That Woman C V
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* * *
"Unni? What's with that face?"
"Wait. Unni... are you crying right now?"
"Ah. Um, no. At least tell me why you're crying."
"It's okay. It's okay, unni. Don't cry. Why are you crying, you idiot. Don't cry."
"...Unni."
That night.
Cheon Yo-hwa had her heart broken.
* * *
The word "one-sided love"[1] was a deeply inaccurate one.
Say "sided," and it sounded as if there were a matching partner, a counterpart cut to fit you.
A best buddy, a seatmate.
It carried the nuance that, even if not now, there might be a chance someday.
Reality was different.
Rather than "one-sided love," maybe "loving alone," or a love broken into pieces, a "shard love," would be more fitting.
"Ah, Go Yuir!"
"Oh. Welcome, Reverend."
This feeling of a heart split clean in two.
"Wow. Rising to such a high position really does the trick, doesn't it? These days your face just glows."
"Ahaha. It's all thanks to you, Go Yuir!"
This feeling where smiling didn't feel like smiling, and thinking didn't feel like thinking.
The words "one-sided love" simply couldn't hold all of it.
"Ji-won told me everything. You're going to be running something interesting over at Stanford?"
"Ah. Yes, that's right."
"Look at you, Yuir oppa. Now I see. I kept wondering why you went and propped up a young lady like me, and it turns out you were planning to use the Cult's assets all along, weren't you-?"
"Yes, I won't deny it. I desperately need your help, Reverend. Someone fresh out into society like me could never pull off work like this alone."
"Aigoo. It'll be a teensy bit hard for us too, having to go all the way out to California and set up shop. But I owe you so much I couldn't very well refuse. Honestly, I feel like I've been led around by the nose with my eyes wide open!"
"Haha..."
"Ah. We sort of glossed over it, but in private I can just call you oppa, right? Yuir oppa?"
"Mm, yes. Of course. Please call me however is comfortable for you, Reverend."
"Aw. You're being too polite. You can just drop the formalities and talk casually, oppa!"
"No. That's a bit..."
She wanted to die.
Every time she met Go Yuir, Cheon Yo-hwa got giddy. But "giddy" didn't necessarily mean anything good.
Her heart pounded abnormally even when she didn't want it to, her face grew hot, and somehow she dressed up "ordinary" with the mask she'd spent her whole life building. She was capable enough to keep up that disguise, but now and then her feelings leapt out, jamming the hammer of her sentences and words like a misfire.
The hinge of her heart creaked. No one had come through the door.
In the room where she was left alone, Cheon Yo-hwa alone gripped the door handle, opened it, closed it, opened and closed it again and again, greeting and seeing off nothing but the air of someone who would never come here.
After they smiled and turned and parted, what stayed in Cheon Yo-hwa's memory were her own words and sentences, the ones that had jutted out crooked in the middle of their conversation.
"...Unni."
No. The truth was, she wasn't entirely alone.
In front of her little sister, Cheon Yo-hwa could choose not to smile. She didn't even need to.
"If that's how it was, you should have just said something."
Her sister seemed to have already guessed everything, even though Cheon Yo-hwa hadn't laid out a word of her own circumstances.
It had been so long. And yet, lately, often, her sister stroked her head.
"You can't give him up?"
"..."
"Should I... get rid of him for you?"
"No!"
Her voice tore. Before she even realized it, Cheon Yo-hwa shrieked as if screaming.
"No. Absolutely not. Don't you dare."
"Why...?"
Her sister's voice was calm.
"You can feel it too, can't you, unni. Ever since Father died, our god-nim's authority has been growing stronger and stronger. We could do it now. If you and I set our minds to it, we could definitely kill that girl..."
"No! I said no!"
Who was she even shouting at?
Cheon Yo-hwa felt as though her heart were being seared in a scalding marsh, drowning in it.
"Those people are different! It's not like that. It's not like that. They're... they're human beings, different from something like me."
"..."
"I'm sorry. I thought my feelings would go away too. In a few years. I don't know why they won't disappear either. Sorry. Father's dead now. That man's gone too, so all that's left is to be happy. So why?"
She wanted to die.
Why did she put on airs in front of Go Yuir every time she met him? Why could she only stay in the kind of air she could smooth over with laughter and smiles?
Why was it that the moment she stood before that person, no, after she'd stood before him and then turned to look back, it felt this embarrassing, this shameful, this agonizing?
"Please, I'm begging you. Yo-hwa-ya. Her... Yu Ji-won. Don't touch her. Just, don't touch her. You can't do that. You're not allowed to do that."
"What if I disguise it as an accidental death?"
"No. I know it, Cheon Yo-hwa. We both know it."
"..."
"She's a really, really beautiful person. Different from something like me. Sorry. I didn't want to say this. I'm sorry."
The sister embraced her unni. And with the same face, the same hair, the same eyes, she murmured.
"So unni was a person who could only love one. From the very start."
"..."
"That must be exactly why Teacher Go Yuri chose someone like that for you. Out of countless options and candidates. ...Yeah. That's vicious. Truly."
Time was dying.
Yet only the time inside Cheon Yo-hwa kept dying. Outwardly, the Reverend who had newly seized power was handling business with peerless competence.
Her talent burst into full bloom.
As if she'd been born with an instinctive nose for organizational management and resource allocation, she pulled off not only the Cult's existing enterprises but also the "time capsule" quest Go Yuir had commissioned, step by step.
"I've rounded up all the personnel the operation needs. So, Yuir oppa, how exactly do we make a time capsule?"
"Mm. I have an ability called time seal, and we'll be using it. Reverend, the Outer God's authority has gotten stronger by now, hasn't it?"
"Ah, yes!"
Go Yuir called the "god-nim" dwelling within the sisters an Outer God.
Strangely enough, Go Yuir held more detailed and precise information about the "god-nim" than the sisters did. It was probably information he'd heard from a reincarnator.
"Reverend. By any chance, have you been having strange dreams lately?"
"Eek!"
"Dreams oddly overflowing with realness, almost impossible to tell apart from reality, and even after you wake the memory stays nearly whole, like lucid dreams. Isn't that so?"
"Eeek...!"
Cheon Yo-hwa reacted with exaggeration. Because that exaggeration would be etched into him as "Cheon Yo-hwa's natural self."
"H-how did you know?! I've been agonizing so much over that lately!"
"That too is an authority arranged for you, Reverend. Think of it as a kind of simulation ability."
"Simulation..."
"Yes. As long as you're given enough data, you can run a simulation of any scenario, Reverend. Ah. Of course, what's flat-out impossible won't work. Only feasible scenarios."
"...Heeh."
Then was kissing your lips in last night's dream also something that could have happened, originally?
That retort nearly burst out of her, and Cheon Yo-hwa held it in by a hair.
It wasn't all that difficult. She'd grown quite used to holding things back in front of Go Yuir anyway.
"You're saying we'll use my simulation ability to make the time capsule? Hmm. I still can't quite picture it."
"My time seal. Your simulation, Reverend. And your sister has to create an anomaly called a Baku[2]. Only then is it possible."
"My sister too?"
"Yes. This part's fairly complicated... Anyway, for now please focus on growing the authority. Ah. Even when I say grow, of course I'm not asking you to reach the point where the Outer God devours you."
"Hmm. So what's my role?"
Go Yuir smiled awkwardly.
"I'd like you to 'simulate' the things that happened between Ji-won and me, Reverend."
A pause.
Cheon Yo-hwa set down her coffee cup, putting on an air of being perfectly natural about it.
A cafe run by a member of the Cult.
They'd reserved the whole place, so there were only the two of them for customers. Still, being like this felt good, as if she'd set down the title of Reverend and was enjoying an "ordinary" date out in the world.
Of course, behaving this way couldn't help but spread rumors.
The members of the Cult were always smashing the "subscribe" and "like" buttons on the Reverend's every move in the YouTube of their hearts.
Within the Cult, Go Yuir was already passed around as something like the Reverend's kept man. There was no denying Cheon Yo-hwa had, knowing this, let the rumors run.
Even though the truth was nothing of the sort.
Even though it was obvious this kind of scheming would do nothing for the relationship between "those two."
"Uh, um. I'm sorry, Yuir oppa. What... what does it mean to run a simulation of things between you and Ji-won...? I'm not sure I understand."
"The baku. The anomaly that will later be altered into the tutorial fairy can store other people's dreams. Naturally, it's also possible to input the contents of the dreams you've had, Reverend."
"Yes. I can understand up to there."
"To raise the resolution of this dream, that is, to store a truth that isn't some mere dream but is endlessly close to reality. You'll run the dream's contents through your simulation, Reverend."
"..."
"After that, I bind the fairy that now holds this dream of truth with my [time seal]. On the grounds of Stanford University."
"Ah."
"This way, someday in the future, the regressor who comes to unseal the sealed time will, through the baku, inherit this cycle's dream."
"..."
"This is the time capsule."
Go Yuir smiled.
"The one Ji-won and I thought up so desperately... the shabbiest, the tiniest Ark in the world."
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa realized it.
