Chapter 94 - We Fight Because We Know Each Other

Before going to see the Wicked Laughing Demon, I stopped by the Blood Heaven Saber Demon's residence. There was something I wanted to confirm with him.

He was sitting by the window, reading a book in the warm sunlight.

"So you really do read regularly."

"It's all for show. When I hear your footsteps in the distance, I run to the bookshelf."

He set down his book and asked, "What brings you here?"

Rather than go inside, I stood outside the window and spoke to him.

"I've come to ask about someone."

"Who?"

"Do you know much about the Wicked Laughing Demon?"

I sensed the Blood Heaven Saber Demon flinch for an instant.

"Why are you asking about him?"

"I'm thinking of bringing him over to our side."

The Blood Heaven Saber Demon frowned slightly.

"Damn it. That loose-lipped woman."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play innocent."

As perceptive as ever, he had realized that the Single Flower Sword Supreme had told me about it. He wasn't the sort to go spreading this around anyway, so I spoke freely.

"It was the Sword Supreme who told me that you were the one who persuaded him, not her. She did it for your sake."

"Not for my sake. She's just obsessive about being morally upright."

"If you know each other so well, why do you fight so much?"

"Do people who don't know each other fight? We fight because we know each other."

Unable to argue with that, I could only chuckle.

"So what do you want to ask?"

"How did you persuade the Wicked Laughing Demon?"

That was the question I had come to ask today.

His answer revealed something surprising.

"He came to me first."

"The Wicked Laughing Demon came to you first?"

"Yes. What could I possibly have needed so badly that I'd go ask that revolting bastard for a favor?"

"Senior Sword Supreme was wrong, then."

"What did she say?"

"She said you probably got through to him because you're both villains."

"What? She lumped me in with that bastard?"

The Blood Heaven Saber Demon bristled indignantly.

It might seem as though I was needlessly tattling, but this, too, was part of my effort to reconcile them.

I had to keep mentioning each to the other. Remind them that neither had forgotten the other. That they still hated each other. That way, when an opportunity finally came, all these pieces could fit together and allow them to reconcile. Reconciliation didn't happen out of the blue.

"What conditions did he set?"

"He said he'd vote for Cheong Seon if I helped him when he asked for a favor later."

"You agreed without knowing what he'd ask for?"

"He'll ask for something that benefits him, I imagine. If he asks for something absurd, I can simply refuse."

"Why didn't you at least make sure I knew what you'd done for me? 'I've incurred a debt because of you. What are you going to do about it?' Why didn't you say anything?"

"Why would I make a fuss about it?"

When I first met him, the Blood Heaven Saber Demon had been truly calculating and meticulous. The kind of man who seemed certain to demand credit for every favor and collect on all of them.

But once I opened the door to his heart and stepped inside, I found another Blood Heaven Saber Demon. A man who tossed such concerns into a corner and enjoyed reading in the sunshine.

"Sir, people won't know unless you take some credit for what you've done."

"They don't need to know. Besides, I didn't get the feeling he helped with this specifically to ask me for something later. Why would the Wicked Laughing Demon go out of his way to ask me?"

He looked at me as though to say, Surely you don't think so either.

If that hunch was right, why had he helped us?

"Thank you in any case. I'll go see the Wicked Laughing Demon now."

As soon as I said goodbye, he reopened his book as though he'd been waiting for it.

"Aren't you worried that I'm going to see the Wicked Laughing Demon?"

"About whom? You? Or the Wicked Laughing Demon?"

I turned away with a smile.

After leaving his residence, I headed toward Villains' Valley, in the northeastern part of the inner grounds.

As its name suggested, Villains' Valley was a valley.

It was artificial rather than natural, with residences of various sizes housing the Faceless Wanderers lining both sides of a stream.

They looked as though they had been erected haphazardly, but this was a kind of fortress built according to a meticulous plan, accounting for the Faceless Wanderers' abilities and standing as well as defense against intruders.

At the entrance to Villains' Valley, I announced that I had come to see the Wicked Laughing Demon. A Faceless Wanderer in a white mask led me inside.

The Wicked Laughing Demon's subordinates were called the Faceless Wanderers. They all wore white masks with only eyeholes cut into them.

The eyeholes formed smiling shapes, like crescent moons laid on their sides. Though the eyeholes smiled, the real eyes behind them did not. The incongruity made the masks unnerving to look at.

The Wicked Laughing Demon's residence stood in the deepest part of the valley. The building was modeled after a white mask. Its only window was where the eyes would be, and that seemed to be where he lived.

Feeling as though the Wicked Laughing Demon were swallowing me, I walked in through a mouth that the masks themselves lacked.

A spiraling staircase led up to his room.

The moment I entered, a chill ran through me.

Every wall, and even the floor, was painted white. There was nothing in the room. No table, no display cabinet, not so much as a chair or a cushion.

The Wicked Laughing Demon stood alone in that utterly empty space.

Facing the wall in white robes, he blended so completely into his surroundings that, if not for the black hair visible at the back of his head, I might not have noticed him standing there.

Even after I entered, he continued staring at the wall, so I slowly walked over and stood beside him.

"What are you looking at?"

The Wicked Laughing Demon turned his head toward me. He wore a white mask like the Faceless Wanderers, and his eyes behind its smiling eyeholes were clear and cold.

His specially made mask was designed to conceal his eyes from anyone outside, but my New Eye Procedure allowed me to pierce the darkness and see them distinctly.

At last, he answered.

"I wasn't looking at anything."

His low, deep voice was pleasant to hear, and his height and long limbs gave him a tall, handsome bearing. He was also polite, quite at odds with the name Wicked Laughing Demon.

