episode_0003

And beyond my momentarily white vision, a scene I had never seen in my life flashed through my mind.

The moon, which I had never seen in my life due to a curse.

A vast, empty grassland.

White hair.

The interior of an unfamiliar house, filled with medicinal herbs.

A hand touching the soil.

A golden branch.

A heart.

A seed.

A root.

A branch.

A pumpkin.

The World Tree.

A magnificent Imperial Palace.

An unfamiliar Fallen alley.

An unfamiliar witch.

Brown hair.

A staff.

Tears.

A sickbed in a mansion.

Myself, lying down.

A massive knight in golden armor, looking down at me.

Tears.

Regret.

…And.

A monster.

Thrust—!!

…A knight staring at me, panting, with a face full of hatred.

Grind—!

From the hand twisting the sword plunged into my abdomen and from his eyes, I felt a murderous intent that swore to kill me.

Whoosh—

An unknown black power surged from my body through the cracks.

It looked like a cursed power, but it was more dangerous than any cursed power.

A stronger, more ominous power surged as if it would break through my body and come out.

It’s terrifying.

The fact that something like this surged within my body was terrifying.

The scorch marks that had only covered my left forearm had spread throughout my entire body.

My flesh-colored skin was blackened and peeling.

It wasn’t skin.

Crumble—

It was ash.

My blackened skin slowly turned to ash and disappeared.

Skin, muscle, blood vessels, even bone.

Slowly, every part of my entire body gradually turned to ash, and I had to accept death.

It’s terrifying.

I want to cry.

It’s deplorable.

I resent it.

Who. Who do I resent?

Had I ever resented anyone?

Was the person turning to ash right now even me in the first place?

Perhaps it wasn’t me.

Then, was the person harboring this feeling of resentment the owner of this body, and not me?

Who was the owner of this body?

Who was it, to harbor such sorrowful emotions?

Whose emotion was this?

Was it my emotion, or the knight’s?

Who was pouring resentment onto whom?

I don’t know. Everything is confusing and full of questions.

Countless emotions and questions surged in like a tsunami.

Swept away by the wave of emotions, I had no choice but to surrender my body to the current.

And as I surrendered to the current, my own human subjectivity began to fade.

I couldn’t distinguish between the emotions of the body’s owner and my own.

The questions remained abundant, but as the emotions assimilated, the body’s owner harbored the same questions as me.

The target of those deplorable and resentful emotions was.

None other than myself.

In my last visible sight, a beautiful constellation tattoo on my left arm caught my eye.

And, having etched that into my memory, I.

Woke up from the illusion.

***

“Hey, Agape.”

When I came to my senses, Roland was waving his hand in front of my eyes.

“You okay? You’re sweating buckets right now.”

“Sweating buckets?”

At his words, I touched my neck, and it was drenched in sweat.

Only then did I realize I had lost consciousness while standing, and I asked Roland.

“How long was I like that?”

“About 30 seconds? You suddenly went, ‘Ugh!’ and frowned, then your expression went blank.”

“…I did that?”

My vision flickered for a moment, and an illusion began to appear; it must have been then that my expression went blank.

‘An illusion?’

Suddenly, the word ‘illusion’ made me feel curious.

‘Why did I think it was an illusion? I don’t remember seeing anything.’

I tried to recall what had happened during the time I was unconscious, but only a terrible headache came, and nothing else came to mind.

No, it felt like something was blocking me from remembering.

‘What on earth is this situation?’

It felt like I had experienced something absurd, but I couldn’t spend all day trying to recall what that illusion was, so I pulled myself together and looked at the child again.

Dong—

Donggg—

Donggggg—

As the infinite bell tolls announcing noon echoed throughout the city, I made eye contact with the crouching child.

“…”

Looking again, it was indeed a girl.

A girl with indigo eyes reminiscent of a night sky.

Soon, my gaze shifted to her left arm.

A beautiful constellation tattoo.

I didn’t know what kind of fool would engrave something like that on such a young child’s body, but for some reason, that constellation tattoo particularly caught my eye.

“Roland.”

“What?”

“Do you know anything about that constellation tattoo?”

“How would I know?”

Roland shrugged his shoulders.

‘Right. Indeed, even Roland wouldn’t know something like this.’

Just as I thought that, Roland exclaimed as if something had occurred to him.

“Ah! Now that you mention it, I once heard that each of the Prophets has a tattoo like that.”

“Prophets?”

They were the seers who guided people to not go astray ever since civilization first blossomed on the continent.

“So, this child is a Prophet?”

“How would I know? I’m no scholar. All I know is that Prophets have constellation tattoos on their bodies.”