Looking now, the direction and intensity of the smile the girl named Yu Ji-won had worn resembled the man in front of her exactly.
It was a fact she'd barely managed to grasp precisely because she had watched the two of them harder than anyone.
"Now that you've heard this far, you'll have guessed, but... it's also the reason we approached you in the first place, Reverend."
The traces of the one she loved, because she loved him, she could find in someone she could never love.
"An operation that's impossible without your cooperation, Reverend. Because in this world, you're the only one we can ask for this plan."
"...Ah."
"Will you help us?"
It was miserable.
"Mm, well. Yes!"
It was cruel.
"It's your request, oppa, so of course I have to grant it! Eheheh. But are you really sure you're okay with this?"
"Yes?"
"This means I'll end up knowing everything that happened between the two of you. Things like this- and things like that. Kyaa! How embarrassing!"
"Ugh. Well, it is a little embarrassing. But it's fine. I'll trust you, Reverend."
"..."
The corner of her mouth trembled faintly.
'What are you doing, Cheon Yo-hwa?'
Smile.
"Ahaha. Hon-estly, oppa. If you trust people that easily, you might find a knife in your back later, you know?"
Right. Smile. I said smile.
It's the thing you're best at, isn't it. Smiling.
"Ah! But... um. Never mind, never mind."
"Yes? What is it?"
"It's nothing! Let's drop it. It's fine to just let it go."
"No. Please speak freely, Reverend. For what it's worth, didn't we accomplish the hardest thing together?"
Huh? Or did we not?
Was there one more thing you're even better at than smiling?
"Mmm. So the thing is..., haa. The truth is, the number of people inside the Cult making weird guesses about your and my relationship has gone up a bit, oppa."
"What?"
"It seems, the. Ah. Don't get the wrong idea, okay? Because I absolutely don't think that way! It's just, cult members who have no- idea about our circumstances. These good-for-nothing nobodies, this riffraff- saying isn't this a little strange. Saying aren't we giving too much special treatment to an outsider like you, oppa."
"..."
"Talk like that goes around once in a while. Honestly, I don't get how these cockroach-like things just never end no matter how many you squash. Right?"
"Even so, killing them is..."
"No. You have to be firm on a problem like this, oppa. When the Reverend, me, says drop it, they should drop it. The nerve of these lowborn things crawling up to butt in, telling you and me what to do?"
"..."
Acting. Scheming.
When it comes to deceiving and controlling people, you'd be better than anyone, wouldn't you? Right? You even deceived Father.
You're definitely far, far more capable than Yu Ji-won at that one thing at least. How enviable!
"Haven't you seen blood enough? I think there's probably a gentler way."
"Hmm? A gentler way..."
Lift a finger, prop it under your chin, yes. As if it's nothing. With no ulterior motive at all. Just act like you're thinking.
Look at that. This man. He's watching with such an incredibly serious expression.
While firmly believing the world is going to end, he frets about the lives of cult members who have nothing to do with him? Why?
What an idiot.
"...Mm, well. There's a little bit of talk going around saying maybe you and I are actually dating..., saying wouldn't it all make sense then, but..."
What an idiot.
"Ah, don't worry about it! Our elders are always going on and on about my social life anyway."
"Ah..."
What an idiot.
"I know perfectly well how devoted and pure you and Ji-won are to each other. I do!"
"Ji-won and I aren't that kind of..."
"Ihihi. Forget it, forget it. When you go to California, I'll book your first-class tickets and hotel, so take it easy and enjoy your trip!"
"..."
"And so there's no chance of that kind of noise after the trip, I'll clean it all up nice and tidy. So don't you worry!"
"..."
What an idiot.
"Reverend."
"Yes?"
"Maybe that method... might actually work."
"What method?"
"A betrothal."
"Eh."
What an idiot. What an idiot. What an idiot.
"Think about it. Not actually getting married, but holding a betrothal to disguise our relationship. Then no one will make a sound when we use the Cult's resources."
"Uh, uhhh... That's true, but. I personally don't mind, but are you sure you're okay with it? Oppa?"
"Yes. Either way, if we push the wedding date far enough back, the world will end before that day comes. If a betrothal, words and nothing more, is enough to win over the Cult's goodwill..."
"No, no! Not that. Ji-won. You have Yu Ji-won, oppa. So you're really fine getting betrothed to me?"
"Ah."
Go Yuir smiled.
He understood the intent of the question belatedly, but a faint yet warm smile, as if the question itself held no meaning at all.
Endless trust hung there.
"It's fine. If it's Ji-won."
"..."
"Because I believe in that girl."
Half a year later.
A betrothal was formed between Cheon Yo-hwa and Go Yuir.
Some members of the Cult voiced dissatisfaction at the low status of the live-in son-in-law, but his academic background wasn't one they couldn't accept, and at least the dissatisfaction was never openly expressed.
"..."
Crinkle.
The engagement document, written out so carefully, character by character, the paper with Cheon Yo-hwa's and Go Yuir's names lined up side by side, crumpled in her hand.
"Ahaha."
She wanted to die.
Footnotes:
[1] The Korean word for one-sided love, jjaksarang, literally means "pair-love" or "partner-love," which is why Cheon Yo-hwa rejects it: the "pair" implies a matching counterpart. She prefers pyeollyeon, literally "fragment/shard love," rendered here as "shard love."
[2] A baku (Korean: mongma) is a creature from East Asian folklore said to devour dreams and nightmares; here it is repurposed as an anomaly able to store and replay people's dreams.
-x-X-x-
That Woman C VI
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* * *
The truth was, Cheon Yo-hwa already knew.
To put it as a metaphor, the Cult she reigned over was a demonic cult. And she was its Heavenly Demon.
A proper Heavenly Demon ought to strike down her own father and then seize her position purely by her own strength.
She, too, had done nothing more than faithfully follow the traditions of a demonic cult.
And so a trial that no high-ranking cultist of the demonic path could ever avoid had been handed to her as well.
The inner demon.
-The fact that I like someone now could end up wounding that person, couldn't it.
-So you wound them.
"...No, what the hell."
When had it started?
There was a voice inside her heart, whispering in an imitation of her own.
At first she truly believed it was her own innermost thoughts. But no matter how she looked at it, she would never act that filthy.
Probably. No, without a doubt.
This inner demon had to be the influence of the 'Outer God.'
-Really? You sneak glances at his lips every single day while talking with Go Yuir and fantasize about kissing him, and you're really not filthy?
"Eeeeeek!"
-Actually, Go Yuir might already have noticed. Mm, a hundred percent he noticed. Remember last time? How he suddenly switched the lip gloss he always used to Vaseline. Since you stare at his lips so much, he probably figured something was wrong with the product and switched to a different one...
"Eeeeeeeeeek! Die! Die! Please, die! Just drop dead, would you!"
The crash and clatter from the Reverend's chamber sent the door flying open, and her sister rushed in.
"Unni?! What happened? Don't tell me it's an assassin?!"
"No, it's... it's nothing..."
Sprawled across the floor, Cheon Yo-hwa groaned.
"M, more to the point. Yo-hwa, do you ever get a cunning demon whispering inside your heart these days too?"
"Ugh."
Her sister took a step back.
"Unni, even so, chuunibyou[1] at your age is kind of... I always thought you had a bit of an otaku streak from way back, but failing to keep your dignity even after becoming Reverend, I think that's a real problem."
-Are you an idiot?
The inner demon sneered again.
-This is an inner demon, Cheon Yo-hwa. Your heart for the Way warped and a gap opened up. It's like an asphalt road crumbling and weeds growing in the cracks. Do you think an inner demon could find room to slip into a girl who walks her own path as straight as your sister?
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa dismissed her sister, who kept staring at her with a worried face, and was alone again.
But alone, she was not alone.
Cheon Yo-hwa muttered inwardly.
'I've given up on Go Yuir. At the very least I'm trying to give up. It hasn't gotten so bad you could call my heart broken.'
-Ahahaha.
A laugh she couldn't stand rang against her eardrum. It was a noise that vibrated not outside the eardrum but inside it.
-Want to open the second drawer over there and say that again? After you smoothed out that engagement document you'd crumpled into a ball, pressed it flat with your own hands, and enshrined it like some holy relic. Given up?
"..."
-You know what, Cheon Yo-hwa? I'm not the one deceiving you. You're deceiving yourself. I only speak on your behalf, and that's why you can't kill me. Because I'm honest.
'Shut up.'
-You shut up. I'm not some separate split personality. I'm you. I exist because you can't let go.
Cheon Yo-hwa's hair came undone.
The hair her attendants had so carefully styled at dawn each day fell into ruin, and from beneath it a groan leaked out.
"...Then what do you want me to do."
-Just honestly admit your heart.
The voice turned gentle.
-Whether you call it god-nim or Outer God, the one thing you can't deny is that it is one body and one heart with you. Which means the more upright and strong your heart grows, the stronger the god's authority grows too.
'Aha.'
Cheon Yo-hwa scoffed.
'So in the end all this bullshit was a scheme to seduce me and offer me up as god-nim's living Sacrifice? How cliche.'
