Chapter 17

Chapter 17

"Ah."

I jerked my head up after realizing I'd dozed off without meaning to.

Thankfully, I hadn't damaged the sculpture.

And perhaps because of my protective gear, I hadn't hurt myself either.

"Tsk. Have I been awake too long...?"

I fumbled around for my phone.

It was dead again.

I plugged it into the charger, then headed toward the kitchen to wake myself up.

By the time I returned with a bottle of cold water, the sunlight outside was already blazing.

Here and there across the yard, I could glimpse the silhouettes of people.

Apparently, my guards had reported for duty safely again today.

Gulp, gulp.

"Ahh... Hm?"

The moment I opened the door connecting the house to the workshop, my eyes widened.

Chaeri was pecking at something on the floor.

An insect? Is she eating a bug?

Was this what it felt like when a dog on a walk started chewing something mysterious?

Worried, I hurried closer.

Then I saw what Chaeri was actually eating.

"...Is that a piece of Sacred Wood?"

"Mmm?"

Every time Chaeri swallowed another fragment of the layered wood, her black eyes sparkled.

I couldn't tell whether I was hallucinating from lack of sleep or whether this was some mysterious effect of a World Tree material from a Gate.

"...Come here for a second. Quickly."

"Okayyy."

Chaeri glanced regretfully at the remaining piece of Sacred Wood before flying over to me.

"Does Sacred Wood taste good?"

"It tastes healthy."

Healthy.

I picked up one of the smaller fragments and cautiously bit down on it.

Unsurprisingly, the hard wood showed no sign of yielding beneath my teeth.

The texture was so solid that there was absolutely no way I could think of it as food.

"..."

"?"

I frowned without realizing it and placed the fragment on my palm.

When I tried to throw it into the trash, Chaeri instantly snatched it away and swallowed it.

Her eyes sparkled again.

I squished Chaeri's body, checked her all over, and even opened her unchanged status window.

Then I carefully set her down.

"It really is good for you, right? I knew it was considered a powerful medicinal ingredient, but I didn't know it could be good for an item too..."

"It really is good!"

Well, maybe things worked differently for Chaeri.

I nodded for now and swept around the sculpture with a broom.

I wasn't going to stop her from eating the wood fragments anymore.

But if she kept hopping around the sculpture, I might accidentally step on her.

Apparently she still wasn't full.

Chaeri followed the wood chips as they were pushed around by the broom.

Damn it.

I guess I'd have to wash the wood scraps before letting her eat them.

By the time I finished everything, there wasn't a drop of strength left in my body.

I collapsed into the single-person reclining chair in one corner of the workshop and pulled a blanket over myself.

My eyes remained on the sculpture.

The completed piece, which I'd finished after working through the entire night, occupied a huge portion of the workshop.

I should invite Guild Master Yoon Jamok soon.

The invited Yoon Jamok stood silently for a long time, her eyes turning red almost immediately.

When she finally spoke, it wasn't an impression.

It was a question.

"The face of the sculpture... Was that intentional?"

"Partly."

At her question, I looked at the completed sculpture's face too.

Part of it was hidden behind a strip of cloth.

The exposed features faintly resembled Seol Ga-hyeon.

Not enough to look exactly like her.

But enough that someone who knew her well would probably think,

It looks like her.

"Even so, you're really going to place this in front of the guild's main entrance? What if the protesters damage it?"

"This is something I made with a lot of care. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried."

I looked at the sculpture.

"But more than that... I have confidence that this child will be all right. Don't you feel the same way, Guild Master?"

"...You've made all my worrying pointless."

Her voice softened.

"The location has already been cleared. Let's move it."

A pleased smile naturally escaped me at the client's declaration of satisfaction.

Now it was time to see how the other viewers reacted.

Wrapped carefully in white cloth, the sculpture was carried to Badger Guild by the cautious hands of its members.

I rode in the vehicle behind them and followed.

It took an hour to calm the protesters before unloading the sculpture.

Then another two hours to unload and install it.

I waited inside a car parked some distance away for the unveiling.

Fortunately, I wasn't bored.

I'd already seen the finished sculpture, and anticipation kept swelling inside my chest.

"One, two, three!"

The guild member assigned to unveil it shouted loudly.

Flutter!

The white cloth was pulled away.

The black sculpture appeared beneath it.

The street, which had been filled with shouting only moments earlier, fell silent all at once.

Kim Ji-eon had been involved with the protest group for a long time.

At around eighteen years old, he had lost his family to a Gate and been left completely alone.

There hadn't even been time to grieve.

Before the Gates, there had been youth shelters and plenty of welfare organizations.