“…Is that so.”

My gaze returned to the girl.

Her indigo eyes, still filled with fear as she looked up at me, were brimming with tears.

“You.”

She flinched!

“What’s your name?”

“My, name…?”

“Yes, your name.”

At my words, the girl shook her head.

“…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Nod.

I looked at Roland, signaling ‘what should we do?’, and Roland shrugged his shoulders in a ‘I don’t know either’ gesture, then tilted his head towards the girl.

It meant to ask something else.

“Then where did you come from? Your parents? Do you have anywhere to go?”

Parents.

For some reason, the girl seemed not to understand that word.

“…I don’t know. Where I came from, or what parents are.”

“…You don’t know what the word ‘parents’ means?”

“…”

The girl nodded instead of answering.

But her next answer startled both of us.

“I don’t, remember anything…”

The girl said, weeping.

“Where I came from… sob… I don’t, remember…”

“What in the…”

When I looked at the girl with a bewildered expression at her words.

Thud—

She suddenly collapsed.

I quickly checked her condition; it was exhaustion.

“She seems like she hasn’t eaten anything for quite a long time.”

At my words, Roland said he thought so too, and brought up the girl’s last words.

“By the way, she said she didn’t remember anything in the end, right?”

As I nodded, both of us wore troubled expressions.

“But what do we do? We can’t just leave her here.”

“…”

After exchanging glances with Roland for a moment, I looked back at the collapsed girl.

Tremble—

Her emaciated body was trembling from the cold.

Fallen, located in the easternmost part of the continent’s coldest region, was famous as a city where it snowed for most of the year.

So, if we left her in this state, it was clear she would freeze to death.

“Haa.”

I sighed, yet picked up the girl and said to Roland,

“What to do? We have to take her.”

“…Are you serious?”

“Have I ever made empty promises?”

“Well, that’s true, but…”

I carried the girl on my back and said,

“Let’s go back to the hideout.”

First, we needed to feed her something.

***

Creak— Creak—

“Mmm…”

My whole body is warm.

The girl, eyes closed beneath a warm blanket, thought so.

No shivering from the cold air, no one hitting her.

The place she lay creaked noisily every time she moved, but that noise felt like nothing compared to the greatest comfort the girl had ever experienced in her life.

…So much so that she wondered if it was alright to be this comfortable.

“Gasp—!”

Only then did the girl come to her senses and hastily sat up.

And looking around, a completely different scene from before she lost consciousness unfolded before her.

Creak— Creak—

It wasn’t a hard, bare floor.

Below her was a soft bed, old and noisy, but comfortable.

From the bed, her gaze moved around again, taking in the interior of a dilapidated wooden shack, patched with planks.

And…

“Are you awake?”

“Hiccup—!”

Startled by the sudden voice from beside her, she unconsciously hiccuped and turned her head.

“…Hiccup.”

A boy with a fierce expression and a massive scar across his forehead was looking at her.

Seeing his chilling face, the girl clamped her mouth with both hands, trying to stop her hiccups.

“Hiccup, hiccup—!”

But when her hiccups wouldn’t stop properly, the boy handed her a glass of water.

“Just drink this.”

As Agape handed her the glass, the girl, seemingly thirsty, cautiously took the glass and began to gulp down the water.

Perhaps it was the water; seeing the girl calm down after quenching her thirst, Agape asked again.

“So, you don’t remember your name?”

“…”

Nod.

“Or where to go?”

Nod.

“And ‘parents’… since you don’t even know what that means, you probably don’t have any.”

Nod.

At that moment, Roland, who was sitting backwards on a chair behind them, asked,

“Then what do you know?”

“…Nothing.”

Drip. Drip.

The girl, hearing that, answered in a tearful voice and began to cry.

“Uh, um…”

Roland looked flustered and didn’t know what to do at the sight, and I sighed, watching the crying girl.

“Stop.”

“Hiccup… Sniff…”

At my words, the girl tried hard to stop crying, clamping her mouth with both hands again. I had tried to speak as gently as possible, but it must have felt like a threat to her.

It made me feel like I was a bad person, but I pushed such thoughts aside and got to the point.

“If you have nowhere to go, would you like to stay here?”

At my words, her moist indigo eyes turned towards me.

Fortunately, she seemed to understand what I meant, but she didn’t seem to understand why I was bringing this up so abruptly.

“…”

“What, what?! Hey, you didn’t even discuss it with me…”

“I’ll take responsibility, we’ll talk later.”

At my words, Roland clamped his mouth shut, his face full of dissatisfaction.