-What's cliche is your interpretation.
-Seduction. Sacrifice. Plunder. Those words are nothing but the hopelessly one-dimensional readings of third parties who have never experienced the relationship between a god and a priestess for themselves.
-It isn't like that, Cheon Yo-hwa. It isn't like that.
-A god has no intention, no purpose. There isn't a speck of any aim to toy with you. As a priestess, surely you can feel it?
-The god simply wants to set you free.
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa was silent, and also not silent.
-The 'time capsule' project Go Yuir asked for lately, the progress is a little sluggish, isn't it?
-That's all because your authority hasn't ripened enough. You still haven't reached the level where you can run simulations as freely as you'd like.
-As long as you treat me as an inner demon, you'll keep walking in place forever.
And then?
-Admit your own heart. Don't run away behind the word "given up," face it head-on.
-Will you repeat after me?
Repeat what?
-I love Go Yuir.
"..."
-Just repeat it once. Even murmuring it in your heart is enough. Repeat it just once, and tonight you'll feel your authority suddenly grow.
-And this isn't only for your own sake, it's for Go Yuir too.
For Go Yuir's sake?
-Of course. You have to grow your authority to finish the time capsule sooner, don't you? World annihilation is creeping closer by the moment, and you mean to lounge around obsessing over your own purity?
"..."
-Repeat it.
-Come on. Hurry.
Cheon Yo-hwa's lips pressed hard together.
'...I love Go Yuir.'
And?
'I probably... won't be able to give him up. Ever.'
Well done. Well done, Cheon Yo-hwa.
-Now I'll prove that my words aren't some bewitching lie.
That night.
Cheon Yo-hwa had a lucid dream.
Lucid dreams had always been thoroughly familiar to her. As the Outer God's authority grew stronger, 'simulations' had begun to manifest in the form of dreams.
But the sleepwalking dream she had this night was somewhat... no. Far, far higher in resolution than usual.
「People are dying!」
「This is the path to saving them. Yes, I know. It must sound like sophistry. But the moment I dared to spoil things for you, Oraboni, this life became a 'discard card' for me.」
A back alley where rain had started to fall.
On the dark, gloomy roadside, Go Yuir and Go Yuri were having an argument. The scene played out from a distance.
Cheon Yo-hwa felt exactly as if she had become a ghost.
She could see those two, but they couldn't sense her at all.
'This is?'
The inner demon whispered.
-The night Go Yuri died. The simulation has restored the scene of the murder. Yes, look there. See the kid hidden under a raincoat?
'Ah.'
-That's Yu Ji-won.
The girl, masked by the sound of the rain, ambushed Go Yuri. A kitchen knife. The blade, sheathed in aura, drove precisely between bone and bone and pierced through her chest.
-The moment everything changed. The fork in the route, if you want to call it that.
"..."
-Rewind it a little further into the past.
"Is that... possible?"
-Right now it is. You've heard the whole thing from Go Yuir dozens of times anyway, and you know every major character's face. Try it.
She turned back time.
How such a feat was even possible was a mystery, but with that brilliant mind of hers, Cheon Yo-hwa grasped the method at once.
'This isn't reality, it's a human's dream. A simulation. Which means I'm contemplating the world in a form [I can understand.]'
'In that case, a format that's a little easier to understand and easier to manipulate... For instance, what if I think of it as a [video?]'
Bzzzt-.
The world's image quality degraded somewhat. But in exchange, Cheon Yo-hwa could now press a 'fast-forward' button on the scenery before her, just like skipping a video back and forth.
-Heh.
The inner demon marveled.
-You grasped the principle of your authority without anyone teaching you? That's right. You have to weave the world into a form that's easy for you to control.
-The more cumbersome the form, the weaker the authority. But the easier it is to use. The less form there is, the stronger the authority. But the harder it is to use.
-You have to strike a good balance between the two, little priestess.
-Remember. You have to figure out for yourself which form suits you best. Free of shape or place.
Time rewound.
What spread before Cheon Yo-hwa's eyes was no longer the alley. A budget business hotel. The lodging where Go Yuir and Yu Ji-won were staying.
-This is the situation right before the route diverges.
Cheon Yo-hwa knit her brows.
'This? Nothing about it looks special.'
-Soon, Go Yuir is going to reveal a secret to Yu Ji-won. He's going to open up the information about the reincarnator.
-Foolish, foolish, foolish. At this point in time Yu Ji-won is the strongest priestess, who has climbed to the level of being one body and one heart with the Outer God by her own power.
-From the girl Yu Ji-won's standpoint. From the Outer God's standpoint. There's no way they'd let a prime chance to kill the reincarnator slip by.
-You have to stop it, Cheon Yo-hwa.
How?
-Simple. Just keep Go Yuir from staring at Yu Ji-won, deal with nothing but his gaze.
'Huh?'
For a moment Cheon Yo-hwa was dumbfounded.
'Turn his gaze away? ...You're saying that alone changes the route?'
-Don't ask me back.
The inner demon's voice sank low.
-I'm not delivering information you don't have. You just grasped how to use your authority entirely on your own.
-I only restated and repeated the fact you realized. I didn't create something out of nothing.
-You know it already, so don't ask back.
-Block Go Yuir's gaze as it falls on Yu Ji-won. It's dangerous.
"..."
Crash!
A glass tumbled off the table.
「Oh.」
Go Yuir was flustered. At that, Yu Ji-won, who had been sitting at the desk, quickly rose too.
「I'll fetch a towel and gloves, Mr. Matiz. Do not pick up the glass.」
「Uh, uh-huh. And socks too!」
「Yes.」
Yu Ji-won and Go Yuir, perfectly in sync, cleared away the glass in no time.
The subtle air that had been flowing between the two of them moments earlier had vanished somewhere too.
Just then Go Yuir's smartphone buzzed, and after confirming it was a text from Go Yuri, Go Yuir hurried out of the lodging.
-Follow him.
She followed.
「Anyway, congratulations on your overseas trip, Oraboni. It's a trip you planned a whole year in advance, isn't it?」
「Well. Yeah.」
「I'm only saying this out of a worrywart's caution, just in case, but you have to keep my existence a secret from Miss Yu Ji-won, all right?」
「...Y, yeah. Of course.」
A warm, friendly conversation between siblings.
Unlike the 'past' where they had argued fiercely, in the newly diverged 'route this time,' Go Yuir and Go Yuri talked together in nothing but an ordinary way.
What's more.
'...Yu Ji-won's tailing is gone.'
-Mm.
The inner demon chimed in.
-If the glass hadn't dropped just now, Go Yuir would have kept looking at Yu Ji-won, and they'd have had some important conversation.
'And that conversation... triggered Teacher Go Yuri's death?'
Cheon Yo-hwa swallowed hard.
'The teacher's life or death was decided by whether or not one single conversation happened?'
-Every necessity is chance. Chance is necessity. Necessity is the world. Now fast-forward and check what's changed.
She checked.
In the worldline where the reincarnator didn't die, Go Yuir soon appeared before the Cheon Yo-hwa twins as the successor tutor.
And.
There was no Yu Ji-won at his side.
-He moved to Sejong to teach us sisters.
'Yu Ji-won...?'
-He left her behind in Seoul.
The inner demon analyzed calmly.
-They still contact each other by phone now and then, but they don't cling together like rice cakes the way they do now. Of course. In the worldline where Go Yuri is alive, the goal of saving the world hasn't been given up yet.
-Yu Ji-won's route is over. Now it's our sisters' turn. So with Yu Ji-won out of the picture, for a whole 'few years,' we sisters build a bond with Go Yuir.
"..."
Before her eyes.
The relationship Cheon Yo-hwa came to share with Go Yuir was quite different from the reality she originally knew.
-Sunbae!
She no longer called Go Yuir by the stiff title of 'Mr. Go.'
Under the pretext that they'd be attending the same university anyway, she used the word 'sunbae.'
-Yeah, yeah. Don't go scoring a zero on purpose on this exam. What face am I supposed to face your father with?
-Ehehe.
Go Yuir, too... did not treat her with distant, formal speech as 'young lady' or 'Reverend.'
He spoke casually, just like someone truly close to her.
In the eyes that looked at Cheon Yo-hwa, though it wasn't a lover's affection, there remained the warmth of someone looking at a disciple and friend held endlessly dear.
-My father needs a jolt of tension whenever he goes slack. Only then does your value go up right along with it, you know?
-You're overflowing with nonsense today, disciple.
-Woof woof?
-Grrrrr.
-Huh. You caught on that I was imitating a Shih Tzu and immediately possessed a bulldog...?! As expected of you, sunbae. Tremendous reflexes... I can't beat your sheer dog-bastard power either.
-Why you little.
She casually slipped her arm through his, and he casually patted her head.
Right before her.
A conversation so completely different. An air so completely different. A smile so completely different.
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa could only watch that scene blankly, for a long, long time.
Until she woke from the dream.
"..."
The ceiling came into view.
The ceiling blurred.
Cheon Yo-hwa covered her eyes with her forearm.
-Well? Your authority got stronger, didn't it?
