chapter 93

The Painter Who Draws Dungeons - Episode 93

How miserable a thing it is to have to live an entire lifetime with a single memory.

That was a mermaid’s fate.

It was like an illness they were born with.

The strongest emotion etched into the soul left a vicious trace that could not be overturned no matter what happened.

For Iser, that trace was the human called Giovanni.

“Sleep well.”

“...Teacher, you too...”

This place is peaceful.

“Have a peaceful night.”

So comfortable it gives you goosebumps.

It was a sensation that made no sense.

A sensation a mermaid—one like Iser—could not allow.

Even the quiet spring breeze and the murmuring rustle of the forest that drifted in softly came as something alluring he couldn’t shake off.

Iser was given a bedroom in Gio’s cabin.

“...”

The floor under his bare feet was made of wood.

From the cabin’s floor and walls and ceiling, smoothly coated and polished, came a bitter scent that made the mind hazy.

The large terrace window was wide open, drinking in the forest air, and the bed—neither too big nor too small, just the right size—held a soft warmth.

“...”

When he lay down on that texture.

“...This...”

Iser couldn’t hold it in and spoke.

“Does this make any sense?”

Within this peace, Iser felt a dreadful emptiness and loss.

“Where am I right now...?”

In a mermaid’s memory, Giovanni was dead.

Dead horribly.

Bearing wounds he couldn’t believe were inflicted by the children of the sun who carried warmth, seeing the rotted, decaying skin and the spoiled strands that dripped down between it and the empty eye sockets, what had Iser thought then?

‘...I was drugged, but that doesn’t mean I have no memory of that time.’

Rather, the situation then was far too vivid.

No one would know what he had been thinking, that he had to eat him.

That day, our peace met death.

The dead should not return, and yet what is this comfortable space supposed to be?

Where am I feeling tranquility right now?

“...It’s scary...”

It felt like the belly that had been full had become empty before he knew it.

“...”

Instead, it would be filled with rotten flesh.

“...I feel sick.”

His stomach wasn’t good.

It felt like he was getting seasick.

It felt like his brain was shaking.

His vision seemed blurry yet clear, and the voices of the silent forest grew louder and louder.

A mermaid’s memory had stopped at Giovanni’s death and the sun’s ruin, so there was no way such warmth could not be uncomfortable.

Iser had become more familiar with blood and screams.

“Ah...”

That was Iser’s fate.

“...”

A mermaid lived in a sea of blood.

Now, even if you gave him a senseless gift like this, he had become a pathetic adult who felt fear first.

“...”

Only after quite some time did the mermaid speak.

“...I think I’m going to have a bad dream.”

I hadn’t known the place I live is a nightmare.

Lying here like a corpse, only now do I know it is hell.

* * *

“...”

At a peculiar sensation, Gio lifted his body from the bed.

“...Mm...”

A sensation that made him want to take a walk.

‘Should I go out.’

Gio was not the kind of person who deeply agonized over the root of his desires.

Leaving sleeping Honey behind, he left the room.

Stepping down the wooden stairs with their soft feel and arriving in the living room, for some reason he could see the teddy bear lying on the living-room sofa, and Dana the cat beside it.

The two looked up at Gio, emitting a faint light as if they might go out at any moment.

“I am going out for a walk.”

“...”

“Dana, shall we go together?”

Dana, who had been looking at black-haired Gio, soon stood at his side.

Like a ghost, there was no sound of footsteps.

The teddy bear did not stop the two as they left the cabin, only watching.

Pulling on the black cloak he always wore, Gio walked the path without placing meaning on it.

He had come out barefoot, but the grass that brushed underfoot was soft, so it didn’t hurt.

Here, no matter where you stepped, the texture felt good.

That seemed to be why he wandered around without even putting on shoes all the more.

The enjoyment of walking was great.

“The forest is quiet.”

At this hour, the forest always kept a strange silence, as if it were asleep.

“Dana, do you like the forest.”

“...”

“How about the trees?

The scent of the flowers?”

“...”

