──────
* * *
Yu Ji-won had known for a long time that she was not a psychopath.
"..."
Soft, even breathing.
The man's face hovered before her eyes. The two of them lay together on a bed in the dim room.
It was not as though romantic desire had grown between them. He had passed out on the sofa, and Yu Ji-won had merely carried him to the bed in secret.
'You cried all through last night, didn't you, Mr. Matiz.'
Yu Ji-won reached out and stroked the other's hair.
She had learned long ago, after sneaking into the house, that his real name was Go Yuir. But what did it matter? To her, he was always nothing more than Mr. Matiz.
'It was my first time seeing Mr. Matiz cry like that. It was fascinating.'
A bed in some lodging where no one was watching.
Yu Ji-won secretly drew up a bluish energy at her fingertips. It resembled water, wriggled about, then gently covered Matiz's face.
On the surface, it looked exactly like someone had washed up and then put on a sheet mask.
So that his breathing would not be obstructed while he slept, the bluish energy wrapped around his entire face except for his nostrils.
"Hm."
Yu Ji-won narrowed her brow as though uncertain.
'As expected. Even like this, I still cannot make out the shape of his face.'
She knew there was a nose there. Eyes as well. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not picture Matiz's appearance in her mind.
'If he is with other people, I think I can somehow tell him apart. Distinguishing him itself seems possible. But if you ask whether I could recognize Mr. Matiz by himself, that is another matter.'
Yu Ji-won shifted a little more and buried her nose beneath Matiz's chin.
Then she slowly drew in a breath.
'...A nice smell.'
The fog in her head calmed down.
'He had prepared it for me alone, so that even if this world faces annihilation and we are separated, we can find each other when we meet again someday.'
'A single fragrance.'
A smile drifted across Yu Ji-won's lips.
It was an intentional smile. A learned expression.
That was why Yu Ji-won's smile looked utterly bizarre on the surface.
Ordinary people calculated not only when to smile, but when to withdraw it as well. How appropriately, how quickly, they should let that smile fade so as not to be rude to the other person.
Everyone desperately aimed for naturalness.
But Yu Ji-won's smile lacked that sort of calculation. The smile was there, then immediately gone. It was not there, then suddenly it was.
Anything beyond that level of naturalness was still unnecessary for Yu Ji-won.
Her smile was, in any case, an artificial thing made for one person, and that person had never once blamed her for it.
Stroke. Yu Ji-won brushed back his bangs.
"What is love?"
"..."
Flinch. Yu Ji-won's voice must have reached his eardrums, because Matiz stirred, but his eyelids remained shut.
Yu Ji-won thought. Could the relationship she shared with the person before her be defined as the emotion called love?
It was impossible.
To say it again, Yu Ji-won had known for a long time that she was not a psychopath. She could not feel emotion in nearly every respect.
A psychopath was not the same sort as someone like her, someone who could not feel emotion. A psychopath merely had the ability to empathize with others cut away.
'Mr. Matiz. It seems I still feel no emotion toward you either.'
Wriggle, wriggle.
Water droplets bubbled at Yu Ji-won's fingertips. The clear droplets moved as though alive, then burst with a pop.
The world Yu Ji-won saw was always submerged underwater.
The man before her had said the following about the droplet that had just burst.
-Water bug. That's a water bug. A miniature version of the giant sea dragon called Leviathan. The water bugs gather and gather until they form the shape of a dragon.
In truth, that was wrong.
From Yu Ji-won's perspective, these droplets were bubbles. The sort of bubbles that rise when a diver exhales underwater.
For Yu Ji-won, the world had long since been submerged in water. That was why the forms beyond the water-covered veil were always distorted.
Just as the outlines of things waver and blur when one looks up above the surface from underwater.
'I want to touch it.'
Bubble, bubble.
Whenever Yu Ji-won wished for it, the water bugs were born. From her fingertips. From the space around her. The bubbles boiled up and rose toward the eternal surface.
Yes. Up toward the surface.
Matiz seemed to find it terribly fascinating that the water bug rain fell not from above to below, but from below to above.
But was that not perfectly natural? If they were bubbles rather than rain, then of course they would rise upward.
It was a difference in perspective.
'Mr. Matiz. What is emotion?'
She wanted to feel it too.
It was not simply some vague curiosity about what it might be like to feel. It was the will to look at the world the way he looked at it.
'What do you look like?'
'To me, people's voices always sound like signals scattered and refracted through water, dull and wavering. What sort of tone does your voice have out there?'
Wriggle, wriggle. Wriggle, wriggle.
Transparent bubbles kept popping without end.
'A nice smell.'
And yet, even in this underwater world, fragrance alone came through clearly.
"...Ji-won?"
A voice suddenly came from above her head. When she looked up, Matiz was looking down at her with sleep-heavy eyes.
"Yes. Good morning."
"Yeah, good morning... But can I ask why you're biting my nape?"
"The perfume smell was strongest here."
"Are you actually a pervert?!"
"That is rude, Mr. Matiz. This is merely an act of confirming your existence. By that logic, everyone in the world who looks at other people's faces would be a pervert."
"That woke me right up, seriously!"
Matiz grumbled as he got up and started tidying himself. It was midsummer. Since they planned to ride their bicycles for several hours, he could not afford to apply sunscreen sloppily.
From Yu Ji-won's standpoint, sunscreen was a very slight hindrance. It made the carefully applied perfume smell somewhat vague.
But that was merely a matter of getting used to it, and so, wanting to get used to it, she buried her head deep in Matiz's arms before the ride.
"...You don't need sunscreen?"
"Yes. There is no problem."
"Good grief. Don't trust your skin too much just because you're young. You'll still be working as a model for at least a few years before world annihilation arrives."
"As you said, I am fine precisely because I am young. Even if my skin tans a little, it would only add a temporary, season-limited sort of exotic beauty to my charm."
"A psychopath and a narcissist, this is really something else..."
Of course, that was a lie.
'In the first place, I am submerged underwater twenty-four hours a day, so there is no chance for sunlight to reach me.'
Why was she hiding this secret on purpose?
Why, naturally.
'Mr. Matiz did not know that these are bubbles. Which means the reincarnator named Go Yuri does not know either.'
If you wanted to deceive the enemy, you had to deceive your allies first.
'Mr. Matiz seems to trust reincarnators quite a bit. But trust alone cannot make all the affairs of the world go around.'
To trust another was to trust oneself.
Those words might sound beautiful, but they were not enough to make a beautiful world. There was no need to even bring up the JTB problem. Belief and reality were different things.
Therefore, Yu Ji-won's decision to hide that information was perfectly natural.
'If, by some chance, the reincarnator deceives Mr. Matiz, or if the reincarnator deceives herself, then I will be needed as a last resort.'
Today's schedule had also become especially busy.
First, Yu Ji-won contacted the caregiver she had arranged in advance. Now that the reincarnator was dead, someone else was needed to take care of Grandmother.
The caregiver, as if waiting for the call, confirmed the payment and replied that there was no need to worry. It had been a promised arrangement from long before they left for Japan.
"...You, just how thoroughly did you plan this murder?"
"Even if the murder had not taken place, I could not leave Grandmother with an unidentified person like the reincarnator. I needed to create an alibi that would not matter even if it were exposed to a public institution."
"Sometimes you scare me, Ji-won..."
Was that true?
She could infer that the other person had made a joke. But what if it was not a joke? What if the joke contained some sincerity?
To reason that out, she needed the other person's voice and expression. If she had those, it would be quite simple.
But both offered Yu Ji-won only pitifully meager data.
So then, did Mr. Matiz truly find her frightening?
'That is possible.'
Yu Ji-won thought it through.
'I killed someone who may have been Mr. Matiz's family, teacher, perhaps even a lover.'
'Of course, Mr. Matiz accepted me. He forgave me. But that is Mr. Matiz's resolve and action, not his emotion.'
'I have heard that emotion is something humans cannot help. Even if Mr. Matiz's emotions fear me, there is nothing to be done about that.'
What was emotion?
'I want to know.'
How did he feel about her?
'I want to touch it.'
So she reached out her hand.
"...? Ji-won?"
"..."
Press. She took hold of Matiz's hand.
And from hand to hand, she sent a transparent water droplet over, no. A bubble.
"?"
Apparently, Matiz could not see the bubble.
That was not strange. Sometimes he could see this, and sometimes he could not.
That was why Yu Ji-won freely controlled the bubbles without worry.
'Skin.'
The bubbles wriggled as they crawled up Matiz's forearm. In an instant, they seeped beneath the skin.
'Muscle. Bone.'
A little deeper.
'Heart.'
Thump.
The bubbles wrapped around Matiz's heart. They clung to it.
And so, in those deep waters invisible to the eye, thump.
Every vibration he felt came through to her as well, clear and distinct.