Not afterward.

When your own life was as fragile as a fly's, who had the luxury to care about someone else?

Especially a minor?

The moment Kim Ji-eon lost his parents, he felt as though the country had decided he no longer existed.

His neighbors ignored him.

The government said there was neither money nor manpower left for welfare.

And he couldn't even scream about how unfair it was.

Because he wasn't the only person trapped in that situation.

Society turning its back on someone was no longer something considered abnormal.

So before Kim Ji-eon could even properly mourn his family, he was thrown out onto the streets.

Thrown out into society.

The innocent expression of a teenager who knew nothing about the world disappeared.

In its place, a vicious determination to survive settled around his eyes.

He wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood, taking whatever work he could find.

He earned money.

He barely managed to find somewhere to sleep.

Then even that place collapsed during an Eruption-Type Gate incident.

Still, he stubbornly found another home.

The unfortunate thing was that every emotion eventually expired.

Once that fierce determination drained away, Kim Ji-eon's heart became hollow.

Little by little, exhaustion replaced everything else.

Will this life ever get better?

What am I gaining by living like this?

Wouldn't it be easier if a monster just killed me instantly?

What was I so afraid of that I fought this hard to survive?

Even as society gradually rebuilt itself and generations appeared who had never experienced the early days of the Gate Era, his own circumstances barely changed.

The helplessness ate away at him.

That was when Seol Ga-hyeon appeared.

A Necromancer.

A girl raised in a wealthy household with both doctor parents still alive.

When Kim Ji-eon first saw her in the news, all he felt was envy.

But as he learned more about her...

As he heard the criticism surrounding her...

And finally, when he saw her actually use her skill...

Something inside him began to boil like lava.

Why should someone's death become Seol Ga-hyeon's power?

To him, Seol Ga-hyeon seemed like a fruit that had grown atop the deaths of his parents and countless others.

And once that idea hardened inside him, he became convinced that one of the countless skeletons she summoned had to belong to his family.

His parents, whose bodies had never been recovered.

His parents, for whom he'd never even been able to hold a proper funeral.

He felt as though they were standing beside her.

Kim Ji-eon had lost his parents.

He had been ignored.

He had suffered until it felt as though his chest had been hollowed out.

Meanwhile, she seemed destined to surround herself with the countless dead and continue rising higher and higher.

Just as she'd been raised comfortably by her parents.

Seol Ga-hyeon's very existence began to feel like something that had grown by trampling over his impoverished past.

Eventually, Kim Ji-eon abandoned everything he'd been doing to keep his life together.

He went to Badger Guild.

He gathered people like himself.

Together, they shouted the same accusation.

That Seol Ga-hyeon...

And by extension, Badger Guild...

Were insulting the dead.

Kim Ji-eon couldn't know every protester's true feelings.

But in some of their faces, he recognized the same exhaustion he'd carried through life.

Those who shared his beliefs became his only comfort.

Their presence was proof that he wasn't wrong.

As time passed, part of him began to wonder whether the bones really might not belong to his family, just as the government claimed.

But he couldn't stop.

He had gone too far.

And his chest was still too empty to begin his life alone all over again.

So, as far as Kim Ji-eon was concerned, unveiling a single sculpture in front of him wasn't going to suddenly change his mind.

"..."

It looked as though someone had carved a piece of the night sky itself.

The sculpture depicted a woman wearing worn, shabby clothes.

One hand reached toward the sky.

A thin strip of cloth crossed over her eyes and fluttered behind her head.

The staff looked as though it might slip from her grasp at any moment.

Her upper body leaned forward so heavily that it seemed to whisper she was about to collapse onto the ground and never rise again.

And yet...

Her other foot was firmly planted on the earth.

One arm stretched straight upward.

Her staff, in the end, was still touching the ground.

And even though her eyes could barely be seen, her face remained endlessly turned toward the sky.

Those details suggested that she would eventually rise again.

Strangely, Kim Ji-eon felt as though the woman was praying.

As though every painful step she took was another sentence spoken toward the heavens.

This was a form of prayer.

A life spent endlessly revealing herself to the sky and never hesitating to move forward.

Even Kim Ji-eon, who had spent years maintaining a cynical view of everything, found himself imagining some miracle awaiting that woman.

At the same time...

The woman who carried the night sky within her already seemed to have reached heaven.

As though the long, exhausting path she'd walked throughout her life...

And the prayers she'd offered along the way...

Had finally carried her there.

It felt as though she had come here only to show the world the difficult road she'd survived.

None of those thoughts felt absurd.

Because the woman in the sculpture looked genuinely alive.

And because of the warmth she spread around herself.