-This is the simulation 'sunbae' mentioned. The true substance of the Outer God's authority. The more information you have. The more transparent your heart. The higher the simulation's resolution.
-Naturally... you can run as many simulations as you like of scenes completely different from the 'reality' you live in now.
-But.
The inner demon whispered.
-The further and further you stray from reality, the higher the level of authority demanded of you climbs too. Of course, the computation a simulation consumes is different.
-Just admitting that you love sunbae is, sadly, only enough to take you this far.
-To run more varied, longer simulations, you'll have to push yourself a little harder. Mm.
Silence fell. Dawn. Outside the window it was still dark.
Beneath the face hidden by her forearm, Cheon Yo-hwa's lips slowly parted.
'...More. To strengthen the authority further, what do I have to do?'
The inner demon answered in a low voice.
-When you speak with me, make a sound out loud, not in your heart.
-The human heart is like an object submerged in water, refracted into vagueness.
-Refine your heart into language. Speak your heart into the open. Surrender your heart to the keen-edged air.
Cheon Yo-hwa's lips parted again.
"...To strengthen the authority further, what do I have to do?"
The inner demon answered in a low voice.
-Use honorifics. Your heart is an altar for yourself. Your tongue is the ritual implement placed upon the altar. Your language will itself become a rite for you.
Cheon Yo-hwa's lips parted once more.
"To strengthen the authority further from here... what do I have to do?"
The inner demon answered in a low voice.
-A rite isn't an everyday occurrence, it's a ceremony always held at a set time, in a set place.
-Time and space. The very attempt to grasp the space and time that humans cannot truly catch with their fingers is the essence of a rite. This is sik, the form.
-When you speak with me, hold to proper decorum. Just as you refined your heart with language, refine my rite with objects. This is gyeok, the rank.
-Hold to a proper gyeoksik, a formality of form and rank, in dealing with me.
-In your room, in a place where no one, not even your sister, can interfere, prepare a single mirror. The heart is, in the end, a mirror and an abyss no one can approach.
She did so.
The Reverend's bedchamber. In the deepest place, where neither her sister nor her attendants could set a foot without permission, Cheon Yo-hwa stood up a single vanity mirror.
-Well done, Cheon Yo-hwa.
Within the mirror.
-Now I will become a god for you and you alone.
The corners of Cheon Yo-hwa's mouth were twisted.
Footnotes:
[1] Chuunibyou (Japanese: "eighth-grader syndrome") is otaku slang for an adolescent who acts out grandiose, edgy delusions, such as believing they harbor secret powers or a dark alter ego. Here the sister teases Cheon Yo-hwa for talking about a demon whispering inside her.
-x-X-x-
That Woman C VII
──────
* * *
"Excuse me."
"Hm?"
The Cult's main headquarters.
Go Yuir was strolling down the corridor when he turned to look back. Standing there was the absolute authority and supreme dignity of this place, the Reverend... no, not quite.
It was someone who looked exactly like the Reverend.
"Ah. Sister-in-law! Good morning!"
"Yes."
The Reverend's younger sister. Her name was Cheon Yo-hwa.
In other words, the one person whose name was pronounced exactly the same as the Reverend's, leaving him at a loss for what to call her.
But now that they were tied together as the Reverend and her betrothed, the convenient title of "sister-in-law" had become available.
The person on the receiving end of that title from Go Yuir, however, made a subtle face.
"What can I do for you?"
"No, it's nothing major... More to the point, brother-in-law. You can tell my sister and me apart really well, can't you? Even the servants who've worked at the house for years sometimes mix us up."
"Ah. The atmosphere is different."
"What? The atmosphere?"
"If you're like the sun, sister-in-law, then the Reverend is like the moon, I'd say. Whether that's the principle of yin and yang or whatever, I wouldn't know since I'm an Oechul, but even your way of walking is different, so I can't help but feel it. Haha."
"..."
The younger of the twin sisters, the girl the Cult called the Grand Protector, made an even stranger face.
"...I think I'm starting to understand why my sister slapped a restraining order on you, so let's get straight to the point."
"?"
"Brother-in-law. Lately my sister's been shut up in her room."
Go Yuir blinked.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. You don't get involved in running the Cult, brother-in-law, so you probably didn't notice, but she's been a recluse for over a week now."
"Uh... A week or so, can't we just treat that like the occasional vacation? It's summer, after all. The Reverend must be worn out too."
"Without a word? My sister?"
Go Yuir's sister-in-law scoffed.
"Sure, I can keep impersonating my sister and putting on a show in front of the believers for a few more days. But go in there and ask her why she's suddenly so into this hikikomori act[1] she never used to pull."
"Is that all right?"
"Is what all right?"
"I'd think the Reverend would be much more at ease if you went, sister-in-law, instead of an outsider like me..."
"Ughhh."
For some reason, the sigh ran deep.
"I told you. I'm busy playing my sister. Can't you just go in place of your overworked sister-in-law, brother-in-law? We're family, you know, believe it or not."
"Ah. My apologies. I failed to consider your situation, sister-in-law. Of course, I'll pop in right away."
"No. You don't have to make it that quick..."
"?"
"Ah. Forget it, forget it. Seriously. Any longer and my own head's going to go funny too."
Jingle. She handed him something. A key.
"It's the key to my sister's bedroom."
"Uh. Is it really okay for me to just take something like this..."
"It's not 'just' anything. What's strange about a betrothed man carrying his betrothed's key? I've got a spare, so use that one, brother-in-law."
"Mm... Understood. Thank you. I'd love for the two of us to get coffee sometime and grow closer."
"Are you out of your mind?"
"Sorry?"
"Ah. No, I, it's nothing. Just talking to myself! I talk to myself a lot, see. I'm a total otaku! A complete weeb! If you knew what I watch on a normal day, brother-in-law, you'd be totally turned off. I've got a rotten personality too, always going around talking trash about people."
"Ah. Uh, I, I see..."
That was TMI he had absolutely no desire to know.
Go Yuir walked off with a dazed look. He hadn't gone far when a voice came from behind him.
"Brother-in-law."
"Yes?"
"My sister. On the surface she always seems smug and perfect and capable, but deep down she's someone who keeps a really tender soft spot in her heart."
"..."
"Think about how many people my sister is actually close to. Me. And you, brother-in-law. That's it. Why a person like her would pull you into a relationship like a betrothal in the first place... just think about it once, even once, for me."
It was a strange thing to say.
Before he could ask what it meant, she vanished off somewhere in a flash. The Cult's mansion had corridors tangled like a maze, and tracing the path of sisters who had lived here since birth was no easy feat.
'Think about why she got betrothed to me?'
Go Yuir cocked his head and headed for the Reverend's inner chamber.
'Isn't it because, as accomplices who murdered the previous generation together, we arranged a family bond so neither of us could betray the other?'
As Go Yuir approached, the servants waiting outside the bedroom all bowed their heads at once.
Every one of them had their tongues cut out and could not speak. They were close attendants who had served Cheon Yo-hwa since the previous generation. In the Cult they were called the Eight Trigrams.
Thin veils covered the faces of the Eight Trigrams, making it hard to tell one from another.
They seemed very old yet also quite young, and facing them left you with a thoroughly strange feeling.
To be honest, Go Yuir found these servants a burden. The way they treated him was always far too reverent.
"No, no. You may straighten your backs. The thing is, I came at my sister-in-law's request to check on the Reverend."
"..."
"I even brought the key, see."
Jingle, and when Go Yuir drew out the key, the servants' heads snapped sharply toward it.
"..."
"Everyone. May I go inside for a moment to see the Reverend?"
The servants exchanged glances without a word.
Then, bowing at an even lower angle than before, they scurried off down the corridor without so much as a footstep. Would you believe it?
In an instant, Go Yuir was left alone in the corridor. The key dangled forlornly from his hand.
"Uh. I didn't mean to ask you to clear out entirely... though."
No reply came from anywhere.
Go Yuir shrugged, then rapped on the door. But when there was no response at all, he reluctantly used the key.
"Pardon the intrusion, Reverend. I'm coming in."
Creeeak.
The door rang out so loudly it almost seemed excessive, leaving the back of Go Yuir's neck cold. No. Maybe it was the chill that seeped in like a crosswind from inside the room.
"Reverend?"
The room was wide. Sliding paper doors lined both sides. It was called a bedroom, but this single room seemed to be a detached residence all on its own.
Completely cut off from the outside.
'...Where is she?'
Gulp. Swallowing at the inexplicable tension, Go Yuir opened the sliding doors one by one in search of Cheon Yo-hwa.
"Ah."
She was lying in the very last room.
This place was the true 'bedroom' in every sense. A bed large enough that four people, never mind two, could lie down with room to spare.
On a bed where black timber and white sheets formed a stark contrast, Cheon Yo-hwa lay quietly, without even the sound of breathing.
"..."
No matter that they were officially betrothed, peeking at another person's sleeping form like this should have been rude, and yet, unexpectedly, it wasn't.
Because even in sleep, Cheon Yo-hwa's face and the set of her clothes were immaculate. Exactly the same as always.
