Can You Accept Someone Like Me?

Perhaps many children will hear this from adults.

That you are a precious being above all else.

That birth is a blessing, and life itself deserves respect, so that’s reason enough for us to love you…

How wonderful it would have been if I could have grown up hearing such words.

‘Has the curse that started from the mother continued to the present?’

Coincidentally, I didn’t know what kind of person my mother was.

I only knew that even pouring out the power of miracles couldn’t cure her, and that she died shortly after giving birth to me.

People who didn’t know anything considered it a pitiful and sad thing.

But people who knew the circumstances.

People who knew that I inherited the same symptoms as my mother, directed such sad gazes at me.

‘Indeed, it was a cursed bloodline. Why did the Duke with such a woman…’

‘Be quiet. This matter must be kept secret.’

‘But the curse has been passed down to the daughter. If the curse of the only heir is passed down to her descendants…’

‘How about adopting?’

‘No, the Duke says he has no intention of having another child.’

Father said.

The Bertayu, swordsmen who have supported the Empire for generations, love only one person in their lifetime.

Because a sword facing an enemy must always be raised without wavering.

Advocating such a belief can be found in many aspects of the family culture, and maintaining purity and that heart is also said to represent a straight-drawn sword.

Above all, father loved mother.

Because he truly loved her.

Father, who didn’t take any other companions or adopt, kept me as his only child, and without informing the outside world, searched for an heir to be matched with me.

‘Poor thing.’

Those who knew my circumstances always spoke with sympathy.

‘How could God have cursed such a small person?’

Everywhere I went, there was only sympathy.

Not jealousy or pretense, but pure sympathy…

In a world where one can directly prove the nobility of one’s heart, I felt this even more keenly.

‘The Lord has always watched over the descendants of mankind who were expelled from paradise for committing sins. Despite their endless sins, He always embraced humans with a generous heart.’

The one who declared himself cursed by God was sincerely claiming that his assertion was not wrong.

‘The unbeliever will be punished, but the believer will surely be forgiven. Faith will be the way to your salvation.’

‘Really, will it be like that?’

‘Even if it’s not now, your descendants might be able to receive it.’

I won’t enjoy that protection and to my descendants…

Doesn’t that ultimately mean that I won’t enjoy what they call a miracle?

‘So pray.’

Yet they insisted.

Just as they hold rain rituals until it rains, I should also pray with clasped hands for good situations to come.

And take that alone as life’s comfort.

‘If you awaken true faith and enjoy that light. Surely your life will become more abundant.’

Still, at that time I thought it was natural.

I didn’t know who this God was, but I believed without doubt that if He was really watching over me, He would manage my heart.

Even if He couldn’t cure the disease, He would at least manage my heart.

Moreover, not for me who was cursed, but for those who had relationships with me, and even for their children, that prayer would reach.

In the heart of a girl waiting for her fiancé, such simplicity existed.

Please don’t let the person who will be tied to me feel the same pain as my father. And for my child too…

Something that can hardly be called faith, and cannot be said to have originated from the simple fluttering of a young girl’s heart.

A heart that noble people would call ‘desire’.

‘It’s not a curse.’

But such a wish.

The boy who was destined to be tied to me was shattering it so mercilessly.

‘Not… a curse, you say…’

I had believed that all my life.

Because everyone around me said so.

Believing that it was right, I had taken comfort only in the peace of mind that came from the prayers that stemmed from it.

Being tied to him and having a child.

I thought my only wish was for that curse not to be passed on to that child.

‘The condition you have is a symptom of airway obstruction caused by inflammation blocking your airway. It’s nothing more than an allergic reaction caused by irritation from dust or smoke.’

But what followed was something I had never heard anywhere before.

Perhaps not just me, but others as well.

Because the church has always defined what he calls ‘medicine’ as heretical sorcery.

‘It’s not a curse. It’s a genetic disease, so holy power only recovers the symptoms, but with proper medication, it’s a condition that can be sufficiently improved.’

But how do you know this?

Why do you, who are just a young boy like me, know in detail about knowledge that everyone calls heretical?

Where did you learn such knowledge, and why are you testing me?

‘Celia, you…’

But there was no way I could shake it off.

No matter how much the common sense I’ve believed in until now is denied.

Even if the treatment he wants to do to me is an act denied by people who believe that everything can be solved through prayer.

‘You’re not wrong. You’re the same as me.’

Not sympathy stemming from ignorance.

Knowledge based on proper facts felt as sweet as the devil’s temptation.

---

‘I pronounce the defendant guilty.’

But the world cruelly branded him, who had erased my disease, as a heretic, and sent him off to the battlefield with an indelible label of a criminal for life.

It was a natural flow.

Because the power of religion stems from absoluteness.

What cannot be solved by pure power must be something impure, and what solves it instead must be the work of a devil who paid a price.

Otherwise, it would be denying everything that has been built up until now.

If that happens, everything that has been firmly established would collapse.

For the Empire, which has made such things the mainstay of its rule, the result that my condition improved should not be acknowledged.

It might just seem better as if tempted by the devil, but surely I must have fallen into an unholy existence.

The one who protected me in this situation was my father, who recognized that person’s noble sacrifice.

‘Celia. You’re not wrong.’

Father.

Father who loved me more than anyone else after losing the mother he loved so much.

Although it was a country where the church was the mainstay, father was also one of the four dukes supporting the Empire.

Rather, he was in a position to put considerable pressure on the imperial family and the church to protect his child.

‘Father. May I ask you for one thing?’

While he had become a thorn in the Empire’s side in an instant, countless people began to target this family because of it.

If they were tied to a cursed person, even if they were just a son-in-law, it would be possible to take control and manipulate the family.