Kim Ji-eon found himself intoxicated by that warmth.

It felt almost like someone gently stroking him.

Then he noticed that the woman's face vaguely resembled Seol Ga-hyeon.

By then, the anger and resentment had already melted away into the tears falling from his clouded eyes.

Something else, something he'd locked away for years, began itching inside him.

Guilt.

Does every joy only come after suffering?

Kim Ji-eon remembered a church he'd visited when he was even younger than eighteen, holding a friend's hand without knowing what the future would bring.

The Bible stories he'd heard there were filled with suffering.

Suffering after suffering.

And then, after some small reward, people finally found rest.

As a child, he'd thought the rewards were pathetic compared to the suffering.

He'd thought the stories were all nonsense.

Now they felt different.

Because he had become someone desperate even for that tiny reward.

With tears swelling in his eyes, Kim Ji-eon broke the silence and stepped toward the sculpture.

The Hunters standing nearby finally came to their senses.

They reached out to stop him.

Kim Ji-eon ignored the hand catching his clothes and stretched his own hand toward the sculpture.

Come to think of it...

These guild members had never once used their supposedly incredible awakened abilities on the protesters who had tormented them for so long.

Look.

Even now, the hand pulling at his clothes wasn't using any real strength.

Kim Ji-eon's rough hand, hardened by a difficult life, gently brushed the sculpture's cheek.

Tap.

The grip on his clothes disappeared.

The cheek beneath his fingertips felt cold.

And smooth.

Like the night sky that had silently watched his regret and pain every night.

Kim Ji-eon didn't apologize to the Hunter beside him.

He only let out a choked sound before turning away.

Behind him, he heard the protesters cautiously approaching and brushing their hands over the sculpture too.

Rustle, rustle.

Small.

Insignificant.

Almost pathetic little sounds.

I lowered the car window slightly.

A cool breeze brushed across my bangs.

The protesters...

Beginning with the man who had first stepped forward, they approached the sculpture one by one.

Then they began leaving.

No matter how hard I looked, none of them seemed to be harming the sculpture.

The expressions of the Badger Guild members standing beside it were gradually relaxing too.

Sniff.

"...?"

I turned in surprise at the sound from the front seat.

The Badger Guild member behind the wheel was wiping at his eyes.

His face was red when he put his glasses back on and met my gaze through the rearview mirror.

"It's... truly incredible."

Then came the sudden compliment.

Apparently, even from this distance, he'd felt something.

Embarrassed, I gave him a wide smile.

But he wasn't finished.

"I'm only saying this now, but honestly... I felt completely trapped."

He took off his glasses again and rubbed his entire face.

"No matter how honestly we lived, nobody cared. Every time we came to work, people insulted us. But we couldn't just stop coming to work either."

The guild member in the passenger seat quietly shook with suppressed emotion.

"Even when I wanted to quit everything, it felt like doing that would make me into exactly the kind of terrible person the protesters accused me of being. So all I could do was keep enduring it."

He drew in a breath.

"So... what I'm trying to say is..."

His jaw tightened several times before he continued.

"Until this moment, I never even imagined things could become better."

Even the Yeonwoo Guild guards who had accompanied me were now looking warmly toward the front seats.

The air inside the car gradually became damp and heavy with emotion.

After finishing his long speech, the guild member behind the wheel spoke again.

"Thank you. Truly. ...Because of you, I can imagine a better future."

Pride rose inside me when I heard that.

Not because the sculpture had somehow solved Badger Guild's suffocating situation.

That wasn't it.

It was because the expressions of the guild members in front of me...

And the faces of the protesters slowly receding beyond the window...

Looked relieved.

The feeling I'd imagined while carving had been delivered to the viewers.

It comforted them... right?

I smiled even more broadly.

"Looks like we can use the front entrance now, doesn't it?"

"Yes...!"

The car began moving smoothly.

The closer we got to Badger Guild, the clearer the faces around the sculpture became.

Guild members with reddened eyes and expressions of relief.

Protesters standing still, unable to hide their confusion.

Already, only a quarter of the protest group remained.

They couldn't even bring themselves to stop the others from leaving.

They simply stared endlessly at the sculpture.

Click.

I stepped out of the car.

The walk toward the main entrance was silent.

No accusations.

No shouting.

The Badger Guild members standing beside the sculpture met my eyes.

Their tear-brightened gazes looked at me with unmistakable emotion.

Maybe this was one of those moments when a sculptor truly felt glad to have become a sculptor.

The moment you looked at the faces of people viewing your work.

The moment they became lost in their own thoughts while looking at it...

Then opened their eyes again and saw reality a little differently.