Chapter 97 - The Trailblazer XI

Cheon Yohwa.

Heaven. Emptiness. Transformation.

—Perhaps I had already sensed an omen long ago, when I first saw the characters of that name.

Cheon, meaning heaven. Yo, meaning lonely. Hwa, meaning to become.

Simply interpreted, it meant “to become lonely.”

Wasn't that a rather strange name to give a beloved child?

Still, yo did not mean only “loneliness.” It also meant “emptiness,” “an empty sky,” and “stillness.”

Have you ever seen writers dress up a passage with “hushed solitude” when a simple “quiet” would have sufficed?

The character for solitude in that expression was the very character in this child's name. Interpreted as “to become still” rather than “to become lonely,” it was not particularly strange.

Yes. If that was all you read into it.

A warning.

What follows is a secret I have never told even Cheon Yohwa, information that only I know in this world as yet—an afterword's worth of oversharing.

It is nothing more than my personal conjecture, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I am merely showing you the fragments I gathered over various runs.

The first fragment.

I assume you all know by now that I visited China with the old Sword Marquis in my 108th run.

While he was busy planting red flowers on Mount Hua, I briefly wandered the surrounding area.

Here is a verbatim excerpt of how I described it then.

――――――――――

My anomaly-hunting range gradually expanded, too. It spread beyond Shaanxi Province into Henan Province.

“Tutorial dungeons” were a worldwide phenomenon, not something limited to the Korean Peninsula, and wouldn't you know it, a dungeon of unprecedented scale appeared in a place called Yingyang Town in Henan.

Throw in some Taoist-derived cultist terrorists, and it was the apocalypse in all but name.

――――――――――

There is a city called Dengfeng in Henan Province, famous as the home of Shaolin Temple.

Go a little farther west, and you reach a place called Yingyang Town.

The Yeongyang Cheon clan.

That is the ancestral seat of Cheon Yohwa's family.

The second fragment.

Korea's Yeongyang Cheon clan originally descended from a Ming general dispatched to Joseon during the Japanese invasions.

The general did not come alone. He brought his family and became a naturalized citizen of Joseon.

Most of his descendants adapted perfectly to their new home and blended in without incident. According to my hypothesis, however, a tiny branch of the family continued practicing their “traditional faith.”

China's orthodox faith is Taoism.

Laozi, who could be called its founder, came from Luyi County in Henan Province. He worked in Luoyang, Henan, and is said to have written the Tao Te Ching at Hangu Pass, also in Henan.

Yingyang Town, the Cheon family's hometown, lies along the route connecting Luyi County and Hangu Pass.

The birthplace of Taoism. A region long held in the gravitational pull of faith.

At some point, however, among the Cheons who crossed over to the Korean Peninsula, the faith of Yohwa's particular branch became corrupted.

Whether it had been that way from the beginning or changed later, I cannot say. There are no records.

They built a mansion covering 14,990 square meters in Sejong City. Hidden beneath it was a religious facility. They founded Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School and enrolled the children of their believers.

Cheon Yohwa's father, the leader of the cult, replaced the character for his daughter's surname: Cheon, “thousand,” became Cheon, “heaven.” Their roots no longer meant anything to this family.

They called upon a god of their own.

There was no way to know what god they wanted to descend. Perhaps it was nothing more than a cult leader's cheap scam.

But in the void at the end of the world, spells were not fantasy. They were real. Especially a spell performed by hundreds of people offering up hundreds of their children.

Something beyond the void heard their prayers. Answered them.

And so Gapless arrived.

The third fragment.

“Silent, oh, empty.”

There is such a passage in the Tao Te Ching.

Before humans distinguished one thing from another, before all things acquired forms and names, before heaven and earth had even parted, the world existed.

Laozi described that world as silent and empty.

A little farther on, the passage continues:

“I do not know its name.”

I do not know its name.

That silent, empty world—that silence and emptiness of the world—was something that preceded the forms of all creation, and therefore “had no name.”

Now, then.

Let us look again at the name of the Student Council President before me: Cheon Yohwa.

Read only its surface meaning, and it becomes “to grow still.” You might reasonably conclude, “Ah, her parents must have wanted their daughter to grow up into a shut-in.”

But those parents—her father in particular—were the high priests of a heterodox group that had strayed from Taoism. There was no possibility that he did not know one of the Tao Te Ching's most famous passages.

And so, once you knew the origin of yo, interpreting the name Cheon Yohwa became... exceedingly strange.

To become lonely.

To become still.

For heaven. To become empty.

To lose one's name.

Anonymous. Nameless. Into that silent, empty heaven without form or name. Abandoning both self and birth name, returning to a world where nothing can be distinguished.

Wordplay in a name.

... What a vicious spell.

Cheon Yohwa: heaven becoming empty. An utterly ominous ring to it. Not a name anyone could possibly give a beloved child.

Rather, it was a name fit for a living sacrifice offered to an evil god.

The crueler fact was that the spell had succeeded.

Far beyond its caster's expectations.

A God of Alienation filled with every form, yet effectively without any form at all. Gapless, and the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. Hundred Tales.

