Chapter 267

Chapter 267

The previous day, Bae Seogyeong had received the Moon from the evil god.

“Soon, I will become very angry.”

His words and tone were gentle, as if soothing a young family member.

“When that time comes, how could I remember you? Swept up in rage, I will make countless foolish choices, so I entrust this noble Moon to you. I believe you will fulfill your duty and release it below.”

“...Is this, truly... what you mean by Teacher...?”

Bae Seogyeong carefully gathered the Moon Lady into her arms.

“...”

How noble.

Cold and round. Even while holding it, it didn’t feel like she was holding it. That this lacking vessel could embrace the Moon Lady in her arms must have been only because the evil god had shown mercy.

“...Ah...”

Bae Seogyeong hugged the Moon Lady as though holding her own daughter.

“...For a long time, I wished to see Teacher. I asked countless times why you would not take me. And yet no answer reached me, and I could do nothing but collapse again and again.”

“Now your Teacher is in your arms. You are the bishop of the Moon Lady Religion. You must protect the family of that cold home and lead them on the right path. I ask you—what do you desire?”

“The right path. I intend to guide my pitiful family on the right path.”

“I am curious what sort of steps the right path you speak of will take.”

“What more could this cold home need? What I want is family, love, and warmth. I will not let anyone depart alone.”

My rotten liquor that I love.

“I will reveal our sins to the world, and as the price of those sins, I will become a star in the sky.”

That was all she wished for.

Bae Seogyeong smiled with joy and accepted the overwhelming opportunity.

* * *

Kugugugung...!!

The sky collapsed.

“We have all gathered like this for the sake of the saintess.”

Stars fell.

“Can you remember that this sparkling thing is your brothers and sisters? Ah, it is so very beautiful. This was truly the path the Moon Lady Religion should have walked. If a sinner becomes a star in the sky, where in all heaven and earth could there be an honor greater than this!”

The stars soon reached the small moon upon the earth, the saintess.

“Your family has been shaped into such a precious form!”

“The form of family I want is never stars!!”

Kakang—! Kakagagak!!

The saintess twisted the sharp direction of the star with the power of a nebula.

“I never wanted stars! I only wanted to become a small warming stone, I never meant to sacrifice you! If it would harm my family, how could I have wished to become the Moon!!”

The falling stars were contained within her universe.

‘It’s too much.’

Aram is only human. Her vessel was merely a little large—she could not be called divine. Of course, using the power of the universe was burdensome as well. There was a limit to containing this many stars.

‘But I can’t let even one slip away.’

The Moon Lady Religion, already silent, grew even more quiet. Every priest who had remained in reality fell asleep. The result of that sleep was these brilliant stars. It was too cruel.

If Aram let even one slip away or be wounded, her family would never regain their original forms for the rest of their lives. That was not what Aram wanted. With all her strength, she widened her universe.

“How can you so cowardly make excuses—your excuses...! You should have told me long ago! That you were suffering in such piercing loneliness! That because you spent days moaning, the evil god’s whispering was so sweet!!”

“It is true I was tempted by the evil god, Saintess, but like you, I only did the best I could...! Look, this small vessel! My shabby appearance! I could not dare become the Moon in the sky, and I could not become a fragment of the universe. This was my best!!”

“Why did I do my best when I didn’t even want to—that’s what I’m asking! You could have not done it, you could have said even a single word to me!! I’m your daughter. Your family and friend. Your colleague...!!”

Tears surged up.

“Why didn’t you tell me!!”

As much as Bae Seogyeong loved her, Aram loved her mother as well.

“That is also my sin, my sin. Drunk on the affection you gave me, I couldn’t see reality. I respected you—did that become harm? My blind devotion to you covered these two eyes; because I leaned on you!!”

The stars kept falling.

It was an unbearably beautiful sight. They say meteors are the corpses of stars, and this was exactly that.

Her family became stars and fell to the earth. They plummeted down into the abyss below. Beneath this black lake there might be life living...

My family was being buried under the black lake, filled only with cold knowledge and wisdom.

“Why are you shouting that it’s only your sin? I too am a member of the Moon Lady Religion, and I am no longer a miserable little child. I’m not the scrawny, foolish child you brought that day!”

