Chapter 138 - Surviving (3)

"I thought you might get in touch someday. You've been doing well for yourself."

"I'm sorry it took me so long to call. I should have called sooner..."

"At your age, you're busy making a life for yourself."

A small cough came over the phone. The director cleared her throat.

"Sometimes strangers come by and ask whether you grew up in our orphanage. At first, I thought you'd done something terribly wrong. Someone who grew up here with you showed me a video and cleared that up, though. Oh, was it Death King? What a sense for names."

"I didn't choose that epithet myself. The Tower..."

"Well, hearing your voice after so long does put my mind at ease."

"..."

"Gongja?"

"..."

"Is something wrong?"

I gripped the phone tightly, forcing the emotions rising from my chest back down below my throat.

"There's something I want to ask you, Director."

"Go ahead. No, wait. How serious is this? Tell me that first."

"Very serious. Probably the most serious thing I've ever talked to you about..."

"Then give me two minutes—no, three. I'm lying on the sofa right now. I'll get up, fetch some coffee, and sit down properly to listen. Stay on the line for three minutes."

"Yes."

Thinking about it, what an arduous life she must have led.

I imagined the malice a person had to endure before becoming a good person. Gather all the good people living in this world, and surely you could put every kind of malice on display.

"Um, how's the orphanage these days? Are you feeling all right?"

"If you're changing the subject, this really must be serious. I'm fine. We have more teachers than when you were here. I'm the director in name now, but there's not much for me to do. Donations have increased, too... Oh, and the food tastes a little better."

"I'm glad."

"Yes. I'm sitting in my office now. Go ahead and tell me."

I drew a breath.

"Director, when you were a student... did you graduate from a place called Sinseo Middle and High School?"

"..."

Silence settled over us.

Tension hung in the air. I caught the sound of liquid lapping. On the other end of the phone, the director was sipping her coffee. She was swallowing that black water.

"Yes. I graduated from Sinseo High. It was quite prestigious, as it still is."

"Were you..."

I wished the answer would be no.

"Were you the class president in your second year of high school?"

I hoped it had all been an illusion fabricated by the trauma. That every scene from the past I thought I had glimpsed was a lie, that the director was simply an ordinary good person, and that her school days had not been terribly unhappy.

That was what I wished.

The silence continued for a while before the director's voice came through.

"That's right. I was the class president. It's been decades already."

"..."

"..."

Neither of us spoke. My heart ached at the things I was about to say. The air was troubled. The director seemed to sense something ominous too, and kept her lips closed.

"Director."

"Go on."

"When you were the second-year class president. Was there someone. On the school rooftop."

"..."

"Was there someone like that?"

The sound of breathing stopped.

"Yes," the director said. "There was."

The nightmare was confirmed as reality.

"I never had a proper conversation with him. But yes. There was."

The school hallways I had walked, the chains on the rooftop's iron door that ■■ had looked down at, the school field as bleak as a wasteland, the shack floating like a white island amid a sea of plastic garbage—all of it was true, without a single speck of falsehood.

Only...

["Don't die. Please. I'm begging you."]

["Together. Let's live in a different world, the two of us."]

Only the ending was a lie.

["Yes, Class President. Let's survive in this world together."]

The things that most needed to be lies were true.

And the one thing that most needed to be true was only a dream.

That was the story of ■■ and the director.

"Director..." I barely managed to speak. "Do you remember his name?"

No one in this world knew his name. He was the one who had crossed the wilderness. The people of the empire had bestowed the name Lefanta upon him out of reverence. He was the one who killed constellations. The people of the Tower called him the Heaven-Slaying Star.

He was someone abandoned by the outside world. No one had tried to remember him. And so, now, only one person bore witness to his name.

"Kim Yul."

One person called another by name.

"That child's name was Kim Yul, Gongja."

"..."

I closed my eyes and recalled my conversation with the Paladin in the school hallway.

["Do you remember the student sitting by the window in the very back of the classroom?"]

["Of course. He's our classmate, isn't he? I think his name was..."]

The static cleared.

["Kim Yul."]

There had been a person with that name.

["I'm not sorry to you, Kim Yul."]

A child so small that the white curtain concealed him whenever the wind blew through the classroom window.

