novelraw Chapter 84 : Chapter 84
Chapter 84 : Chapter 84
Chapter 84: If There Is an Answer in This World (2)
On the outside, he was a flower seller.
That was the impression of the old troll man. A man dressed in rags, with withered flowers woven around him. No one would feel any strangeness from the man's appearance. Like most trolls, his expression was demure and his back was stooped.
That's why he was a Sword Saint.
The Pope's shadow had to be discreet.
One of the three Sword Saints of the current era, Zareksle of the Wilderness.
In his eyes, which had endured two hundred years, Abel was reflected. Zareksle had once been Abel's teacher, appointed by the Pope, but he felt that he had never once taught Abel. He had been complete since he appeared with the face of a ten-year-old boy. Physically and mentally, Abel was superior to Zareksle from the beginning.
“I will not make any excuses, Teacher.”
However, Abel called Zareksle teacher.
Was it consideration or mockery? Zareksle once wondered. He concluded that it was neither. He was just considered a teacher because he was a teacher. Abel Argento was such a man.
“I revealed myself as a Sword Saint without following the procedures. I must take responsibility.”
“His Holiness was very angry.”
Zareksle smiled faintly.
“Going to the Saint-Pierre estate just like that? You even summoned the inquisitors? No, you even took armor from the Naflansee Cathedral? What are you going to do about destroying the Dawn Leaf Theater? Do you think it will all end if you just report it like that!”
He was in a rage, saying such things.
Zareksle muttered so.
“……I have no excuse.”
“She was your disciple, wasn't she?”
Zareksle's turquoise eyes tilted.
He carefully observed Abel's face. Although he was utterly indifferent, Abel did not avert his gaze. He was just staring at Fleur's coffin moving into the distance.
“The young evangelist of the God of the Underworld. It's a truly regrettable matter. Her future would have been brilliant……”
“It would have been.”
Fleur was young.
Because she was young, she had potential.
She could have lived as the heir of her family, or she could have served the Pope as an evangelist. It would have been fine even if she did nothing else. If she had just lived her life, Fleur would have been safe all along. Enjoying her status, or exploring her talent.
“That child knew well what she had.”
She died because she knew too well.
Abel believed that without a doubt. To realize everything about oneself, and to fight because of it. Fleur's life had ended the moment she witnessed her mother's death. To be prepared for death was the process of abandoning the will to live.
“But I wanted to teach her.”
Fleur was a girl.
Even as the heir of the Saint-Pierre family, even as the evangelist of the God of the Underworld, the fact that she was a very young girl did not change. Fleur only didn't know that fact. She wanted not to know.
As a teacher, Abel wanted to teach her. As ‘The Mother God's Left Hand’, who had resolved to erase his own existence and had vowed to die in place of the young hero, he wanted Fleur to recognize that she was a girl. It was only right to teach her that it was not yet time to give up on life.
“It is all my fault. If I had hurried a little more, Fleur would have……”
“Put away your pride, Abel.”
Zareksle whispered in a calm tone.
Then he picked up a flower. He continued speaking as he chewed on it.
“You and I are truly strong beings. It's nothing to face a crowd of soldiers. But even so, we can't save everyone.”
When we save a country,
some child will starve to death.
It's a hard thing to accept. We have become the most powerful force in this world, but in the end, we can't even save a single child.
But we can't stop.
“There is so much to do.”
A smile spread on Zareksle's lips.
It was a laugh of resignation.
“The one who has the right to witness all the deaths in this world and silently feel self-reproach is probably……”
That's right.
Only the Main Gods, he said.
Zareksle asserted blankly.
“So don't try to ascend to the position of a god. You, of all people, should already know that.”
Abel didn't speak.
He had saved a total of 96 worlds. The journey of salvation was never a glorious one. It was about seeing the sky by stepping on the corpses that piled up. It would be clear if you looked up at the high places with your hand as a visor, but if you looked down, it was full of deaths that had piled up from the darkest places.
Only the Demon King could end the world.
The death of the Demon King was not the end of the world.
Salvation could not be the period at the end of the story, it was just that there was finally room for mourning. Abel's life was continuing with a moment of mourning.
“Listen, Abel.”
And so, Zareksle's voice was heard clearly.
“His Holiness has summoned you. Go to the Papacy soon.”
“I was prepared for it. He will hold me responsible.”
“Is it something to be so prepared for?”
Zareksle shrugged his shoulders.
“He will scold you quite a bit. But that will be all, won't it? He will give you a difficult mission, as he always has.”
Abel was silent.
Even though he had become a professor at CIAR, his duty had not changed. He was only able to leave through the Pope's consideration; Abel was a Sword Saint. He had no intention of abandoning his duties as a Sword Saint or as ‘The Mother God's Left Hand’.
There was one problem.
How should he look after the children?
Abel thought, looking down at the drenched rose. The disciples, including Monika. What could he say to the children in the class who had witnessed Fleur's death?
“It's about time I get going.”
Meanwhile, Zareksle prepared to leave.
He walked, chewing on flowers one after another.
“I have no business here since I've met you.”
“Where are you headed, Teacher?”
“It seems I have to go to the Demon Realm. The movements of Frozen Color have been unusual lately. It's a big problem. To think that the religion of the apostates has even spread.”
“I will see you to the dimensional door.”
“Well, now. It's an honor.”
More importantly, Abel, he said.
Zareksle stopped and looked back.
Abel's appearance, drenched in the rain, was shabby. The only thing that sparkled was the single rose in his hand. Even that was soaked with water and was withering.
“Tell me. What kind of child was Fleur de Saint-Pierre?”
I want to hear your thoughts.
Not as a teacher, but the thoughts of Abel Argento.
To Zareksle's words, Abel,
“Fleur de Saint-Pierre was……”
hesitated for a moment.
