Chapter 94 - The Trailblazer VIII

14

STEP.

The next footstep was Noh Doha.

On an island connected by a single bridge, where people had only one way to come and go, Noh Doha opened a workshop. I worked as her assistant.

Noh Doha did not ask much of life.

Sunlight. Water. A swath of land. Sand on the beach. Leaves, a few more. Flowers, a few less.

A hammer. As many other people as she could handle, and as much hurt as she could bear. Warm coffee. Whatever the beans.

Summer, autumn, winter, spring—these were what she had wished for. She wanted to wake not to human footsteps, but to rain falling on the stones in her garden.

If she died someday, she wished neither to be cremated nor buried, but for the old winds of late summer to give her a wind burial.

Unlike Dang Seorin, who wanted to leave for anywhere at all, Noh Doha wanted no one to visit from anywhere.

And so Noh Doha must have been the person who asked the most of life.

"Assistant..."

"Yes?"

"Pack our things for a short business trip. Hah. There are far too many old folks on the mainland who can't even make it to the island..."

"Ah, yes. Understood."

As winter ended and the last snow melted, Noh Doha left the island. The bridge had gone unrepaired for so long that sections of its railing had worn loose.

It swayed. The sea blew a playful breath.

"Careful, Workshop Master. All that snow this winter has done a lot of damage to the bridge. I'll have to fix it up when we get back."

"..."

"Workshop Master?"

I was walking ahead of her across the bridge and started to turn back when Noh Doha lightly placed her palm against my back.

It was pressure I could have ignored, had I chosen to.

I did not ignore it.

I stopped in the very posture of turning around.

"Workshop Master?"

"I don't cling..."

"Pardon?"

"Assistant. I have no need for ideals. A utopia. An ideal life. An ideal ending. Hah. Living with a part of every day mortgaged to such things is not how I accept the world..."

"..."

"I'm not the sort who takes pride in denying reality. I outgrew that hobby at twelve. Assistant. As I'm sure you know, I very, very much dislike leaving a debt in someone else's keeping..."

A light nudge.

Noh Doha gently pushed my back.

That, too, was a gesture I could have ignored, had I chosen to.

I did not ignore it.

As it happened, the loose railing could not bear my weight and collapsed with a creak.

Just before I fell from the bridge, I looked up at Noh Doha. The shadow cast by the sun obscured her face.

Only a shadowlike smile was drawn across it.

"Get the hell out..."

Noh Doha's face rapidly receded.

SPLASH.

As I heard myself hit the seawater, I could not help thinking.

Dropping someone midway across the passage from island to mainland. From the other shore to this shore.

What a thoroughly Noh Doha way to murder someone.

A blink.

CLUNK.

The wheel of time turned.

Two steps to go.

15

STEP.

The next footstep was the Saintess.

"..."

"..."

Astonishingly, the two of us were sitting on the silver moon. We faced each other in chairs carved from stone, a table between us.

The world was holding its breath.

Earth, across the reaches of space, had stopped, and the sun illuminating it from behind did not move either.

A white world.

The endpoint of time. No, a pause.

The inevitable terminus the awakened called the Saintess would reach if she developed her ability to its utmost limit—

"Mr. Undertaker."

Ocean-class. No.

Perhaps another God of Alienation-class anomaly.

The being who bore the name Saintess as an awakened, but would bear the designation "Executor" as an anomaly, parted her lips.

"As you already know, Mr. Undertaker, you can reach an ending like this whenever you wish."

"... An eternal rest?"

"Yes. Not the vacations you occasionally take almost as a joke... but truly letting go of your breath. Rest, in the sense of resting your breath. The world has stopped, and people no longer move. No sin is committed. No misfortune, no misery."

As though murmuring a little song, the Saintess mingled Telepathy with her voice—the transmitted speech of a constellation.

[And, of course, no regression.]

"..."

"Every being is like inanimate matter. A speck of dust, merely drifting through moments that are both eternity and an instant. If this world is to stop someday, is there any reason that day should not be today?"

"Saintess. You must already know you cannot persuade me."

"..."

The Saintess drank her coffee.

Coffee loaded with sugar and creamer, no different from the mass-produced stuff sold at convenience stores.

Cheap stuff that left me, a barista, with nothing to do but tear open Maxim packets, pour them in, and stir. Yet the Saintess said coffee I stirred "tasted different."

Did she know I secretly added half a spoonful of cinnamon powder?

"Why? Do you believe you can someday escape eternity?"

"Of course."

"Do you realize that Mr. Emit Schopenhauer, who gave up everything in his twenty-third run and fled into a world consisting of just himself and his lover, was actually the normal one?"

"..."

"Even twenty-three runs were already a sufficiently long time, and a sufficient amount of suffering. Your hope is far too strong, Mr. Undertaker."

The Saintess expelled her voice.

"This world is hell."

There was no capacity in space to accommodate a human breath, so that voice and breath were entirely a moan produced by the Saintess's transparent, colorless aura.

It was the only noise in this universe.

And therefore the only scream in all the universe.

"The world is hell, yet no one takes responsibility. Efforts to change it are either nonexistent or far too slow."

[If time cannot be made to move forward, it must be stopped.]

"Why is there a torture chamber in some underground corner of the world? I've seen a child not even ten years old dying."

[The child had been sold to a 'factory' at a very young age, and was destined to be tortured to death on their tenth birthday.]

"Why do slave miners born in mines of rock and mines of mire come into this world in cramped crevices and spend their terribly short lives dying there, never even knowing a wider world exists?"