A man whose politeness itself was chilling—that was the impression he gave.

"It's been a long time, sir."

In truth, one could call this our first meeting in this life. Apart from seeing him from a distance at official gatherings, I had never met him privately like this.

"Sir? I'm still young. Please treat me as casually as a friend."

"How many people have fallen for those words and departed this world?"

The Wicked Laughing Demon laughed. True to his name, he laughed readily.

"What about you, Second Young Master? Are you usually the one being deceived, or the one doing the deceiving?"

"If I had to choose, I'm the sort who pretends to be deceived."

He laughed out of habit.

"Isn't it tiring to laugh for people all the time like that?"

A strange glint flashed in his eyes behind the open holes.

"Why would laughing be tiring?"

"I thought it might be harder than crying. It's easy to live in tears, but hard to live with a smile, isn't it?"

"At last, someone who understands my hardships."

Even as he said that, he laughed again, loudly and theatrically, like an actor in a marketplace.

I did not trust his laughter.

It was like the appendage on the head of a deep-sea fish. Let yourself become distracted, entranced by that splendid, gently swaying lure, and before you knew it, you would find yourself being sucked into a great maw.

I must never forget: he wasn't laughing because he liked me.

"Second Young Master, why have you come to see me?"

I couldn't reveal that the Single Flower Sword Supreme had broken the rules and told me how the vote had gone.

"We've never had a conversation like this, have we, sir? I came hoping to learn what sort of person you are. To be frank, I came hoping you would support me instead of my brother."

"Shall we walk for a moment?"

The Wicked Laughing Demon began walking slowly along the white wall.

"This is how I walk when I want to organize my thoughts."

I followed him. The ties securing his mask dangled and swayed behind his head. No one in Murim had ever undone that knot, though even a child could loosen it with a tug.

As he walked, he said, "Answer one question for me, and I'll give serious consideration to supporting you, Second Young Master."

"Please ask."

"How did you kill the Soul-Seizing Demon?"

He tossed out that crucial question as though it were of no consequence. Following behind him, I answered just as calmly.

"I didn't kill the Soul-Seizing Demon."

"No. You most certainly did. I'm not asking whether you killed him. I'm asking how."

He was convinced I had killed him.

"Second Young Master, I won't tell anyone else. Tell only me. I'll give you another vote, just as I did for Cheong Seon."

"As I said, I didn't kill him."

The Wicked Laughing Demon suddenly stopped, turned around, and strode toward me. Coming right up to me, he held out his hand.

"Let's be friends."

I knew very well that he was prone to such unpredictable behavior.

And this was the second time I had heard those words from him.

When I returned to the Cult to find materials for the Great Art of Regression, our paths had crossed. Back then, he had said exactly the same thing to me.

"No."

"Why not?"

Because everyone who became his friend had died. With one exception.

"There are three reasons we can't be friends."

"Oh, as many as three?"

He openly displayed his curiosity.

"What's the first?"

"If we act like friends, sooner or later I'll make a mistake. Familiarity inevitably breeds disrespect. Speaking respectfully will keep me from making that mistake."

"What's wrong with making a little mistake?"

"Exactly. It would be fine if the other person weren't the Wicked Laughing Demon."

He laughed loudly.

"Our Second Young Master is even more entertaining than the rumors suggest. What's the second reason, then?"

"The Pavilion Master of Yellow Springs Pavilion and the Wicked Laughing Demon don't belong together."

"They say good and evil are two sides of the same coin. Learning evil from me would help you uphold good."

"I imagine that saying was invented by the evil side."

"What do you mean?"

"How could good and evil be pressed together like two sides of a coin? Evil lies at the bottom of an endless abyss, while good sits atop a towering mountain. That saying is surely nothing more than something evildoers concocted to justify themselves."

Of course, his metaphor meant that good and evil could coexist within a person. But I deliberately spoke only of good and evil themselves, placing them far apart.

"Then you must think me a hypocrite, Second Young Master."

"Not at all. How could someone who proudly puts 'wicked' in his own epithet be a hypocrite?"

"Then do you think I'm admirable?"

"Evil can never be admirable under any circumstances. The only time it is admirable is when it subdues another evil."

He laughed. Though he laughed heartily, his eyes behind the eyeholes had settled into a cold stare. Without the New Eye Procedure, even I would not have known.

It was astonishing that someone could laugh so merrily while wearing such a subdued look in his eyes.

"So the rumors were true."

"Which rumors?"

"That the Second Young Master has become a rigid, tiresome little nobody from the orthodox factions."

"If that's how you feel, this is probably why. Somewhere along the way, we became worse than those rigid, tiresome nobodies from the orthodox factions. So I'm hoping to set things right, even now."

Chuckling softly, the Wicked Laughing Demon asked, "Is this the new Demonic Path you dream of, Second Young Master?"

"You could say that."

"Then you and I can never coexist. I will continue to support the First Young Master."

"Then there's nothing to be done. I'll take my leave."

I bowed politely and turned away.

Then he asked from behind me, "By the way, what's the third reason?"

I stopped on my way to the door and turned back to him.

"I don't make friends with people who wear masks."

This was the moment when he should have laughed, but he didn't.

I saw it.

Though no laughter escaped him, his eyes behind the eyeholes were smiling. That meant he was truly angry.

He had never removed his mask in front of anyone. Naturally, no one had ever seen the face beneath it. No one knew what he looked like or how old he might be. Asking him to remove his mask was taboo, the one thing that must never be touched.

Yet even he had shown his face to someone once in his entire life.

To me, before my regression, when I came looking for the materials for the great art. To me, the only person who had become his friend and survived.

I had seen the face beneath that mask.