After inhaling the scent of the rose for a moment, he glanced at the place where the coffin had passed. Flowers scattered on the roadside. They had been thrown by those who had gathered on the street for mourning. They seemed to be sad not for the death of a nobleman's daughter, not for the evangelist of the God of the Underworld, but just for the death of a girl.
Therefore, it would be alright to say it.
It would be fine to think so now.
“Not Fleur de Saint-Pierre, but Fleur Epanoui was……”
She had tried to honor her mother,
she had dedicated her life to repaying her grudge, but,
she was just clumsy, she empathized with the pain of others, she was not bound by her status, she was not swept away by the chain of evil deeds and realized her wrongdoings,
and so she tried to save someone, and also tried to protect someone,
“──a hero.”
Abel's hand was extended into the distance.
And so, it scattered. The rose that Abel was holding was scattered, drenched in the rain.
Among the numerous scattered flowers,
one red rose was added with difficulty.
* * *
When she opened the door, it was full of dead flowers.
Monika took a step. She folded her umbrella and stood in the middle of the greenhouse. The musty smell of soil, withered leaves. And a vast empty space. The place Fleur had left behind was already dead.
Right, it was like this from the beginning. Monika thought, lowering her head. It was dead. Fleur was already dead. She had worn a lively flower crown on her head, but the place that surrounded Fleur had been the Underworld from some point on. This place was a space that was as dead as the Underworld.
‘Nothing…….’
is lively.
The moment Monika thought so and sat down,
Wheee,
a small sound echoed.
“This is……”
Monika's amber eyes trembled.
Monika ran. She tilted her head in all directions, looking for the source of the sound. Wheee, wheee. She could hear Thunderstorm's whining. And so, she pushed aside the blades of grass and the rotten petals and found it.
“……Ah.”
Monika's eyes turned red.
There was Thunderstorm. There was Lisian.
There was Monika's dog and Fleur's dog. Thunderstorm was whining, licking Lisian, who had turned into a pile of bones. Monika bit her lower lip. It's okay. Come here. Come to me. Monika whispered, extending her hand towards Thunderstorm.
She placed Lisian's remains in a corner of the greenhouse.
She dug. She dug endlessly. Monika dug through the soil to bury Lisian. She occasionally stroked Thunderstorm, who was lying at her feet, and ignoring the blood that had begun to stain the gaps between her fingernails, she dug and dug and made a space, and then,
‘You…….’
she shed tears.
‘……What on earth were you.’
The raindrops falling on the greenhouse ceiling were numerous.
The moment the drops of water touched the glass, they became ripples. They left a mark in the shape of a wide-open mouth. The rain marks were rampant on Monika's head as if the sky was talking to her, but even so, it was like a small whisper. Tuduk, tuduk, or shwaa, shwaa. Only the sound of the rain, stained with noise, was in Monika's ears.
‘Answer me.’
Monika curled up.
‘Answer me, Fleur.’
She wasn't a friend. She wasn't an enemy.
In the end, she realized that they were both survivors, but now, even that was not true. Fleur had not survived. She had died. They could no longer face each other, nor could they talk.
I continued to hate you.
I thought that every story you told was rude and extremely unpleasant. I thought, over and over again, that I didn't even want to see your face. Why did it have to be that way? Why didn't you know? How to love others, how to be considerate, how to share friendship, why did you not know that so much?
It wasn't that she didn't know.
She just thought that she didn't know,
but she definitely knew. If there was a childishly naive part of you, it would probably be just that. You were extremely clumsy at loving someone, being considerate, and sharing friendship.
Since when had you been dead?
I think I know now. The fact that all your words and actions were your last will. The fact that you had been stubborn like a person living a terminally ill life. You probably didn't have much time, planning your revenge with the intention of dying. Unknowing and rushed. You really lived a messy life.
So, Fleur,
I think I know why you left this place.
‘……It’s so like you.’
Monika thought, with her face buried in tears.
It wasn't just the flower stalks that had rotted. The roots had also rotted. The diseased and withered roots were vaguely stretched out, and were tangled in a complex way that could not be counted. As if representing the life that Fleur had lived until now.
‘I'll dig it all up.’
I'll dig up all the dead flowers,
plant new seeds and wait for a long time.
I'll let in the sunlight and pour in the water. I'll wish for the buds to sprout and be happy every time a flower blooms.
If this place has been rotting like your life until now, I hope it will be completed as a world in the future. A place that I hope you, who may be reborn in this land someday, will reach. If you have left for the Underworld, I want to prepare a very small world for you.
Someone survives, and someone dies.
Life and death take root and are entangled. It's not because of the weight of life. It's hesitant to consider it a product of chance.
I just hate it. My teeth chatter when I try to accept it as a law that makes up the world. An endless attachment wells up and I keep wanting to think of it as my own problem. I want to take responsibility as if I am imitating the world myself. By considering even a bit of responsibility as the legacy of the deceased.
And so, I stir the soil. To bury something.
Or to plant something. Clumsily, or roughly, like a lost person wandering around.
I plant flower seeds as if stamping my footprints, and it just continues.
I keep walking. I keep growing. I keep wandering. I keep withering. I keep stopping. I keep planting. I keep, keep, keep, dying and stopping and living and growing. Everything continues.
‘And yet you called me…….’
the most beautiful in this world.
Surviving is not a very pleasant thing, but you told me that the people who survive are the most beautiful.
‘Stupid.’
She wasn't a friend, and she wasn't an enemy.
A faint smile brushed Monika's lips.
With her body soaked in soil and water, she opened her lips, smeared with tears and laughter, and,
“Fleur Epanoui, you were the first to me……”
Monika whispered softly.
Words that no one would hear.
Buried in the sound of the rain, words that she herself could not even hear.