Chapter 113

Chapter 113

I do not know you. Nor will I ever fully understand you. So in the end, what I can affirm to him is about myself.

What I can do for him. What I can put into practice. What I can accept.

Things like that.

“So, Mr. Yoon Juyeong.”

Will the words I say to him now truly remain in his memory?

This is something that doesn’t exist in his memory, and perhaps something that ‘never happened’ in the past of Mr. Yoon Juyeong’s memories. Sunlight, pushing through the clouds of the pouring rain with my own hands, poured down equally on me, on Mr. Yoon Juyeong, and on the street.

Toward the man who kept blinking, as if dazzled by the sudden sunlight, I tried my best to smile brightly.

“Trust me a little more.”

Even a love that burns hot enough to last a lifetime will fade someday, and even familial affection that seems as solid as steel and endless will shatter without warning, yet still, people whisper anxiously to themselves that *our* relationship alone will be hotter than a summer’s noon and harder than well-tempered steel.

That’s probably not because they truly believe their feelings will last forever, unconditionally. Rather, it might be that they say it because they *hope* it will be so.

May our relationship be eternal. May it always be hot, and thus always be strong.

Like that.

“I can’t promise eternity or constancy, but I can promise continued effort. So that it can keep going, so that it can keep growing strong.”

Just as I am now.

“Because I’ll trust you too, Mr. Yoon Juyeong.”

In the distant, pouring sunlight, the man’s face, wearing a bewildered expression, was simply pale. I smiled a sincere smile at Mr. Yoon Juyeong, whose eyes were wide open as if he was very flustered.

As if on cue, a faint light seeped in from far away, across the edge of my vision. Still wearing that smile, I gripped the scissors inside my bag. Following the mana flowing from my fingertips, my gardener, who had been watching this place from afar, arrived where I stood.

“Goodbye, Mr. Yoon Juyeong. See you in the future.”

Please, when I open my eyes and face you again, may we be able to trust each other a little more.

I prayed quietly, and in the space that began to crumble, I grasped the gardener’s hand reaching out to me.

And then, there was light.

* * *

With a light sound like the tick of a clock’s hand, a translucent blue window appeared.

[Tutorial 3. The Strong Prey on the Weak]

Quest Progress (1/2)

…You absolute bastards.

Did you really think I’d keep playing along with your little tricks?

“Oh my, looks like I’ve been found out.”

A white hand, suddenly emerging from the pitch-black darkness, touched the blue window floating in the air. The owner of that white hand that split the darkness, Juyun, stared at the blue window with a perfectly composed expression, completely unlike his words.

“But we’ve already achieved what we wanted, Librarian. Yoon Seohee will walk the path she was always meant to walk.”

As if it had heard the man’s words directly, the blue window floating in the air flickered violently before outputting text again.

[Tutorial 3. The Strong Bully the Weak]

Quest Progress (1/?)

So you seized the moment my attention was elsewhere for just a brief instant, did you? You coward.

Do you think I’ll just let things go your way?

“What can you do now? The hasty quest creation meant to pull her out of our machinations was used against you the moment it began, and the system—your only means of intervening with her—won’t reach her as she is now.”

After saying that much, Juyun smiled faintly, as if a thought had just occurred to him.

“Ah, and while I’m at it. Stop pretending to care for her, Librarian. We merely guided her so she could reclaim what is her own.”

The blue window flickered again.

[Tutorial 3. The Strong Bully the Weak]

Quest Progress (1/3)

…Fine, it’s true that both you and I are trying to take her for our own benefit.

But things won’t go the way you want.

At the very least, I can insert a variable into your plan.

“…Librarian, what the hell have you done—!”

“Hey!”

From far away, beyond the deep darkness, another man came running in. Juyun narrowed his eyes slightly as he stared at the man approaching from the opposite side—the Taoist Master, Jeon Woochi.

“What’s the matter all of a sudden, Taoist?”

“Well, the concealment spell that was wrapped around her won’t dispel. To be precise, it’s maintaining an extremely unstable state.”

“…What does that mean?”

—I told you so.

The blue window floating in the air flickered with noise, and soon a human figure began to shimmer into view on its surface. A woman inside the blue hologram, glowing alone in the pitch-black darkness, stared at Juyun and the Taoist with an unbearably arrogant gaze.

