A Second Life
The monster born from devouring its own parents.
The talentless wretch, blessed with no ability at all.
The moth that snuffed out the brightest of flames.
Ask to whom all those disgraceful epithets belong, and the people of our family would answer without a shred of shame: the Former Young Family Head, already departed from this world — they were the names of the one son he left behind.
I had lived a life despised by everyone.
No... perhaps not by everyone.
In this alley where the rain fell so hard it blinded me, a girl was walking slowly toward me. I had believed that girl, at least, was different — she had always smiled at me with warm eyes and treated me like a genuine human being of the family.
"...Why?!! Why on earth?!!"
Which was exactly why this confusion cut so deep.
With this ordinary body, there was no escaping an exorcist. With this body that could wield no ability whatsoever, there was no escaping a family of exorcists hailed as the strongest in history — they watched me from every corner, waiting to stamp out the walking calamity that was me. I had overlooked that simple truth for far too long.
"I, too, was merely one of the family's eyes."
"......"
I looked straight at my cousin, dressed properly down to her formal hanbok, her saber leveled at me. Her usual bright, cheerful expression was nowhere to be found — in its place was a coldness without end, the very face I feared most from my family.
In the end, I had been deceived yet again — by the Family Head himself. I, who had been born devouring his brightest flame, had been cast aside by him once more.
"...Why?!! Why on earth?!!"
"......"
"What did I do— what did I possibly do that was so wrong?!!"
I didn't want to die. Being born into a family of exorcists without a single ability to my name — what crime was that, exactly? The tears of a man struggling to live were simply swallowed by the rain.
I let out a long, ragged breath and stared at the cousin before me, hoping she would give me an answer, any answer. She sighed, lowered her sword a fraction, and explained as though it were a chore.
"...You've lived a full fifteen years, and you truly don't know?"
"......"
"I can hardly believe you and I are the same age, brother."
Her eyes went cold once more. Those blue eyes fixed on me as if to swallow me whole again.
"This year, you and I both turn fifteen — the age of enrollment at the Exorcist Academy."
The Exorcist Academy. A school that drew exorcists from all over the world, where talented commoners and the children of renowned exorcist lineages enrolled to walk the path of becoming certified exorcists. Which meant that children of exorcist families had to enroll, talent or no.
"...!"
"I see you finally understand."
"......"
I had no choice but to nod. The family had always balked at letting me set foot outside. The Inhwa Family, into which I was born, had hidden my existence from the exorcist world — a monster born of devouring its father and mother, the family's most brilliant flames, and inheriting none of their talent, was nothing but a stain upon the family name.
But no one, not anyone, could evade the eyes of the Exorcist Academy's Principal. And if evasion was impossible...
"...then you simply bury it and be done with it. At least, that is what the elders of the family believe."
"......"
"...You look distressed? Well, it is only the natural order of things."
Distressed, she says?
"If I weren't distraught, staring down my own death, would that even make me human?"
When I asked with a twisted face, she seemed taken aback for a moment — then burst out laughing.
"You are a monster, brother."
"...What?"
"At the very least, from the Inhwa Family's standpoint, you are unquestionably a monster."
At that sneering, condescending look, my jaw clenched — but the moment I accepted there was nothing I could do, every ounce of strength drained from my body.
— Thud.
So this was where it ended. My worthless little life had been fated to meet its end just like this.
"For a life no different from the imps and evil spirits strewn about this world — thank you for your trouble."
My cousin's words barely reached my ears. A blade cold as the grave forced my drooping head back up, its icy flat settling beneath my chin. My heart pounded like mad, screaming itself hoarse at me to live, to run — and yet.
'...That's enough now. Let it end here.'
I simply wanted it to stop. I didn't want to become any uglier than this. Struggling here would only buy me more ridicule. To an exorcist, an ordinary person must look like nothing more than a field mouse scampering before a human.
Through a vision blurred by tears and rain, I saw my cousin's figure — unlike me, with my black hair and black eyes, she had been born with the silver hair and blue eyes of the Inhwa Family. A heartbeat later, her blade — carrying no ability of any kind — tore swiftly through my chest.
— Shhk!!!
An attack that would never have felled an exorcist. Because I was no exorcist, it arrived as a mortal wound, and pain dyed my body from head to toe.
