Chapter 273

Chapter 273

Do you know how much immense rage was buried in that forest?

* * *

One day.

The child was writhing from hunger on an empty stomach.

‘There’s nothing to eat here.’

No matter where he looked, no matter where he turned, there was nothing but weeds. Even the color was pitch-black; no matter how he looked at them, they didn’t seem edible. The smell was strange, too. Moreover, the color of the soil those things had taken root in was murky.

The bright child endured his hunger as best he could. If he ate something like this just because he was hungry, he would fall ill in no time. There was no medicine, no one to care for him, and he didn’t want that.

But even that reached its limit.

“...Ugh...”

Just one mouthful of water.

‘Wouldn’t it be okay if I drink just once?’

He would drink little by little so he wouldn’t upset his stomach. The taste would surely be awful, but if he didn’t drink even this stagnant black water, it felt like he would die right away. He didn’t want that.

The child held his breath and walked until he reached a small puddle. Trembling, he stretched out his hand. Sssst— a sound that would never come from normal water rose from the fingertip that touched it. But there was no pain.

‘It’ll be fine.’

What could be more frightening than dying right now?

‘Just to moisten my throat, that’s all I need...!’

Gulp.

“...! U- ugh...!!”

His throat hurt as if it were burning.

Tears welled up. The child, not even realizing the monsters might hear, cried out in pain. He wailed and wailed, and only after noticing the monsters’ gazes did he run. Clutching his throat, he ran for a long time.

But it didn’t go well. For some reason, the sensation in his body grew duller and duller. His vision turned red, and black, and blue. As if his ribs were being tightly squeezed, he couldn’t breathe well. Only after he collapsed did the child look at himself.

“...”

He was rotting while still alive.

“...U, ugh... aaah...”

Is this my hand? Is this my arm? What’s wrong with my legs? And my feet—what’s wrong with them? I’m not ice, so why am I melting? It hurts, it hurts so much. It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts...!

“M-mother... Mother! Waaaaaah...! I- I, it hurts so much...! Please save me! Father, big brother! Where are you all?! Dalia, I’m in pain! I’m scared! Help me...!!”

His voice grew more and more grotesque. He hated that so much that he scratched at his throat, but the texture felt strange. When he looked at his hand again, disgusting flesh had been mashed like cheese and wedged between his fingers.

‘No way.’

This has to be a nightmare. This is all a dream. Human skin can’t be this fragile. I scratched a lot when I was itchy, but it never happened like this. Right, of course. I’ll wake up from this nightmare soon.

‘Then Dalia will come wake me up, right?’

He would wake up in a soft bed and go see Mother and Father. He would grab his big brother and cry his eyes out, saying he had such a terrifying dream. He would cry for them to comfort him.

‘Yes, yes, so...!’

Before he knew it, his vision darkened.

‘I’ll wake up soon.’

But he didn’t.

“...”

The child lay on the rotten ground for a long time.

He couldn’t move his legs. He couldn’t lift his head, and he couldn’t scream. Even twitching a finger was too much. He could see nothing, and he could hear nothing.

He could only tell, slowly, that his body was being torn away or melting down.

“...”

I guess a monster is eating me.

‘...Mother really did abandon me.’

Father, big brother, everyone in the family had abandoned him.

He had known it since he came here, but he acknowledged anew the truth he had forced himself to deny. There was no way his family would come to a place crawling with monsters. The child had to slowly rot here and be eaten by monsters.

‘Death wasn’t the most frightening thing.’

He didn’t know how much time had passed. The monsters took a bite of him at a time and then left. Was it because his body had melted away? Please, someone kill me. May God take my breath.

The fear of a child trapped in the eternal ages of emptiness soon became rage.

* * *

One day.

The child was so terribly lonely.

“...Right now, what time is it, even...”

He stared up at the sky in emptiness, but he couldn’t tell the time.

A black sky. Black trees. Black monsters. Black flowers. Black weeds. Black earth. Black puddles. Everything was nothing but black.

‘At this rate, won’t I become black, too?’

The child curled up as much as possible and held his breath. He had learned how to avoid the monsters’ attention. He just had to be as if dead. But he was so lonely. There was no one to chatter with, no one to look at him.

‘Did I do something so terrible that I have to be punished in a place like this?’

With feathered wings, the child wrapped his small body as tightly as he could. His family had screamed when they saw it. He should have hidden it as much as he could—he shouldn’t have bragged just because something cool appeared.

‘I was stupid.’

No one liked the only thing he hadn’t wanted. His family had only been the same. Regret remained. If he had hidden it tightly, he could have stayed with his family. Now, it was like a dream.

“Ugh...”

It was cold, and hot, and dry, and humid. In this forest where the weather had gone mad, no normal creature lived. Soon he himself would become like that. Thinking so made him so depressed he felt his mind would snap.

‘I don’t want to be alone.’

But the monsters were scary.

‘I want to feel sunlight. I want to see clouds, and a starry sky, too.’

No—honestly, as long as it wasn’t black, anything would do.

‘I wish I could talk with the friends in the village. If that can’t happen, then at least my family. Even the old folks who wander the streets because they’re bored would be fine.’

Well, honestly, anyone would do, as long as they were a person.

‘There’s nothing here...’

It wasn’t only color and people that were missing. There was no time, and there was no will. Here, the child was rotting while alive. Like milk forgotten in a storeroom. Or like a broken object.

“...”

The timid child hid like that for a very long time. Avoiding the monsters, in a very quiet place, he died without being able to eat or drink anything. And for a very long time, he longed for many things.

The longing of a child whose existence had been erased soon became rage.

* * *

One day.

The child wanted to live no matter what.

“—Die, all of you!!”