—I can at least insert a variable.

* * *

It was a night thick with darkness that swallowed even the moon and starlight.

The child was picking up fallen leaves that crunched underfoot. Rustle, rustle. Each leaf clutched in their hand made a sound of dying. No, that wasn’t right—these were already dead, so perhaps it was more accurate to call it the lingering echo of death.

At any rate, the child was picking up leaves. It was by no means the kind of pretty leaf-collecting a young child would normally do. Nor was it the kind of leaf-gathering an elder might reminisce about, burning them to roast sweet potatoes.

The child was picking up leaves to survive.

“Cough.”

Though winter was still far off, the mountain in the dead of night was bitterly cold. The child coughed again as the chill scraped against bare skin, continuing to rake in leaves. There was a reason the child, barely clothed, was out on the mountain at this hour gathering leaves.

The child had been abandoned on this mountain just a moment ago—roughly thirty minutes earlier—by their parents.

“Cough, cough.”

The child’s parents had loaded them into a rental car borrowed from somewhere and driven to a secluded mountain away from prying eyes. Then, grabbing the child by the hair as they resisted, saying they didn’t want to go, they climbed the mountain. How far did they go? By the time blisters had formed on the child’s feet, which weren’t even properly shod, the two adults finally let go of the child’s head.

And right after, they left the child behind and descended the mountain on their own.

The child watched them go in silence, without a word. They didn’t follow, didn’t hurl curses at them, and didn’t even cry. Just silently.

Rustle, rustle. The leaves the child had painstakingly gathered formed a small mound. The child briefly gauged the size of the leaf pile they’d built, then began gathering more leaves from around them. This wasn’t enough. Even if it wasn’t winter, the mountain at night was terribly cold, and to endure it with so little clothing, they needed to pile up more leaves and burrow inside.

“Cough, I’m hungry… cough!”

Their stomach, which had eaten nothing all day but a few scraps of bread, kept voicing its hunger. But the child didn’t stop the motion of gathering leaves. They had grown mature enough to distinguish between immediate desire and reality.

So, if only…

If only a woman hadn’t suddenly appeared before the child, they would never have stopped gathering leaves.

“Cough, cough…?”

Beneath a lightless, dark sky, a woman stood. The child paused their actions and stared blankly at the figure of the woman standing upright across from them.

She was a woman who, truly, did not fit the current situation at all. No, not just the situation—she didn’t even fit the backdrop of 21st-century Korea itself.

Beneath a cloudless night sky, the woman, shining in the moonlight, wore black clothes. But what she wore was neither a suit nor a dress. It was a gown that was neither Western nor Eastern.

The woman slowly raised an arm—thin and delicate in line, yet somehow strangely firm. Swish, the soft black fabric of her sleeve flowed down with her gesture.

Where the black fabric fell away, a pale wrist was revealed, adorned with a golden ornament. But it wasn’t just her wrist. Golden ornaments, glittering brilliantly in the moonlight, also hung from her ears and ankles.

Yet the child’s gaze was fixed not on the dazzling golden ornaments, but elsewhere. A pale ankle peeking out from between the black fabric, the golden ornament, and beneath it, a bare white foot.

The woman was, incredibly, barefoot.

The child was astonished, not realizing that they themselves, wearing only a single sock, were hardly any different. Someone hiking up a mountain like this in the dead of night? Really? The child stood with their mouth wide open in bewilderment, then suddenly looked up at the woman’s head.

“Oh.”

On that small head, where jet-black hair gleamed under the moonlight, there was a golden light whose identity was utterly impossible to discern. It looked like a crown, or perhaps like the ring of an angel from a Bible that had once been shoved into a corner of the house.

‘Is she an angel? Or maybe a grim reaper?’

The brilliant golden light resting atop her head made her seem like an angel, but the clothes she wore were so black they seemed to melt into the darkness, making her look like a grim reaper. The child bravely tried to speak to the mysterious being that had descended before them. Who are you? Where did you come from? Are you an angel, or perhaps a grim reaper? There was so much they wanted to ask, and therefore so much they needed to say.

“You were there.”