A child who quietly took out an old notebook and studied it before class began.

A child who tugged on the chains of the iron door even though he knew it would not open.

["I'm sorry, Kim Yul. I'm sorry."]

Decades ago, in a time before I was born.

["I'm sorry."]

There had been a child like that in this world.

"Gongja?"

And there was someone who had lived through those decades.

"Are you crying right... No, never mind. Um. Anyway, where did you hear about Kim Yul? There shouldn't be anyone who knows about him."

She had been clever enough to attend school on a scholarship. Diligent enough to remain first in her class at a prestigious school. She had studied on four or five hours of sleep a night. She had been someone who would shape her future according to her dreams.

What dreams had she had when she entered high school?

What future had she dreamed of?

"I don't know how you came to know that child. Truly."

But she had seen.

She had witnessed humans.

She had witnessed beasts.

She had seen death.

["Nobody cares about you. Nobody, nobody. Nobody..."]

At that moment, one person's time had stopped.

The freedom to choose that everyone deserved had vanished.

The rest of the director's life had become nothing more than years spent proving one thing.

[There was a child named Kim Yul alive in that place, at that time.]

"Director, he's here."

"What do you mean?"

"Kim Yul. Your classmate. That child."

"I simply don't understand what you're saying..."

"He lived in the garbage dump at the foot of the mountain. Kim Yul."

"..."

"The very back row of the classroom. The seat by the window. That's where he sat."

"..."

I continued.

"There was grime on the collar of his school shirt. You know, that guy dating the student council president back then was a rotten bastard. The one whose older brother was a singer. He forced a phone on Kim Yul, who hadn't even owned one, and the whole class bullied him through text messages."

"..."

"Did you know there were animal pens behind the school? They kept rabbits and chickens there. The animal care club was supposed to look after them, but after a foreign woman jumped to her death with her newborn, no one took care of them anymore. So Kim Yul started looking after them."

"How..." The director's voice trembled. "Gongja, how do you know that...?"

"You tried to stop it, didn't you? You tried from your first year. But when you investigated, you found the main perpetrator's parents on the school board, so you gave up. The head pastor of your church was there too, wasn't he? Seryun Church. You told the homeroom teacher, but you couldn't press the issue because of your scholarship."

"How...?"

"He's here, Director."

I bowed my head, still holding the phone.

"He's here."

"..."

A long silence pooled between us.

"Four days," the director said. "No. Will you wait a week?"

A student whose time had stopped decades ago spoke in a voice a little older, a little more tired.

"I'll come there."

4

The week passed in an instant.

During that week, the director put her assets in order. Anyone could enter the Tower, but they could not bring their possessions from the outside world. Everything she had built, owned, and protected over the decades—the director left it behind.

"I'd been planning to retire anyway."

Seeing the director for the first time in so long, I found her older than before.

"I'd found a teacher to take over ages ago, and though I still have a few local responsibilities... Once I'm in the Tower, even the civil servants can't do anything about it, can they? They can sort things out themselves now."

"Welcome, Director."

"I'm not the director anymore. But call me whatever you like."

She gave a wry smile.

Having only just entered the Tower, the director naturally had no epithet. People without epithets could not yet enter the Great Library. But I spoke with the [Shut-In Librarian] and secured special permission to bring her in.

"Now that I'm here, I can see just how successful you've become. Everywhere I go, all anyone talks about is you, Gongja. When I entered the Tower, dozens of people crowded around me at the city entrance to show me the way..."

"Well, I have done pretty well for myself in the Tower. Believe it or not, I'm ranked second, Director."

"And you were dead last in your studies among the children your age..."

The director looked at me as though seeing me anew.

["Princess Pyeonggang is making a man out of Ondal the Fool."]

The look in her eyes was exactly like the one I had seen in the trauma.

While emotions I could not identify washed over me, my companions gave the director an enthusiastic welcome.

"Aha! So you're the one who raised the Death King! I'm the Inquisitor. I look forward to getting to know you!"

"I'm the Black Dragon leader. We're always indebted to the Death King. He's also our guild's deputy leader. If you have any difficulties during your life in the Tower, please let me know at any time."

