Chapter 306

[Whoever's reading this is one of two people. Either it's my oppa, or my successor.]

That was how the letter began.

[If you're not my oppa, you've probably just realized I'm a girl and gotten a bit of a shock. Nice to meet you—I'm Shadow Walker. You're probably going, "Wait, I thought he was a guy—she's a girl?!" right about now. And I bet you're even more surprised because I'm pretty, huh?]

I let out a small, helpless laugh in spite of myself.

Next to the question mark was a tiny drawing of a round little character with its hands on its hips, sticking its belly out smugly.

[If you were hoping there might be something more left here, sorry to disappoint. This isn't for you—it's for my oppa.]

Below that, another little character was drawn, mouth open in what looked like a scolding.

[If you're really worthy of being Shadow Walker's successor, then go and steal or hunt down or take what you want like you mean it!]

[You got six whole legacies—what more could you possibly want?!]

"...I can't deal with her."

The moment I finished the last line, I covered my mouth without meaning to and groaned.

For a second I was so flustered I fumbled with the letter, the paper crinkling in my hands.

"She didn't used to be like this..."

Telling someone to go steal what they want, openly and proudly.

Muttering to myself, I turned to the next page.

Unlike the first page with its big, blocky letters and scattered drawings, the second page was filled top to bottom with tightly packed handwriting.

[Hi, oppa.]

[Out of nowhere, but—you know what today is?]

[Today, the day I'm writing this, is my birthday.]

[And it's the day I'm officially the same age as the version of you I remember.]

[It's been years already since I came to this world.]

"......"

I read on without a word.

When I'd first picked up the letter, I'd half expected to break down sobbing or fall apart on the spot. But I felt strangely calm—calm enough that it caught even me off guard.

[Anyone other than you wouldn't even be able to read this. If my successor—Jin Ye-seul or anyone else—tried to read this letter, the whole thing would burst into flames the second they got past the first page.]

[I'll put it here just in case. After you've read all of this, burn it. I didn't put a spell on it because I didn't want to risk hurting you. Okay?]

[Don't go holding onto it just because it's the first letter you've gotten outside of birthdays, Parents' Day, and your stint in the army, and end up in trouble over it.]

I found myself nodding even though there was no one there to see it.

[The story of when I first came to this world... I'll just give you the short version. You probably went through the same thing—it was really, really hard. I was sad, I missed you, I missed my friends, I wanted to go home... But I'm okay now. I've got fun friends here, and lots of companions. Even right now, while I'm writing this, the others were doing dumb stuff trying to make me laugh because they said I was getting too serious, and I yelled at them and chased them all out.]

[And, Shadow Walker...]

[Shocking, right?]

[I didn't have a choice. I think you'll understand, at least. I don't regret it—not really.]

[For what it's worth, I only ever stole from bad people and criminals, so don't be too mad, okay?]

[...Hmm, my opening's gotten way too long. I guess writing to you after all these years has made me sentimental. There's so much I want to say...]

[Let me get to the point.]

"Yeah."

Tell me what you know.

That was what I was thinking, still standing where I was, as I kept reading.

[The truth is, there wasn't a whole lot I could actually do in this world. You know how it is—this is hundreds of years before the original story even starts, right? What could I possibly do?]

[But that's only true for the original. The sequel was different. You wouldn't really know since you didn't play it, but I did, at least a little.]

[Milited's children. Hmm, I don't know what they're called in your version of things. But you know that slime-like Seven Calamity? "Milited" is one of the names it used the longest.]

[A world where all the Seven Calamities have been sealed away. They call it the start of humanity's golden age, but there were still plenty of people suffering. When I first got to this world, even though their power had weakened, Milited's children still controlled huge swaths of territory—and those regions were the worst of it.]

[...Well, honestly, it wasn't some grand thing like "saving people" or "rescuing the suffering masses" or anything like that. I just ended up on bad terms with them by accident.]

"Yeah, that's you all right."

That was so completely her.

I nodded slowly.

[Honestly, I would've ended up tangled up with them one way or another. You wouldn't believe how much horrible stuff they pulled in the sequel. There's not enough space on this page to even list it. And, well—there was the sealing stone, too.]

[Yeah, the sealing stone.]

[...I tried everything I could to get my hands on it. In the end, I couldn't.]

[It's not the kind of thing you can just decide to take. If you're the true owner, you could throw it into the deep sea or out into space and it would still find its way back to you. And if you're not the owner, it'll slip out of your hands no matter what.]

[I wasn't the owner of that stone.]

[...So in the end, this world, this era—I was never going to escape it. That was my fate.]

"......"

I silently turned the pendant at my neck between my fingers.

[That's when I started finding clues about you.]

[The first one was when I heard the story about Minerva's sealing. The story went that Minerva made a bet with a human, lost it, and sealed herself out of wounded pride. At first I just thought, wow, somebody crazy enough to make a bet with a Seven Calamity, that takes some guts. But there were a few records left behind by people who remembered what the human with her looked like back then. Well—not "people," exactly, since most of them weren't human, but you know what I mean.]