And then.
'This speed.'
Yu Ji-won splashed bubbles onto herself as well. She adjusted them, tuned them. How?
'This tone.'
By copying the direction and speed of the other person's heartbeat exactly. She made hers the same.
Thump, thump.
When Matiz's heart beat, Yu Ji-won's heart beat as well. The rhythm his heart held, Yu Ji-won's heart also came to hold.
"Mr. Matiz."
"Hm?"
"Are you afraid of me?"
"Yeah. Seriously, scared as hell. Ji-won. I prophesy that you're going to become a Korean model who succeeds a German art student and a Georgian poet."
"..."
Thump, thump.
'At peace.'
Thump, thump.
'So it was a joke.'
Yu Ji-won nodded.
'This is Mr. Matiz's emotion when he jokes.'
A smile hung at the corner of her mouth.
"I, too, deeply respect those two as my seniors. Over the next few years, I plan to devote myself to studying art and the craft of poetry."
"Is that for real..."
The two of them ate lunch and set off again.
"Hrk, huff. Hrk. What kind of damn uphill road is this. Why won't it ever end..."
Thump. Thump.
'This is the emotion called hardship.'
'Mr. Matiz's hardship.'
Yu Ji-won was not tired at all.
No matter how steep and long the uphill climb was, she merely judged how much muscle fatigue had built up, then attached the label hardship to that judgment.
The label was always a blank pale beige. It never became dyed in the hue of emotions like "I want to give up" or "I do not want to ride a bicycle."
"Wow."
Not anymore.
"Ji-won, stop for a second."
"Yes? We still have to pedal for another twenty minutes before we reach our destination."
"No. Look at that sunset over there."
Screech. They stopped their bicycles for a moment in the middle of the uphill road, and Yu Ji-won turned her head after Go Yuir.
'Red. Orange. A faint wine color.'
Yu Ji-won looked up at the surface expressionlessly.
'One side of the sky is already night. Given the time, in ten more minutes the twilight will rapidly lose its colors. We must arrive at our destination before night falls.'
'The wind is cool. If we remain stopped like this, our sweat may cool and our body heat may rapidly drain away.'
Yu Ji-won turned her gaze expressionlessly. Go Yuir's face was there in profile, his lips slightly parted.
"It's beautiful..."
"..."
Bubbles.
Skin. Muscle. Bone. Heart.
Thump.
'Beautiful.'
Thump.
'This is the emotion called beauty.'
Thump. Thump.
'Mr. Matiz's beauty.'
Once more, Yu Ji-won looked up at the sunset.
The world was dyed red. The clouds had dissolved bath salts into the sky. Along the fine cracks drawn across the heavens, the cry of cicadas trickled down.
"..."
Yu Ji-won smiled.
"Yes."
Resting her head against Go Yuir, intertwining their fingers tightly, she said,
"It is beautiful."
Long ago.
Yu Ji-won had already known that she was not a psychopath.
She was merely empty. Sunlight rarely reached down into this deep sea, and even when it did, it came only as the shadow of light, so Yu Ji-won could do no more than grope at the outlines of the world beyond the surface as shadows.
She still could not know the world.
The only smile she knew was his smile.
The only pain she knew was his pain.
The only beauty she knew was his beauty.
"Truly, it's beautiful."
And for her, that was enough.
Because there was someone by her side who breathed the breath her heart needed to beat, in her place.
She considered herself happy to have been born in this abyss beneath the sea.
-That Woman Y. End.
Footnotes:
[1] A reference to philosopher Edmund Gettier's challenge to the classical definition of knowledge as "justified true belief." The point here is that belief and reality are not the same.
-x-X-x-
──────
* * *
Click.
"Ji-won, stop for a second."
"Yes? We still have twenty more minutes of pedaling before we reach our destination."
"No. Look at the sunset over there."
...
"It's beautiful..."
"Yes. It is beautiful."
...
"Truly... beautiful."
"..."
[1. Now that the reincarnator has been killed, world annihilation is inevitable. From here on, live out your remaining days for the girl in front of you alone.]
[2. You struggle alongside them. To the very end.]
Click.
[2. You struggle alongside them. To the very end.] ◀
Click.
[ERROR.]
[That selection is impossible.]
Click.
[ERROR.]
[That selection is impossible.]
Click.
[ERROR.]
[That selection is impossible.]
[That selection constitutes a clear alteration of the past and gravely violates causality.]
[Even if the player chooses this option at this point, no meaningful ending can be derived.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Ji-won."
"Yes, Mr. Matiz."
"I don't think this route is wrong. No. I won't let this route be judged as the wrong one."
"I'm sorry. I don't understand what you mean."
"You killed Go Yuri for my sake. Maybe Go Yuri's death wasn't right, but the heart behind it, the part of you that thought of me, that can't have been wrong."
"..."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"In the end, it's our actions that decide whether a heart is right or wrong. I want to prove that you weren't mistaken."
"..."
"We'll probably fail. Fail miserably, even. The reincarnator's project has run aground, so I'll never awaken as a regressor. Most of the strategy intel I got from Go Yuri has probably gone useless too."
"Yes. I imagine that's true."
"Even so, will you live alongside me?"
"..."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Spend one single life, one that will linger in no reincarnator's memory and in no regressor's record, just struggling pointlessly at my side."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Your hand."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Will you take my hand, Mr. Matiz?"
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"...Yes, I can feel it. So clearly. So vividly."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Fear. Worry. Tenderness. Despair. Trust. Ice that looks ready to melt at any moment under a summer sun. Ice as transparent as crystal."
"..."
"I see. So this is the future you picture for the two of us, Mr. Matiz."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"I think it's beautiful."
...
"As long as I'm with you, Mr. Matiz."
...
"Even the most meaningless world and the most useless life will always be the most beautiful music to me."
[You struggle alongside them.]
[To the very end.]
* * *
There were no land-owning nobles on the Korean Peninsula.
There were, of course, a number of factions you might call local magnates or men of influence. But set them next to the genuine magnates of the Japanese archipelago right next door, and the reaction you'd get was more along the lines of "oh my, how adorable."
This did not mean the noble class of the Korean Peninsula had fallen, though. If anything, it was the exact opposite.
They had simply escaped the supremely "material" condition of land and achieved a loftier, more "spiritual" ascension instead.
A few disloyal ruffians called this noble collective, with their attained state of spiritual transcendence, a "pseudo-religious cult," but that was nothing to fret over.
After all, how could it suit a noble's dignity to answer the rudeness of every last lowborn?
"Young lady."
"Hm?"
"Allow me to report on the search operation you ordered last time."
The heiress of a family that reigned in Sejong, the spiritual capital of the Republic of Korea, as nobles even more spiritual than the rest, the lady Cheon Yo-hwa, did not particularly lend an ear to the opinions of lowborn folk either.
"Order? Ah. You mean Teacher Go Yuri?"
"Yes. We secured the cooperation of the police and conducted a search centered on her residence, but we couldn't pick up her trail at all."
"At all?"
"That's right. We confirmed she entered her residence on a specific date, and it was even cross-verified, but after that her whereabouts go completely cold."
Cheon Yo-hwa let out a hum and propped her chin in her hand.
"She went into her house and vanished. Then, simply put, there's just a secret passage in the house, isn't there? Our house has plenty of them too. Underground secret passages."
"That's just it..."
The Cult official let his words trail off.
"I cleared out the police and searched the house from top to bottom. The yard too. But I really couldn't find a single trace."
"Anyone else come or go?"
"No one."
"What? Then you're telling me she really evaporated into thin air?"
"I have no excuse..."
The back seat of the limousine. By order of her father, the cult leader, all manner of listening devices had been installed here, but that didn't matter.
Anything she truly couldn't let her father find out, she wouldn't have discussed with her subordinates here in the first place.
In any case, "Teacher Go Yuri" was a benefactor among benefactors, the one who taught her and her younger sister how to win their freedom.
Above all, the teacher's disappearance was a great source of worry not just for the twin sisters but for her father as well.
If word spread that she, the heiress and his daughter, was working this hard, running around like this, then at worst it would earn her points with her father, never a minus mark.
'Or maybe not? Maybe it's too blatant, like I'm leaning on the listening devices too hard, and that's a minus?'
After carefully gauging her father's twisted temperament, Cheon Yo-hwa's lips curved smoothly.
"Honestly. Please try a little harder, Uncle. Teacher Go Yuri isn't just some ordinary tutor, you know? Haven't you heard the rumors?"
"Erm. Young lady, if you mean the rumors..."
"My father's, you know. This. This one."
Cheon Yo-hwa smirked.
"No."
The official's expression turned to panic.
"Th-that's a baseless rumor, isn't it, young lady. It wasn't long ago that we dealt with the servant who leaked talk about that..."