'No way. Does the Reverend wear makeup even when she sleeps...?'
Thanks to that, Go Yuir, though her betrothed, was able to study Cheon Yo-hwa's face closely, probably for the first time since they had met.
'Wait. Don't tell me... this is her bare face?'
It couldn't be.
It wasn't just a matter of her face. There were hardly any wrinkles in her clothes, and a faint fragrance drifted from her lips.
She was at a level where she could step straight into the day's schedule just like this, without any makeup, without even brushing her teeth.
'Insane... For real? Is she always like this? Wow. So there was a reason the sister-in-law had no qualms about giving me permission to walk into the bedroom.'
Just then.
Right before his eyes, Cheon Yo-hwa opened her eyes.
"Ah."
"..."
He was reflected in those deep red pupils.
Go Yuir flinched. Part of it was the closeness, but even so, her eyes were too transparent, far too transparent.
Like someone startled at their own reflection in a mirror that was too clear, Go Yuir was momentarily turned to stone.
Blink.
It was only when Cheon Yo-hwa's eyelids opened and shut once that the petrification finally broke.
He drew in the breath whose reservation had backed up because he'd forgotten about it for a moment, and.
"Ah, pardon me..."
Letting the breath out got pushed back a little further.
Because his lips were blocked.
"..."
Go Yuir's mind came to a complete stop.
His brain stuttered as it tried to interpret what was happening before his eyes.
'Huh?'
Time was not passing. The future was not coming. Because of that, all Go Yuir could do was replay what had just happened, that is, the past.
'Huh?' 'Huh?' 'Huh?'
Right. A moment ago he had drawn in a breath.
As he inhaled, a little of the orange fragrance steeped into the bedroom got drawn in too. But for some reason, the orange fragrance had now gone beyond a smell, standing out in outline like fruit juice, filling the inside of his mouth.
'Is this' 'right now?' 'what's happening' 'I mean?'
Her eyes were close. He could feel her breath. It wasn't his own breath or his own scent, so Go Yuir couldn't tell whether he was breathing or having his breath stolen.
'So...'
Stutter. Like an AI that hadn't been paid for, Go Yuir's sluggish brain struggled to deliver an answer to the user's question.
'A kiss?'
There was a reason the answer was late. For that one beat he was "Go Yuri," and Go Yuri's database contained no entry for the term.[4]
In the language of the humanities, it was also called a 'first kiss.'
"~~~~~~?!"
A beat too late, Go Yuir began to thrash. His breathing turned ragged. His pupils widened to their limit.
And Go Yuir realized just how flimsy a being his self had become in a worldline where he'd given up being a regressor.
No matter how he struggled, he couldn't escape, not in the slightest, from the grip of Cheon Yo-hwa's hand cupping the back of his head.
"Mn, mmnn... Sun, baeee...♪"
When their lips parted, a trace of laughter slipped through, and then Cheon Yo-hwa pressed her lips to his again.
This time pulling Go Yuir right onto the bed.
"~~~~~~~~!?!?"
When Cheon Yo-hwa's fragrance invaded even the boundary line one must not cross carelessly, Go Yuir's thrashing grew fiercer still.
Of course, it amounted to no more than the desperate flailing of the German army holed up in Berlin with the Allied forces right at the door[2].
The more Go Yuir flailed, the deeper into the quagmire he sank.
The blanket coiled around him, and something that clearly wasn't the feel of a blanket coiled around him too, and the scent of Cheon Yo-hwa soaked into the blanket stabbed at the tip of his nose from all directions, and his two hands... huh. When had their fingers gotten laced together?
Something slid down his spine with a smooth glide, brushing it like piano keys.
"!?!?!?!?!?!?!?"
Go Yuir never could have imagined it in his wildest dreams, but.
At present Cheon Yo-hwa had sharply strengthened the authority of the Outer God, and day in and day out she was enjoying dates with Go Yuir in her dreams.
As a result, an exclusive skill called [Read Go Yuir's Weakness] had leveled up like crazy, and then leveled up some more.
In short, the present Go Yuir was a Pidgey living in the wilds of the Beginning Village[3]. And then some Pokémon trainer approached and abruptly whipped out a level 80 Pikachu, would you believe it.
The type matchup was bad on top of that. From Pikachu's standpoint, even a light little nuzzle of the cheek could be a fatal jolt of electrocution for a Pidgey.
A hellish five minutes passed.
"Ehehe... Mn, sunbaeee..."
The Pokémon champion seemed satisfied at last, and released the Pidgey from her arms. Then she drifted off to dreamland again, breath whistling softly in and out.
"..."
Without a word, Go Yuir carefully peeled Cheon Yo-hwa's two arms and two legs off of himself, one limb at a time, as they clung to him.
It was no easy task. Ten minutes per limb. Forty minutes in total before he finally managed to separate them.
At long last, Pidgey-yuir escaped.
Rattle, he closed the sliding door. Thud. He closed the main door.
Just as he had about an hour earlier, Go Yuir was once again left alone in the corridor.
It was a great mercy. If the Eight Trigrams servants had still been standing by, low-level-yuir might have killed himself out of shame.
"..."
Straightening his disheveled clothes, catching his breath, groaning at the orange fragrance smeared all over his dress shirt, vowing that before going home he absolutely had to shower and send these clothes to the cleaners.
Go Yuir squeezed his eyes shut.
'Nothing... happened!'
It was a firm resolve.
'Until I die. Uh, until the world ends, more or less! Right, Yuir. Just a few more years, that's all! Let's carry it to the grave as a secret...!'
Go Yuir's back as he staggered away down the corridor.
"..."
There were eight pairs of eyes quietly watching it from the corner of the corridor.
A sidelong glance. Sixteen pupils in all looked at one another. A nod. They nodded up and down, too.
Then they scurried off somewhere.
* * *
"Yo-hwa."
"What is it, sister?"
"Lately it feels like Go Yuir has been avoiding me. Is it just my imagination?"
"Ahh. Yeah, it's your imagination. Just your imagination."
"Is that so...?"
"Yeah. These days I'm playing the Reverend in your place a lot, you know. So brother-in-law strikes up all sorts of conversation with me, thinking I'm you. Oh, don't worry! There is absolutely no way I'll ever come to like brother-in-law!"
"Mm..."
"More importantly, rest a bit more, sister. Rest up properly. You ran yourself ragged after being such a dutiful daughter to Father."
"But I worry it'll be a burden on you..."
"Aw, I'm just gaining some experience this time around too! Anyway, sister. You're taking your sleeping pills properly, right?"
"Ah. Yeah. The ones you gave me last time work really well on me. Thanks to them I keep training even in my dreams."
"It's not just in your dreams you're doing that, though."
"Hm?"
"No, no, it's nothing. Anyway, you've got to rest properly while you rest, or there's no point to the vacation. Let's keep at it for just two more weeks, sister!"
"...Do you really need to keep at it just to rest?"
"Yeah. The way I see it, absolutely."
"?"
"Ugh. Honestly... You work so hard, so hard. There's nobody in this world who looks out for family as much as I do."
"??"
Footnotes:
[1] Hikikomori is a Japanese term for people who withdraw into total social isolation, shutting themselves in their homes (or a single room) for extended periods.
[2] A reference to the Battle of Berlin (1945), the final major offensive of World War II in Europe, in which the encircled German forces fought a hopeless, last-ditch defense before surrendering.
[3] Pokémon references. Pidgey is the weak, first-route bird Pokémon; the "Beginning Village" is a riff on Pallet Town, the starting town in the games. The joke casts Go Yuir as a low-level wild Pokémon ambushed by a vastly overpowered, type-advantaged opponent.
[4] The Korean deliberately switches from Go Yuir to Go Yuri here for the joke, as if his brain crossed wires in the middle of the kiss.
-x-X-x-
That Woman C VIII
──────
* * *
Everything in this world had its pros and its cons.
But you had to be careful about the order when you read that sentence.
The original meaning was, "If there's an upside, then a downside comes after it."
Flip it around, reading it as, "Since there's a downside, surely an upside is coming next?" and you could land yourself in serious trouble.
Example: a writer who diligently keeps to a posting schedule will, someday, absolutely hit burnout.
If each day's update is a small battle, then burnout is the inevitable downside, the thing you might compare to one enormous war.
Winning the battles meant nothing if you lost the war.
So you weren't supposed to grow smug over the upside right in front of you. You had to brace for the downside.
On the flip side... what happens when a slump arrives for a writer who never posted anything to begin with?
What kind of upside could possibly come from that? Before you even get to wars or whatever, haven't you already lost the very first battle? Isn't it nothing but downside?
In the same vein.
"Reverend."
"Oh, yes! Miss Yu Ji-won. What can I do for you?"
"It's nothing complicated. I came to ask that you stop summoning Mr. Matiz every morning to indulge in kisses under the pretense of talking in your sleep."
"..."
One-sided love had no upsides either.
* * *
Cheon Yo-hwa, the absolute authority of the Cult, was by no means stupid.
Blaming sleepwalking and pretending she couldn't tell dream from waking had only worked for a day or two.
