No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 138

Some people are truly born like this. It’s not just something that appears in novels, but they are forced to live such a life for real. In a way they didn’t choose, living a life they didn’t choose. Everyone probably thinks such tragedies only exist in books, right? 

But they existed outside of books too. It’s just denied, saying where do such things happen in today’s world.

So I took reality even more lightly. 

Instead, when I wasn’t intermingling bodies with people, when I wasn’t drinking alcohol, whenever I had time, I would without fail dive into books. I felt like I would go crazy to a strange degree if no one was by my side.

Because this place doesn’t deny “me”.

Even if it’s just some character or another, at least when I see someone like “Ryuseong”, I don’t feel like I’m a misfit puzzle piece that shouldn’t exist in this world.

Once, I agonized over what’s the point of living when the world will only become dark and drab even if I’m alive. Because people don’t want to hear about someone else’s misfortune as much as you’d think.

Just by me voicing what happened in a day, someone views that act of talking about it as an inconvenience. Of course, it’s someone else’s business so that’s only natural. In the end, an abused person like me will only disrupt the peace no matter where I open my mouth.  

It’s not that I wanted to torment those living innocently under the delusion that the Earth is peaceful, like they do.

To do that, I had to submerge myself deeper and deeper down.

I had to thoroughly act normal.

But if I gather the shattered pieces of “me” and trample them underneath the abyss, what remains after that?

What’s the reason I have to disappear in order to maintain the delusion that the spinning Earth is tranquil?

I couldn’t find a reason. So I lived recklessly. Sharing love with anyone, intermingling bodies. I flamboyantly made my existence bloom in full.

I kept doing that even though I knew it was destroying myself. 

To me who was like that, “Ryuseong” was a “character” who simultaneously gave hope and despair. Even though “Ryuseong” is the story’s protagonist, he was born cloaked in tragedy. I liked that. I really liked a novel that seemed to acknowledge that people born like this also exist in the world.

Come to think of it, what I wanted was perhaps just one person who would simply understand that I’m in pain. Seeing how I could receive such comfort from a single book… Mm, right. I remembered. What I said to you as we fell.

The subconscious I conveyed to you is this.

‘I was actually happy.’

Because no one ever fell together with me. I had never been loved to that degree.

You embraced me before death as we fell, didn’t you.

Ryuseong. Now you’ve become my first meteor. A falling star. Because you’re here, our fall will be recorded as the descent of a meteor shower emitting light.

I wanted to say the night sky I looked up at then, with the fog lifted, was truly beautiful. At that time.

In the end, I actually wanted to say… I was really grateful you embraced me.

That was the reason the sobs wouldn’t stop.

Really, that was all it was.

* * *

Some time passed. Only then did I open my eyes. My vision was still hazy, probably from pooled tears, but I could at least see your energy dancing as if rippling. You shone scattering from my eyes.

“Are you awake? How’s your body. Are you feeling, alright?”

‘Who knows. Are you asking if I’m healthy.’

You’re asking about my health. But I only look up at you. Squinting my eyes, in case you’ll be visible properly by some chance.

But I can’t see. A little shocked, I fumble to touch my eyes but Ryuseong held my hand.

“Don’t be surprised. It’s safe here. It’ll be fine as long as there’s a purification barrier. Trust me.”

I don’t know where this is. Still, my heart melts and stabilizes. 

The following words are a little annoying though.

“More importantly, don’t force your eyes open. They’ve temporarily turned pale grey from shock. Because your mana overheated… It seems an impact close to losing your mind hit you.”

I know too. I’m not doing well right now.

As the price of drawing out excessive magic in a single moment, my mana circuits have been wrecked from the dantian to the optic nerves and the ends of my left hand. If I don’t precisely circulate mana as if performing surgery on the nerves one by one, I may die. I’m in even greater danger because unlike other people, I don’t gather the mana circle in my heart but shove it into my dantian to live.

“I’ll help you circulate qi, so circulate mana even once. It’ll hurt but if you don’t do it now…”

“Yes, I know. If I don’t restore the circuits, I’ll catch magic addiction like this and go berserk.”