"Come on. I don't know what the truth is either. But considering how foully the rumor spread and yet Teacher Go Yuri came away without a single hair harmed, she'd clearly secured my father's favor at the very least, wouldn't she?"
"I, I'll pretend I didn't hear that just now."
The official cleared his throat.
"The Reverend is extremely wary of street gossip of that kind. As you well know, young lady... Isn't it the single greatest obstacle to bringing ordinary young people into the Cult's operations?"
"Ordinary people? Ah, the Oechul lot[1]? Why would I care? Whether or not some clots of flesh who weren't even chosen by Taeguk[2] come in."
"Young lady. The Reverend will be furious if he hears that..."
"Yes, yes. Nagging again."
Cheon Yo-hwa swallowed a smile far more sinister than the one showing on her face.
This was about right.
Through this exchange, she had implied that she knew nothing at all about "the fact that listening devices were installed in the limousine."
And going further, that she had a "marked tendency to blindly separate pure-blooded believers from new converts."
'Just about the flavor my super control freak father likes. Well, whatever.'
The heiress Cheon Yo-hwa's range of movement and way of thinking remained under the control of her father, the cult leader...
The so-called "Yo-hwa is still a pure little papa's girl >_<)!!" operation.
It would be hard to put an end to her father's pathological suspicion with a single secret chat, but as the saying goes, dust piles into mountains. The preservative that extended the shelf life of his trust would grow a touch stronger, bit by bit.
That was when the limousine came to a somewhat abrupt stop.
"Eugh."
Cheon Yo-hwa, seated in the back, lurched slightly. As for the official across from her, he toppled outright and briefly did a bit of knee-cleaning on the limousine floor.
"You bastards... Hey, what's going on!"
The official shouted, his face going red.
Bang! Apparently eager to bury the fact that he'd embarrassed himself as fast as possible, he kicked the door open with a roar and stormed outside.
"Don't you know the young lady's aboard right now? Huh?"
"S-sorry. Some madman suddenly threw himself into the road..."
"What?"
"It's true. There, that guy."
A great commotion.
Cheon Yo-hwa quietly lowered her window, to see what all the fuss was about.
She was, by nature, a romantic who chased the extraordinary over the everyday, war over peace, dopamine over enlightenment.
The lowborn might counter with "isn't it just that she likes stirring up trouble?", but the noble eardrums of Cheon Yo-hwa, the puppet-master heiress, would never lose to such low-grade slander.
'A person cut in? Is it someone with a screw loose? Or some fool who handed over his entire fortune to our dear father? Which scenario is it?'
What she saw through the lowered window was not someone with a screw loose.
'Oh.'
The face attached to that head was somewhat out of the ordinary, though.
'Bit good-looking?'
A bit of a look about him.
But Cheon Yo-hwa had never once thought of herself as weak to a pretty face.
Especially when the man in question had blocked her vehicle's path, nearly caused an accident, and was, as a result, being subdued by her bodyguards in real time, it became all the harder to judge a person by their face alone.
"Lady Cheon Yo-hwa! Lady Cheon Yo-hwa, please hear me out!"
"What are you doing, you idiot! Subdue him! I said subdue him!"
"No, this guy, he looks scrawny, but where's he getting this strength..."
"All of you, pile on at once! Pile on! Now!"
A crashing, banging tumble.
The man, who looked like a college freshman at the oldest, was, surprisingly, putting up quite a fight even while ringed in by four bodyguards.
It was a losing battle, of course.
They were no ordinary bodyguards but elites selected to protect the heiress. Every one of them a Naechul believer, able to wield at least a little divine power.
"Young lady! Lady Cheon Yo-hwa!"
'Hmm.'
Cheon Yo-hwa rested her elbow on the window frame and propped her chin. A grinning smile hung on her lips.
'The blow-his-whole-fortune scenario after all? He knows my name and where I'm headed, so he's no total stranger to all this. If he's risking his life to report something in person, then, well, "please clear my name," that sort of thing.'
Cheon Yo-hwa's eyes narrowed.
'And he's got a nice build too.'
'No idea how much he donated to my father, but if it's under three hundred million, should I just take him for myself?'
Not bad.
Watching him finally get pinned from behind by the bodyguards and flung onto the concrete, watching the sorry sight of him squirming like a worm to wriggle free somehow, it started to feel more and more "not bad."
"Lady Cheon Yo-hwa!"
'Heh. Nice voice too.'
She wasn't exactly a sadist obsessed with torture.
To begin with, torture carried out from a position of "overwhelming superiority" over "an already captured opponent" was far removed from the puppet-master heiress's refined tastes.
She had only mastered its techniques.
Cheon Yo-hwa had done so in a thoroughly professional manner. To prove her qualifications and rigor as the heiress. To harvest recognition and respect in front of her father and the believers.
In short, she had learned the arts of torture in the spirit of a diligent farmer.
'That man, somehow... I want to torment him. Yeah.'
That was the strange part.
She'd met him for the first time today. She had never felt anything like this before, and yet, oddly... no. Wait.
A man she'd met for the first time?
Cheon Yo-hwa's brow furrowed faintly. Was he really a man she was seeing for the first time?
'Strange. There's this, this nagging feeling like I've definitely seen him somewhere...'
"My name is Go Yuir!"
Blink.
Cheon Yo-hwa blinked.
"I'm Go Yuir, Go Yuri's younger brother! The one who aced the college entrance exam and got into a prestigious university, whose religion is Taoism! The interview! The one who was supposed to be hired as your tutor, taking over after my sister!"
'...Ah.'
Only then did her mind light up bright. So much so that she clapped her hands together without thinking.
Right. That was it! He was "that" successor Teacher Go Yuri had sung the praises of every single day, every chance she got!
'The high schooler ID photo guy!'
What this meant was that when Teacher Go Yuri bragged about how handsome her little brother was, the photo she pulled out happened to be a "national ID card photo."
Naturally there was no retouching to speak of, and the pose was as stiff as could be. The hairstyle was plain itself.
And yet it was a face that made it roughly clear why Teacher Go Yuri doted on him so foolishly, so the impression had been filed away, gathering dust, in a corner of the study in Cheon Yo-hwa's mind.
'Whoa. The real thing was way better, huh?'
"Lady Cheon Yo-hwa! Young lady!"
'No. Hmm, maybe he's the type who blossomed after entering university...'
"Please, even just for a moment, talk with me!"
'Right, college really is nature's plastic surgeon, nature's dermatologist...'
"Young laaaaaadyyyy!"
Oh.
Cheon Yo-hwa realized she'd gotten too absorbed in the show. The man named Go Yuir was already being beaten to a pulp by the believers.
Cheon Yo-hwa lightly opened the back door.
"Uncle. Stop hitting him."
"A-young lady?"
"He says he has a clue about Teacher Go Yuri's disappearance. We were just talking about that anyway, so this worked out well."
"Still, a man of unknown identity like this...!"
"Ah, how tiresome. Enough. Uncle, you ride in another car. Bring our guest over here."
The Cult official shut his mouth.
When it came to Cheon Yo-hwa, the word "tiresome" was a kind of warning. A line being drawn. That if he kicked up any more noise here, it wouldn't end well for him.
The official did not want his innards "harvested," so he had no choice but to bow his head.
"...Understood. Hey. Bring the guest."
"Ah. Yes."
A short while later.
The limousine began running down the asphalt road again. Inside it, Cheon Yo-hwa and the man sat facing each other.
The man's appearance was, to put it kindly, a complete mess.
Scraped along the road, crumpled by fists. Covered in scratches. His lip too had been grazed against the asphalt and was bleeding.
"Hmm."
Cheon Yo-hwa crossed her legs.
"You're bleeding, you know. I don't know what you wanted to talk about so badly that you'd pull a crazy stunt like this, but how about wiping your mouth first?"
"Ah."
The man lightly wiped his lip with the back of his hand. Spots of blood came away, and he glanced at it from beneath his eyelids before losing interest.
"It's fine. I've already lost all my manners in how I treat you, young lady."
The man looked at her straight on. Blood still smeared a little at his mouth. With a gaze the wounds could neither cover nor trample down.
"In that case, the least I can do is show you my sincerity."
Thump.
"..."
Huh?
'Hm?'
'Hmmm...? Hm-hm? Hmmmm?'
Cheon Yo-hwa's smile wavered slightly.
What the.
Don't tell me... am I a sucker for a pretty face?
Footnotes:
[1] Oechul, literally "outsider," is the Cult's coined term for non-believers; it is paired with "Naechul," the term for insiders and believers.
[2] Taeguk is the established name of the anomaly invoked by the Cult here.
-x-X-x-
──────
* * *
Cheon Yo-hwa, in all honesty, had never once thought of herself as a chosen human being.
