What She Wished For (3)
Yuel had chosen the path she had to take.
She understood where she had to go and how she had to get there, so there was no hesitation in her steps. She was that kind of person. Yuel quietly did what she had to do.
“To be honest.”
93,217 people.
“I was scared. Think about it. I opened my eyes and suddenly found myself in a city I had never seen before. I barely had ti to catch my breath, then they told , ‘From now on, you are the City Lord,’ and the godfather killed himself right in front of .”
91,121 people.
“The city was a complete ss, people were running around with blades everywhere, and sohow I was the City Lord. What was I supposed to do? I had to do it. I thought, just survive one year first. If I made it one year, I figured I could at least tell that old man, ‘I did this much, so cut so slack...’”
89,482 people.
“Years passed. My hands reeked of blood. Every ti I saw blood, I felt sick. Ah, I hated it. I really hated it. Fuck, am I really going to live like this and die like this? How much longer do I have to keep living this way?”
83,215 people.
“I stopped knowing what I was anymore. Ah, people are scared of , that’s all. If I ruled through fear, at least it would be better than this. Fine, then I’ll beco fear itself. That was the decision I made.”
79,861 people.
“I made that decision, and I lived by it.”
Yuel looked at Najin.
“If you hadn’t appeared, I would have lived that way and died that way. It is not hard to imagine how I would have ended. A being everyone feared. The cruelest monster of all, who executed everyone in the city with her own hands.”
She gave a bitter smile.
“A creature with no blood, no tears, no emotions, a monster obsessed with the law would have been born.”
But then she took Najin’s hand.
“Not now.”
Their fingers intertwined. Looking at Najin, Yuel gave a faint smile. Her lips moved.
“Najin.”
“Yes, Yuel.”
“You are my anchor.”
The residents of the city defined her as the City Lord. They feared her, avoided her, and treated her as a different kind of being from themselves. If things had gone as they originally should have, Yuel, who was losing herself, would have accepted that as her new self.
But now it was different.
As long as he was here, holding her hand, as long as he held on to her, as long as he looked at her, Yuel could keep from losing herself. Najin was an anchor that kept Yuel, the person, fixed in place.
“Only in front of you can I remain myself.”
Yuel smiled softly.
That smile carried countless emotions. Gratitude, affection, tenderness, a trace of regret, and a little desire.
“So this hand.”
Yuel leaned against Najin.
“Please do not let go.”
The stage began plunging toward its finale.
71,215 people.
The city’s population kept dropping.
62,881 people.
Countless incidents flashed by in rapid succession. Massacres, terror attacks, arson, cannibalism, torture, endless criminals appearing and disappearing.
51,117 people.
As if urging the human struggling on her stage to give up, the god who made this world kept causing chaos. Yuel’s close aide betrayed her. Rebellion spread all the way into the Lord’s Keep. She did not waver.
32,912 people.
She moved forward without hesitation. She killed those who did not follow the law. In a city crawling with beasts, she hunted beasts for the humans who still remained.
15,871 people.
By the ti the population that had once been 170,000 dropped to 10,000, only those with unusually strong minds were left in the city.
7,311 people.
They sensed their own end. So accepted it. Those who could not struggled desperately.
1,215 people.
And so.
97 people.
In Sealed City, a city built by shoving in 170,000 humans just to create one beast.
8 people.
Yuel endured for a very long ti. Through all those years, she never once broke the rules she had set. That was her persistence, and at the sa ti, a kind of madness.
5 people.
To prove that she was human to the god who treated humans like livestock, Yuel endured.
Three.
And the end was approaching. The 172,387th human, who held out to the very last, committed a cri by her own will, not by the god’s impulse. In a way, it was suicide. She died by Yuel’s hand, smiling.
Originally, she would have been the last.
Two.
There was one more human left in the city.
“Najin.”
He was a variable that should never have existed in an experint designed by a Transcendent.
2.
Yuel looked at Najin. The man before her was the last human left in this city besides Yuel herself. Looking at Najin, Yuel smiled bitterly.
“I see.”
As if she had understood sothing.
The number of lives needed for one human to beco a Transcendent was 172,397. And the city’s population had been maintained at 172,398, exactly one more than that.
The man before her was the 172,399th human.
A variable that should not exist in this city. The mont she faced that variable, Yuel found herself smiling.
“That is a relief.”
“What do you an?”
“That the one left at the end was you. If I had to kill even you with my own hands, then I probably...”
“Probably?”
“Do I really have to say it?”
Najin shrugged.
Yuel stayed silent for a mont.
Now, the two of them were sitting in the middle of Sealed City, where no one else remained besides them.
“...”
Without saying a word, Yuel gripped Najin’s hand hard. As if the ti had co to let go, yet she did not want to. She lowered her head deeply.
She was hesitating.
She knew it too. Only one step remained now. With one step, she could put a period on this vicious story. How many years had she endured for that final period? The ending was truly right in front of her.
“Ah.”
Yuel let out a sigh. Knowing her own ending, she smiled with regret.
“There were more things I wanted to say. There were many things I wanted to do with you too. That is what I regret.”
“Like what?”
“If you really do not know, then say so. Ah, fuck, you do not seem that dense. Are you not asking even though you already know?”