“The weather is very nice.”

Step, step...

The sound of soft grasses swaying.

“The moon is up so bright.”

Here, there is a sun and there is a moon.

But they were clearly different from Earth’s, or from another planet’s.

They boasted a color like transparent jewels, and even if you held them in your eyes, they didn’t shine with a painful light as if they were far away.

It felt as though you were simply looking at a brightly drawn painting...

“Look.”

Above their heads floated a jewel-moon of icy, glacier-like light.

“You look like it.”

“Meow.”

“That’s a different cry than usual.”

It sounded like a cry imitating a cat.

“You are a cat, but...”

He was about to say something, but he didn’t want to think any further and turned his gaze away.

It resembled that cold moon floating in the night sky.

“It’s shining.”

“Meow.”

“Thanks to it, it isn’t dark.”

The round moon was huge, and like the school of jellyfish he had seen in the deep sea, a Milky Way was also draped across this sky.

They held still with a dry glitter that didn’t feel even the slightest vitality.

The moon gives off light.

The Milky Way has drawn a curtain.

At his feet stands an icy cat, and the forest that should have been dark becomes secretly bright, so the only shadow here is Gio himself.

The only black in this place is him.

“Even though it smells strongly of trees...”

His steps soon stopped before a brilliant spring.

“Inside it, there’s the scent of the sea.”

“...”

“Aria.”

He saw his student with pale bare feet soaking in the pooled springwater.

“Can you not sleep?”

Looking at the black cloak in the shadows where his face could not be seen at all, the mermaid wore, as always, a seasoned smile.

“How could I fall asleep in a place like this?”

“Did you not like the bed?”

“I liked everything, to the point it gave me goosebumps.”

“And yet you do not run away.”

“Because I hope that someday you will accept us.”

Pearl-colored eyes held the black cloak.

“If we take responsibility, will you forgive us too?

Will you love us again like then?”

“My forgiveness is not necessary.

It is not my part to resent and hate you.”

“...We have a great deal of time.”

Aria’s voice was, as always, clear and soft.

“I didn’t know it would come to feel like such a great fear.”

She asked Gio.

“Do you know what kind of existence this spring is?”

“I did not try to know, because there is no reason I need to know.”

“Do you know what this forest means to you?”

The mermaid continued asking.

“Why you are placed in a situation like this, why you were revived in a grotesque form that is neither resurrection nor anything else, what intention and context the world is flowing with like this...”

“I am not curious.”

“An answer like you, Teacher.”

There was a smoothness like pearls in the mermaid’s voice.

“Kind, and indifferent.”

That was why there was also a roughness.

“Do you have the awareness that this place is inside your belly?”

“This place is a painting I drew.”

“It doesn’t seem that different.”

“If you say it is a part of me, then perhaps it is.”

Because what created this place is Gio, and at the same time he is a portrait.

“I knew this forest reflects my inner landscape.”

“Even so, can you still be called human?”

“I have never once departed from being human.”

“...”

“I was always human.”

It was something so natural he didn’t even need to think about it.

“It seems like a night good for conversation—do you have anything you wish to ask this teacher?”

“...”

At the voice that changed its tone in an instant, Aria held the pitch-black cloak in her eyes.

“...I can’t see your face...”

The inside of the cloak could not be seen even a little.

“Do you exist at all?”

“I have never vanished, Aria.”

“What do you look like now?”

“I do not know, as I do not look in mirrors.”

“But I can’t see you either.”

Then.

“How can you prove that you exist?”

How can one distinguish whether there is a human inside that pitch-black shadow, a sun god, a painting, life, or death.

If it is a shadow whose appearance is unknown until someone defines it.

“There’s something I’m curious about, Teacher.”

“I promise I will give you the best answer I can.”

“How can you be sure you won’t disappear?”

“Nothing is eternal.

What lives and what dies must continue to change.”

“It’s true I failed to see humanity’s limits.

The humans I knew grew stronger without end, evolved, and even became gods or nature.”

But.

“It’s a different grain from them.”