She was simply a bit smarter than most, prettier, blessed with abundant wealth, gifted with a silver tongue, brimming with charisma, and, the deciding factor, favored by a god.
She was not truly special. That was how she regarded herself.
If the commoners outside the manor had heard her, they would have switched their citizenship to French on the spot and put in an order for a guillotine. That was the level of nonsense it was.
'My life's going to get burned up as god-nim's Sacrifice Number One anyway if I can't deal with Father somehow. What's so special about that?'
Cheon Yo-hwa had her own logic, her own circumstances.
'If I'm special, it's the way two-plus hanwoo[2] is special. Are Yo-hwa or I even human?'
That was right.
In this silver-spoon young lady's estimation, she herself was not yet human.
Could a human ruled and bred like livestock by aliens be called human? That was just a monkey that had shed a little of its fur.
Whether one seized freedom for oneself or not, that alone was, for Cheon Yo-hwa, the measure of whether humanity was present or absent.
"Ahahahahat! Aha, ahahahaha!"
In that sense, the man before her, the one who had thrown himself into the road and brazenly demanded a one-on-one meeting, had at least succeeded in drawing Cheon Yo-hwa's interest.
"G, Go Yuri is a, a reincarnator?"
"Yes."
"R, reincarnation, that's, you know? Like Gung Ye?[1] Hmmmm. I know all about it, too. Our father used to use the Maitreya Buddha title now and then in the old days. And on top of that, Teleportation... pfft. Ahahat! Th, the setup is way too over the top!"
"I'm aware it sounds preposterous."
A reception room set off in one corner of the great manor.
Not Reception Room A but Reception Room B, a place built for somewhat less important guests. It was also one of the few spaces inside the manor free from her father's eavesdropping.
On the reception room wall, the certificates and trophies the twin sisters had accumulated over the years glinted with a golden sheen inside their glass display case.
"But I believe even you, young lady, have sensed in some subtle way that my sister Go Yuri was special."
"Yep. But that doesn't prove she was a reincarnator."
"An outsider, no more than a mere Oechul, won the Cult Leader's favor in the span of only a few years. She even monopolized the heirs' education from when they were very young."
"..."
"And there was no serious backlash or grumbling about it inside the Cult either. It defies common sense, and if so, that means she was a being beyond common sense."
Hmm. Cheon Yo-hwa let her gaze slide downward.
'That much is true.'
It had already been forty minutes since she had brought him to the manor.
Cheon Yo-hwa had launched a barrage of questions from every angle.
The point of attack was a single one. 'Is this man really, definitely Go Yuri's younger sibling?'
Cheon Yo-hwa's verdict on that was...
'Ninety percent. No, almost a hundred?'
She had already had her sister run a background check. The message that had just arrived on her smartphone was the result.
[Pet Sis♡: Sis, I got into the newspaper articles from a few years back and that school's records and checked.]
[Pet Sis♡: It's the same person the teacher said was her younger sibling. He went on a trip to Japan a little while ago, then rushed back home.]
Tap tap. Cheon Yo-hwa moved only her fingers beneath the tablecloth to send a message.
It was a dedicated messenger that ran only inside the Cult, impossible to hack by ordinary means. It was, after all, an object that borrowed 'god-nim's' authority.
[Heaven-and-Earth-Unique-One: The murder case said to have happened near Fukuoka?]
[Pet Sis♡: Checked through three separate channels via local Japanese Cult members.]
Blink. She must have already drawn up a list of the questions her twin sister was likely to ask, because the answers came back as if she had been waiting for them.
[Pet Sis♡: It's a dismemberment murder.]
[Pet Sis♡: A dumped corpse was found at the location you gave me. Identity unknown. I couldn't make out the body's features exactly. But the clothing it had on is definitely the teacher's.]
[Pet Sis♡: I'll send photos.]
A stream of them came through.
Photos that should still have been shared only inside the local investigation headquarters were uploaded as if it were nothing. Looking at them, Cheon Yo-hwa's brow stiffened.
'Teacher... it's her, yeah.'
A corner of her heart went cold.
'And she'd been such a self-contained person.'
'Once even the teacher is dead, she's just a corpse.'
She closed her smartphone.
At that, the man, who had been watching her with a serious gaze the entire time, gave a slight nod.
"You've confirmed it, it seems."
"..."
"To secure the data in barely thirty minutes. The Cult's power really is formidable. No, perhaps it's the power of you young ladies, who can pull the Cult's resources this far."
How much does this man know?
The corner of Cheon Yo-hwa's lips curved up of its own accord.
"All right. Let's set aside the whole reincarnator business and just look at the facts on the table for now. So Go Yuri was killed by none other than you."
"That's right."
"Then why should I lend an ear to a scoundrel who got rid of the teacher I served with affection deeper than I gave my own parents, no, deeper than my parents? No matter how I look at it, revenge seems like the right answer."
"..."
"I could distort the facts and claim my sister and I caught the culprit by our own strength alone. I'd earn some points with Father. I could also slice you up alive in front of the congregation and hand you out as salted fish paste[3]."
Cheon Yo-hwa propped her chin on her hand.
The truth was, she had no real intention of reclassifying that man's biological category into ground meat.
Well, she might at most work him like a slave under the pretext of 'granting you a suffering in life worse than death.'
'His voice was pretty when I heard it earlier. Even just locking him in the basement and playing his cries on loop would relieve some stress.'
Even now, just looking at the man, dozens of torture methods popped, pa-ba-bat, into her head.
Unlike the usual indifference with which she handled her 'Sacrifices,' today alone her creativity surged up like fireworks, bursting again and again.
'Justification, profit, and a hobby, all satisfied. A triple crown!'
A chance like this would not come around day in, day out. Today, for the first time, Cheon Yo-hwa realized her heart could water with greed too.
"I beg your pardon, but you, young lady, have more than enough reason to build a cooperative relationship with me."
"Huh? Why?"
"Because I killed your tutor, a person 'whose death you couldn't even imagine,' without a soul being the wiser."
"?"
Cheon Yo-hwa tilted her head.
"And why is that a reason to cooperate?"
"Because in your world, the people 'whose deaths you couldn't even imagine' number not one, but two."
"..."
In that instant, Cheon Yo-hwa's mind bristled as if jolted by static electricity.
Her heart began to pound, in an entirely different sense from a moment before. Her lips parted, and her eyes went wide.
The man simply looked her dead in the eye, calm.
"Doesn't it tempt you?"
"..."
"If it's me, I can take care of it for certain."
Who?
There was no need to ask.
'Father.'
The very apex of the Cult clan that had laid its foundations on this land and spread its religious power in every direction.
The great enemy that she and her younger sister had to annihilate without fail in order to breathe, in order to live as human beings.
Freedom.
"..."
After a long while passed, Cheon Yo-hwa parted her lips.
"How?"
"There's someone I'd like to introduce to you."
The man, Go Yuir, smiled.
"My family."
* * *
Not long after.
Cheon Yo-hwa came face to face with the secret of how a tutor who had seemed so perfect could have been wiped out in an instant without even putting up a proper fight.
Kwarrrrrr.
"..."
In the distance, a four-story derelict building collapsed in on itself. Watching it, Cheon Yo-hwa could only gape.
Huh? Could that building have been made of tofu instead of concrete?
No way. That was one our Cult used in the old days and then threw away.
"This child is called Yu Ji-won. As you can see, she possesses an ability that can destroy and cut through anything."
While a cloud of dust billowed up behind her, the girl bent at the waist in a bow.
"I'm Yu Ji-won. Young lady. You may regard and treat me as Mr. Matiz's tool."
"Ah. U, uh-huh..."
Cheon Yo-hwa's voice dropped in volume without her realizing it.
To be honest, she was rattled.
It was not solely because the child introduced as 'Yu Ji-won' was extremely pretty.
If you put a power-user who could turn a building into a 'build/ing'[4] from a full three hundred meters away right under your nose, anyone would be a little rattled.
"Uh. The devout believers in our Cult, and I myself, can play around in various ways, but your side is a little, how should I put it. A touch on the violent side...?"
"You flatter me. Young lady."
That wasn't a compliment, though.
Cheon Yo-hwa found it impossible to settle her pounding heart.
'It's simple. A really simple, efficient, easy-to-understand ability...!'
Violence about as intuitive as it got.
There was no need to laboriously cook up bizarre, intricate schemes. She just had to seize the chance and slice-and-dice her father away, and that was that.
'Good heavens! God-nim! If only you'd bestowed an authority this simple on us instead of data analysis and all that garbage!'
Cheon Yo-hwa found herself resenting the heavens all over again.
'What's the point of making talismans and offering Sacrifices a hundred days running! It's worse than the cutting power that girl swings around!'
It was only an emotional matter, of course.
