Ch.297Work Record No. 042 – The God Wearing the Beast’s Hide (1)

El Pastor was originally a person who found smiling awkward. The same went for laughter. It was a world with few reasons to laugh, and being an undertaker offered even fewer.

The best outcome he could achieve was death, and openly speaking the word “life” was considered taboo. Back then, it was a dissatisfaction he couldn’t express, but now he could find the perfect words.

There had been only pretense and ritual, without joy. El Pastor couldn’t understand the phrase “peaceful death.” Death was the end of struggling on the ground, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.

How could that be peaceful, dignified, or ideal? El Pastor wanted to live life. And since El Sueño had arrived, he had been savoring the feeling of being alive.

It was fine even if his body froze when his eyes met a mutant’s. It was fine even if the Las Vegas Strip attacked. Everything was fine and could be laughed off. Because El Sueño was here.

Neither slumbering nor sleeping, needing not a drop of water nor a bite of food in this wasteland… La Roca might still believe he was human, but he was clearly a god who was with them.

No. El Pastor shook his head. La Roca must be doubting by now too. It was only her cynical nature holding her back, but La Roca would soon know. She had been watching from closer than anyone else.

Imagining that cold-blooded woman crying out El Sueño’s name, El Pastor could manage a somewhat natural smile. Eventually, everyone would know, and everyone would call out that name.

The red mint flowers that had naturally bloomed where El Sueño tore apart the Las Vegas Strip’s gang hunter were spreading throughout the wasteland, as if urged on by time.

Even now, the sharp scent of mint flower pollen tickled El Pastor’s nose. This would make an excellent symbol. Like the spreading mint flowers, it would become the spreading faith of El Sueño.

El Pastor lifted the patches he had prepared to distribute to the gang members. They were patches with dark red mint flowers arranged in a circular wreath against a deep gray low-visibility background. There were more than enough.

Unity requires symbols. What the symbol means is only the second most important thing; the most important thing is that everyone shares the same symbol. El Pastor knew this power.

El Pastor ground his teeth compulsively and manically. The world had too many false gods with nothing but their symbols. Like Santa Muerte, whom he himself had believed in.

Though El Sueño didn’t use the word “heresy,” he still cursed Santa Muerte like a convert making a confession of faith.

The tension in El Pastor’s tightly clenched hands released. He wasn’t relaxing them himself. Someone was sliding fingers between his and slowly loosening his grip.

El Sueño materialized from those grip-loosening hands. La Roca still called it deactivating optical camouflage, but El Pastor believed he was walking out from dreams into reality.

El Sueño’s voice that followed was soft and warm. El Pastor could sense something fatherly in his voice. Not a father. Better than a father. He too had been a returned child.

“The thirsty can drink from a spring, from a stream, or if desperate enough, even from a puddle on the ground. Do you still regret?”

“Still, seeing such a clean spring spread before me now, I only regret the times when I drank water pooled in someone’s footprints, El Sueño.”

El Sueño didn’t bother to deny or correct El Pastor’s words. He simply picked up one of the prepared patches and held it before his eyes. A small but not insignificant symbol.

Someone was quite satisfied with El Pastor. He was fulfilling his role sufficiently. Becoming intoxicated with the visions El Sueño showed, and making everyone else similarly intoxicated.

“Don’t make me your refuge. Joy shouldn’t be where your feet land when you run away. It should be like the North Star, something you look up to and pursue. Do you want this small symbol to contain your regret and remorse?”

Only then did El Pastor feel a guilt that seemed to weigh on his heart. He felt somewhat ashamed of himself for looking back at his primitive and foolish past despite having found true joy.

While other gods bound beings, El Sueño was a god who unbound them. He loosened chains. He freed people from the past, from morality, from all manner of human and insignificant things.

That freedom… though frightening, becomes enviable. El Pastor revered El Sueño’s way of doing whatever pleased him without being bound by anything.

He looked like a god wearing the skin of a beast. Despite possessing brilliant reason and rationality, he seemed like another life form that could live relying only on instinct like a beast.

In his voice… El Pastor struggled to find the right words, and finally produced one. In his voice, even amid the gentlest fatherly words, one could hear the cry of a beast.

A young and strong beast. Young enough to devote his life to what he believed in, yet strong enough not to be crushed to death. The vitality of life at its most brilliant phase seems to captivate people.

Only then could El Pastor find the right answer. He could give a response that matched El Sueño’s intention of uniting without constraining. He attached the patch to his forearm and said:

“For mine, it doesn’t matter. But for others, I’ll give them ones with no meaning attached. So they can experience you themselves and fill this small symbol with whatever they wish!”

El Pastor didn’t deny that regret and remorse would remain in his symbol. But he also didn’t deny that although light always shines in the midst of darkness, darkness has never overcome light.

His time with El Sueño would drive away regret and remorse within him, and those memories would become El Pastor’s personal scripture. All other gang members would walk the same path once they understood El Sueño’s will.

While Hollowed Creek’s scripture was written by its leader, El Sueño’s scripture would be written by each believer individually. That statement must have satisfied El Sueño. A shallow laugh could be heard from him.

“Neither discard your past nor live bound to it. Isn’t regret part of you, and overcoming it also part of you? Offer yourself as a living sacrifice, not a self-tailored version of yourself, but your whole self.”

Someone believed El Pastor could fully understand these words, so spoke without explanation. It wasn’t a wasteland-style demand for a living sacrifice, but a call to be an example.

Ten days had passed since El Sueño’s arrival, and from Los Soñadores gang’s perspective, not much had changed. The biggest change was perhaps just getting uniforms.

