Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 425

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 195.
An Angel’s Face and
The Blood Flowing Through a Demon’s Heart (4)
Above all, I could envision myself released from Daemon’s grasp. Even without Grandmother’s explanation, I understood what that state signified. Intuitively, I could not help but understand.
Could such a state still be called human? Or should it be called a doll? Would there even be a name there? In a place where not a single name holds meaning, I would be neither Demonic nor Joshua. Therefore, none of today’s suffering would matter. Yet why do I fear grasping the secret words, fear stepping beyond the boundary?
I know that too. That is why I, foolish and incomplete, still cling to this place, trapped within it.
“What dolls lack yet humans possess, and what those who are neither doll nor human struggle to hold—that is what brought me here. Because I was one who performed acrobatics between doll and human, I could love that doll. Knowing someone sought to expel me from order, before I could resist, I suddenly felt freedom.”
Grandmother gazed at Joshua. In that moment, I realized something. Grandmother could see me, could hear me. Yet Aurelia had not lied either. This was because they both possessed the same power.
Grandmother spoke.
“Yet others have said that Daemon has no substance and therefore does not exist. They said Daemon is another mind living within a person, or a memory carried since before that person was formed. They said it is both fear and freedom. Therefore, the Daemon that The Scholar met existed within The Scholar’s own heart.”
“Then he made a contract with himself?”
“The Daemon that The Scholar met exists in the child of that day, and also in you, our guest. All humans possess it. There have always been those who sought to break their contract with Daemon. Yet they never succeeded. For it is not easy to remember the words Daemon bestowed. The secret words sleep within you but do not awaken easily. Many sought to destroy themselves merely to glimpse the secret words, yet they reached death before they could unearth them. Will you seek out the secret words?”
The words about regaining a body that neither dies nor ages nor grows when one remembers the secret words, and the words about those who destroyed themselves seeking the secret words only to reach death—these seemed contradictory at first glance. Yet both shared the quality of transcending causality. I thought they might mean the same thing.
No, they were the same.
So long as my doll existed.
Looking back at the past, forgetting was the easier path. That road people called madness was utterly free, requiring responsibility for nothing. One need only tear a single, paper-thin veil. For one like me, who is Demonic, it lay within fingertip’s reach.
To deny that I felt the impulse to tear through it countless times would be a lie. To deny that fear was the reason I did not would also be a lie. Fear of being forgotten by all, of losing everything bound to this finite flesh—this fragile, trivial, worthless thing that lasts but a moment, yet simultaneously infinitely precious.
At that thought, I felt a suffocating despair, and simultaneously, tears welled up from the depths within. There is no help for it. Contradiction itself is truth. I stood with my hand upon that thin veil. I stopped before I could grasp and tear it. Yet still, I could not tear my gaze from what shimmered faintly beyond that milky membrane.
I wish to cross over and see it clearly, knowing it would be as brilliant, swift, and perfect as a galaxy where billions of stars are born. Yet I am a coward, I am tender-hearted, I am human. I have lived this way all along. I have endured this dull, suffocating, slow world. I merely closed my eyes and imagined.
I knew that if that piercing light poured forth, it would erase the human world, the world would erase me, and nothing would remain. Yet when I looked back, the doll was standing there. Even the order that was once declared to be absent in dolls—replicated in the doll.
And I understood. That I could flee no longer.
I hear the voice saying, “I will stand where you stood.” A choice has appeared. Now my world has become an arena of confrontation.
With that, Joshua’s uniqueness shattered. Yet it is so captivating, so unbearable. Even though I cast down that uniqueness everyone reveres as precious, this wretchedness is so beloved that I think I shall go mad.
That I am no longer alone. Whether I kill you or love you, whether I die by your hand. At last, I have descended to the earth. I have come to this stage where birth and death intersect but once. Because it was you who called me, because that call is myself.
Blood, light, pain and ecstasy call to me simultaneously. My incompleteness, your incompleteness, this world’s incompleteness, the heterogeneous perfection gathered from billions upon billions of incompleteness—let us become that very thing.
Or, remain here as incompleteness that reflects perfection in but a single sharp fragment.
What shall I grasp?
As Joshua reached no conclusion, Aurelia’s voice reached my ears.
“Joshua. Do you find that story convincing?”
Joshua turned. In this moment, I thought the way she pronounced my name sounded somehow special. Aurelia was neither friend nor sister. Yet we shared another connection. She was a sensitive being, like undifferentiated cells, like an unopened flower, like a latent form before becoming Demonic.
“Tell me. Can you believe the story that Daemon’s origin is thus?”