If she had truly had an ability like Yu Ji-won's, there was no way her father would have meekly acknowledged her position as heir. The gaslighting would have come first, far more brutal than it was now.
'A, anyway, the enslavement plan is scrapped!'
'If I carelessly mistreat the man a crazy monster like that calls her comrade, who knows what calamity would come crashing down on us sisters?!'
Cheon Yo-hwa felt as if she had aged ten years. Rarely had her habit of not rashly showing her inner thoughts felt as much a blessing as it did this day.
"O, kay, um. All right."
Ahem. Cheon Yo-hwa cleared her throat.
"So Go Yuir and Yu Ji-won..."
"Please feel free to address me however you like. Young lady. I am no more than Mr. Matiz's tool, so there's no need at all to mind your words."
"...Yu Ji-won."
Only then did the girl give a nod of her chin.
'Scary!'
Not so much as a single spoonful of emotion came through in her eyes or her face, so Cheon Yo-hwa's delicate heart shrank back even further.
"...I'll admit now that you can wreck my father all you want."
Color came to Go Yuir's face.
"Then you'll cooperate with us? Young lady?"
"Yes, of course. Roughly, I'll use my authority to register Go Yuir and Yu Ji-won as Oechul, then when the angle presents itself, we kill Father. We'll designate the specific time and place from our side."
"Thank you! Young lady!"
Go Yuir threw himself down in a bow.
Yu Ji-won, who had been plastered right up against Go Yuir's side, knelt down on the bare earth without hesitation. Cheon Yo-hwa was horrified.
"No no no, uh. Ah, c, comrades! We're cooperating comrades now! There's no need for you to use such formal honorifics!"
Go Yuir didn't budge an inch.
"We'll keep relying on your help, young lady, to accomplish the great undertaking ahead, so how could I dare hold my head up stiff? I only ask that you look kindly on us."
'Why is a duo that could assassinate the President of the United States just by getting close so abjectly humble?!'
Cheon Yo-hwa was going out of her mind.
'She can assassinate a target hundreds of meters away with no presence, no stance! If she can attack, she could surely be used for defense too!'
'Since there's no telling when that blank-faced girl might slice us sisters apart...! I absolutely have to keep them happy. Absolutely!'
After a whole round of fuss, she finally managed to get the pair back on their feet.
A sigh of relief slowly slipped out of her.
'Father. ...I really can kill him.'
A feeling hard to put into words.
While they made their way down, leaving the 'build/ing' behind, Cheon Yo-hwa glanced back at Yu Ji-won.
"Oh, right."
"...?"
"I forgot to ask. What reason did you have for killing the teacher?"
"You mean Go Yuri."
Yu Ji-won answered, blank-faced.
"Go Yuri seized Mr. Matiz's life and wouldn't let it go."
That the bizarre title 'Mr. Matiz' pointed to the man, she had already guessed.
The part that pulled at Cheon Yo-hwa's interest lay elsewhere.
"Seized his life and wouldn't let it go?"
"Yes. Go Yuri was a reincarnator. To stop the danger of the world annihilation that was going to come blowing in, she chose Mr. Matiz as a chess piece."
"Hehh..."
"And to keep the chess piece from moving as it pleased, she went and turned the whole world around Mr. Matiz into a chessboard."
Yu Ji-won reached out and took Go Yuir's hand.
"But the world is not a chessboard."
"..."
"At the very least, I cannot permit Mr. Matiz's world being treated that way. So I removed her."
It was clear language.
'Freedom.'
Cheon Yo-hwa could recognize that transparency.
It was not because she herself was as transparent as the girl before her. It was the very opposite.
Because she was murky from head to toe, she could, by contrast, recognize the transparency she lacked.
'The condition for a human to be human.'
Just then a remarkable thing happened. Trivial, in a way, but to Cheon Yo-hwa's eyes an astonishing event unfolded.
A smile had come to the lips of the girl who had seemed as if she would stay blank-faced forever and ever.
That smile was looking up at the man whose hand she was holding.
The man, too, with a faint smile of his own, stroked Yu Ji-won's head.
'Ah...'
Not a single word had passed between them, but Cheon Yo-hwa's keen mind understood everything.
Respect, regard, love, trust, affection, tolerance, understanding. Whatever the word.
In the 'bond' set before her now there existed something different from the relationship she had formed with Go Yuri, or the one she shared with her younger sister, some texture in the very air.
And that she might, perhaps, never for all eternity have any part to play in that bond.
A sharp pang.
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa pressed a hand to her chest without thinking.
A wound she didn't even know she had was already waiting there, a little ahead of her.
Footnotes:
[1] Gung Ye (c. 869-918) was a real Korean warlord and founder of the kingdom of Taebong who proclaimed himself the incarnate Maitreya Buddha and claimed to possess the supernatural power to read people's minds. He is a byword in Korea for a megalomaniac who believes himself divine.
[2] A reference to hanwoo (premium native Korean cattle) graded '1++' (read 'two-plus'), the top quality tier; the joke is that the sisters are 'prime livestock' bred by their god rather than people.
[3] Jeotgal, Korean salted and fermented seafood, traditionally chopped fine and distributed in jars; she is threatening to mince him up and share him out among the congregation.
[4] Wordplay in the original: the Korean word for building, romanized as 'geonmul,' is split into 'geon/mul' to evoke being sliced clean in two by the girl's cutting ability.
-x-X-x-
──────
* * *
Time slipped by fast. When people threw themselves into something they loved, the hours just deleted themselves.
In that sense, Cheon Yo-hwa had discovered a new hobby. Filial piety.
She racked her brains day and night over how to serve her father as devotedly as humanly possible, and, well, goodness. A few years had simply flowed past, hadn't they?
With the big day approaching, Cheon Yo-hwa launched into a final inspection alongside her beloved younger sister.
"How many of the executives have crossed over to our side?"
"Forty percent. But most of them are from HR and finance, so the losses are basically nothing. If anything, this makes the organization healthier."
"Don't get cocky! Keep checking the police and prosecution sections all the way to the end."
"It's fine, unni. We routed sixty billion won through Japan and fed it to them, so do you really think they'd betray us? If the bribery scandal blows up, they'll be the ones ruined first. I'm actually more suspicious of those people over there, what was it, Yu Ji-won, Go Yuir, whatever their names are. Can we really trust them?"
"Now of all times? And if we can't trust them, then what? Without the materials they handed over, forget forty percent, we'd be lucky to scrape twenty."
"Hmm..."
Her sister tilted her head.
'Ugh.'
At moments like this, Cheon Yo-hwa felt a little stifled.
'Whether or not we trust them, the hilt of the knife is in their hands anyway, so what's the point of debating this, little sister.'
But she didn't bother letting any of it show on her face.
Hadn't she known since they were children that her twin's intelligence lagged a step behind her own?
And besides, her sister sometimes flashed an intuition that surpassed her. Well, everyone had their own specialty.
"But unni."
"What?"
"We've ended up in a relationship that shares a secret this enormous. Even if he's Go Yuri's brother and all, you can't just hand out trust to anyone."
No, it isn't a matter of trust, it's a matter of power, she was about to answer, when her sister's lips moved first.
"I really think it's better to bind them through marriage. Unni."
...?
"Huh?"
The voice that leaked out after a brief silence sounded, even to Cheon Yo-hwa's own ears, thoroughly stupefied.
Her sister stared at that face of hers like it was strange.
"Why are you making that face? We're allies, but the collateral is uncertain so we're uneasy. In a case like that, there's no method more orthodox and efficient than marriage."
"...Uh, uh-huh?"
"You said he's a university student. Hasn't done his military service. So compared to those decrepit old men they tried to set up marriage talks with when we were little, he's way better. Oh, is his face just really ugly?"
"That, no, it's not. But still."
"Huh? Then what's actually the problem?"
"..."
Wee-woo wee-woo wee-woo wee-woo.
Cheon Yo-hwa's head, which only moments ago had been ice cold while discussing the power structure inside the Cult, was instantly thrown into an uproar of red sirens.
But say what you would, she was the puppet master daughter of the Cult. When had she never had an experience of panicking like this?
Cheon Yo-hwa held on to extreme composure and, to all outward appearances, kept talking to her sister without a hitch.
"Eh... come on! Marriage is a bit much. Yo-hwa. Think about what kind of house our family is. Ahaha, that guy's dirt poor. Total dirt spoon[1]! The standing of his household just doesn't match, not at all."
"Hm? What's the problem? Bring him in as a live-in son-in-law."
Wee-woo wee-woo wee-woo.
"Family standing and all that nonsense, the only ones who ever cared about it were father and the elders. We're going to lop off all the old men's necks with this very opportunity, aren't we. Unni's going to seize complete power over the Cult. So the more humble our marriage partner's household, the better, no? If the partner's family had high standing, in this case it'd just mean more meddling."
"..."