Seeing a world teeming with such desires, I made one request to my father, invoking the mercy he had prayed for me.

‘I want to be tied to someone stronger than me.’

What is faith, what is loyalty.

None of that mattered.

I was alive.

I came to know how clear the air in the forest was where I walked for recovery, and what it felt like to swing a sword until I was out of breath.

I wanted to prove to the world that persecuted the person who provided me with such opportunities.

Even though I’m just someone who only knows how to swing a sword.

If I could prove it even with just that.

‘The successor of Bertayu will be decided by the one who fights and defeats my daughter, Celia Bertayu. Only two things are needed. A sword and life.’

The opponent bet their life.

And I fought betting my succession rights and chastity.

From the position of the family’s successor, I made bloody efforts betting my succession rights and chastity in the body of a young girl.

When that person continued his desperate survival on the front lines as a prisoner, I, wanting to prove his righteousness, bet my chastity and beheaded challengers.

Among them were those who knew honor. There were desperate ones. There were those who purely felt love for me, and those who hated me for trying to deny the Empire’s system sincerely.

They all fell by my hand.

I had to become strong to kill.

‘Father, are you really going to fight the imperial family?’

And father was a person who shouldered an even harsher burden than me.

He, who was stronger than anyone in the Empire, nevertheless tried to persuade them through dialogue rather than force.

‘It’s alright. Because you have achieved results. If they truly care for the country, I think they will believe me if I speak.’

I only needed one sword, but father was a person who had many things to protect, not just me.

To protect his territory, to protect his pride, and further to hope that the country would not be shaken because of him.

I liked father who prioritized his love for me above all else.

Because I respected and loved him.

‘All of you in the Empire!! Behold this pitiful sight of a leader!! This is the end of one who tried to defend a heretic!’

While grandly conducting my father’s funeral.

I hated the authorities of the country who babbled on with their own intentions, putting forth a corpse that could not speak.

‘That sword that stood firm fell without any strength against what they created called medicine. Where is the honor in this death, where is the nobility in this death!’

Those noble ones who emitted light as if solidifying their own justice, swayed by those words.

And people who, without even thinking of judging for themselves, were just incited by listening to what was said from above.

‘Bertayu has betrayed the country!’

‘How can an ignorant bloodline that fell for the schemes of heretics be qualified as a leader!’

‘Step down immediately! Drag down that corrupted one there!!’

Ah, yes.

Sion. You’ve been fighting this kind of battle from the beginning.

You’ve been pushing through your beliefs against people who are blinded by the panacea made from faith, and don’t know that ignorance is a sin.

I felt his humanity just from the fact that his anger didn’t end in tragedy, but I…

I couldn’t bring myself to show mercy to those who had insulted the people who loved me.

I just came to dislike human beings.

I just came to dislike the existence called humans, I was so disgusted that I was only eager to turn my eyes away…

It was then that the tombstones of the people I had killed came into view.

A number exceeding hundreds beyond dozens.

I, who was faithful to my own circumstances even in a position of responsibility, had I killed so many people by my own hands?

A human life.

Despite the life that person had lived, did it disappear so lightly with just one sword stroke?

When the sound of something snapping echoed in my head, and eventually nothing could be heard.

Before I knew it, I had come to the point of beheading even a member of the imperial family who tried to lay hands on me, not knowing my place.

I felt nothing.

Even though I foresaw the storm that would come after, it didn’t matter.

Rather, I felt unburdened. It felt like I had been liberated from everything I had valued until now.

Putting power in impure hands.

Entering an impure path, and in the end, even abandoning humanity…

I thought that this might be what religion calls corruption, but I thought if it feels refreshing, isn’t that good enough?

And so I charged alone towards the imperial army rushing at me.

Thinking that if I died fighting in that refreshing feeling, that would be enough.

Cutting, cutting, and cutting down again the elite soldiers sent by the imperial family in place of the imperial army that wouldn’t survive the war…

‘Listen, everyone!!’

Yes, for someone, this must have been seen as an opportunity.

For example, rebels who set out to occupy the imperial palace taking advantage of this gap.

‘From now on, the history of blood will end. Those who will revolutionize this land with me, Ganian Astora, lay down your weapons!’

At the end of the imperial castle.

The moment when the one who had beheaded the emperor, who had squeezed the people’s blood through war, lifted that head and shouted towards the people at the scene.

The story that the people at the scene had seen began to spread by word of mouth throughout the entire empire.

The moment when the sky of the system turned red, and a black being rose from the imperial castle.

They said that an angel descending from the sky slit its throat, and the feathers scattered as it left healed the bodies of the dying people.

I don’t know if it’s true or if it’s a plausible fabrication, but it didn’t matter.

I just ran.

I ran there without even thinking of wiping off the blood covering my body.

Because at a scene even more tragic than the battles I had been through, I saw one man I had longed to see so much walking towards me.

‘Sion, I…’

I’ve been waiting for you all this time.

Perhaps to put a period to a story that might not continue after that.

‘Celia.’

But he opened his mouth before me and approached.

With more blood stained than me.

Leading a body more abused than mine.

As if the blood on my body didn’t matter at all, he approached and embraced me.

‘Even someone like me.’

Sion. My savior. The only person I, who had turned my back on the world, chose to approach.

The person who overcame the most cruel fight in an age when those burdened with God abandoned their selves and went mad.

‘Even someone like me, can you accept?’

But he too was human.

Unlike me who gave in to madness unable to endure reality.

Unlike me, a person who needed a place to lean his tired body.

‘…Gladly.’

I loved him who chose me as such a resting place.

And so the two lived happily ever after…

Hoping that this story would conclude like such a cliché yet beautiful old tale.