Her own little sister and the attendants were scheming together every single day to quietly use her betrothed as a living, breathing alarm clock, and there was no way she hadn't caught on.
'Huk. Wait, have I really been kissing sunbae, no, Mr. Go Yuir, in reality this whole time and not just in dreams?!'
To say it again, Cheon Yo-hwa was not stupid. Which was exactly why she made the wisest decision possible.
'Wow! Jackpot! Let's keep playing dumb!'
A run-of-the-mill romcom character would have launched into embarrassment, self-denial, scolding everyone involved in the scheme, and so on, but Cheon Yo-hwa didn't waste her time on such unproductive processes.
Obviously. The moment she let on that she "knew" anything, this sweet secret rendezvous would be over, so why on earth would she lend an ear to the voice of her conscience?
'This time I'll drag him under the covers, play totally clueless, and feel out Teacher's ribs...'
'Hmm. Surprisingly, he does have abs. Is his body fat percentage just naturally low?'
'Sunbae always wears the same perfume, and honestly it's so strangely nice. What product is it? Should I have the kids look into it?'
'Tomorrow, in secret, really, really in secret... ihihi.'
Thanks to all that, Cheon Yo-hwa had been savoring her Go Yuir tasting course in full swing, like a chef relishing premium beef cut by cut.
She had been enjoying it. Until.
"Uh..."
A faint tremble.
Across from her sat the rival who had abruptly requested an audience. Facing Yu Ji-won, Cheon Yo-hwa fought to keep her expression in check.
"Kisses in my sleep...? Hmmm. I'm sorry. What might this be about, Miss Ji-won? I can't think of a single thing it could be referring to."
"Is that so?"
Yu Ji-won, on the other hand, had always stuck to being a blank-faced character, so she had no need to manage her expression at all.
A mere tilt of her head was enough to set the other person's heart pounding, no different from the realm of the heart-sword[1].
"Lately, every dawn, Mr. Matiz goes off somewhere and comes back. When he returns there's always a deep scent of orange clinging to him."
'Is your nose's species, like, a puppy or something?'
"Wondering whether he might be meeting with your younger sister, Reverend, I deliberately scheduled things with her yesterday morning. Even so, the orange scent didn't change."
'Insane. You pinned down the culprit on top of that?'
"The orange scent was concentrated over Mr. Matiz's whole body, his lips in particular. In other words, the reasonable conclusion is that you, Reverend, exchanged kisses with Mr. Matiz."
'No. By what method did you even figure out that his body scent pooled on his lips??'
"Yet from Mr. Matiz's heart I detected nothing but bewilderment and tension. Which means it was not a voluntary kiss but one forced upon him by another's will."
"..."
"Therefore, I humbly make this request of you, Reverend. Please do not force unwanted physical contact upon Mr. Matiz."
Silence fell.
Beyond the blank face, there was one more thing about Yu Ji-won that had to be addressed, and that was her gaze.
Yu Ji-won rarely looked away.
Always perfect posture. From a head that never wavered in the slightest, her two eyes stayed fixed on the other person as if they knew nothing but moving straight ahead.
Combined with this girl's particular looks, it gave off an aura that made her hard to treat lightly.
It felt as though, the instant you let a word slip, every word and every sentence was laid bare in mirrors on all four sides, which made her unpleasant to deal with.
But.
"... Really?"
Today, Cheon Yo-hwa looked Yu Ji-won straight in the eye too.
A shadow resembling a smile hung at the corner of her mouth, as if it were the one trace of decorum she had left.
"I wouldn't really know. But let's just suppose my sleepwalking or whatever flared up and somehow I ended up kissing sunbae, no, Mr. Go Yuir. At that moment, in Mr. Go Yuir's heart... would there really be only 'bewilderment' and 'tension,' like you said, Miss Ji-won?"
"..."
"I think there'd be more. A bit more."
Cheon Yo-hwa propped her chin on her hand.
"Believe it or not, I've never once gone through life without being told I'm pretty. And besides... I'm sorry to put it this way, but it's not like I'm just a face, right? Don't I have rather more going for me elsewhere?"
"..."
"Ahaha, please don't tense up so much, Miss Ji-won. It's all hypothetical. Yep, yep. Just talk of an IF!"
"Mm."
And yet, even though it was the first time since they'd met that Cheon Yo-hwa had bared anything that could be called real hostility.
"Pardon my intrusion."
For some reason.
Not a single shadow fell across Yu Ji-won's face.
It was as if the thorns Cheon Yo-hwa had loosed left no wound, no scratch on her at all.
"I only wished for you, Reverend, to think of Mr. Matiz first and foremost."
"...What?"
"I had guessed that you, Reverend, might hold a heart similar to mine. It seems my judgment was mistaken. My apologies."
"..."
"You're already absorbed in building the time capsule, and here I am holding you up to tack on pointless words. I'll take my leave now."
"Oh."
Yu Ji-won bowed at an angle as upright as her gaze, then left the audience chamber.
"..."
For some reason, Cheon Yo-hwa couldn't bring herself to stop her.
* * *
Everything in this world has its pros and cons.
Of course, this proposition was, at the end of the day, a maxim meant for life's winners, the ones who had succeeded in claiming the upside.
As Holden Caulfield, the senior of all cool-type light novel protagonists[2], put it, "if it's nothing but losers gathered together from the start," you couldn't even come up with the idea of trading pros against cons one for one. This was a point the genius linguist Master Kumagawa Misogi[3] agreed with too.
Even so.
'...I.'
'I didn't put sunbae Go Yuir... first?'
Even when the downside had been handed over first.
A single alchemy, like a miracle, that interlocked with that downside to wring out an upside in spite of everything.
A blade for the loser had been permitted to human beings.
'...Really?'
Self-awareness. Reflection. Introspection.
'Even in front of sunbae Go Yuir, I was thinking only of myself first, not of sunbae...? Me?'
The first mirror every human being is born carrying inside their heart.
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa thought.
In the depths of her private bedroom, where no one was allowed near. Seated before the mirror she had set up at the Outer God's request.
She spoke alone.
"Why? I thought sunbae, and even Yu Ji-won, were beautiful. I'm not lying. I truly, genuinely thought them beautiful. So why am I the selfish one?"
"Because you didn't know. Because you weren't used to it."
A monologue before a mirror always came in two layers, so from the reflected face Cheon Yo-hwa's echo answered back.
"From the moment you were born, a life for your own sake was never permitted to you, Cheon Yo-hwa. A Sacrifice. A living altar. That was the role you were assigned, and your father was the pressure piled on top of it."
The Cheon Yo-hwa inside the mirror murmured without expression.
"You always felt that your life had been stripped away from you, and that feeling was no illusion."
"...But. I, I killed my father. I took every bit of the Cult's power into my own hands. I became an adult, an adult stronger than any adult. Then... shouldn't things be different now?"
"Time cannot be turned back."
Cheon Yo-hwa shook her head.
"The childhood your father stripped from you can never be restored. You know that. And it isn't only you who knows, everyone does."
"..."
"So no matter how much you whisper, [now things have to be different], what good is it? You are fated to forever crave a substitute father and take your revenge on the world, all to be compensated for a past that can never be restored."
The time capsule project progressed smoothly.
The sleepwalking trait Cheon Yo-hwa had come to possess. The signs of self-division she suffered because of the mirror. All of it was proof that her authority for handling the Outer God had reached its peak.
In other words, a trivial 'side effect.' Nothing more than a 'downside' she'd been saddled with as the price for an overwhelming upside.
Cheon Yo-hwa's wits for telling dream from reality grew thinner and thinner. It was because the resolution of the reality she could manipulate within her dreams had risen sharply.
"Then am I... even if I do end up together with sunbae Go Yuir. Even if we come to share love, will it always be like this?"
This very conversation, too.
Cheon Yo-hwa carried it on in her bedroom not only in reality but identically inside her dreams.
The Cheon Yo-hwa reflected in the mirror was sometimes the same as now, sometimes far younger, and at times wore the Baekwha Girls' High uniform dyed pitch black.
"Can I not love sunbae the way Yu Ji-won does? Can I not think of the other person before myself? Can I not accept the other person, purely, just as they are?"
"No."
"Why? I... I was a 'vessel' from the moment I was born. A child destined to be an empty vessel that receives my father's will, the god-nim's will. So why is it that I can't even put first the one person I love?"
"Because that person is not a god but a human being."
"..."
"He isn't perfect. He isn't complete either. Accepting the person you love doesn't mean cutting out your brain and physically taking them in."
Cheon Yo-hwa murmured.
"Success is easy. When there's an upside, it's all you can see. The problem is what comes after. Can you admit your own failure? Can you find an upside in his downsides? Can you become his mirror, and he yours?"
"..."
"Life is not a story. Are you prepared to face him and walk beside him, knowing that all of this is an eternal epilogue that will never end? You?"
Cheon Yo-hwa could not answer.
A hasty answer was like front teeth. The only things they could bite into were tiny problems.
So before she answered, she watched.
「Please don't make that face, Saintess. I only want to be with the you in front of me.」
「Me too.」
The epilogues of others, not herself.