"Huh?! Or unni, don't tell me, do you actually have a man you've got your heart set on? S-sorry. I just could never picture you dating in a normal, human kind of way, so I went and assumed...!"
Her sister put on a solemn expression.
"It can't be helped, then. In that case I'll get engaged to him in your place, so that..."
"That is absolutely not allowed!!"
Her sister Yo-hwa jumped at the sudden shout.
"Why are you yelling all of a sudden?"
"T-that's, that. That's..."
"If you don't want to get married, unni, then I'll just marry him. Of course, it's a little odd since he's someone you've never once introduced to me, but."
Her sister smiled, as if to reassure her.
"You don't have to worry about me, unni. A political marriage is something I've been prepared for since I was seven, so it doesn't bother me."
"..."
That wasn't the problem!
The truth was... exactly as she'd just said, Cheon Yo-hwa had never once let her sister meet Go Yuir face to face. Deliberately!
"Why are you hiding him away so tightly," "Aren't we comrades who planned the big day together," "Shouldn't we at least see each other's faces and have a self-introduction time," and so on, no matter how reasonable the opinions her sister put forward, she'd kept ignoring them all.
There was an extremely rational reason for this.
'It's a guarantee! My taste in men and Yo-hwa's taste are guaranteed to overlap...!'
Cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck.
It was broth wrung out not by the body but by the DNA itself.
Why else would Go Yuri have gone out of her way to choose Go Yuir as her successor in the first place?
Wasn't it a scheme to hook and devour both twin sisters, noble daughters of the Korean Peninsula, all the way down to the marrow?
Was it even possible to escape a honey trap plotted by a reincarnator?
'And this is purely my hunch, but...'
Cheon Yo-hwa shot her sister a glance.
"?"
Her sister was tilting her head with an utterly innocent face.
'That girl is the type who's terrifying when it comes to love!'
Cheon Yo-hwa, who knew exactly what kind of violence hid behind her sister's purity, could only shudder.
'There's a goalkeeper, so she'll cleanly give up? No way, no way, absolutely no way.'
'She'll murder the goalkeeper and then say, "Oh, it's stained red with blood, so this is a human red card, right? Hurry up and process the sending-off"!'
'This coin's already crashed as it is, and I can't let you, Yo-hwa, get trapped holding the bag too...!'
Having reached her judgment at light speed, Cheon Yo-hwa began reciting her lines like a robot.
"That guy already has a girlfriend."
"Eh? Really?"
"Yeah. And she's seven years younger."
"What?!"
"Apparently he's been seeing her since she was a middle schooler."
"That's insane. He's a complete psycho, isn't he?!"
Her sister was horrified. Just as expected.
Of course, she herself knew perfectly well that the relationship between Go Yuir and Yu Ji-won wasn't "a dating thing." Well. Even rating it as generously as possible, it was platonic love at most.
But for the sake of her beloved sister... Cheon Yo-hwa was happy to sacrifice a thing like Go Yuir's reputation (she'd never exactly sought his consent).
"On top of that, before he started dating his current girlfriend, he and Go Yuri were in that kind of relationship."
"Eek?! Uh, uh-huh. Wait. Hold on, unni. That guy named Go Yuir. Didn't you clearly say he and Go Yuri were siblings...?"
"That's right."
Cheon Yo-hwa's expression turned exceedingly dark.
"In other words, this man named Go Yuir enjoyed the depravity of incest from a young age, and then after murdering Go Yuri, he gaslit the girl seven years his junior who'd taken part in the killing with him and made her his new lover."
"He's a total full-blown psycho, isn't he?!"
"Right?"
"At that level he's the trash of all trash, more questionable as a human being than even our father?!"
"No, that's... right. Yeah, yeah."
Cheon Yo-hwa barely managed to compose the emotion that nearly burst up out of her chest.
Composure. Composure and nothing else.
"And even though he already has a girlfriend, the way he looks at me is clearly suggestive."
Cheon Yo-hwa's gaze went wistful.
"I think he's probably coveting my exceptional looks. And my young age and status."
"Eeeeek..."
"But trash though he is, he's competent. No. Maybe it's precisely because he's trash that he's competent. Little sister. There's a saying, fight poison with poison, isn't there? For us to defeat the great evil that is our father... we have no choice but to join hands with the devil that is Go Yuir too."
Cheon Yo-hwa smiled.
"Even so, I don't want to watch my lovely little sister tie herself to a devil like that."
"Ah..."
"Even if a marriage does happen, it's right that I, the elder sister and the official heir, take responsibility for it. You, Yo-hwa, go live a happy life unbound by anything."
"Unni..."
Her sister's eyes went wistful too.
The two sisters laced their fingers together tightly. Performing all sorts of rituals together in the Cult had made them used to a posture like this. Through their cool body heat, the sisters' warm affection passed between them.
Then, right in front of her, her sister grinned brightly.
"Hey, Cheon Yo-hwa. I'm just asking in case, but you're not pulling some dirty trick to keep that guy named Go Yuir all for yourself, are you?"
Sharp as hell. Scary little thing.
The elder sister grinned right back, perfectly unfazed.
"Aw, Cheon Yo-hwa. As if that could ever happen. You don't trust me? Trusting yourself is trusting me, and trusting me is trusting you. Because the two of us together are Cheon Yo-hwa..."
"If I catch you lying, I'll kill you. Unni?"
"I swear it. On your life and mine."
"Hmm."
Her sister gave a smiling-eyed look and released her grip. The brief squeeze had left Cheon Yo-hwa's fingers tingling.
"Well, fine. I'll trust you."
Cheon Yo-hwa felt like she'd shaved ten years off her life.
The next day, the big day finally went ahead. They raided the executive meeting and harvested the executives of their father's faction as easily as popping the heads off Lego figures.
They didn't pop off their father's neck. They made a special request to Yu Ji-won and had only his limbs trimmed up nice and pretty.
"Yo-hwa, how dare you... To forget the grace of raising you, the grace of bringing you up! How dare you!"
Their father resisted to the very end, summoning his divine power, but it was useless.
The moment they ambushed him, they'd already cut off both his arms, sealing away most of his rituals. On top of that, the favor of "god-nim" had long since shifted from their father to the two sisters.
In less than three minutes the cult leader was completely subdued. Hearts pounding like mad, the twin sisters personally escorted their father to the underground torture chamber.
Flame Filial Piety. ON.
Since providing audiovisual material would violate moral restrictions on several fronts, only noise-cleaned audio will be attached here.
"Wait, unni! Ah! Ah, come on! How can you stab father like that! Have a conscience and leave somewhere for me to stab too!"
"Oops. Sorry, sorry. Whoa, looking at it like this, I think I get why humans are born with two eyes and two kidneys. God-nim must have arranged it all so that close sisters like us could split everything fifty-fifty and tear him apart. Yeah, yeah."
"Whoaaa. Look at how pitch-black the bone is. How much offering did he give god-nim to boast a 100 percent pure black like this?"
"Now then, father. I'll trim off the bits that are sticking out. Don't worry! They say when parents get old, the children clip their fingernails and toenails and all that for them."
"Snip-snip, snip-snip."
"Snippity-snip, snippity-snip♪"
"Wow, father's diet was a success!"
"That's our father. A middle-aged man of willpower! I never once doubted that father could shed the flab any time he set his mind to it!"
"My goodness. What kind of child runs the diet automatically on their father's behalf? We really are dutiful daughters, unni."
"Of course. If we put up a memorial gate for dutiful daughters, we'd have to put up a thousand of them, like the torii at the Fushimi Inari Shrine over in Kyoto[2]."
"Wow! A human tourism and culture festival!"
"Do you understand, little sister? In the modern age, filial piety has become a truly intricate problem. Beyond serving father in life, ensuring that even in death he enjoys eternal, immortal fame. This, truly, is what we can call the true pinnacle of filial devotion..."
Over a full two hours, the twin sisters dissolved a lifetime of grudges.
"Hwaaah."
It had been a deeply rewarding stretch of time.
A slight post-high comedown. Feeling a deep satisfaction, Cheon Yo-hwa stretched out wiiide.
Ah. What would have become of her if she'd never had a time like this?
She probably would have grown into the kind of person who, forever unable to embrace her childhood trauma, dragged it around behind her like a shadow with every step...
Wasn't it truly fortunate? Finally able to be reborn as a normal person, Cheon Yo-hwa felt very proud of herself...
"Hm?"
The Lego heads still lay strewn about the scene. As Cheon Yo-hwa looked around to check she hadn't slipped up anywhere, something caught her eye.
Someone's right hand. The wrist that had run away from her father's arm of its own accord a little while ago.
"..."
She whipped her head around.
Cheon Yo-hwa glanced around. There was no one. Naturally, since for the sake of this day she had manipulated the followers' schedules and movement routes several times over.