"Kghh......"
The thick taste of blood welled back up my throat. My chest burned. The feeling of something hot trickling down only sharpened the agony, cruelly so.
"...And with this, it's over, brother."
Through the pain, I heard my cousin's infinitely cold voice. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to tremble, just a little.
"Have I grown attached, I wonder... Father ordered me to make your death as painful as possible, yet it seems this is the first time I have ever gone against the elders of the household."
In that voice — so like one bestowing mercy — I thought I caught a faint trace of sorrow. Surely just my imagination.
"A life no better than trash — I have ended it with my own hands."
And with those words as her only farewell, without so much as a bow of her head, my cousin — In Hwa-rang — drew her blade from my chest and walked away.
The strength to hold myself up ebbed away, and sprawled across the ground, I stared blankly at the sky. A sky raining down as if demented. Through vision clouding to gray, cold concrete buildings and a brooding, rain-heavy sky gazed down at me.
Lonely to the very last. What a life.
'...Th-this life... I never... asked for it.'
I had never wanted to be born. If I had never existed, my mother and father would still be alive. All I could do was resent myself, without end, for the simple fact of my birth — the me of the past who had doomed the me of now to suffer. I had learned long ago that resenting others changed nothing, so who else was there to blame but myself? At least now, here at the end.
Consciousness drifting out of reach. Warmth abandoning my body from its farthest edges inward. If I had to die, I prayed, let me at least come back as a vengeful spirit and be given my chance at retribution — and just as I was slowly loosening my grip on the fading world...
— Splash.
Into a world sinking into silence, footsteps sounded, impossibly clear — so clear I felt I could trace the ripples blooming from every puddle those steps disturbed. At the same time, an elegant fragrance like warm flowers brushed my nose, as though it were coaxing my dying senses back to life, one by one.
'...A person?'
Was this... a person? No — too light to be human. And yet too much of a human soul lingered to call it a monster. Which left only one answer.
'...An exorcist.'
An exorcist — and one above even my grandfather, the Family Head... no, a being that dwelled somewhere far higher still. I couldn't make out its shape, but from sound alone I knew it was holding an umbrella over me — the rain's voice had changed, striking fabric now instead of flesh.
"Truly, is that what you wish for?"
I couldn't tell what he meant.
"...I asked whether you wish for revenge."
Did I want it? Of course I did. Fifteen years — a full fifteen years I had endured. Of course I wanted revenge. The very existence of exorcists made me sick with loathing. I had believed that even among them, some were kind. And one of them had just betrayed me.
My chest tore with pain — I couldn't tell whether it was the blade or the betrayal, the agony was beyond telling apart. But was that truly all there was to it?
After a moment's struggle, I thought, dazed:
"...I... want to..."
"What is it?"
Someone like you......
"...I want to be... a great exorcist... like you..."
I wanted to become a great exorcist.
The shadow rippled faintly, and once more the clear voice came.
"Pfh. What an ambitious little dream."
It didn't sound like mockery.
"...?"
In that instant, crimson flames swallowed me whole, and consciousness left me.
How much time had passed?
"...!?"
When I opened my eyes once more—
"Wh-what is this...!?"
I was inside the body of a stranger — someone I had never seen before. No... it didn't seem to be possession, exactly.
"A mole beneath the eye...?"
The teardrop mole under this eye sat in exactly the same spot as the one on my old body. A dull, unidentifiable ache throbbed in my chest, and the only thing covering me was a single cloak.
Before the shock could even settle, one person surfaced in my mind.
"...Don't tell me — that invitation to come to his school, at the very end..."
Was that his way of gifting me a second life?
Only once the thought had run its course could I finally take stock of my surroundings. First: there seemed to be no Inhwa Family exorcists anywhere in sight. That, at least, was a mercy. As for any other variables...
"...Clothes."
A hanbok lay before my eyes, along with a single letter and a certificate of admission. Someone had clearly worked a charm of some sort — hanbok, letter, certificate, not one of them was the least bit damp, all arranged in tidy silence.
"Hahchoo...!!! Haa... r-right. Clothes first."
I had been lying there with nothing but a cloak over bare skin, and my body was in a sorry state. Everything was bewildering, but if I stayed like this and got hauled off as some indecent pervert, things would only get worse — so I resolved to dress first.
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