“What are you doing, hurry up and throw it in!”

“Do you think you’ll be safe after doing this?! Cowards, hypocrites! When did you ever worship me, and how dare you treat me like this trash?!”

“If we throw that into the Black Forest, we live...!”

“A curse will fall upon you all, upon you all!!”

He struggled desperately not to enter the Black Forest. But it was meaningless. The adults were far bigger and stronger than the child. The gate in the sturdy, massive wall surrounding the Black Forest shut closed. The child was abandoned.

“May God mete out punishment, you damned spawn of evil spirits!!”

The child panted and insulted the people who had thrown him away. But the people beyond the wall didn’t even answer. Now the only place the child could go was deeper into the forest. The child ground his teeth.

“...I’ll never die like this...”

He was scared. His body shuddered with betrayal, and his vision swam with bleak helplessness. But he didn’t want to die meekly. He wanted to live. To do that, he had to grow strong. He had to summon courage.

The child trained his strength desperately. He learned skills and built wisdom. Sometimes he became a swift fox and fled, and sometimes he became a bird and flew through the sky to avoid monsters. It was the rare ability that had made humans discard him.

And so the child even uncovered a small truth.

“That’s right, you worthless bastards! I was the son of God sent down to save you!!”

It was a wretched truth that only made him angrier.

“If God has a conscience, He’ll punish the world...!”

So he decided to become an adult in the Black Forest. The child was truly diligent. In a world where everything wanted him dead, he stubbornly survived. To live was to grow stronger. Those were days he could take pride in.

But in the end, the child met death.

“...Ugh, hhk...”

The reason was nothing special.

“...Nngh, uuuugh... bweeeehk...”

While asleep, he was struck by the spores of a poisonous mushroom.

He woke in a panic, but it was already too late. The child wept tears of blood from injustice. How had he endured up to here only to die so emptily? He hated it—he hated it so much his insides twisted.

But death only crept closer, slowly.

“Hhkk... waaaah, waaaaaaaah...!!”

In bitter sorrow, the child cried his heart out.

He tried this hard. He worked so much, but there was no one who recognized him. He would simply be abandoned and forgotten by history, a speck of dust. It was unbearably miserable.

The child prayed to God.

“Save me, please. My noble Father...! Please, me...!!”

And in the middle of that prayer, the child died.

The desperate urgency of a devout child, as always, became rage.

* * *

“...”

A good child. A bad child.

“...”

There were children who loved their families, and children who didn’t. Sometimes it was a boy, and sometimes it was a girl. A hungry child, a lonely child, an angry child...

Someone was eaten by a monster without even being able to scream once. Someone moved with bated breath and was crushed to death by a monster. Someone felt a bitter betrayal, and someone felt only deep despair.

“...”

There were children who gave up on life, and children who did not.

“...Ah...”

But the result was always the same.

They hated humans, raged at the world, and died.

“That must have been frightening.”

“...Yeah, it must have hurt a lot.”

“They look very young.”

“If you say young, aren’t we young, too...?”

“But that was something we chose.”

“That’s true, too.”

Figures that glittered like a pure white moon each added a word. There were not very many of them. Those young or youthful silhouettes gently soothed the memories of crimson dragons.

They were in a gigantic library fashioned from silver and marble.

“I don’t want my juniors to become like this.”

“Honestly, me neither...”

“...This isn’t what I wanted to see.”

They—those who had once been saints of the Moon Church—gathered the little dragons’ memories. In their own way, they understood, remembered, and analyzed them, and then engraved them onto hard, white paper.

“So let us remember.”

This was not pity.

“We can be of help to each other.”

“From those children’s rage and sorrow and pain, our juniors will learn many things.”

“And those of us inside here will also walk out with endless caution and greater care.”

“So we must record it without a single letter, without even one second of time, being wrong.”

“That is courtesy to the little dragons who gave us learning.”

“And it is our thanks.”

White books were created one by one. They were the noble records of their study, bound with moon halos. The saints of the Moon Church remembered by placing them into the Moon’s shelves. The immense bookshelf quickly became packed full.

The little moons spoke in unison.

“We will remember you.”

“You, too, remember us.”

“Let’s talk about what the right path is.”

“We can do that as much as we want...”

One of the moons hugged a white book tightly.

“...Look, it’s warm.”

“Oh, it really is.”

“Is it because they’re dragons?”

Someone laughed.

“With this many dragons, won’t the moon become warm quickly?”

Their library was very cold and lonely. But it was filled with all the knowledge and wisdom they loved. The saints of the moon loved the moon, their teacher. A pitiable and lovable existence.

“Then, of course. Our junior is hugging the moon.”

“I wish she’d hug it a bit tighter.”

“She definitely will someday.”

“She looked like a junior far smarter and kinder than we are.”

“Let’s trust Aram.”

The small white figures sat in a row, leaning against the dragons’ shelves. When you stayed close to the shelves, it was warm enough to feel hot, and a faint vibration—too slight to easily sense—hummed.

“...It’s just like a living animal.”

“Ah, was it like this?”

“I came after forgetting everything, so I can’t recall it well...”

“But yes, I think this is how it felt when you hugged an animal like a cat.”

“Let’s hold these children one by one.”

“That’s a good idea.”

The saints laughed softly and huddled around the books.

“Ah, it’s warm...”

“Yeah.”

They stroked the books.

“Thank you.”

For helping.

* * *

The emotions that come after rage are very diverse.

So not every ending can be happy, but those who belong to nature and fate instinctively know how to embrace that end. Even the smallest and most foolish creature in the entire universe does.

The little dragons finally, quietly, closed their eyes.

“...”

Among the dragons that had become earth, Aram merely kept silent.

(To be continued in the next chapter)