I didn’t want to accompany Balak in his naked state.
I looked around for something to cover him.
We found a man writhing on the floor.
He was wearing ragged clothes.
I didn’t know who he was.
Only, unlike Balak, he had completely lost his reason.
He crawled on the ground, staring blankly at the air with his mouth agape.
He didn’t even look at me or respond when I called him.
He just made strange noises, like, “Ah, ah.”
“What’s wrong with this person?”
Balak sighed, looking troubled, and then explained.
“He’s a shattered soul. The longer you stay here, or the more you cling to certain memories or desires, the more you lose your identity. Just like I did. Unlike me, who had a bit of self-awareness, he seems to have completely lost it.”
“Could it be that the lady could end up like this too?”
“…It’s hard to say.”
Eliya hadn’t been here long.
But there’s not a small chance she could become obsessed with certain feelings or memories.
Just like Balak, who bound himself with his regrets and guilt, losing his identity.
Eliya might undergo a similar process.
The collapse of the soul isn’t just limited to time.
It can happen in a short span as well.
“I need to find her quickly… Where should I go…?”
Balak stripped the man of his clothes.
The man didn’t resist as he was touched, flipped, or had his clothes taken away.
He lay powerlessly, looking only up at the sky.
Balak then put on the man’s clothes.
They were shabby and unappealing, but better than being naked.
Balak offered a brief prayer toward the man.
It felt strange to watch that.
Uncomfortable.
Each time I confirmed there was still a shred of humanity left in the one who had abandoned Eliya,
A discomfort grew that was difficult to articulate.
So I kept staring at the sky.
“That’s enough.”
“Right. But where should we go from here…?”
We needed at least a minimum clue to serve as a standard for our movement.
I asked Balak.
“How did you find your children?”
“I wandered around aimlessly after coming here when I stumbled upon them. It could be a while before I saw them in this vast place. After that, I was wandering around in a daze until I was tied down to that rocky mountain. Until you came, I wasn’t in my right mind either.”
In the end, Balak also didn’t know the geography or paths of this place.
With no other choice, we decided to choose one direction and move straight ahead.
“Let’s go this way… huh?”
I pointed in a direction and opened my eyes wide.
A woman with black hair.
She was standing way over there, very far away.
So far she looked like a dot.
A mirage seen in the desert.
“Do you see that, over there?”
“Where… What do you mean?”
Balak looked in the same direction as I was.
He squinted as if trying to see better.
“I don’t see anything…”
“Can’t you see that woman over there?”
“No matter how I look, I don’t see anyone… Are you okay?”
A surge of worry hit me.
Having come here alive, my soul might be affected already.
‘So am I seeing hallucinations?’
The woman was standing still, looking this way.
Her stillness was as if she was inviting me to follow her.
She acted the same way when I first arrived here.
And following her, I met Balak.
It would be no different this time.
‘Honestly, whether I follow her or not, I have nowhere else to go.’
At least it was better than having no clues at all.
Even if it was just an illusion.
Even if my mind was already crumbling, I couldn’t turn back.
I would stay here until I found Eliya.
“Let’s follow her for now. Thanks to that person, I might also find you, Balak.”
“Okay, I’ll follow your lead.”
He seemed to have no better options either and agreed with my words.
Balak and I moved to follow the woman.
She maintained a perilously safe distance.
Close enough to be recognized, but not identifiable.
Balak and I continued to walk steadily.
While we walked busily, I asked him something I was curious about.
“About what you said earlier, when you cling to certain memories or desires, what exactly does that mean?”
I wasn’t dead, nor did I know this world well.
On the other hand, Balak seemed to know a fair bit.
I didn’t particularly want to have a conversation with him.
I just needed as much information as possible to save Eliya.
Balak fell silent for a moment as if organizing his thoughts before speaking.
“I came here after I died. But right now, I don’t feel ‘dead.’ I see, hear, and speak normally. So then, what constitutes this ‘me’?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Memories. The memories I lived as this human being. Information that lets me understand why I am me.”
Balak glanced slightly into the distance.