Najin shrugged again. No matter how bad he was at this kind of thing, missing this would have been impossible. He had only acted that way because it seed Yuel wanted him not to notice.
“Will you be alright?”
“As if I could be.”
Yuel lowered her head. Her pure white hair fell. The hair that covered her face like a curtain swayed.
“Still, I told you before. In this kind of city, in a city that stirs up human desire, I did not want to say it as if I were being pushed into it. It is too precious to say like an excuse.”
“I see.”
“Yes. So...”
She stood up. Then she let go of Najin’s hand. Even after letting go, she seed reluctant, repeatedly clenching and unclenching her own hand.
“I will say the words I saved once we are outside.”
She knew it too.
The mont she stepped outside, there would be no ti left to say those words. She knew that, and still she smiled anyway.
“Thank you for everything, Najin.”
If she wished it, the seed in her heart could have passed Sprouting and gone straight through Blossoming to Full Bloom in an instant. Yuel placed a hand on her chest and looked at Najin.
A heavy heart. A little regret.
But eyes full of resolve.
Yuel let out a long breath, then accepted the self she had rejected for so long. Her heart thudded hard. Her soul began to shake.
“Because of you, I could remain human to the very end.”
Not as an elaborate machine built to maintain the city, but as Yuel, a human being.
“Let’s et outside.”
With those last words, Yuel closed her eyes.
The one who opened them was the City Lord of Sealed City.
The City Lord, who had killed 170,000 humans with her own hands, or through rules she made herself, affird herself.
She had the qualifications. The conditions were fulfilled as well. What she needed was only to affirm herself as City Lord.
The mont she accepted herself as City Lord, the seed finally sprouted. As it sprouted, the flower blood. Petals blossod around her, saturated with blood-red color. Red flowers reached Full Bloom.
Whoosh.
In a place where sunlight and starlight could not reach, the flowers in Full Bloom covered the city. Like blood flowing through the city’s drains. Like blood seeping through the cracks between bricks and walls. Like drops of blood falling from severed heads displayed in the square. Red flowers blood across the entire city.
Sealed City was dyed in blood.
At the center of that blood-soaked city, the City Lord reached her hand toward the sky. The gathered blood shot upward. The mont red petals touched the sky that looked like a night sea, a star rose in that starless sky.
Flash.
It was not a platinum star. The platinum star was covered in blood. The star inverted and turned black. Black and red mixed together, and it began changing into a black-red star.
“Ah.”
The mont rlin saw that star, her eyes widened. It was not only rlin. Najin’s eyes widened too. It was not surprising that Yuel had beco a Transcendent. What shocked them was the color of the star.
A red star.
Not just red, a star steadily turning closer to black.
Everyone knew what a black-red star ant. If the first star children learned about was Arthur, then the next story adults told them was always about the Baleful Star.
Witch of the Abyss.
The apocalypse sealed at the end of the world. Deferred destruction. The being that once swallowed ninety percent of the world. Black-red star, Baleful Star, those words had always pointed to her alone.
Because every black-red star was made from her.
The Baleful Star rose into the sky.
Only then, as if she had realized sothing, rlin twisted her expression. She went over the words Hermann, the madwoman who designed this experint, had once muttered.
“One who is about to be born must destroy a world. The mont a person destroys the world that confined them, that person leaps into a realm no one else can reach.”
Destruction of a world.
“So Transcendents are strong, and so are weak. Where does that difference co from? It cos from the shape of the world each one perceives.”
How one perceived the world.
“Ha.”
rlin let out a dry laugh.
Hermann, that madwoman, had not been trying to create an ordinary Transcendent. She had not put in this much effort to create just one Transcendent.
What Hermann was trying to create was a Baleful Star.
A being who stained her entire perceived world in blood and declared the end of one world. Compared to the Witch of Camlann’s star it was insignificant, but at least it would bear a star of the sa color, the sa nature. That was the kind of Transcendent she had tried to bring into existence.
...And here was one human.
A human who killed everyone except herself in the space she perceived as one world, a human with the right to reach Transcendence.
A human who defined herself only through terror and fear.
What she would obtain was not a beautiful star.
In the sky above Sealed City, a black-red Baleful Star shone.
The mont the Baleful Star rose, the city could no longer endure the existence of a Transcendent. It had been designed that way from the start. The mont a Transcendent was born, the experint ended.
Craaack.
The sky split. The city collapsed. As one world was destroyed, Yuel reached Transcendence.
A bird struggles to break out of the egg.
The egg is one world.
One who is about to be born must destroy a world.
The bird that is born flies to god.
And that god’s na is Hermann.
Hermann looked at the young bird flapping toward her. Looking at the masterpiece she had created, the corners of her mouth split wide. With crescent-curved eyes, she clapped.
Cheering, praise, applause.
She moved to face her masterpiece.
And she was not the only one who moved.
The mont Sealed City collapsed, the stage changed, and it took on a form sufficient for Transcendents to step in, two Constellations besides Hermann moved almost at the sa ti. Both were variables that should not exist in this story.
The Carnival King spread out the script.
Najin drew his sword.
Almost at the sa mont, two Transcendents barged onto the stage.
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