[Black hair, a sharp, gloomy-looking face, a long scar at the corner of the mouth.]

[And, more than anything else, snake-like eyes.]

[Snake-like eyes... lmaooooo. Who else would still be famous for having snake eyes hundreds of years later besides you?]

At that part, Sbeungali stifled a cackle.

I bit down on my lip a little.

[Um, to be honest, I wasn't totally sure at first. But then I almost completely smashed Milited's children, and I got a chance to enter the undersea temple where Milited was sealed. And there, I saw murals and drawings scattered all over the place.]

[The person in them was you.]

[There's no way I wouldn't recognize you. It was you, no question.]

[I was a little shocked. Like, my brother came to this world too? And 150 whole years before me, at that!]

[But then I noticed the drawing right behind you—a woman with red hair. That's Han Su-yeong, right?]

[And there was a really detailed drawing of the pendant around your neck. That's when I was sure. Ah—my brother was the owner of the sealing stone all along. And somehow, for some reason, he came back in time with Han Su-yeong and sealed Minerva away.]

[...Um, this is getting a little off topic, but...]

The moment I read the next line, I forgot to breathe.

Because I had no idea what to do with it.

[...You really sealed Minerva by winning a bet with her, right?]

[It wasn't... anything else, right?]

[Eh, it can't be. Even for you... right?]

[Like, after everything you put me through... no way, right?]

[Don't tell me you and a Seven Calamity actually—]

That was the point Sbeungali apparently couldn't hold back anymore, and he burst out laughing like a maniac.

[Aha, ahahaha! Ahahahaha!!!]

[...Shut up.]

Minerva muttered it in a voice that promised murder.

At my feet, the shadow was thrashing hard enough that I could feel it even without looking.

But the instant I read the next page, the shadow settled.

[Still—you know what, if it really is like that, I'll cheer you on. I mean it.]

[Honestly, who cares? If the person involved is happy, then it's none of anyone's business.]

[Plus, what good would it do for me to be mad? I already know exactly what would happen—the second you bring a niece or nephew home, I'd take one look and just start grinning and nodding "yes, yes, of course."]

[Wha—!]

Minerva flinched and clamped her mouth shut.

Sbeungali, who showed no signs of stopping, got crushed silent under Minerva's mana directly.

[...Okay, my story's wandering off again.]

[Anyway, once I figured out about you, I started to change my mind about a few things.]

[For what was coming next—for the sake of the original storyline, basically—I asked my companions to hide my legacies in the exact same places they'd be found in the original, and I made a bunch of other preparations.]

[I also made a special request to Henir's Shadow. He's normally pretty violent and he doesn't care whether anyone but me lives or dies... but I think he'll work hard to protect you. If you somehow ended up without Henir's Shadow, just use him yourself. He'll be a huge help.]

A few memories surfaced one after another at that.

Come to think of it, even back when Henir's Shadow hadn't fully accepted me as its true owner, it had thrown everything it had into protecting me.

I'd brushed it off at the time. To think all of it had been—

"How did I not realize..."

I muttered the question to myself.

I already knew no answer I came up with would be one I could accept, so I just clamped my mouth shut.

[Now I'm going to tell you the most important thing I figured out.]

You and me.

Besides us, there were other people like us in this world.

"Wait. What?"

Startled, I crushed the letter tight in my hands.

Then, unlike before, I started reading at a rush.

[People who crossed over from other worlds, the same way we did. From what I dug up, there were at least three others besides us.]

[And they were called by different names. Stepping stone, wedge, irregular... in my case, I was called the contrarian, the one who goes against the natural order. You've probably picked up on something similar by now, even if the wording's different.]

[The future this world is supposed to unfold into... people who shouldn't, who couldn't exist in the original story. That's what we are.]

It was just like she said.

A trait that wasn't displayed on my status window, but that clearly, undeniably existed.

A being that went against the flow of the world.

It existed exactly as she'd described.

[There were others besides us. So where are they now? Nobody. Not a single one.]

[And there was one more thing I figured out.]

[It's like there's some kind of generational swap—only one of us can exist at a time. Whether by choice or by force.]

[And there's someone making sure that's how it stays.]

[...I think you've probably caught on by now. Right?]

"Yeah."

I nodded.

There was only one thing it could be.

"Ahriman."

[Ahriman. That's the one.]

[...I've only met it once myself. And all I remember is that I met it, and that 'I turned down something it offered me.' I think the rest of it got wiped from my memory by Ahriman itself.]

The part about turning down "something it offered" was written in thick, emphatic strokes.

And the part about her memory being erased—that snagged on more than one thing inside me.

[Haahh...]

Sbeungali, who'd been through the exact same thing I had, wasn't laughing anymore. He let out a small, weary sigh. I kept reading.