“As long as there are those memories and a self that recognizes them, I can exist as myself. But too much time can blur those memories. Then, like that man whose clothes I’ve taken, I would end up like him.”
“…”
“Getting buried in one memory or desire is akin to severing that ‘memory.’ For instance, if you wiped out your life and only retained memories from before meeting Eliya, and then returned to now, would you still be you?”
I fell silent.
‘It was just a light question for information, but his answer feels too heavy…’
Yet the mood was quite serious, and I ended up thinking deeply.
Who am I?
What constitutes me?
How childish, but I thought of Eliya.
The question Eliya had asked me.
Whether she was real or fake.
I truly thought, felt, and answered that I was undeniable real.
And Eliya, relying on my answer, said she was real and leaned on me.
In that moment, I was truly just me.
‘But that alone couldn’t constitute who I am.’
The things that happened with Eliya.
The experiences I had as a knight and as a candidate.
Only when all past experiences are included can I finally become myself.
I remembered the words from the God who sent me here.
The continuity of existence.
Was this what it meant?
‘If you’re buried in one thing, you lose the rest completely.’
Noticing I was lost in thought, Balak remained silent for a while.
After a suitable pause, he spoke again.
“If you obsess over just one thing, your other memories will fade, and you will lose your self.”
“What happens if all your self is lost…”
“…That’s.”
Balak glanced at the sky.
A pitch-black night sky.
The darkness was far thicker than that seen from the ground, and the starlight was bright.
“That, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know everything after all.”
“What I just told you wasn’t originally known. Just… when I came here, I naturally came to know. But strangely, I don’t know what happens afterward.”
Just as the living don’t know after death.
He added that and fell silent.
I obtained the rough information I needed.
‘What could Eliya be doing now?’
Could she be buried in something, fixated?
Or is she wandering around just fine?
I’d prefer the latter.
It would be troublesome if she lost herself before I found her.
Afterward, we exchanged no more words.
We simply followed the woman in silence.
The woman I had thought was Eliya at first.
But as I followed her, it seemed she wasn’t.
Then who could she be?
‘Could it be… that person?’
The moment I tried to recall that, the woman vanished.
I wasn’t flustered.
At the point she disappeared, we arrived at a certain location.
Eliya was nowhere to be seen.
However, I was certain there was Eliya here.
*
An endless expanse of fields.
A sea of green.
The scenery resembled the meadow that Judas once saw with Eliya while riding Yuel.
In the center, a cluster of red flowers bloomed beautifully.
Fully opened flowers.
Anemone.
Just like the flowers blooming in Eliya’s garden.
The Anemone blooming only in the middle of the endless fields wasn’t that large in scale.
And there, unexpectedly, were several people who I neither anticipated nor sought.
“The position of the head of the family belongs to me… I must inherit the Bevel family from my father… I can’t just hand it over to a nobody like you who lucked into the wizard’s power….”
Cain.
“Why should we give way at all? There are enough brothers already, and the head position delegation is screwed, so how did such a thing come to life….”
Levi.
“I don’t have enough for myself, and you’re a bastard born with the power of fire? This is nonsense….”
Jezebel.
“How can this be? Why does such a person inherit our estate? Bevel isn’t something anyone can just hold!”
Sara.
Each was arrogant, stingy, greedy, impure, and aimless, filled with rage.
The five of them, blindly dwelling in some emotion.
They were the five siblings of Balak and Narcissi.
The lazy father who neglected taking care of the family watched them vacantly.
Beside him, Judas was not contemplating whether a dead person could kill another.
There was no time for such leisure.
The five of them stood encircling the Anemone garden, raising and flailing their arms toward the sky like zombies.
Above them.
In the very center of this vast field.
The black sun hung in the air.
The small sphere shimmered with a mysterious black light.
A color that seemed to shine, yet seemed not to shine at all.
Way too high to be touched by man, but not cosmic in some void.
Looking at the black sun, Judas became convinced.
‘Eliya.’
She was over there, that was Eliya.
‘I found you.’
That was Eliya herself.
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