“So, what will you do? Take your time to think about it and tell me.”

I spoke with an air of magnanimity, but honestly, I didn’t know why I was doing this either.

‘I’ve never done a good deed in my life.’

I had no memory of performing a good deed for anyone, so why was I trying to do one for this child?

As I searched and searched for the reason, I suddenly found a memory hidden deep in my mind.

*”Just as your father did, Agape, can you become a wonderful person who illuminates hope?”*

*”Whatever else, this mother hopes our Agape will become such a person.”*

“…”

Mother.

Right, now that I think about it, she did say something like that.

Nod.

The girl nodded.

“Alright, then. Uh… what should I call you?”

I was about to call her by her name, but then I remembered she said she didn’t know it.

So, as I hesitated about what to call her, the girl, having stopped sobbing, spoke to me.

“…Just.”

“Huh?”

“…Just, you name me… I don’t even remember my name…”

With those words, the girl bowed her head deeply.

“Are you sure I can name you?”

The girl slowly nodded.

“If it’s you, …it feels like it’ll be alright…”

“Even if you say that…”

I knew very few words, having only vaguely learned to read from Roland, so it was a bit difficult.

So I looked at Roland, but he gave a ‘why are you looking at me?’ kind of reaction, so I turned my head back to the girl.

‘A name, a name…’

Since nothing suitable came to mind, I decided to give her the most beautiful name I knew.

Even an uneducated person like me knew that it was wrong to carelessly give a name to a young girl.

“Then how about Kara?”

“…”

“Ka, ra…?”

At those words, Roland’s pupils contracted.

The name Kara was—

“Hey, you—”

It was his deceased mother’s name.

The name of Agape’s mother, whom Agape cherished most dearly.

Roland looked at me with eyes asking if I was really sure about giving her that name, but Agape himself, who had given the name, was excessively calm.

From his expression, it seemed he had no intention of retracting it.

“I don’t know.”

Roland put his interlocked hands behind his head and shook it.

A moment later, Agape brought stew and dried jerky and handed them to Kara.

Clatter—

“…”

“You’re hungry, eat.”

Rumble—

Just then, Kara’s face flushed bright red as the sound of her stomach rumbling filled the shack.

Then, she shyly bowed her head and muttered in a small voice,

“Why are you so kind to me…?”

“What?”

“Until now, everyone only tried to take things from me.”

Kara’s expression darkened.

“My clothes were taken, so I picked up a blanket because I was cold. And when I wrapped myself in the blanket, everyone who saw me would beat me, trample me, and hurt me to take my blanket. But…”

Kara’s gaze turned to me.

“Everyone else did that, but why are you so kind to me?”

Kara’s eyes, expressing her thoughts with an unpolished vocabulary befitting a young child, held suspicion.

Since no one had ever shown her this much goodwill before, she was starting to feel afraid of such a selfless act of kindness.

‘Now that I think about it, no one in Fallen behaved like me unless it was to exploit someone.’

What should I answer to that?

“Hmm…”

I made up my mind.

‘Anyway, I’m not as eloquent as Roland.’

I’ll just be honest about my feelings.

“Honestly, I don’t know either.”

“You don’t, know…?”

“Whether it’s just a whim, or because I’ve never done a good deed in my life and want to become a virtuous person, or…”

*“Sob… Mama, don’t go…”*

“…I don’t know if it’s because of lingering regrets. Just think of it as me helping you because I wanted to. And…”

Smoothly—

I leaned forward towards the girl and looked her straight in the eyes.

“It’s not entirely for free, so just keep that in mind.”

I gestured towards the scattered items in the house.

“You see all that, right? As you can see, only two men live here, so the house is a mess. So I’m thinking of having you live here and take care of the housework from now on. How does that sound?”

Did my sincerity get through to her? Her guard lowered more than before, and Kara nodded.

“I, like it.”

“Alright, I’ll be counting on you from now on.”

Gently— Gently—

I stroked Kara’s head.

For a moment, her body stiffened, but as I continued to gently stroke her head, I could feel her body’s tension slowly relaxing.

And.

“Th-Thank you…”

She gathered her courage and conveyed these words to me.

“I’ll, work hard from now on.”

Seeing the joy, fear of the future, and gratitude coexisting in her eyes, I couldn’t help but feel a mix of emotions.

‘Gratitude.’

Had I ever received words of thanks from anyone in my life?

For a moment, I wondered if hearing those words was a first for me.

“…Right.”

While feeling a complex mix of emotions regarding gratitude, I slowly nodded.

And so, after four years, a new family member joined me after Roland.