A pitch-black canvas that can become anything.

“...If I feel fear and loss toward that, will you understand?”

“I think it is only natural to feel distance as much as I have changed.”

“Distance?

That’s not what I was going to say.

It’s completely different.”

So long as he was ‘Giovanni,’ she had no intention of moving away at all.

“Why would I try to distance myself from you.

I already had to stare for long years at nothing but an empty sea that was neither coffin nor grave, feeling that vacancy.

Now that I know this isn’t some absurd nightmare or miracle that struck in an instant, I’m saying I don’t even feel a trivial distance like that.”

So the emotion Aria was feeling now was—

“I...”

“...”

“...Teacher.”

—closer to misery or desperation.

“Why are you always standing at the center of fate?”

It was dreadful.

“Wouldn’t it have been better if you were just some insignificant person passing by.

Being born into an ordinary family, living an ordinary life, and dying ordinarily.

They say no one suits such a place as much as you do, Teacher.

And among the thousands and tens of thousands of people I’ve seen, even more than that, why is it that you are not included...”

You can know it when you see this forest.

No.

“You can know it just by looking at you.”

If you still couldn’t know even after seeing those eyes, it was no different from being unable to see the world.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if you died.

It was an expected situation.

Even if it wasn’t a very peaceful, comfortable death, I would have been satisfied.”

“...”

“If only you’d been just a little more ordinary, if you’d been common enough that everyone in the world could just pass it off like that, if you’d died only like that, how good would it have been.”

From within the deep shadow beneath the pitch-black hood, where the inside could not be seen, a voice flowed out.

“So you wished that I would be happy.”

It was clearly Giovanni’s voice.

“Because I’m too special a person, because you can’t bear it, is it hard for you?”

“I want to think it’s excessive self-awareness, but it really does seem like that.”

“Does it not feel like a very cute bit of sulking?”

“...”

How many voices could possibly flow out from within that shadow?

“...Unfortunately, it’s not such a cute situation...”

If only she could have laughed it off, it would have been so much better.

“...Since when were you a portrait?”

“I don’t know that well, either.”

“What do you think you are?”

“I am Gio.”

“Now your happiness isn’t what matters.”

Giovanni did not meet an unhappy death.

“I know it was a death you were satisfied with.”

So what mattered was the fear and loss around him—the mermaids’, Aria’s.

Because no matter what moment comes, Gio will choose what is happiest for himself.

“You will live the life you are satisfied with.

No matter what becomes of those around you later, you will do the best action you can do at that time.

Do you not think it’s terrifying that it’s so ideal?”

“Aria seems to think it is terrifying.”

“Yes, it’s terrifying.

Because I know it’s the best, and I know it’s an ideal.

After respecting that 모습, I can’t now tell you to fix it either.

Because I’ve lived too deeply fallen into it...”

What, then, is the essence of this portrait?

This thing’s name is ‘Gio’s Portrait.’

It is a person, and at the same time a painting.

It is only a painting, yet it is also a painter.

It was like the owner of fate who directly drew his own life, and also like a vast nature that would live holding even more fates in its arms.

Because he was a portrait from the beginning, did he come to endlessly repeat the name ‘Gio’?

Or at some point, because he was Gio, did he become a portrait and come to hold countless ‘Gio’?

“Yes.”

Because she was so uneasy, Aria finally laid down a definition.

In a very distant past, and in the future, and even now, at this very moment...

“...Teacher will be special for your entire life.”

This person could not be ordinary.

Not even once—he never had been.

“...”

“...”

Now what should she look at and accuse as cruel?

“...Teacher, do you trust humans?”

“There is happiness that can only be obtained by trusting.”

“And you won’t give up.”

“Just as Aria did not give up on anger.”

“Yes, then...”

With a drained face she had never shown before, Aria smiled.

“I’ll take care of my share myself.”

Of the shadows beneath that pitch-black cloak, how much can I have.

She prayed it wouldn’t only be something to spill into the sea again.

The Painter Who Draws Dungeons

Fantasy, Modern,