“If it is said that all of this is for the saintess, then it would be great arrogance and sin. This is for you, and also for me, and to replace this rotted water. Saintess, look. Don’t you know the sins we committed here...!”

“How can running away be atonement just because you sinned!!”

“This isn’t atonement at all! Look at me—do you truly not know what I want, why I became like this? Everything was my selfishness! Everything was my inadequacy! This is nothing but flailing and venting born of the evil god’s mercy!!”

Bae Seogyeong shouted too, full of bitterness.

“Because I don’t want to leave the Moon alone anymore!!”

She had to send off too many family members.

Ah, she shouldn’t have. Back then, Bae Seogyeong had been young, and foolish as well. With her wisdom lacking and her vessel small, she was simply grateful to the saints being placed into the Moon Lady. But as time passed, she realized.

That humans could never shake divinity.

“All of it, all of it...!”

“Please stop!!”

“All of it was nothing but a dog’s death!”

Bae Seogyeong was furious at herself.

“I drove them into miserable deaths!!”

Even if she could not become the Moon, she had been the young priest who received the second-most love from the Moon Lady among humans. She had authority, and she had leeway. And with that, she had merely watched the saints’ deaths.

“But it won’t be that way anymore, not anymore. I learned the way to become a star. I borrowed the evil god’s wisdom. Your universe is very small right now, but it will widen beyond measure. It won’t even take long to reach that. I was so afraid of that.”

Even now, look.

“You still have limitless potential.”

“I didn’t want that...!!”

“Aram, please. You were already so cold, so often...!!”

Cowardly words, but yes—she should have blocked it desperately back then. She should not have brought that clever child into the Moon Lady Religion. At the very least, she should not have made her a saintess.

“I know how much you suffer from loneliness. I saw you that day on the street. I saw you shivering alone on a cold winter day. And yet, I placed this nauseating fate into the hands of you, who looked at the world with affectionate eyes...”

A child who deserved to be loved by more people.

“We will be the stars in the sky, so look at the world. Look at the world with those wise eyes of yours. You’ve only just gained a good opportunity. You gained a good teacher too, and a chance to live a new life, and now the chance has come to you to learn the precious emotions we have neglected and scorned.”

“Yes, I wanted that. I realized that peripheral joy, which I thought vulgar and shallow, is also a precious emotion that makes up a human. I realized, after so long, the joy of eating delicious food! I’d forgotten it all, I had...!”

Kwaaaak—!!

Aram widened her universe with tears.

“But even there was the joy you gave me too!!”

My family, my foolish people.

“How can it be called my sin that I wanted to hear my family’s story, after neglecting it for so long? Mother, please—my mother whom I respect and love. You loved these people too. Becoming stars—how lonely and dreadful is that?”

“But we need a hell that suits us. And if we become your stars, it can be called the greatest luxury even among those hells. Yes. It is luxurious. It is wanting to enjoy extravagance beyond our station. But what can we do? We are receiving salvation in the evil god’s mercy!!”

Bae Seogyeong stretched out both hands and called the stars.

“We will not be granted such a beautiful hell a second time!!”

The stars clumped together among themselves, collided, shattered, and with those fragments they blocked the saintess’s view. The sight of all the stars in the universe shining brilliantly as they scattered could truly be called artistic.

“Please help me be trapped in this beautiful hell. And you will remain in the human world and learn and gain more. Then even if you someday become the Moon, your loneliness will be less. We will fill that emptiness—these sinners, your sinners...!!”

“I will become the Moon—!!”

From among the broken, shattered stars, Aram shouted like a shrill scream.

Silence fell.

“...”

“...”

The world stopped.

She held her universe.

“...Ah, haha... hahahaha...”

At that sight, Bae Seogyeong sank down onto the surface of the pitch-black lake. Strength left her legs.

“...Beautiful.”

The stars Bae Seogyeong had flung about and damaged at random found their places in the universe and drifted at ease. It was calm, peaceful, and mysterious, like lying in an observatory and gazing at the sky.

It could not compare to the night sky she had made.

“I... wanted to make... this sky.”

A night sky filled with peace. She wanted to make such a world.

“...”

“Does this look like hell to you?”

“...To my paltry eyes, it looks like heaven.”

“Does this look like a place for you to atone?”

“This is a work of art, not a place where I can set foot.”

“Then how do you wish to become a star?”

