Chapter – 12
I pretended to look up once and explained to Eileen that the structure of the staircase bore the pattern I had described to her at Pungrimhwasan (Wind Forest Fire Mountain).
Eileen twitched an eyebrow.
The brightness of her pupils, which held no light, had lowered another notch.
“Does it perfectly match what you saw and what I drew?”
“…….”
“This is quite a troublesome matter.”
“…….”
“You said that after that pattern rose into the sky, the sky split open and an eyeball came out.”
I didn’t answer, nor did I nod.
But Eileen didn’t seem to care about that.
“So, we can assume there’s some correlation between the pattern and the destruction of Franz, correct? Circumstantially, at least.”
“Perhaps.”
“I didn’t want to believe it, that’s why I even came here personally. I should have just trusted your words. I should have trusted you. It’s my fault for not placing my trust in you. If I had, I wouldn’t have wasted time like this.”
The last part wasn’t directed at me.
She couldn’t hide her confused expression.
She, who was always lofty and overflowing with composure, was noticeably agitated.
“This is no time to dawdle in a place like this. Let’s go outside. Right now.”
Unfazed by her urging, I guided her to the first step leading outside.
Perhaps some of my calmness was transmitted to her, as she took a deep breath, steadying herself.
I had achieved my objective.
That’s what I thought.
She was now convinced of the pattern’s existence,
and the doubts would later become a typhoon sweeping through the Papal State.
Where should I go next?
What else should I change?
Of course, it’s not as if changing the actions of just one Eileen could prevent the world’s destruction.
Several figures flashed through my mind.
Not a single one of them would be easy to handle.
In fact, this case was special.
It’s not easy to find someone you can communicate with, move them in the desired direction, and do so without drawing *its* attention.
*It* can gaze upon any place in the world, but *it* isn’t always gazing at everywhere.
*It* is omniscient, but not omnipotent.
As long as I don’t act particularly unreasonably like last time, I should be able to avoid drawing attention.
I really had to be careful about that part.
What to do? Who should I save? Who should I change?
Hong Hyeon-ja? Punggeomju (Wind Sword Lord)? The Forest Magistrate? The Winter Witch?
“Do you know something?”
It was when we were about halfway up the staircase again.
Eileen, who was walking up beside me, stopped abruptly and spoke.
She showed no intention of moving even if I helped her. It wasn’t the behavior of someone who just said there was no time to dawdle.
I shifted my gaze from the front to her.
It was a questioning look.
“You sometimes seem like you’re not from this place.”
“Of course I’m not from here.”
“I’m not talking about the difference between natives and immigrants. Can you tell me what you were just thinking about?”
“No.”
It wasn’t a thought-out answer.
It was just a reflexive denial.
From my perspective, it was a natural reaction,
but it was also a hasty one.
I could have just made up something plausible.
Even if I regretted it, I couldn’t take it back.
Eileen smiled wryly.
“I cannot see with my eyes, but because of that, I can see things that those who see with their eyes cannot. Like the shape of your brain rolling around quite clumsily. When your round soul suddenly becomes sharp as a blade’s edge, you often sink into deep thought and then the atmosphere suddenly changes.”
“I guess being an immigrant makes me a bit different.”
“Do you think there are no immigrants in the Papal State?”
“…….”
“I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“There’s more than one or two puzzling things.”
Until then, I thought she was going to talk about Holy Knight Esther, the Papal State, or Pungrimhwasan.
Wasn’t she the one who kept ruminating on that throughout the journey?
I was about to casually ask ‘what is it again?’ when I was literally overwhelmed by a strange power she radiated.
It wasn’t holy power or anything like that.
The atmosphere.
It was a force I couldn’t describe with any other appropriate word that bound me.
Silence fell, and a veil of quiet enveloped the empty surroundings.
Eileen just stared at me intently.
For some reason, cold sweat trickled down.
A strange,
no, an ominous premonition.
That she had realized something.
She didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t guess her intentions.
Naturally, I didn’t speak either.
I couldn’t.
A bad certainty that if I opened my mouth, I would say something foolish held me back.
It must have been a brief moment, but it felt long.
A silence that could anchor a massive ship
was pulling me deeper and deeper into the abyss.
In our locked gazes, only endless stillness was full.
The black background never changed into anything else, only the small body rising and falling slightly with each inhale and exhale,
and the blue eyes framed by long eyelashes blinking occasionally were the only proof that time was passing.
And finally, she asked probing.
“Who are you?”
“Who am I? What do you mean…?”
“Iu-hyeon. From Earth. Immigrated six months ago. That’s not what I’m asking. Yes. I misspoke. Who you are isn’t important. What do you want?”
“What do I want?”
“You must have a reason for being here.”
“Well, of course…”
“Because I chose you? And because you happened to have nothing to do? Really?”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“You met me. By your own will.”
“It was a coincidence. The Association Head sent an envoy to the Papal State, you happened to be the one who came, and I happened to be the last survivor of Franz. So I met you. It’s not like I sought you out to meet you.”
“You followed me here.”
“What about it? You wanted that, didn’t you? Did I suggest going first? No.”
“You should stop trying to play innocent. Coincidence? They say when three coincidences overlap, it becomes inevitability. Are you going to use coincidence as an excuse?”
“This is too much, even for stubbornness.”
“Do you have some unspeakable circumstances?”
Gulp.
The words caught in my throat.
Unspeakable circumstances.
Of course, I had circumstances.
If it wasn’t something trivial, but a threat to my life.
I couldn’t talk about that.
Not if I wanted to live.
I decided to just keep my mouth shut.
I couldn’t refute her.
It didn’t mean her logic was perfect.
On the contrary, it was full of holes, if anything.