"I'm the Paladin, responsible for public safety in Babylon on the first floor, ma'am. I heard you ran an orphanage outside. It's a difficult subject to raise at our first meeting, but the Tower is always in need of trained professionals as well. I'll visit you formally at a later date."

"Thank you, everyone, for your warm welcome."

The director responded to the hunters as though accustomed to it.

Once the procession of greetings had ended and we were alone, she spoke.

"One of the children who grew up with you became the youngest member of the National Assembly, so I'm used to this. Back then, too, dozens of people came every week to congratulate me and offer all sorts of greetings."

"What? Who?!"

"Kim Han Feizi. Do you remember him? He's a proportional-representation assemblyman now. He changed his name, so you probably wouldn't have recognized him."

I was stunned.

I hadn't heard that news even before regressing four thousand days.

I had lived with no interest at all in my hometown.

"Good lord... No way. He was just an idiot... What did he change his name to?"

"Kim Han Fei."

"He just dropped the 'zi' at the end! Doesn't that prove he's still an idiot?"

"Now that you're an adult, I can tell you this, Gongja. You were an idiot too. An absolutely monumental idiot."

"Huh? Wasn't I at least a little on the smart side?"

"Until I raised you children, I never understood why people struggled with math. Death King, you should be very grateful the Tower doesn't determine your ranking by test scores."

My attendant spirit snickered behind me.

"Looks like we're getting an earful of Gongja's embarrassing past today. Good, good! Tell us more!"

The director and I exchanged pleasantries.

I had spoken to the Librarian in advance to keep our conversation from being broadcast outside. He had granted my request. And that was not all. The bookmark maids served us black tea and refreshments.

"I've seen it in videos, but this really is a strange world..."

The director eyed a bookmark maid suspiciously.

"So."

Her gaze swept over the vast Great Library before finally settling on my face.

"Where is that child?"

I told the director everything. About my abilities. About the trauma. About the person called [Lefanta Aegim] and the person called the [Heaven-Slaying Star].

"..."

The director listened without expression from beginning to end. But an absence of expression did not mean an absence of feeling. For over an hour, she sat still, unable to take even a sip of her tea.

"Those are difficult stories to believe. Every one of them."

"Yes."

"But the very fact that you know... Kim Yul is impossible."

As it had been since my childhood, the director's expression was hard to read.

But now, after experiencing the trauma, I could tell.

She was afraid.

"Kim Yul wasn't in the graduation album either. He couldn't be. But to me, the fact that there wasn't a trace of him anywhere in the album... Think about it, Gongja. Couldn't they at least have left an empty space for him?"

"..."

"And why did they make all the album photos so cheerful? Those bastards... that bastard... For a long time, I couldn't understand how they could smile. Yes, I'm sure they're still living well."

With detached eyes, the director looked down at the surface of her tea.

She quietly drank the tea that had gone cold long ago.

Then she looked straight at me.

"It's all right."

"..."

"Please summon that child. No, the trace of that child."

I nodded.

"Rebirth of a Hundred Ghosts."

Shadows spread.

They writhed.

The darkness moved as though alive. Black water like filthy runoff rippled, then its currents took on a human shape. The waves turned into silver hair, and the pool formed neat clothing.

"... Hmm."

Lefanta Aegim.

The Heaven-Slaying Star looked around.

"An unanticipated situation."

The silver-haired man muttered flatly.

"An abduction? Did you abduct a puppet and forcibly awaken it? My combat abilities... are unavailable. I surmise that the puppet's system has been modified, or that extremely powerful mental magic has been applied."

That man had lost his black hair. His name. His memories. [Kim Yul] was merely his forgotten starting point, and so the man before us might be someone entirely different from [Kim Yul]. He was Lefanta Aegim. He was the Heaven-Slaying Star.

Thus, no one had the right to call him [Kim Yul].

"... Mr. Kim Yul."

Except for the one witness who had been there at his starting point.

The Heaven-Slaying Star turned toward the director.

Slowly, she sank to her knees on the library floor.

"I am one of the people who killed you, Mr. Kim Yul."

"..."

"I've wanted to tell you this for so long. Truly..."

The director bowed her head.

"I'm sorry."

The Heaven-Slaying Star's face stiffened.