“Because I have no path...”

What she could see was stale sin, and where she had to go was a cliff. And so she had been grateful for the evil god’s mercy. Even if she were trapped in a cold, lonely ice star, he had shown her a path.

“I wanted to become a good bishop, a good brother, a good parent.”

Golden tears flowed from Bae Seogyeong’s eyes, dyed like the evil god’s.

“...I already knew the previous day that it couldn’t be. So I begged the evil god. And I received the Moon Lady from him. But it seems my vessel truly is very small. Even while holding divinity in my arms, I was only imitating some miserable night sky that could not compare to the saintess’s...”

The saintess widened her universe, and widened it, and widened it again. And so she embraced even the night sky Bae Seogyeong had decorated so wretchedly. Then she hugged her so she would no longer tremble in cold and loneliness.

The stars embraced within the mysterious universe looked very comfortable.

“...”

“...A path...”

Was it because she had forcibly widened her vessel? Aram was sweating coldly, breathing out in ragged, colored pants. It was because she had flailed so none of her family would be cast beneath the lake. Because of that.

Aram, who had shouted several times in a life where she had never done so, said in a hoarse voice.

“I... I can be the path.”

Aram realized that was the path a saint should walk.

Aram sat down on the surface like her mother. Then she plunged both hands into the lake—splash—and drew them out. In her hands, after rising, was the pure white Moon Lady Bae Seogyeong had imprisoned.

Aram said.

“...What is a human’s role. Where does the value of mystery lie. How in the world can the world progress. As Mother said, I still don’t know much, and there are many things I must know.”

On her small hands, the Moon Lady shone brightly.

“However, endlessly seeking a path is a human’s role; the value of mystery lies in asking us questions through fate and nature; and the world progresses through that unending process of anguish.”

From Aram’s hands, the Moon Lady slowly floated up.

“This is the conviction I hold.”

And also malice.

“This is the world I must cling to, viciously.”

“...”

“ I will become the Moon Lady. And I will not be devoured. The Moon Lady, the library of knowledge, is only a collection of information, not something we can call our teacher. I will hold this, and I will look at the world.”

“...Aram...”

“I know. It will be difficult. If not for the evil god’s mercy, I probably wouldn’t even be holding the Moon Lady in my hands right now. But look, Mother.”

Aram held up the Moon Lady, full in both hands.

“...It’s warm.”

Unlike the dragons of the Black Forest, the noble saints who had offered themselves were warming the Moon, if only faintly.

“It wasn’t a dog’s death. The saints Mother sent off were still warming the Moon inside here. Enduring cold and loneliness, they did not lose warmth.”

“...”

“It’s only that we lacked know-how. The method was wrong, so it was an unavoidable inadequacy. So I— I who have not yet become inadequate—will hold the Moon. I will become the teacher of my brothers and sisters.”

Between learning and punishment, Aram chose learning.

“Since we sinned out of ignorance, shouldn’t we repay it by learning...?”

Aram crawled before her mother, weeping.

“I’ll take responsibility. I decided that. We will all take responsibility. We were walking a dreadful path that would create an evil god, but up to now... we haven’t gone that far yet. I will take away and protect all the cold and loneliness of the saints contained within this.”

“...That is... too... difficult a path...”

“There must have been an easier, more comfortable path. But there’s no guarantee that was the right path. How can atonement through death and annihilation be called only right? We will walk a different path than the evil god who wanted to punish with rage. I will help you, so help me.”

“...But...”

“Mother, please. Hold up the Moon Lady.”

Aram, coming forward on her knees, placed the Moon Lady into Bae Seogyeong’s trembling two hands. Small hands and wrinkled hands together held up the brightly shining Moon Lady. It was light, and brilliant.

Bae Seogyeong blankly stroked the Moon. She had certainly held it earlier too, and yet strangely...

“...”

Warmth could be felt.

“...Ah...”

She cried transparently.

* * *

A bandaged man was watching.

“...”

What touched his feet turned to gold and then melted away. It became pitch-black poison. Wearing a sheep’s skull, he bled golden blood and vanished into the darkness with a limping gait.

No sound came from his bare feet.

『...My second hand is empty now.』

Only his voice remained belatedly in the poison-dyed air.

『What shall I hold next...』

A deer followed by his side.

(Continued in the next part)