[Be careful, oppa.]

[Ahriman's target is us.]

[People like us, who shouldn't exist in this world.]

[I have no idea what its ability even is, I'm really sorry. I tried so hard to figure it out butIcouldntithisweirdnoonecanunderstanditnothinglikeitsasifits]

"...What is this."

The sentence didn't even have proper spacing, and the spelling was all wrong.

The handwriting, which had been so neat and round just lines ago, had warped into something that looked like a small child stringing together straight lines and curves for the first time.

She'd scratched over it with slashing lines to cross it out, but even underneath all that, you could still make it out.

[Surprised, right? Sorry for scaring you.]

[...I was going to rewrite the whole thing, but I changed my mind and left it the way it was. Whenever I try to remember anything about Ahriman, my head gets tangled up like that.]

[I figured showing you would be more of a warning than just telling you.]

From here, the handwriting and the color and thickness of the ink were all subtly different.

She'd probably picked the letter back up after enough time had passed to write again.

[Um, so before I was going on like I had all this stuff to share, but honestly, that's pretty much it. A little embarrassing, sorry.]

[...But you get it, right? There really wasn't much I could do here in the first place. Honestly, even this much is plenty.]

[Okay, I should start wrapping this up. So let me write a few last things.]

The letter was already saying goodbye to me in that same even tone.

[First—it was on purpose that I handed my blood over to Milited's children.]

[I couldn't think of any other way to make sure my face would actually reach you. I bet it was a shock—I'm really sorry about that. But don't worry. Your little sister's strong. Even if every last one of them came at me together, they wouldn't stand a chance.]

[Second, I'm leaving you the things that can be used as weaknesses against Venus and Juno.]

[In my time, both of them were already sealed, so there was nothing I could do with them. But you have to fight them, right? Even after beating Minerva, taking them both on at the same time would be... yeah, we both know how reckless that would be.]

[Leto has them. He'll hand them to you on the way out.]

Every Seven Calamity had something that could be used as their weakness.

For Margo, it had been the weight. For Sbeungali, the branch.

To think she'd actually tracked down the weaknesses for those two—items that hadn't been findable even in the original work, just hinted at—

[And once you make it back to your own world, please come back here again. I'm sure my other friends besides Leto will help you.]

[Oh, right. When you come back, would you tell Leto for me how sorry I am, and how grateful I am?]

[Even with ogre blood in him, getting his neck cut and his head torn open had to have hurt. He told me he'd be glad to let Jin Ye-seul do that to him just because I asked.]

[I don't know what you'll think of me saying this, but he's like my own child. I've had him with me since he was a baby, and look at him now, all grown up.]

[And last—the crystal I'm sealed in... you might already know, but I lost to Juno. To be exact, I'm about to go lose to what's left of Juno after the sealing. This letter is the last thing I'm doing before I go fight it. I've already hidden away all my legacies, and Juno's weakness has already left my hands. There's no way I'm going to come out of this with a win.]

[...You know as well as I do—even if it's just a remnant, there's no way I could beat Juno. It was always something else from the start.]

[Don't be angry with me, and don't scold me.]

[This was the only way.]

[The only chance, the only possible way I might ever get to see you again.]

I refuse to become a mummy or an undead.

I refuse to become a wight, with only my thoughts left behind.

On top of everything else, the rule about only one of us being allowed to exist at a time—and if she turned undead, there was no way to even guess what Ahriman would do to her.

She was calmly laying out the endings that could have been hers.

[Oh, and—honestly, I wanted you to see me.]

[See the me that's the same age as you now.]

[This was the best plan I could come up with.]

I tightened my grip on what was now the last page of the letter.

The final page had only four lines on it. Five, counting the postscript.

[Oppa.]

[Stay healthy. And live well.]

[And if it's possible... yeah.]

[I really hope you, at least, make it back to our world.]

[P.S. Just because you're in a world with magic, don't slack off taking care of yourself—make sure you take your vitamins.]

A letter with only five lines at the end.

The blank space underneath felt enormous, almost unbearably so.

She'd known she was going to die, and even with death waiting for her, how had she managed to write all this so steadily?

That was the only thing I couldn't stop wondering.

I finished the letter and folded it up carefully, muttering as I did.

"Worry about yourself, why don't you... seriously, sticking her nose into everyone else's business..."

I folded the letter over and over.

Then, gripping the folded paper, I breathed fire from my mouth.

Dragonification made it possible.

"......"

I held the letter tight in my hand, saying nothing, until every last scrap of it had burned to ash.

So this was it.

That was all Han Su-yeong thought as she looked at the Ahriman wearing her own face.

She felt nothing but pure, simple admiration.

'...How far ahead was she actually seeing?'

The me from ten years from now.

As a faint, throbbing ache began to settle into her temples, Han Su-yeong silently thanked her.

From here on out, it was her job.