No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode  141

If I were to turn the dignity I poured onto others back to myself, regardless of what my name is, I was just me. Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. Whatever reason I’m living for. 

‘I am me.’

Whether I’m Jeong Ian or Cassice Demillang, I’m just me. Names are important. They define existence. But they are not more important than existence. Names can be given again as long as existence is alive.

As long as existence is alive and breathing.

‘Even without a name, I can live as myself…’

As I grasped a very distant clue, I began to hear Ryuseong’s voice.

As if echoing in a cave.

“Please. Open your eyes. I’m begging you. Come back…”

Suddenly I came to my senses. If I were to express myself now, I was a broken water jar, and Ryuseong was water.

I felt the blue flame he was pouring into me becoming precarious. Did this guy break his Heavenly True Energy? Perplexed, I hurried. I hurried, not knowing where to go, and took a step. My inner self asked. What is where?

‘I don’t know. But we have to think. We can’t stop thinking.’

Because then existence will become faint.

“I’ll get going now.”

“Where are you going…!”

The brothers asked anxiously without laying a finger on me or approaching me. They were listening to my words seriously and deeply. Before leaving, I smiled at them one last time as they knelt.

“I found someone I love.”

“…You!”

“…You’re in love!”

“What’s with that reaction? I’m seriously going to sue you.”

I grumbled with a sullen face, but ended up laughing out loud.

Who knew it would be fun to talk with my brothers.

“No. I’m busy. I have to go now. I’m saying it’s the first time I’ve loved someone. That person is calling me.”

The brothers were looking at me vaguely, strangely.

“He’s calling me now. I’m going to go.”

I turned my body. I sensed a hand reaching out from behind. Am I going to get hit like this? 

However, this action was actually a hand placed on my shoulder, and when I turned my head, the brothers who had carefully approached me were shedding tears without being able to hug me, stammering their farewells.

“Take care.”

“…..”

“I was sincerely sorry. I wish for your happiness going forward. Live a radiant and healthy life. My younger sibling. If we dare call you that…”

“Yeah. You can call me that.”

I finally realized what laughter was. It was a tickling feeling inside. A welling up feeling.

That unpleasant pounding I get only when I see Ryuseong was laughter and happiness.

It was the same now. I smiled an ugly smile with a furrowed brow.

“Goodbye.”

Live well.

I blessed my brothers until the very end.

I didn’t even think that upon those words, two people in another reality would wake up in tears.

Because I had somewhere to go.

***

I opened my eyes and it was my reality. It was obvious as Ryuseong was next to me. I, who was wandering somewhere like a dandelion fluff, had finally returned to true reality.

“Cassice, Jeong Ian, no, Demillang. Damn it. You’re awake.”

“Yes, yes, damn it I’m awake.”

Ryuseong, who briefly stopped pushing Heavenly True Energy into my body, glared at me as if to say this wasn’t a situation to joke around. I thought it was warranted. 

My body was wrecked.

“The sun is up. How did you revive this body while day and night switched?”

“…..”

“You’re avoiding the answer. You son of a bitch.”

I don’t know why this is my reality. 

But I think that no matter what I do, you will be watching over me.

Now I can think that’s enough.

Just the fact that we live under the same sky was enough for me to be happy.

“Ryuseong. I’m going to start mana circulation now. Take out the Heavenly True Energy you were circulating in my dantian. If you collect it now, it will become at least a little more livable for you too.”

“I won’t do that.”

I just laughed because his stubbornness was cute. Furrowing my brows, with a smirk.

“Even though you’ll be a hindrance to me now? I will recover. In my own way.”

“…..”

“Did you not know I’m a genius?”

I don’t know why Ryuseong is looking at me as if he’s about to cry. Did I not smile very prettily?

But I feel like smiling like this.

“Don’t worry. I’ll come back alive.”

I just did as I wanted to smile.

“I swear. I stake my life on it.”

Just as you once did to me, staking your life.

I thought it might be an illusion.

But seeing you flinch and tremble your hand strangely now, it may have been real. 

“…Make sure to come back alive.”