Worried someone might be peeking, Cheon Yo-hwa quickly snatched up her father's severed hand.
Just as one prefers the drumstick when eating chicken, the part that monopolized her interest was limited to only a portion even of that severed hand.
'Fingerprint seal...'
Cheon Yo-hwa looked down at the fingers bearing her father's prints and gulped.
'With this, hmm. I can smoothly alter or draw up all sorts of documents.'
'For example, an engagement document... or a prenuptial agreement?'
Kyaaaaaaaaaa!
Cheon Yo-hwa's face turned red and she squirmed.
To someone, it might have been a cute little motion.
But given that a severed hand gushing blood currently sat in her arms, to most people of sound common sense it could only be a somewhat terrifying scene.
'I'm insane, insane, insane!'
'But my sister's suggestion to bring him in as a live-in son-in-law is rather reasonable. Even judging by my cool, clear-headed brain, it's a very scientific proposal.'
'Live-in son-in-law... Wouldn't it also look good to have one upstanding man standing beside me, now that I'm about to ascend as head of the house?'
'Oh, wait. Why not change his surname while we're at it? Legally he'd keep the name Go Yuir, but we all have separate names that we go by inside the Cult anyway.'
'Then...'
Cheon Yo-hwa muttered under her breath.
"Cheo... Cheon Yuir?"[3]
Kyaaaaaaaaaaa!
Cheon Yo-hwa couldn't take it anymore and threw herself face down on the floor, rolling around and around.
Her clothes got dirty from the various byproducts that had burst out of the corpse, but since she'd just finished showering in her father's flesh scraps anyway, it didn't matter.
'Insane. Insane, insane, insane!'
'Cheon Yuir... Cheon Yuir! My goodness! It's so destined! I'm Cheon Yo-hwa! And my husband is Cheon Yuir!'
'If this isn't a couple the heavens ordained, then what is it? Like, seriously, what?'
'The real trend isn't Yuir-Yuri or Yuir-Ji-won, it's Yuir-Yo-hwa. I mean, just from how it sounds it's an absolute curb-stomp...'
'Cheon Yuir. Yuir oppa? Yuir Oraboni? Yuir-ah.'
Tap.
In the middle of rolling all over the floor, Cheon Yo-hwa's shoulder bumped into something. Thinking it might be a chair leg, she looked up, and it was a leg, all right, but not a chair's.
It was Yu Ji-won.
The expressionless girl was staring down at her flatly.
"..."
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa slowly got to her feet.
"Ahem, ahem."
She forced a cough into her own throat, all while keeping up, to the very end, the dignity of a cold, lofty, supremely confident puppet master daughter.
"Ah, you worked hard today, Miss Yu Ji-won."
"Not at all. The honor's yours, my lady."
"Thanks to you, Miss Ji-won, we don't even need to go to the trouble of disposing of the corpses, which is such a relief. I'll have you know I'm a person who remembers a kindness. I'll make sure you never have to worry about money for the rest of your life."
"I am most humbled, my lady."
Thump. Thump.
Behind the facial mask Cheon Yo-hwa had built through years of practice, a small heart was pattering away.
Cheon Yo-hwa anxiously wondered whether she had been heard. She had whispered it so quietly that there was no way, surely.
"Just in case, leave all the right and left wrists here and dispose of everything else, please. Oh, and the Cult has a method for making human-skin masks, so I'll ask you for the facial skin too."
"But of course."
The other girl's face still didn't waver in the slightest.
Only then could Cheon Yo-hwa let out a sigh of relief in her heart. Right. Thank goodness. She didn't hear.
"By the way, my lady."
"Yes?"
"Mr. Matiz's real name is not Cheon Yuir but Go Yuir. In case you'd misunderstood..."
"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!!"
Puppet master daughter.
Dark history, deposited.
Footnotes:
[1] From Korean "spoon class" internet slang, which ranks people by inherited wealth: a "dirt spoon" is someone born poor, the opposite of a "gold spoon" born into riches.
[2] Fushimi Inari is a major Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan, famous for the Senbon Torii, thousands of densely packed vermilion torii gates forming long tunnels up the mountain.
[3] The Korean names Cheon Yo-hwa and Cheon Yuir share the surname Cheon and rhyme, making them sound like a neatly matched couple.
-x-X-x-
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* * *
Being honest with herself.
In Cheon Yo-hwa's own estimation, this kind of honesty was her very nature, for better or worse.
After all, just because the desire to kill one's father had coiled itself around your heart, how many people could look that blackish viper dead in the eye?
Cheon Yo-hwa could never bring herself to commit the one sin of self-deception. She simply couldn't.
So she had no choice but to admit it.
The girl seated across from her now, beautiful beyond words. Yu Ji-won.
She hated her. No question about it.
"Ji-won."
Cheon Yo-hwa smiled brightly.
"Is anything troubling you these days? Anything at all?"
"Nothing at all. It's all thanks to you, Reverend, for looking after Mr. Matiz and me."
Yu Ji-won bowed her head, courteous to the very end.
"I'm especially grateful that you've gone so far as to care for my grandmother. Truly, I can only offer my thanks."
"Aw, come now, it's nothing! Between us, this much is only natural!"
Two months had already passed since the special event [Your Father Is in the Middle of Succeeding to the Throne] had occurred.
In that time, Cheon Yo-hwa had been frantically busy updating the Cult's content.
First, as the new Administrator, she shored up popular sentiment by declaring that their game would keep sailing smoothly from here on. The traitors who raised objections got turned into seasoned meat patties along the way.
At long last, formidable power and wealth had been placed in Cheon Yo-hwa's hands. This was what winning at life looked like.
Influential figures from home and abroad came swarming in, claiming they wished to pay their respects to this little Reverend, and thanks to them Cheon Yo-hwa's threshold gleamed and shone, polished bright by all their socks.
She had seized the freedom she had craved so badly. Surely it was about time she let herself feel satisfied.
But... why was it?
An ache and a tingle she couldn't wipe away still lingered. A tiny current of static crackled somewhere around Cheon Yo-hwa's heart.
Especially while she was looking at the girl in front of her.
"I might not look it, but I'm a generous sort, you know. Ehehe. If a top contributor like our Ji-won wants it, I'd happily make you an officer in the Cult, as senior a post as you'd like, and hand it right over."
"No."
Yu Ji-won shook her head. Firmly.
So firmly that, for a moment, Cheon Yo-hwa wondered whether the power she'd grasped was really that shabby.
"I'm truly grateful that you would extend such an offer to someone like me. But there isn't much time left now."
"There isn't much time left...?"
"World annihilation, Reverend."
Yu Ji-won laid out a point she had already raised several times, calm as ever, as though she never tired of it.
"This world will soon fail to escape annihilation. The power you've taken into your hands, Reverend. My grandmother's whole life. Mr. Matiz. Every memory I hold."
"..."
"From the moment Go Yuri was killed, Mr. Matiz and I have been thinking, all along. We've been trying. This very moment, our existence as we struggle endlessly. How we might carry it across the forgetting and the void, and pass even a sliver of it on to the 'future.'"
"Hmmm."
Cheon Yo-hwa fanned herself.
The fingers riding the folding fan brimmed with a Reverend's ease. Yet the impatience nesting in her heart grew hotter and hotter.
"When the world is annihilated, even the trace that we existed right now vanishes. How exactly do you plan to pass that on to the next cycle... to some other future? To turn Mr. Go Yuir into a regressor you need Teacher Go Yuri, and you killed her. You did."
"There's a flaw in the phrase 'next cycle.'"
Yu Ji-won rested her chin on her hand. Expressionless.
All at once Cheon Yo-hwa wanted to scratch a mark into that blank face. It wasn't a desire she felt for the first time.
It was also a desire she'd failed at every single time.
"To put it more precisely, what we're after isn't simply the [next cycle], but the [cycle of the happy ending] in which Mr. Matiz finally manages to stop the world's annihilation."
"Aha...?"
"Even if we deliver the record of our existence to the next cycle, it means nothing if the world's annihilation isn't actually stopped. Our record would just be lost together with that cycle's annihilation."
Yu Ji-won spoke crisply. Not once did her pronunciation stumble, not once did her breathing fall out of step, to the point that it felt almost inhuman.
"And so, the 'time capsule' holding our record must, no matter what happens, be delivered to the world that comes after the happy ending."
"..."
The gist was simple.
Go Yuir and Yu Ji-won. For whatever reason, these two believed this world's annihilation could absolutely never be avoided.
There was no hope of any kind.
In that case they might as well hurry up and kill themselves to spare the pain. But they didn't do that either.
Having accepted annihilation, the two of them resolved to deliver a kind of record toward the future that would arrive someday, toward themselves in the 'cycle that saved the world.'
That was the so-called 'time capsule.'