Examples. Precedents. Answer sheets.
「Okay, let's... do it... Guild Leader...」
Or wrong-answer sheets.
「I think I shouldn't regress anymore.」
「Why...?」
「I don't have the confidence to meet you again once you've lost your memories of now. I might even end up killing you.」
「Oh dear...」
One by one, even as tears flowed, even as blood leaked from her lips, she clenched her teeth and watched all of it.
Simulation. Imagining.
Long ago, Go Yuir had obtained various pieces of information from Go Yuri. That information had flowed in turn through Go Yuir to Cheon Yo-hwa.
Cheon Yo-hwa mobilized the Cult's full strength to secure the personal data of the 'Regression Alliance' candidates.
With only that information, at the height Cheon Yo-hwa had now reached, she could run as many 'simulations' inside her dreams as she liked.
"Ahaha."
Cheon Yo-hwa laughed. A dry smile.
"Sunbae, really. You have so many rivals..."
"Even if every last one of them ends in a bad ending."
Cheon Yo-hwa laughed. A twisted smile.
"No matter the love, ruin is destined in the end. No. It means that man called Go Yuir is the kind of human who only loves someone once ruin has already been confirmed."
"..."
"He tries to save people. He tries to resist a fate where ruin is settled. That's the path he chose. Can you be as earnest about his path as he is?"
"...I can't."
"Right. Cheon Yo-hwa. You can't deny it. In this entire world you're a human who only cares about yourself, plus your little sister and Go Yuir, more or less. The rest, the countless faceless nobodies, you regard as no different from bugs. You have no grievance with bugs simply existing, but the moment they crawl into your room and show themselves, you kill them without caring whether they're useful insects or pests. That's your nature."
"..."
"That's the kind of human you are, so how could you ever love a man like Go Yuir? Locking that man in a basement, brainwashing him, steeping him in carnal desire, this cycle. The next cycle. The one after that too. No. Making him your own possession across hundreds, thousands, millions of simulations. Isn't that the only way of love available to you?"
"..."
To say it again.
Cheon Yo-hwa was a human stained with countless flaws, yet she had a few virtues.
"...No."
She was not stupid.
"It is not the only way of love."
"What?"
"Maybe there's another way. Yeah. After running other people's epilogues as simulations, it's become even clearer."
She was honest with herself.
"I'll believe that sunbae will break through all these bad endings and someday reach a happy ending."
"...What are you saying? Belief? Ahaha. Does blindly believing carry some kind of transcendent power? You really are an idiot."
"Mm-mm."
She couldn't be stupid enough to deceive herself, and she was honest enough to acknowledge herself.
"It's not blind belief."
"Then?"
"For sunbae to reach a happy ending, I just have to prove that I, that Cheon Yo-hwa, am 'absolutely' necessary."
"..."
A path.
A narrow, narrow path.
She could make out the single path that, in this world, was permitted to her alone.
"Sunbae ran aground at a bad ending every single time. But I was never at his side."
"..."
"To put it the exact opposite way, if I support sunbae... And so, really, truly, if the path sunbae chose reaches its terminus."
Cheon Yo-hwa clenched her fist tight.
"If I can just prove that I cannot be absent from his happy ending."
"..."
"Then I won't need to blame myself anymore. By then, even in front of Yu Ji-won, I'll be able to speak of my love with my head held high."
"Because."
"Because, Yu Ji-won, you may be able to share a bad ending with sunbae, but his happy ending absolutely requires me."
"I'm a human who can never love the faceless masses."
"But if sunbae's path of trying to save those faceless masses is a summit that can't be reached without someone like me."
"Then my love for him is also the path to saving other people."
"My love is in no way something to be ashamed of."
"Not to him. Not to her. Not to me."
"The cynic, the mental patient, the one who longs for death, the psychopath, the sociopath, at the end of that path they're all justified."
"So."
Cheon Yo-hwa's smiles overlapped.
"Let's save this world, and prove my love."
From the very beginning,
she had been fated to love only one thing.
And that one thing, it seemed, had been the world to her.
Footnotes:
[1] Heart-sword: a concept in murim/wuxia martial-arts fiction for the highest tier of swordsmanship, where intent or will alone wounds an opponent without a physical blade.
[2] Holden Caulfield is the cynical teenage narrator of J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951), here jokingly framed as the forerunner of detached, jaded light-novel heroes.
[3] Kumagawa Misogi is a character from the manga Medaka Box; the joke is attributing a profound linguistic observation to a fictional character rather than a real scholar.
-x-X-x-
That Woman C IX
──────
* * *
There were people, here and there, whose only road to loving themselves wound the long way around.
"Unni! I, I really did it, I summoned a Baku[1]! Whoa. Collect enough data and an anomaly really does come into being that works just like an AI..."
"Right. A few years from now, 'holes' are going to start tearing open all over the world at once. We turn that to our advantage, defining as much of the void as possible as a 'tutorial dungeon.' That's the duty we'll be handed later on."
"Y, yeah. I heard. That's how we speed up the rate people adapt to the new age, right?"
Not once since the day she was born.
Cheon Yo-hwa had never loved herself.
"So then... anyway, this is the very first Baku ever summoned. What should we name it, unni? Something like Succubus Queen, maybe, or Fairy No. 1?"
"No."
A defect.
And no wonder, since not one lovable scrap could be found anywhere in her.
A deficiency.
A family decent enough to make her crave affection, sadly and by rotten luck, simply did not exist.
A loss.
A little sister who looked exactly like her. Even she registered to Cheon Yo-hwa as little more than a cute pet.
"This Baku will be sealed away by Go Yuir and his [time seal]. It'll vanish from the world for a while. And only in the happy-ending cycle that's bound to arrive someday, only at the very, very last, will it be opened."
"Yeah. And?"
"This is an extremely difficult incantation. So we have to be careful in the extreme, starting from the very work of naming it."
She was lacking in humanity.
For her, unlike all those other people lucky enough to be born otherwise, no shortcut to loving herself had ever existed.
Such a fate. To a person flung onto a long, winding route like Cheon Yo-hwa, a few choices were given.
"By number, it's not No. 1 but No. 404."
"...Oh, like when the internet's down?"
"Yeah. The Baku came from the authority of the god-nim we serve anyway, and that authority is the use of data. It couldn't be more fitting."
One. Inheritance.
Just as she had inherited hatred from her father, she too would pass her lack of self-love down to her children.
This route was the «Broad Road,» and the people walking it were many, so very many.
Two. Denial.
You refuse to acknowledge self-love at all. It is a concept that was false from the start, or else a wildly useless emotion.
This route was a very steep cliff path. People climbed it and fell to their deaths all the time, yet the road was not narrow for it, so anyone could stake their life on the ascent.
And last, the third route.
"Just slapping the number 404 on it isn't enough."
"Then?"
"Pandora's box."
Proof.
"In the original it was a jar, not a box, they say... But in a case like this, symbolic weight matters far more than fidelity to the source. Yeah. The No. 404 Baku, I'll shape it in the form of a 'box,' not a fairy."
"A box... Ah. Could it be?"
"That's right. A box. Just like a 'time capsule.'"
You acknowledge your own defect.
It had been a life handed nothing but flaws from the start.
But no one had done anything wrong.
To call the world wrong is mistaken, and since I, born into a world that is not wrong, am also not wrong, I too could surely reach your side.
"Into this time capsule that a failed regressor resolved to pass on to the next world... into the Pandora's box we shaped, I'll pack every last bit of hope."
"Hope..."
"Yeah. Hope."
This route was the «Narrow Road.»
It was fine if the person had been born riddled with defects. It was fine if she was a miko[2] designed from birth to be an altar.
No, it was precisely because of that that a method of love possible only for her existed.
"But, Yo-hwa. For this plan to work, the two of us sisters have to make a little, a tiny, sacrifice."
"...What kind of sacrifice?"
"We're going to be apart for just a little while."
"And exactly how little is 'a little while'?"
"Hmm. Roughly tens of thousands of years, give or take?"
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa smiled.
"You trust me, don't you, unni?"
* * *
World annihilation drew near.
The press and the public had yet to sense it, but the cult, already warned of the future by a regressor, was receiving reports moment by moment through the feelers it had stretched across the world.
Strange disappearances. Mass hallucinations. Sightings of unidentified life forms. Abnormal contamination of records in reality and on the internet...
These were the aftershocks that had descended in advance, before the great main force could lift its head.
"If it's a cycle's world that's doomed to perish anyway, then it's better that I be the one to destroy it first."
And so the Reverend, Cheon Yo-hwa, resolved to become the earthquake herself.
"Uh..."
Across from her, Go Yuir blinked.
"My apologies, Reverend Cheon Yo-hwa. Have you, perhaps, been completely contaminated by the Outer God?"
"No, Go Yuir. It's the other way around. To hit MAX 100 percent contamination, I have to destroy the world."
"What?"
"The more my heart is dyed by god-nim, the more freely I can use god-nim's authority. In short, to raise the time capsule's completeness to its absolute maximum, the only possible conclusion is that I have to raise my own contamination as high as it'll go too."