I can already feel it. Soon, it won’t just be my left hand but my whole body will be paralyzed. And then… Boom. I’ll hurt Ryuseong.

“……”

The nerve of me trying qi circulation when I’m wrecked to this state, it’s something I’ve never done before. 

Because I’m not Cassice Demillang.

‘Because I haven’t lived being tortured like that kid.’

I didn’t really have the urge to live. But I hated the hazy vision where I couldn’t see anything.

I wanted to see Ryuseong.

That was enough reason to move.

“Help me up. But it will be difficult for you to assist in my qi circulation. The way I rotate my mana circle from the dantian is a method no one can imitate.”

Closed circuit. If I fail even one breath, I’ll die right then. Right before a confrontation that’s practically a matter of life and death, with Ryuseong’s support I managed to raise my body and sit cross-legged. And I thought.

The original Cassice Demillang never once sat cross-legged in front of Ryuseong even when facing death.

So now, do you believe in Ryuseong?

‘Who knows.’

I don’t know if this is belief. But there was no other way.

I sank into my pitch-black interior.

* * *

And so, ten hours later, Ryuseong doesn’t know how it turned out this way. His blood-stained hands tremble. He desperately suppresses the urge to sob that makes his shoulders convulse at every moment. There was one reason. One hour after starting mana circulation, Cassice Demillang began coughing up blood. Until his clothes were dyed crimson.

His condition worsened rather than improved. He was vomiting out all the blood in his blood vessels. Two hours later, transparent ice crystals began sprouting all over Cassice Demillang’s heat-deprived body, and three hours later, he no longer breathed. The meaning was obvious. Cassice Demillang’s breath had ceased.

‘…No. That can’t be.’

However, Ryuseong denied it. Instead, he persistently waited. He could escape alone but didn’t. He even went outside to throw himself as bait to block the monsters that may surge in.

Leaving behind someone whose breath had already stopped, desperately, desperately.

He waited.

‘You won’t die like this.’

For ten hours, even as he simultaneously confronted ninety-nine monsters approaching the area, got caught by a named monster tearing his side and dislocating his shoulder.

‘You absolutely can’t die here.’

For ten hours, he repeatedly thought.

‘You have to return. You have to come.’

Even as his own body coughed up blood over and over as if having a seizure, even as he was too wrecked to use himself as bait anymore.

He prayed. No, it wasn’t praying.

He “believed” that he would return alive.

It was close to a twisted blind faith. 

‘You need to become free. Since you wish for that, you should be able to achieve it… No, no. That’s not it. If that’s what you wish for, I…’

With both hands clasped so tightly they trembled, those words he faintly whispered with dry lips were.

“…If it’s for what you want, I can do anything from now on…”

I lost the world because of you.

Thanks to you, I was loved.

Were those words close to self-torment and defeat a powerless declaration, an oath he couldn’t keep?

Or… was it a prayer?

“Wake up.”

Ryuseong recited while looking at Cassice Demillang. Maybe he was looking down at Jeong Ian.

If not that, then who am I looking at?

“Please, answer…”

You were stiff like a corpse. However, the reaction of death did not occur. You neither rotted nor decayed. But you didn’t wake up either.

The trembling of his shoulders ceased. He didn’t want to show this kind of appearance in case you revived. Burying his face between his knees, Ryuseong cried for a long time in a muffled voice.

“Why are you dying to save me. Why someone like me.”

He couldn’t understand how it turned out this way. But he couldn’t let you go like this…

Then there was only one way left. 

‘Breaking the innate true qi.’

Innate true qi is the minimum amount of life force that exists deep in the dantian for a human to live.

Ryuseong vowed to save the nameless you even if he had to die. As the world’s guardian, surveillance? He had long abandoned such an attitude. Now I. Just. If only one thing can be achieved.

I hope you’ll be happy. I hope the days you live will be brilliant. Even if I’m not by your side. 

I hope you think you want to live.

* * *

At that very moment, Cassice Demillang had become the spoiled youngest son of a chaebol family.

“…Fuck?”

That meant the nameless soul residing in Cassice Demillang had returned to Jeong Ian.