But she seemed already convinced.
I could feel an unknown power in her eyes.
The eyes that see souls.
If I tried to lie, the shape of my soul would waver, and the questions would continue.
It was better not to answer at all.
“I’ll ask again. Who are you?”
“…….”
“You have no intention of answering.”
“…….”
“Then I’ll ask one last thing. You don’t have to answer. Just listen.”
She climbed the stairs without my help.
She looked a bit unsteady, but she ascended without stumbling or difficulty.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
After climbing three, she turned around sharply and looked at me again.
Her flowing priestly robes billowed like a bouquet of flowers,
then soon covered her white ankles like snow.
As I found myself unconsciously captivated by that, she, now at my eye level, spoke.
“Did I bring you here, or did you bring me here?”
“…….”
I again didn’t answer.
But she seemed satisfied with just that.
A beaming smile.
I had always seen her sneering, grumbling, or irritating people, but this was the first time I’d seen that kind of expression.
It was unfair, attacking with her face like that.
I had to admit I was taken aback.
“Don’t resent me too much. I had to speak. I had to resolve my doubts. And I had to ask you.”
What kind of cryptic talk was this now?
“It must have been around the fourth day after we set out. About three days after that Esther fellow left.”
“What are you talking about now…?”
“Hush. Just listen this time too.”
“…….”
“Yes. The stragglers we left at Pungrimhwasan started following us around that time. Why weren’t they tailing us? Remember what we talked about? As expected, they were chasing us.”
I had no idea.
They were chasing us?
That’s not in the novel.
Of course.
In the Istalanicia Chronicles, she encounters Holy Knight Esther and then returns to the Papal State.
Then a question arises.
Their speed should be several times faster than Eileen’s and mine, so why hadn’t they caught up?
Does it make sense not to catch a blind person on horseback?
Eileen solved my doubt.
“They chased us, but they didn’t completely catch up.”
“Why?”
“Because catching us wasn’t their goal from the start.”
“…….”
“Then what was their goal? What do those cunning fellows want? I didn’t know then, but I realized when I discovered this space in the ruins. Doesn’t it look suspicious even at a glance? The kind church people would detest. They wanted me to discover this place. So they would have a pretext to capture me.”
“You don’t mean…”
“When Esther came with the Cardinal’s message. If I had chosen to go to the Papal State obediently, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“…….”
“Those bastards asked me. Did I sense anything strange, or didn’t I? Since I used you to ultimately shake him off, it’s as good as answering that I did.”
“…….”
“I had to come to Franz because of the sky pattern you said you saw, so I sent Esther away. If you were connected to them, they wouldn’t have even asked such a question in the first place.”
Do you understand? She continued.
“If they had instigated you to talk about the sky pattern, and if Esther hadn’t appeared spouting nonsense about the Cardinal and the Pope, they could have just followed from behind, right? That’s how I dispelled my suspicion of you. You are, at the very least, either ignorant or a third party, but not a person of the church.”
As much as I hated to admit it, it was sharp insight.
In reality, I had no connection to the church and had been acting on my own thoughts alone.
“And that you’re not just someone who knows nothing and is merely caught up in events, I confirmed that just now.”
“…….”
“Hehehe. Outside is full of the church’s lackeys. I wonder what pitiful excuse they’ll make up to capture me.”
Well, it’s not like I can’t predict their repertoire.
They’re experts at branding innocent people as devil worshippers and burning them alive.
She spoke cynically.
There was no tremor of any kind in her small body.
She spoke self-deprecatingly.
“My father is the Pope, would they immediately crucify me or capture and torture me? For him, the best he can do is lock me up somewhere. Ah, by ‘him’, I mean that Cardinal bastard. No matter how I think about it, he’s the only one who would do something like this.”
“…….”
“The problem is that the so-called father is critically ill and could go any day now. Ah. If that happens, it would be truly troublesome. I’d rather not have my head quietly chopped off and buried on a back hill where no one knows.”
“Yeah…”
“Do you need me?”
“…….”
“I don’t know what you need me for. But if you didn’t need me, you wouldn’t have brought me to a place like this, had me confirm the pattern, and done all those things. That’s why I’m saying this.”
Somehow, she pulled the corners of her mouth, which had returned to their usual position, back into a bright smile.
Her white teeth were fully visible.
It probably wasn’t a smile of joy.
Why was she smiling?
How could she make such an expression even after realizing her own situation?
I didn’t know.
There was no such scene in the novel.
Just as parents who give birth to a child cannot read the child’s thoughts, even though I created her, I couldn’t read her thoughts.
Eileen continued shortly after.
“Will you come to rescue me?”
I hesitated.
I had things to do.
There were things I couldn’t do without timing them right.
Eileen didn’t press me.
I said what I could keep.
“…A bit later. But definitely.”
“I won’t ask when. Just don’t be late.”
“I promise.”
“I like that. Then let’s keep going up. You have the platinum coins the old Sword Saint gave you, right? I didn’t expect you to have received proxy authority, though.”
“It’s not like I could have lost them in this short time.”
“As long as that Cardinal bastard hasn’t gotten too bold, he won’t dare touch Pungrimhwasan. His lackeys probably know that too. At most, they’ll just take me away. That was their goal anyway. I’ll make sure you get away, even if I have to throw a tantrum.”
Eileen stopped smiling and instead solidified her resolve right there.
It was an expression too heavy for an eighteen-year-old girl, and the fact that I had to let it be that way had been tormenting me.
“Then it would be good to say our goodbyes in advance.”
“…….”
“My journey with you was quite enjoyable. See you next time. Iu-hyeon.”
She reached out her pale hand to me.
Gritting my teeth, I took her hand and guided her outside.
