to see them."
I tried to understand Soo's answer. I failed. If she remembers them, would she not want to meet them?
Looking through Soo's memories, she had not been on bad terms with her parents. Her older brother and older sister had vanished, of course, leaving only a younger brother and a younger sister, but that was simply the way of things in that village. Go into any house and the children of those in-between years are gone. They all go to the Heavenly Demon Cult, and only half of them come back alive, because inside the cult there are any number of ways to die.
Not everyone lives like that, of course. From what I saw in Gapjae's memories, the people in the villages west of the cult do not have their children dragged off to the main sect. The villages clinging to the western side are the Heavenly Demon Cult; beyond them lie other villages. An easy comparison: if the Blue House, the old presidential residence, is the cult's main hall, then the village stuck to its west is Seoul, and the village Soo was taken from is a city out in the provinces.
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. Why are you suddenly asking something like that?"
Soo asked it with a strangely bristling air.
"I just wondered, all of a sudden."
I had been turning it over all along. Had it been yesterday, the question would have been whether she could live well enough if she went out on her own like this. But four years had been bound in place, and so it became a question about nothing at all.
Somehow Soo crawled over, caught hold of me, and buried her face against my body. I would have thought it too hot for that, yet she clung on readily enough. I was wondering how long she meant to stay that way when at last she said it was hot and pulled away.
And right about then, the Heavenly Demon came over. Lunchtime had already passed, it seemed. I rose from where I sat.
"Let's eat lunch first."
"Yay!"
Soo got up. For the first time we ate lunch together with the Heavenly Demon, who had arrived before we sat down to the meal. For the record, the Heavenly Demon grew terribly mournful, declaring that it tasted awful and asking whether we ate like this every day. Well, set beside the food of the Heavenly Demon Cult, it really does not taste like much.
We cleaned up afterward, and the two of them began their training. I meant to wait until Soo was practicing on her own, then go to the village with the Heavenly Demon. It occurred to me, though, that it might take far too long. So I told the Heavenly Demon I would walk on ahead, and left the house.
It was time to make a Harvester.
This time, when I go to the village, I go with the Heavenly Demon. If there is an unknown group, it matters that I go with the highest among them. And if Harvesters keep being abducted, that too will be easy enough to notice.
I crossed ground where the heat rose in shimmering waves and made for the village, then stood near the entrance and waited. Before long the Heavenly Demon appeared, crossing in an instant the road that had taken me quite a long while to walk. Faster than a decent carriage of the modern sort, is she not?
"Why are you so fast?"
"I'm the Heavenly Demon."
It is amusing that she considers that an answer, but it is not exactly wrong, so I accepted it and entered the village with her.
The moment we stepped inside, the atmosphere was unmistakably different. When I had gone in alone, the eyes on me had been furtive, stolen glances. Now they were full of awe and worship, and wherever the Heavenly Demon walked, people bowed in place of a greeting. A religion would be like that.
The Heavenly Demon Cult is closer to a gathering of people who revere force of arms, with no doctrine written down as rules. Even so, a religion is a religion. No—strictly speaking, there is exactly one place that has doctrine. Wolje Hall. Only that place turns in a distinctly alien way. If the cult is made of religion and martial force, Wolje Hall alone tends the religion. The Heavenly Demon herself is little more than a symbol.
Of course I did not say that to her. She may talk of being a sword and what have you, but a person's thoughts are not something that can be trusted never to change. I have no intention of telling anyone, anywhere, that I watch through a Harvester's eyes. That is one of my few weapons. And knowing the weapon has a flaw, I am not fool enough to speak of it. Being unable to know a Harvester's thoughts with any precision is a rather fatal weakness.
The Heavenly Demon and I walked straight on through the bowing crowd.
"Whom do you mean to bless?"
Reaching the center of the village, the Heavenly Demon stopped and asked me. So I looked around. There were many faces I had seen before. A few of them were limping now. They used to be perfectly sound. I have no intention of touching those people yet.
Hmm.
Yes. I will make the plan as I go. Wherever the Heavenly Demon's power reaches—perhaps this is the moment her regard for me stands at its highest, a moment when she would grant whatever I asked. I will gamble here. Wolje Hall is hidden so deep that unless the Heavenly Demon openly tears the cult apart, I doubt I will ever lay eyes on it. I want to give power to the oppressed, yes. More than that, I want the knowledge that can summon me, and I want it while I can still obtain it.
"The Master of Wolje Hall. I'll give it to that person."
Doubt filled the Heavenly Demon's face.
"The Master of Wolje Hall? Why that one?"
I pointed at the village.
"The one who shared with me went missing here. You'll remember. The man who, out of kindness, shared his fruit with Soo and me."
I dress it as though I were going purely to demand an accounting for a crime. In truth I have no intention of demanding any such thing. I am the most vicious one here, after all. So long as I can obtain warmth, I do not care what becomes of anything. But the figure of someone who stands for the lowly is extremely important. The outward face, and the righteous cause. I felt that power for myself in the first world. A lesson ought to be put to good use. First, let us make it perfectly clear who is in the right.
"Heavenly Demon. I am the power the Heavenly Demon Cult desires. That power itself, am I not?"
She had said something of the sort before.
"That's right. You stand at the end of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. No—perhaps you stand at the end of every act of destruction."
The Heavenly Demon granted it.
I scattered the sparks. I played a little game with words, speaking as if I were the cult's final destination, and declared that anyone who rejects me is a villain. To the people who had helped me out of kindness, I handed a cause with which they might resist.
The Heavenly Maiden. They offered me kindness, calling me one come down from heaven. In return, I let them wield that kindness as a weapon. If you are hurt, come find me. If a friend dies, come find me. I will lend you my strength, so do what you wish to do. Arm yourselves in kindness, and seek the righteous path. However much blood runs beneath it, I will see that it is blessed.
I swallowed the words that still must not be spoken. Together with the Heavenly Demon I said a few things condemning the Master of Wolje Hall, and more than once I said that anyone who finds my power unsettling is an enemy of the Heavenly Demon Cult. Then I set out with her to find the Master of Wolje Hall.
Now it is time to acquire knowledge.