The Benefactor (1)
Once I had thrown on my clothes, I wrapped my arms around a body gone cold and moved into the shade, out of the rain.
"Hnnn..."
I still couldn't make sense of any of it. All I could do was drag the tangled memories out of my head, one by one.
I was certain I had died.
No—more precisely, it felt as if someone had seized me by the collar and hauled me back from the bank in the instant before I crossed the river of the dead. Stories circulated often enough of exorcists who never reached the afterlife, their feet bound to the mortal world and left to wander. Some drifted as specters with no sense of self at all. Others were made into another exorcist's servants. Binding a person to this world without granting them a consciousness was, of course, a Forbidden Art.
"...I haven't become an anomaly, have I?"
My body shivered in the cold, but my mind was clear. I could tell that I was myself. My sense of self was intact, which meant no Forbidden Art had been used on me.
"...Did someone save a person who was already dying?"
The dull ache still throbbing in my chest told me the truth of it. The sword had not merely passed through a lung or some lesser organ. It had gone straight through my heart. I had stolen a glance while dressing, and not a single wound remained.
Exorcist or not—could anyone really take a person dying in the winter rain with a sword through the heart and set them back down perfectly whole?
That can't be possible...
It would not have been strange to call it the work of some monstrous god. And yet, from the scraps of knowledge I had only ever stolen in glances over other people's shoulders, I realized I had no way to measure the nameless exorcist who had saved me.
I drew a breath, and damp winter air slipped in across my lips.
"...Is simply being alive a miracle?"
I couldn't even guess how much time had passed. The rain showed no sign of having stopped, so I could only suppose it hadn't been long. Only after the shivering slowly eased and my soaked body began to dry did the letter finally catch my eye.
A strange letter the rain would not wet, and an Admission Certificate.
Come to my school.
I had never properly heard which school that was. Hoping the certificate might say, I went over every inch of it, but the only words written there were these:
A blank document. It did not even say who had been admitted, or where.
After everything I had suffered at the hands of exorcists, the fact that I had trusted one made me feel like a goddamn fool.
If they meant to save me, couldn't they at least have saved me in the body I already had? I had let it pass in the panic. Now a worse fear crept in—that my very sex had been changed, and that I was occupying someone else's body.
...Should I hide, the way I am?
Part of me wanted to run and shut myself away in the mountains, to live out there alone. But I could not believe for a moment that the exorcist would fail to find me, and the simple fact that they had saved me kept my fingers worrying at the envelope.
I'm a wreck...
Truly, maddeningly lost.
I had nowhere else to go, and with my body changed, even my identity had evaporated. In the end, the only person I could rely on was that one. I had no choice but to open the envelope.
If you are reading this letter, then you have opened your eyes. Ah, do not worry. Once you have finished reading it, a man will come to fetch you.
A letter that began with the most obvious of greetings.
If I was honest, I did feel a revulsion toward the people called exorcists. It was also true that theirs was a clan I wanted to smash to pieces.
But...
"...Ngh."
I crumpled the letter just slightly, brow tightening, and coaxed myself to settle down and simply read the rest.
More kindly than I had expected, the letter laid out exactly where things stood.
Your memories may be in some disorder. I heard your wish clearly.
Quite the ambitious dream.
Even I laughed before I knew it... It was like looking upon someone's childhood.
To come to the point: you were born into a body that cannot use supernatural power.
A body that could not use supernatural power. I knew. That was the very reason I had died.
Born of an exorcist's blood, and still unable to wield supernatural power properly—the clan throws you away. I did not know how other clans did things. But mine, the Inhwa Clan, was exactly like that. What a wretched way to treat a person.
Swallowing my anger, I read the next line, and my eyes went wide.
From now on, however, you need not be so pessimistic.
"...?"
Did you think I made your body a woman's for no reason?
Somehow I could tell that the one who had written this was wearing a confident smile.
"...I can use supernatural power?"
Your hair and the color of your eyes will have changed. That is your true self.
My true self. More precisely, the self that could wield supernatural power. The self that might, perhaps, have become an exorcist.
The brightest flame of the Inhwa Clan, they called you.
"...!?"
The further I read, the harder it was not to be stunned. This exorcist had every detail of who I was in hand.
You said you wanted to become an exorcist as tremendous as I am.
Then come to my school.
I will vouch for your identity.
Congratulations on your admission to the Exorcist Military Academy, child.