... Or Cheon Yohwa.

She was a living sacrifice, and Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School was the altar. The school was an offering for her alone, and she was the altar for the god.

This was the solution I had deduced thus far.

A regressor's annotation on why the God of Alienation called Gapless had been bound to descend at Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School, of all places.

But.

The ending of this story was not mine.

“Thank you, Mister,” Cheon Yohwa said.

“I'm sure I couldn't have overcome it alone. No, even if I'd won, I probably would have lost myself.”

Even so, you saved sixteen friends. Always. From the first run to the 117th, again and again.

Cheon Yohwa said,

“Even if it was an illusion, thank you for letting me see my mother again. I got to tell her what I'd never been able to say. The plane was fun. Thank you for showing me the sunset. The coffee you make... it's delicious.”

The awakened once called the only necromancer on the Korean Peninsula. The young lady who had been Student Council President of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. Who had begun playing basketball to rebel against her family, only to fall genuinely in love with it. Who, upon escaping the prison called the void, would lose even the memory of her original name and past, and thus had never once been called by her name in any run from the first to the 117th. Who had been the living sacrifice and altar of this hell of ceaseless suffering.

And who liked her cream latte a little bitter and a little sweet.

Cheon Yohwa said,

“—So I can't hand myself over to an anomaly like you.”

-...

“You aren't me. You don't know the vapor trail I flew through. You don't know the name of the sunset I saw. You don't even know the feel of the coffee I like. You don't know me. Because I've gone where you don't know, I'm going there, and I'll keep going.”

-...

“I'm Cheon Yohwa—thousand, song, tale. I'll sing a thousand stories. Do you think I would settle for a mere hundred stories for my life? I'll live with ten times your capacity, your scale, your colors. Because—I'm not alone. Yes. Someone helped me. There are people I will help. So—get the hell back into your cramped, glass-colored sky. Cheon Yohwa—heaven becoming empty.”

A flicker.

CLUNK

A blizzard swept through. There were no windows. The table, the electric kettle on it, and the coffee cups were all enveloped in white snow.

The wheel of time turned.

From the other shore to this shore.

Steps remaining: 0.

-Ah.

God of Alienation, Gapless, Hundred Tales.

In the white world, Cheon Yohwa—heaven becoming empty—smiled. Though her lips did not move, the blizzard crumbled and gave voice.

-How can it be so beautiful—

The blizzard surged toward us like a tidal wave.

The moment I became certain this was its final struggle, I drew my sword cane.

A longsword forged in a dwarven furnace that had since vanished. Doha: crossing the river.

One flashing stroke.

My ink-black wave split Gapless's white blizzard.

For Gapless, which must have been collecting nearly all the world's data, this “sword” alone was an unforeseen irregularity.

Because Doha was a work the Workshop Master had made for me in another run, not this one.

A masterpiece crafted by the finest blacksmith of Korea, who had studied under the finest blacksmith of another world. A weapon already little different from an anomaly itself.

Though it was the strongest weapon I possessed, I had not used Doha in this run. Not once. I had saved it without even drawing it from its sheath.

For this moment alone.

-—

The blizzard split, and split again.

The being called Gapless was imprisoned in glass before it could finish what it wanted to say.

All the world's whiteness became a blizzard. The blizzard, in turn, became grains of white sand.

The desert sands whirled and whirled, until they were in Cheon Yohwa's palm.

An hourglass.

Cheon Yohwa held a glass-walled world filled with nothing but white sand. Its transparent membrane glimmered. A wheel composed of two glass chambers.

Gapless—without interval—had converged into time.

“Ah.”

Cheon Yohwa looked up.

There was no fog. No bloodred sky of School Ghost Stories. No thornlike birch forest, no hill of spider lilies steeped in shadows.

The sky was red.

Not the red of an anomaly, but the red of reality. The hue the sun cast as it struck the Earth's cornea. Sunset. Proof that this world still lived and bled.

In the middle of the school field, ninety-eight hourglasses lay scattered like petals around Cheon Yohwa as she gazed up at the sky. That was her Night Parade of One Hundred Demons.

(Congratulations) Two Accepted to Seo■ University! (Celebrations)

FLAP

A worn banner fluttered at the school gate. Beneath that flag that had once celebrated civilization, the wind's echoes rang out.

“Yohwaaaa!”

“Mr. Security Guaaard!”

They were the students of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. The children spotted us and waved. Their gestures splashed against the sunset.

The scene seemed quite distant.

But not as distant as the journey from the other shore to this shore.

“... Mister.”

I turned to look at her profile. Sunset light slid over her vermilion hair, combing through it.

“Come to think of it, I forgot to ask.”

“Ask me anything.”

“Why did you come to rescue us?”

Perhaps that was the final moment.

The moment when I could decisively brainwash Cheon Yohwa, who had awakened with an innate ability to brainwash others. The moment of receiving a name. A stop at which the course of a life could be charted.

Absurd though it sounds, if I had said, “I received an oracle telling me to help you,” she would have become a fervent zealot. If I had said, “Because the nation will not abandon you,” she would have become a patriot without equal.