The clothes had arrived from someone beyond the wasteland, clearly another believer of El Sueño. Technicians were issued jumpsuits, and combat personnel received battle dress uniforms.

The greeting of tapping the chest twice with the top of a clenched fist… was that supplied too? It was a gesture El Sueño made when gathering people for speeches, signifying words coming from the heart.

As always, El Pastor and a few others were the first to imitate El Sueño, and they told other members to make the gesture when reporting to indicate there was no falsehood. It wasn’t a difficult hand motion.

El Pastor had precisely targeted this point that was neither significant nor troublesome. This was ritual. Ritual makes people religious.

The clothes prepared by El Sueño were the first ritual, the greeting method was the second ritual. The patches he prepared were the third ritual. No one would consider it the third.

El Sueño had already accomplished getting them to wear matching clothes, and all El Pastor did was distribute something to attach to their arms. This too was neither significant nor troublesome.

Once everyone was convinced they could wear the same clothes, bear the same mark… and accomplish the same tasks together, El Sueño called everyone to the lobby of the research facility used by Los Soñadores.

The lobby was still too spacious. Even with nearly eighty people gathered, there was no need to stand pressed against each other. El Sueño walked through the crowd like the wind.

Some felt him brush past their collars, some felt his gaze upon them… but all firmly believed that El Sueño stood before them to deliver something.

Only El Pastor was an exception. He believed El Sueño would appear in the middle of the crowd, and indeed, he materialized from the center of the crowd. The sound of chest-tapping thundered.

El Sueño responded by tapping his own chest twice with his fist before beginning to speak. Everyone listened. Individual identity seemed momentarily meaningless…

“There are too many in this wasteland who don’t know true joy. Look at Los Payasos, said to be the most powerful! If they knew joy, would they spend so much time tearing people apart and putting them back together?”

“No!”

Someone couldn’t help but feel a chill at the sound of voices returning as one mass. Was it this simple? Thoughts that didn’t belong in this situation were swallowed down throats.

“Who else? Who else feels thirsty for joy and life and pleasure?”

Answers began pouring in response. This time, voices carried some individuality. They began shouting the names of gangs they knew. Names of some black markets and settlements in the wasteland also erupted.

Though Las Vegas Strip was said to pursue regressive pleasures, the truth was that the wasteland wasn’t particularly better. One could find prostitutes with old-fashioned personality adjustment devices in those black markets.

“Why do they not know joy? Were they born with their organs for experiencing joy castrated? Were they born unable to know joy due to someone’s machinations?”

“No! They simply lack the priming water!”

El Pastor shouted first, and thinking this was the most appropriate response, several other gang members echoed his words. Lack of priming water. A phrase with frightening implications.

El Sueño knew that the fanatic before him understood him. He had devoted himself to El Sueño much faster than the other gang members who were still at the stage of physical acceptance.

For Los Soñadores gang, or the El Sueño cult, to survive, they needed more people who understood El Sueño himself like that man did. Therefore, El Sueño allowed El Pastor to speak more.

“Help us bring them the gospel of countable stars and uncountable dreams, El Sueño. Our Dream! Let them know joy too!”

El Sueño was quite satisfied with those words, but didn’t allow El Pastor to take any more control of the conversation. The control always had to remain with El Sueño.

“I will not give you power. You already have it. Instead, I’ll give you what you don’t have. I give you the right to show mercy. Your dream wants living workers, not dead ones.”

Living workers. La Roca pondered one phrase from El Sueño’s words. To El Sueño, everyone must be workers and tools. Even though it seemed like he was declaring a holy war, this was about unifying the wasteland.

She could understand El Sueño through rationality and reason, but no further. The “why” behind El Sueño’s actions always remained a question to her.

She thought there must be better ways to unify the wasteland than letting these fanatics loose… but she didn’t ask El Sueño about it.

She had now agreed with the fanatics on one fact. Perhaps, just perhaps, El Sueño knew the answers and they simply couldn’t understand them sometimes.

The command to show mercy was the right answer in La Roca’s view. If they declared holy war and killed other gangs, Las Vegas Strip would be the one laughing. They needed conversion, even through hardship.

If they could convert and create one large army, that would be what Las Vegas Strip feared most. El Sueño was making the right choice again, so perhaps the “why” didn’t matter.

Perhaps El Sueño had the right to choose one method among many, including the right method she was thinking of. He was deliberately choosing something she couldn’t understand.

When her thoughts reached that point, La Roca quickly shook her head. El Sueño is not a god. He’s just a corporate justice agent with exceptional abilities. That’s the truth. That must be the truth.

But… he deserved worship. If someone so compassionate, warm, and giving everything she had wished for only wanted cheers and shouts in return… she could give those.

La Roca decided to compromise. El Sueño is not a god. He doesn’t particularly try to be one either. But to us, his abilities appear as brilliant as divinity.

Despite the compromise, her heart wasn’t at ease. The result of that compromise was… a terrible tragedy. He is not a god. Yet someone so warm and compassionate was worthy of worship.

She looked up at El Sueño’s expressionless face. For a moment, she wished that the result of her compromise was false and that El Sueño was a real god. Like Santa Claus at Christmas.

No one really believes Santa exists, but… Santa was an entity that wouldn’t be bad to have. A god who uses all his divinity to give gifts to children would be much better to have than not.

Amid the thunderous cheers, La Roca briefly wished for El Sueño to look at her, and that wish was granted. El Sueño’s gaze met hers. She could tell.

“Come to my room, La Roca. I’m not one to wastefully throw my children into the wasteland with only faith and zeal but no plan.”

Though she had intended to treat him as a human, La Roca tapped her chest twice before answering. It was a habitual action, the result of all that fascination and deception.