A dark crimson flame burst from the letter with a violent rush—and burned it away to nothing.
"Kh—?!"
It had not been hot enough to burn me, but the shock was sharp. I pressed a hand over my hammering heart, eyes wide, and dragged in a ragged breath.
"Hah... That scared me."
Once I had caught my breath, I hugged the Admission Certificate tight against my chest and leaned back against the wall, trying to hold on to what little warmth I had.
I was cold, and I was hungry. So what. It didn't matter. Cold and hunger were already old companions. Wail about the cold, and all you earned was a hungrier stomach and a mind that started to blur. The colder it got, the hungrier you were, the more it helped to crouch where you were and keep your breathing small. I knew that very well. In a clan where there had not been a single person I could trust, Grandmother had taken the switch to me for no reason at all and left me shut in a freezing storehouse more times than I could count.
This was better than those days. The people of the clan were not here. They would think I was dead. I was free now, and that sense of release settled me, if only a little.
"They said... someone would come for me."
Sleep crept in, slow and heavy. It would have been stranger if I weren't tired. I leaned against the cold concrete wall and fought to keep hold of a consciousness that kept trying to slip. Minutes passed, and the person who was supposed to come for me did not.
I did not want to think I had been abandoned again.
"...Save me."
The words slipped out of me as I drifted toward sleep.
Splash.
Clear footsteps sounded once more. A moment later, their owner called my name.
"Inhwa Ryeong."
"...?"
I turned my head. Through half-lidded eyes I saw a man in a black hanbok, a gat set on his head.
"...A reaper?"
"I have come to escort you. Let us go."
"Ah..."
"You seem exhausted. Very well."
The rain was coming down hard, but the man readily yielded his umbrella to me and lifted me onto his back. I was so sleepy I could not even remember whether I had held the umbrella properly.
"Where... am I going?"
"I cannot say."
"..."
"Only this. A person of high standing took pity on you."
So that was it. Not bad.
A winter of rain falling in sheets. A girl with short silver hair and blue eyes stared blankly at the drops ticking down the roof tiles.
She was Inhwa Rang, closer than anyone to becoming the next head of the Inhwa Clan. Drawing in the cold air, she traced back through the day's memories with an empty gaze.
Today, for the first time, she had killed a person. She had destroyed a human being, not an anomaly.
"..."
She was not shaken. It was only that she had finished a single mission she had carried for ten years. That human had always been going to meet an end like this. Fate was that sort of thing.
"...The elders will be satisfied."
Murmuring it, she peeled off her rain-soaked socks and dried her hair with the towel the attendant beside her held out.
"I'm certain they will, young miss."
Song Ha-sun was a child of the branch family, born the same year as Inhwa Rang, only a little later. She agreed with a blank, indifferent face, mechanical as ever, and Rang let the words pass as if they were nothing. Changing only her socks, she hurried toward the Family Head's hall.
Before the hall, Ha-sun waited beside the guards. Rang opened the door alone and stepped inside.
The hall was dark. In that vast chamber, thick with a sinister air, hung the portraits of every Family Head who had come before. The immense pressure did not bow her. Rang faced forward, unflinching—and there stood the current head of the Inhwa Clan.
"Family Head. I have returned. The mission is complete."
She sank to one knee before him, reported the success in a cold voice, and bowed her head.
"The body?"
"...I erased it properly, with supernatural power."
At the claim that not even a trace remained, the Family Head smiled in satisfaction and nodded.
"Fifteen years... A full fifteen years, to hide that filth and wash it clean."
Rang said nothing.
"If I had known it would come to this, I should have dealt with it long ago."
At the elder's irreproachable words, Rang—unlike herself—let her gaze fall. A drop of water struck the floor. She fixed her trembling eyes on it and asked herself a question.
...Why did I lie?
Why did I give a false report?
She had never burned the body.
Why...?
Why did I forget that?
No. Did I really forget?
"...I'll take my leave. I'm soaked from the rain."
"Ah, yes. Don't push yourself. The entrance ceremony at the Exorcist Military Academy is soon."
"...Yes, Grandfather."
Sword in hand, Rang rose, turned, and walked slowly away. For some reason her body felt nothing but heavy. She had been certain she was shaking it off on the way here.
"...!"
It was nothing more than her grandfather's ordinary encouragement. And yet, for reasons she could not name, Rang's hand tightened around the hilt of her sword.