She would have been ready to hear any answer, prepared to accept any direction.

I considered it for about a second, then gave her the answers I had thought about for so long.

“Because you are useful to me.”

“...”

“Gapless was an anomaly I could never defeat alone. I needed help from the human chosen as its priestess. The reason you could command the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Yohwa, was that the being called ‘Cheon Yohwa’ had been identified with Gapless to some extent. Recruiting you and defeating Gapless was the best strategy available to me—and, in effect, the only one.”

“... I see.”

Something in her expression cleared. She had probably accepted my answer as a ‘setting’ for the course of her life.

“Okay, then—”

“And because I wanted to know how the worst tutorial dungeon in the Korean Peninsula's history had been created.”

“...?”

“Also because I wanted to follow the truth about those fairies whose faces I'd seen until I was sick of them, all the way to the end. Because I wanted to test whether a God of Alienation-class anomaly could really be defeated. Oh, and naturally, out of pure curiosity about what sort of person a certain nutcase had been before she finished thoroughly brainwashing herself inside Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School and came out.”

“Um, Mister? What are you...”

“Yohwa.”

I smiled.

“It's good to find a reason to live in this world. That alone is already admirable. But I would like you to live for more reasons, if you can, rather than just one.”

“...”

“If a single falling raindrop can make a person resolve to die, then a strain of music can just as easily give them a reason to live. Even when you help someone, give yourself several reasons rather than just one. Profit. A goal. The urge to explore. A test of yourself. Simple amusement. Curiosity. Those thousand reasons can kill a person, and at the same time, they are the reasons that keep you living.”

It was exactly the same declaration Cheon Yohwa had made to Gapless.

No matter how true their words may be, people always need someone else to say the same thing in a different way before they can believe their own words with certainty.

RRRIP

I opened my suitcase and took out a folder I had kept particularly clean.

“That's...”

“A gift. You could also call it a dungeon-clear reward. Normally, the tutorial fairy takes care of it, but I got rid of the one in charge here. Here you go.”

Neat lettering covered high-quality paper rarely seen in this era. My handwriting.

I took out my brush pen, added a few characters, and handed it to Cheon Yohwa.

――――――――――

[Diploma]

Name: Cheon Yohwa (Thousand Songs and Tales)

This diploma is awarded to the above-named individual for completing the full three-year high school curriculum and demonstrating outstanding learning ability.

――――――――――

“...”

Cheon Yohwa accepted the diploma with both hands and looked down at it. The shadow of her motionless figure sank into the school field.

The name field, left blank until just now, gleamed smooth as a bright patch of shade.

“Congratulations on graduating, Yohwa.”

Describing her every reaction at that moment would hardly be gentlemanly narration.

I would merely like to note that a high school student crying at her graduation is a perfectly ordinary sight.

Boss Battle.

Anomaly: Gapless.

Aliases: the hell of ceaseless suffering, School Ghost Stories, the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Hundred Tales, Whitening, Four-Character Taboo, Heraclitus's Garland, Backrooms, Cheon Yohwa (Heaven Becoming Empty)

Threat Level: Lv.5 God of Alienation-class (Alienation)

Subjugation complete.

20

There is an afterword.

No, in fact, there are many afterwords. There are far more than one or two stories involving Gapless. But those stories can always wait.

Today, I think I'll briefly describe something that happened not long after the “graduation ceremony.”

I was walking down a corridor at National Road Management Corps headquarters.

“Oh! Teacher!”

A lively voice rang out behind me, followed by rapid running footsteps.

I turned around to find the former basketball ace closing the distance in a flash before screeching to a halt. Then she gave me a playful salute.

“Oh, Yohwa. What brings you to the Corps?”

“Aha! I thought it was about time to have our guild's exclusive control over Sejong City recognized. I'm just coming back from a meeting with the Corps commander!”

“I see.”

For the record, Cheon Yohwa was still wearing her white sailor-style school uniform. Not only her, either. The Baekhwa Guild... the entire group made up of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School graduates wore them.

Well, uniforms had always been an effective way of fostering solidarity among members. There was no reason to abandon the powerful identity of “Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School” at this point.

Or perhaps Noh Doha was simply hooked on school-uniform cosplay, much as Dang Seorin was obsessed with witch cosplay. Magic-oriented awakened tend to have particularly strong fetishes.

I tilted my head.

“But Teacher? Why aren't you calling me Mister like you always did?”

“Hehe... You were born before me, and you've experienced more than I have, right? So I want to call you Teacher, out of respect! Why? Don't you like it?”

“No, I don't dislike it. It's just a little strange to change careers so suddenly from security guard to teacher.”

“Ahaha. What are you talking about? You even gave me a diploma!”

Cheon Yohwa clasped her hands behind her back and looked up at me at an angle. The smile on her face was distinctly different from any expression ‘Cheon Yohwa’ had worn before the 117th run.

A bright, lively smile.

“I hope I can keep counting on you!”

I could hardly object to her change in address. Because, as I said at the beginning of this episode:

“—My teacher!”

This was a story about how long it took for the title of senior to become the title of teacher.

- The Trailblazer. End.