'Seriously, they're insane. Both of them.'
To Cheon Yo-hwa it was absurd.
"Well. It's interesting, though. How?"
For starters, believing without a shred of doubt in the world's annihilation was already off its rocker. Maybe it was abnormal for the leader of a sham cult to think that way, too.
But what was even more absurd was the part where, after accepting such a ridiculous premise, they went looking for a 'practical breakthrough.'
Any deranged cultist could believe in an apocalyptic end. But preparing 'practical countermeasures' to avoid the end?
Usually in cases like this, a cultist's answer came down to heartfelt 'prayer' or sincere 'donations.'
But the conclusion Go Yuir and Yu Ji-won had reached was neither.
"First, we were able to learn that the reincarnator's plan unfolds largely centered on the Korean Peninsula. No, rather, the reincarnator set the board up from the start so it would unfold centered on the Korean Peninsula."
Yu Ji-won unfolded a map.
Strangely, this girl always kept maps stowed in her bag. The one laid out on the table now was a world map.
"However, the odds that Mr. Matiz, who will one day evolve into a regressor, stays only on the Korean Peninsula are exceedingly low. Once each nation's government collapses, the regressor can roam the Eurasian continent relatively freely, going wherever he likes."
Yu Ji-won's eyes.
They seemed to gaze down at destinations and waypoints not yet visible on the map, as if they were the most obvious things in the world.
"Therefore, for the 'time capsule' not to be discovered by failed regressors, we must bury it not merely far from the Korean Peninsula, but in a place a regressor would hardly ever reach."
"...And where is that?"
"Across the Pacific. The American continent."
"..."
"And it can't be a famous place, even there. Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Uyuni Salt Flats, and so on. Tourist attractions risk a regressor dropping by to kill time."
"..."
"If a regressor were to find the time capsule there, even by accident. If they were to open it even once. And if that regressor reached a [bad ending] and lost themselves. Then our record, too, would stay buried in the soil and be lost forever."
This child.
Where on earth was she looking?
The memories and the bond she had shared with Mr. Matiz, with the man named Go Yuir. Why was she so desperate to pass them on to the future?
Why did eternity dwell only in the breath those two exhaled?
'Ah.'
A flinch. Cheon Yo-hwa's gaze had been snagged on Yu Ji-won's face the whole time, and she hurried to school her expression.
Luckily it didn't seem her dazed face had been caught. Yu Ji-won was still focused on pointing here and there across the map as she explained.
"...Hmm. But it's not exactly a famous place. And there's hardly a good way to deliver a hint about where the time capsule is buried to the [happy ending] regressor alone. It looks way too hard, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
Yu Ji-won nodded.
"That's why Mr. Matiz and I deliberated for a long, very long time about where to bury the time capsule. It was a long deliberation."
Condition 1. The place is far from the Korean Peninsula, and reaching it requires crossing the Pacific.
Condition 2. The place can never be found by a bad ending regressor, and only a regressor who reaches the happy ending can find it.
Condition 3. Leaving a concrete hint about the place is difficult. The moment a hint is left, it's exposed to the [bad ending] regressors as well, and the risk of discovery by the reincarnator Go Yuri rises too.
"And so."
Yu Ji-won said.
"The place must be one that Mr. Matiz 'absolutely' never visits until he has saved the world, but that he 'will certainly' visit naturally once he has saved it. It has to be that kind of place."
"And where is that?"
Just then.
For the first time, that is, for the first time as far as Cheon Yo-hwa was concerned, she found herself witnessing the girl before her wear a smile.
"..."
This time even Cheon Yo-hwa had no choice but to stare blankly at Yu Ji-won.
She had heard from Go Yuir that the girl's emotions had been cut away. That she was a little different from a psychopath, too.
And yet that smile held a feeling so vivid it was impossible to imagine it on the lips of someone who could feel no emotion at all.
Was it because that startled her so much?
"I will major in Latin and Ancient Greek."
Cheon Yo-hwa reacted a touch late to the words that spilled from Yu Ji-won's lips.
"Uh. Yes, yes?"
"Latin and Ancient Greek. They're the majors Mr. Matiz recommended. We plan to pool our funds, go study abroad, and learn them."
"Ah. Then the Cult will support-!"
"No."
Yu Ji-won shook her head.
Not as firmly as before.
She couldn't quite say how to put it, but to Cheon Yo-hwa it felt as though a faint hope and flutter had melted into the tilt of her head.
"After Mr. Matiz saves the world, I'll go to the United States to study. Depending on the timing, I might even go as an exchange student."
"..."
"Among the universities along the Pacific coast there's Stanford University. It has a classics department that systematically teaches Latin, Ancient Greek, and the like. The philosophy encyclopedia treated as the philosophy department's wiki[1] is managed by that university too. We plan to plant the time capsule on its campus grounds."
Yu Ji-won was still smiling.
"If the world's annihilation is stopped, I'll surely go there. And Mr. Matiz will certainly come with me, no doubt about it. So. No matter what happens, we will find the time capsule at the end of the happy ending."
A trust close to infinite.
Happiness. She could feel it.
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa's lips parted.
And a mutter slipped out before she knew it.
"What if you fail?"
Yu Ji-won tilted her head.
"Pardon?"
"What if you fail. You said this cycle has no hope at all, didn't you? World annihilation. Then even if you try hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times, your odds don't exactly just shoot up, do they?"
"..."
"One percent if you're being generous. No, honestly it's under 0.01 percent, right? So why do you, Yu Ji-won, bet your whole life and your future on those odds? Why does Mr. Go Yuir do it too? If there's no chance anyway, then either try to stop the world's annihilation in this cycle, or... rather than waste time on pointless effort, wouldn't it be a lot more reasonable to flex and live it up as hard as you can?"
For a moment silence settled over the parlor.
Feeling the chill of that silence, Cheon Yo-hwa regretted it, thinking, ah, I went and did it.
'I didn't want to say something like that.'
She hadn't wanted to reveal herself to this person.
Because, well, there was no chance of winning at all, was there.
Yu Ji-won had met Go Yuir far earlier than she had. Not merely met him, but formed a bond so deep it was hard for her even to imagine.
She was late. She was tardy. At the decisive moment she had been shoved back in the order of time.
So, what Cheon Yo-hwa had really wanted to say was this.
'You're just... you're just lucky, that's all.'
What she had wanted to swallow back down was this.
'If I'd been born into a flimsy family like yours, forget middle school, I'd have killed my parents back in elementary school already.'
'Then the event would've been moved up by that much, and the timeline where Teacher Go Yuri assigned Mr. Go Yuir to me would've come sooner, wouldn't it?'
'Ahaha.'
'...You got lucky being born into a home like that, you got lucky meeting that person early, and yet.'
'Why... am I the one who has to give up?'
Cheon Yo-hwa bit her lip.
Her heart churned. Without either of them noticing, foul water resembling a taegeuk yin-yang pattern[2] was pooling inside her chest.
'What? You'll live not for this cycle but for the cycle that reaches the happy ending? Then what, you're going to keep Mr. Go Yuir all to yourself forever, is that it?'
'Why? Why, why? Why? Why does it have to be her?'
'If I had met him sooner.'
'For a heartless machine like you, when I like him this much. When this is the first time I've ever felt anything like this. Why-.'
"I don't understand the question."
Right before the foul water could stain her soul.
Yu Ji-won spoke up. Only then did Cheon Yo-hwa come back to herself.
The girl's words went on.
"I believe in Mr. Matiz."
"...No, believe in him or not. I'm telling you it's going to fail."
"It doesn't matter."
"What?"
"If Mr. Matiz fails, there will surely be a reason that failure was unavoidable. It will be a reason neither Mr. Matiz nor I can do anything about, and so there's no use in my worrying over it now."
"..."
"What matters is the simple fact that I believe in Mr. Matiz."
Cheon Yo-hwa.
"Mr. Matiz's failure, his success, his giving up, his hope, his resignation, his smile. I will accept all of it as the finest beauty."
She could say for certain she had never once thought of herself as a chosen human, because.
She was simply smarter and more beautiful and more abundant and more excellent and more favored by the gods than others, that was all, so.
She didn't think she was a truly special person, but even so she had never cursed her own lot while looking at someone else, so.
Now that she had killed her father and ascended to the throne, all the more there should have been no reason to curse anyone.
"That is the life I have chosen for myself."
"..."
For the first time in her life.
Cheon Yo-hwa felt inferior to another person.
'There's no way.'
There was no way she could win.
Footnotes:
[1] A reference to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a free, peer-reviewed online reference work on philosophy maintained by Stanford University and widely used as a go-to resource by students and academics.
[2] The taegeuk is the red-and-blue swirling yin-yang symbol at the center of the South Korean flag, representing the balance of opposing cosmic forces.