[Why do humans count themselves fortunate that someone less happy than themselves exists, instead of being grateful that someone happier exists?]

"If they would excuse even those wretched tendencies by saying they did not choose them, that their surroundings—the world—simply forced them to be that way..."

[Very well.]

"Then why on earth should I permit time to flow so that such a world can continue to exist?"

"..."

"They say hell lies twenty thousand yojanas below. Impossible."

An exhalation flowed into space.

[A single layer.]

The constellation's starlight flickered.

Pythagoras's shadow Earth slipped out of harmony and made a grating noise.

"Just a single layer beneath that planet, everything has been made into hell."

"..."

We fell silent.

Not because we had nothing to say to each other. Because the words we could say to each other were already fixed.

I knew the single utterance that could kill the executor of time, the executioner, the Saintess. And like a murderer with one last shred of conscience, I was slowly bringing down the blade.

"Please help me, Saintess."

"..."

"I want to help other people."

"..."

Blood flowed through space.

According to Pythagorean tradition, the universe consists of ten celestial bodies, one of which is invisible to human eyes.

The shadow Earth.

Always moving in the same direction as Earth, with its back to the light, the shadow Earth remains submerged in darkness, as though in a lunar eclipse all year round.

That shadow planet made sounds as it orbited with the other nine celestial bodies. Like a heartbeat. Like a harmony. Thus, the Pythagoreans believed, the universe was always filled with the song of celestial bodies.

To them, the world was beautiful.

But humans have heard the universe's song continuously since birth. To us, that song has become such an unquestioned "background" that we can never hear the music of the universe.

A single layer.

That the single layer of a brow concealed not only hell but also the beauty of this world was the Saintess's fatal curse.

"Gapless..."

The constellation of shadows, always submerged in shade, turning her gaze wherever people turned theirs, parted her lips.

"...descended upon Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School as the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. It exists as the leader of ninety-nine ghosts. In other words, Gapless has apportioned its existence into ninety-nine pieces."

"..."

"Originally, my ability did no more than stop the world. But as my power grew stronger, I became able to move about as I pleased within that stopped world. Just like that... I'm certain Ms. Cheon Yohwa's ability can become stronger than it is now."

"What do you mean?"

"Imprinting principles of behavior on humans and controlling them like NPCs. That is Ms. Cheon Yohwa's awakened ability. But perhaps—if she develops it, she may be able to use that same ability on anomalies, not just humans."

"Ah."

My eyes flew open.

"She'd be able to command anomalies however she pleased! Good heavens! Isn't that an enormously powerful ability?"

"... Yes. At least, she can command the anomalies that appeared in Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School—no, in School Ghost Stories."

The Saintess nodded.

"Ms. Cheon Yohwa is Gapless's apostle. She should be able to exert some influence over the anomalies it commands. You will know better than I do why she was chosen as its apostle, Mr. Undertaker."

"Indeed..."

I could see a strategy.

The Saintess warned me.

"But once Ms. Cheon Yohwa devours Gapless's Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, she will become incomparably more powerful than she is now. She herself will be no different from an anomaly. ... Like the me you are seeing in this illusion right now."

"..."

"All this from just one Gapless. The more anomalies you subjugate, the more anomalies will gather at your side. Ms. Dang Seorin, Ms. Sim Aryeon—someday, certainly. ... I wish we could simply call it fighting poison with poison, but ultimately, it only transplants the world's poison into you. If you should give up, Mr. Undertaker... the repercussions would be incomparably greater than when Mr. Schopenhauer gave up. So, please..."

I took the Saintess's hand.

"I know."

The Saintess looked at me.

"Please fall into hell with me."

"..."

CREEEAK.

The circle of the universe, motionless until now, creaked. The sun, Earth, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn clattered into motion. Ten wheels formed a straight line.

The Grand Alignment. The most majestic constellation the universe could pronounce.

A shadow stood at the far end of that line.

"Yes."

The shadow smiled before my eyes.

[As far as it takes.]

A blink, and the life beneath a single layer closed its eyes.

A clunk, and ten constellations played soundless music.

Before we knew it, we had turned upside down, still holding hands, and were plunging from the moon's glassy surface toward the earth—toward hell.

An endless fall.

We held each other tight.

The universe's song was time.

A blink.

CLUNK.

The wheel of time turned.

From the other shore to this shore. From the nearest otherworld to the most distant reality.

One step to go.

16

"—Mister! Misteeer!"

I consider why people are born with two eyes.

It is because the world always consists of two layers. Hell spread beneath the sunlight, and beauty submerged in shade.

Blindness and clear sight. Two poles. The gap.

Existence as an interval, not a void.

I slowly opened both eyes.

"Yohwa?"

"Yes, Mister! Hmmmm. So... are you really you? I mean, do you remember... us wandering around School Ghost Stories and everything?"

I looked around.

DING-DONG-DANG-DONG.

A bell rang. This was School Ghost Stories... No, Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. The bell's notes spread through a blue sky, not a red one.

An utterly normal school.

There was no grotesque birch forest, no bed of red spider lilies. It must have been lunchtime; students were crossing the far side of the school field in small groups.

"... Yes, I remember. We were taking four steps to defeat Gapless. Only the last step was left."

"Ahhh! That's right! Um, but why are you and I in the same illusion this time...?"

"It seems this is the fourth step."

STEP.

Cheon Yohwa's footstep overlapped with mine.

A world that was nothing but peaceful, with no gap through which anomalies, the void, or the apocalypse could enter.

That was our final stop.