The trembling blue eyes settled. Ryuseong, having made up his mind, began to extract the true energy. The body yearning for mana tried to bare its teeth and cling to Ryuseong like a specter, but I thoroughly blocked it.

I immediately feel my whole body withering away.

“…!”

But this much cannot frustrate me.

I, who felt relentless misfortune and despair the moment you grabbed me faster than death.

At that moment, I wished that my cursed self would be erased from the universe.

I was so ashamed of my tragedy that had dared to drag you in, I wished to disappear as if I had never existed.

And yet, the reason I try to open my eyes again. 

Naturally, it’s for just one reason.

‘Because you are here.’

Only you, you alone are looking straight at this miserable me. You think of me as human. Without sympathy, pity, or perceiving me as pitiful. Without the elitism of bestowing something upon me.

‘Just me as a person itself.’

You’ll pierce through it with blue.

For some reason I felt like crying so I closed my eyelids. The whitish world was engulfed in black.

I didn’t know the reason, but I quickly changed my expression and smiled crookedly like Jeong Ian.

Just because I wanted to.

“Ryuseong. Are you looking at me.”

Ryuseong, who seemed to nod his head based on the presence I felt, opened his mouth belatedly.

“Yes.”

A stinging feeling of falling rushed up.

I can’t trust you. But the Ryuseong I know from the book isn’t very good at lying.

You’re probably looking at me.

That’s enough. Just that…

“Don’t worry. Kid.”

I just felt like I could live with that. Even if I have to crawl into a gloomy abyss.

“I love you. Bastard.”

If you were there, I could do it.

***

And I realized that the ground I was standing on was a different landscape from the earth we step on and live.

I seemed to be standing on an abyss-like cliff, and something was moving whitely in the center.

Without knowing, I narrowed my eyes and focused.

And I remembered. This was what I had seen in passing a little while ago, and… 

‘Because it was mysterious…’

In other words, this place is…

‘The World Tree.’

In the primordial universe, there was a huge tree.

At the center of the threads of varying thicknesses was Earth. Also, a star called humanity.

The thin thread belongs to a healthy young person.

The thick, multi-layered, strong thread like a chain belongs to an old person about to die.

All of those were the roots of the World Tree and the chains of the bucket that gave and took life.

All of those contained the Earth and stars.

I couldn’t help but be amazed even after seeing it once. A single fine root was the history of a celestial body, and each lush leaf on the trunk was a galaxy.

The upper line was a new world. The world where the dead go. In other words, the more solid the thread that collects life becomes, the more strongly it pulls a person, the closer a human gets to death.

Things I couldn’t understand then, I was understanding now. Even as an image of the interior of some star was imprinted on my retina like lightning, all the information about that person’s soul, direction, knowledge, accumulated values, and biological information came in.

With intense realization, my breath hitched.

‘The fact that a person is a microcosm.’

It was neither a joke nor a metaphor. Humans were a part of the universe itself. Because they belonged to the cycle.

Because they are with the roots of the World Tree.

‘That’s why all humans are microcosms.’

I didn’t feel it before. No, even if I did, it was too little. It would be the same now.

This was not a scale I should be seeing. Something a person who truly lived should not see. The scale of the world. The great divinity. The origin of mystery…

But strangely, my heart was pounding. I felt like I would go crazy from the sense of fulfillment of being connected to the universe. I wanted to stay here and be with the World Tree for the rest of my life. Like the cosmic dust orbiting the World Tree as an axis, like Saturn’s rings over there.

Dreamily floating, as if intoxicated…

‘No. You can’t do that.’

A calm voice was heard from within. I tried to deny it.

Until my inner voice spoke the next moment.

‘You have to go meet Ryuseong. You swore.’

“…..”

‘It’s the first time you made a sincere promise. Keep that. Denying sincerity is hurting yourself. Don’t hurt yourself.’

“…Tsk. I got it.”

Without knowing, I spoke to the voice inside me in honorifics. Is it because it sounds so mature?

Soon, I blankly stared at the vast universe.

‘Wow, damn.’

This is all worth billions of light years of distance?

Then how do I get back to Earth?

“There won’t be any taxi drivers of the solar system or galactic hitchhikers crossing the Milky Way here…?”

…It was really damn daunting.