"..."
Go Yuir pressed his lips together and looked to the seat beside him, to Yu Ji-won. He was asking her opinion with his eyes.
There had been a time when that kind of glance between the two of them used to hurt, leaving only Cheon Yo-hwa feeling shut out. But not anymore.
Yu Ji-won's clear gaze, looking straight at her.
Even in this very moment, meeting it, Cheon Yo-hwa's heart did not waver in the slightest.
Yu Ji-won opened her lips.
"What exactly do you mean by destroying the world, Reverend?"
"First, I'll become one in body and spirit with god-nim. Right after that, I'll tear down the boundary between reality and dream, bring god-nim down to earth, and harvest all of humanity."
"A harvest for what?"
"Data collection. And securing the 'brains' to process that data."
"..."
"I'll run simulations no different from reality, then load that information into 'Pandora's box.' Of course, the lovey-dovey love story of Go Yuir and Yu Ji-won will go into the box too."
At that, Go Yuir seemed a touch embarrassed, but Yu Ji-won was unfazed.
"The digitization of humanity's entire brain mass. It does follow logically. But since the time capsule will hold only Mr. Matiz's information and my own, do you really need data on such a vast scale?"
"Ah. No, I don't."
Cheon Yo-hwa smiled brightly.
"But I... I'm going to cram a whole lot of other people's stories into Pandora's box too, you see."
"Other people, meaning?"
"Noh Do-hwa."
"..."
"Sim Ah-ryeon, Jeong Ye-ji, Dang Seo-rin, and so on. Just like you, Yu Ji-won. And just like this world of ours."
Cheon Yo-hwa brought her two hands together.
As if in prayer.
"Every last apocalypse that ended in a bad ending and so was remembered by no one, all of them, I'll pack into Pandora's box."
"The worlds that fell away..."
"Yes. The beings who became defects."
To capture the perished spans of time.
"Each and every one of them is an apocalypse in its own right. A despair. So a time capsule that gathers every despair in the world is bound, inevitably, to become Pandora's box."
"..."
"But it's in that very place, where every despair has been collected, that the something you and I long for will be born."
"Hope, is it."
"Yes."
Cheon Yo-hwa smiled.
To flip a weakness into a strength.
That was her road.
"Someday Go Yuir will..., mm. All of us will reach a happy ending. The hope that we'll reach such a route. To pass that hope on, paradoxically, every despair has to be collected."
"..."
"But as you know, my power still isn't enough to run the despairs that happened in other cycles as simulations."
"Which is why you need to be devoured by the Outer God..."
Yu Ji-won closed her eyes for a moment.
Soon a murmur leaked from her lips.
"A rational conclusion."
"Thank you for understanding, Ji-won. No. Pandora, who will someday open the time capsule."
"..."
"She who opens the box of despair and hope shall, as is only fitting, be the most beautiful woman in this world. You too are part of the plan I've spun."
"Is that so."
Yu Ji-won.
The girl already slated, in the far distant future, to play the role of Pandora gave a small nod.
"I see. According to the myth, the opening of Pandora's box brought a great deluge that drowned the earth, did it not? Did the Reverend account for even that far?"
"Of course!"
"A splendid scheme."
Yu Ji-won held out her hand.
As they shook lightly, she asked.
"Reverend. When do you intend to begin the world annihilation?"
"A week from now."
That day was April 4th[3].
By the Reverend's command, the cultists gathered at the headquarters. Even as the sun set and the hour came when daily life winds down, the cultists kneeling on the floor did not stir.
Because for them, now was the very promised moment.
"It's strange, isn't it, unni."
"Hm? What is?"
The dead center of the headquarters.
There the twin sisters, one dressed in white miko robes and the other in black, sat facing each other.
The white miko, the younger of the twins, scratched her cheek awkwardly.
"Well. From the very start we were sacrifices, weren't we, born with the fate of offering this world up to god-nim? And yet, going round and round... it really did turn out that way, so it felt kind of uncanny to me."
"Ahaha. I know, right."
The sisters formed the innermost core of the headquarters.
Around them sat dozens of elders, drawing a circle. And then a larger circle again, a larger one still, a larger one beyond that...
Thousands of Naechul formed layer upon layer of rings. Among the Oechul, those of the deepest faith became, especially, the final rampart at the very edge.
"But the sacrifice Father planned in the first place and the sacrifice we've resolved on now are different things."
"Are they?"
"Yeah. Before, it was a sacrifice meant to throw us away... But now, we're offering ourselves up to ourselves, so that we can be left behind. So that we can come back to ourselves."
"..."
"Yo-hwa."
Squeeze.
Cheon Yo-hwa laced her fingers through her sister's.
Around the two of them, the entire crimson sunset chirped with the prayers ceaselessly chanted by the elders, the Naechul, the Oechul.
"My beloved sister."
"..."
"But the word love in 'beloved sister,' which I've said so many times until now, it was probably a little different from the love you hoped for from me."
"...Unni."
"I'm sorry I could only give you that kind of love. And, even knowing it, thank you for staying by my side all this time."
"..."
"Unni, starting today, I'll try."
Cheon Yo-hwa smiled.
"To be an unni my sister doesn't have to be ashamed of."
"...There's never once been a thing about you I had to be ashamed of, unni."
"Aw, that's an exaggeration. When you teamed up behind my back with the Eight Trigrams to slip Go Yuir in, weren't you a little ashamed then?"
"Hwaaaaaaa-."
The younger sister thrashed. Enjoying that thrashing through their laced fingers, Cheon Yo-hwa beamed.
"Also... mm. Sorry for never properly introducing Go Yuir to you! Truth is, I was already swamped just dealing with Yu Ji-won, and if you got tangled up in it too I felt like I'd lose my mind, so I left it alone."
"Ah. So that's it?"
"Honestly, I even imagined bringing him in as a live-in husband for both of us sisters. But no matter how I turned it over, Go Yuir seemed like he'd love you more than me."
"Ehh. Brother-in-law would?"
The younger sister laughed.
"No way, no way! Brother-in-law has never once looked at me like that. Aren't you blowing it out of proportion, unni?"
"Haaaa..."
"?"
"Honestly, this is exactly why there's no talking to a scrub of an ordinary person with no multiverse-simulation ability..."
"??"
"What can you do. Capable, pretty me will just have to understand and let it slide, sheesh."
"???"
The apology that lingered to the very end. The gratitude.
Words that would never again be shared in this life, and that maybe, even next time, and the time after that, would be shared again only once a near-eternal instant had passed.
"Ah."
And then the sun went down.
It was the last twilight this world would be granted.
"Unni."
Taking that twilight against the side of her face, the younger sister wore an expression with not a trace of the earlier lightness left in it, grave and serious, and.
"Mm."
Cheon Yo-hwa nodded too.
"Let's pray."
Her words rang as clear as a bell even within the evening glow.
The elders, already chanting the prayer, were the first to hear the Reverend's solemn toll, and they rang it through their own bodies and spread it far and wide.
"Formed of a swirling chaos, born before heaven and earth..."
"I do not know its name..."
"Silent, and vast, and empty, it stands alone and never changes..."
The Cult's Head Temple, designed and built from the very beginning for this day's rite, blended into the sunset and the night sky, the death of the sun and the birth of the moon, the crossing of yang and yin.
'A Spirit Bomb[4]... no. A burial of the living, maybe.'
Gripping their laced fingers tighter, Cheon Yo-hwa, together with her sister, intoned in a voice as clear as the night sky.
"To live is to die. If annihilation was decreed from the very beginning, then is not every human a living corpse?"
"Just as closing one's eyes does not stop life, so dreaming does not bring reality to an end."
"In each instant, dream and waking are held together, so the annihilation of the beginning is but an instant's dream, and the beginning of annihilation no different from a waking instant."
"So even if we are confined to nothing but the instant of here and now, how could we fail to behold annihilation and beginning directly?"
"Our great, great instant."
"Our small, small eternity."
The two Cheon Yo-hwas closed their eyes.
Up to here it was a prayer their father had taught them since childhood, one that recited itself on its own.
Now the highlight. Only the final prayer remained.
But...
"Please die together with me."
The order was switched.
The prayer the elder sister was meant to recite at the very end, the younger sister said first, and.
"Please live together with me."
The prayer the younger sister was meant to recite first, the elder sister said last.
And.
The god answered their prayer.
Footnotes:
[1] The baku is a creature of Japanese folklore (originally from Chinese myth) said to devour nightmares and bad dreams; here it refers to a dream-devouring spirit.
[2] A miko is a shrine maiden in Japanese Shinto tradition, an unmarried woman who serves at a shrine and performs ritual duties.
[3] In Korea (and across East Asia) the number 4 is considered unlucky because it sounds like the word for "death." April 4th thus doubles the omen, an apt date for an apocalypse ritual.
[4] The Spirit Bomb (Genki-dama) is the signature attack from the manga/anime Dragon Ball, in which Goku gathers energy donated from all living things into a massive sphere. This fits the ritual's gathering of energy from the assembled cultists.