“Your Grandmother told you this story, yet you say you cannot believe it?”
“It matters not who told it. I cannot. I am unable. How can I accept such a simple explanation—that I was born borrowing a doll’s body? How can I accept such a personal explanation—that it all happened because someone loved his wife and child? How can I accept such an explanation for the pain that exists so vividly in my life? Are you saying the ruined lives of countless others besides me were created by magic, by the schemes of Daemon or whatever? Do you believe that? Tell me. Do you believe?”
Joshua gazed at Aurelia for a moment. I thought to tell her what I had come to know. But how?
Aurelia was not Demonic and was still young. The world beyond the secret words, which I had noticed in this moment from having thought about it countless times, was too early for her to understand. I could not lead her even to the crossroads where I myself had found no answer.
Yet I could tell her the beginning. Aurelia shared the same origin as Joshua, so there was a possibility she would understand someday.
Thus, as Joshua made the effort to stand in the other’s position, my face took on an expression blank as white paper—a pure and virtuous blankness that Ivnoa might have worn. Had someone who knew the siblings seen it, they would have been startled by the resemblance. Knowing nothing, knowing too much, and therefore unable to express anything.
The hour came when night drew in its hem. As the distinct boundary between shadow and light in the Grand Hall lifted, only the black coffin remained prominent. Joshua’s gaze eventually turned to the coffin. Speaking while gazing at the light falling upon the wrinkled blanket:
“It is not a matter of belief or disbelief.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying we should accept it as one possibility? As a fable created by someone about Daemon’s unknowable origin? As a legend made by people’s mouths?”
“No.”
Aurelia’s cheeks flushed with excitement, while Joshua remained composed by contrast.
“Aurelia. Do you believe in miracles? Miracles that happen only to yourself?”
Aurelia blinked rapidly several times.
“I don’t believe in such things.”
“That’s enough. Miracles don’t happen. They happen only to others, only in the past, only in books, only in the future. Never to me. We are all destined to live as we are until death. Demonic, mediums, madmen, fools, everyone else—all the same.”
Aurelia pressed her lips together and twisted her clasped hands, struggling to calm her mind. Joshua spoke slowly, very slowly.
“You can believe or disbelieve that the moment you grasp the secret words, you escape your fate. You can believe or disbelieve that a Daemon from the legendary age holds my destiny in their hands. If an incomprehensible being existed in the past, it exists in the present as well. Those in the legendary age had their own legends. To those in the future, our era will become legend. If people live in every age, then incomprehensible beings exist in every age, and people yearn for miracles while living without receiving them.”
“I… I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Joshua lowered his head and smiled faintly, then glanced toward Grandmother. She sat motionless like a painting, just as she had since Joshua entered this house, never once changing her posture.
“Long ago, a scholar suffered from the deaths of his wife and child and sought answers. Here and now, two people tormented by their own fates seek answers. In their suffering from the incomprehensibility of fate, they are all the same. Did the scholar find his answer? Who can say. From the tale of how the scholar created a doll and made a contract with a Daemon to resurrect his child, I felt that I am a performer juggling with fate. And in that, I felt a kinship with him in the story. So I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the origin of Demonic. Because no matter what Demonic’s origin was, my present form doesn’t change. The revelation of who my parents are one day doesn’t alter a person’s essence.”
It was the first time Joshua had made such an effort to explain something with such consideration for someone who wasn’t Demonic. Aurelia’s two hands, which had been tightly clasped, had gradually loosened.
“I realized that only my life isn’t incomprehensible, only my existence isn’t incomprehensible, but that you, our ancestors, and the entire world are all the same. I am a small boat navigating this era. I don’t expect the wind blown from the legendary age to push me forward. I know that an incomprehensible being won’t appear to save me, that a single word cannot be the key to unlocking my fate. For the first time today, I was satisfied with being Demonic. No—whether Demonic or not, I was satisfied. I was satisfied with being myself. Now I even like the name Demonic.”
“I heard that the name Demonic was given by later generations who envied and feared the power.”
Joshua chuckled.
“Daemon. These days it’s called demon. When you think about it, I’m alive because of the secret words given by the Daemon, right? To call one baptized by the Daemon—in other words, by the demon—Demonic… doesn’t it fit perfectly? Even if Icabon gave me this nickname directly, I’d believe it.”
Aurelia’s hand slipped to her skirt. Sunlight streaming from behind illuminated the sawdust between the black coffin’s cracks, revealed the pattern of the blanket, and turned Aurelia’s faded hair golden once more.
“Your words… I almost understand, yet I don’t. Perhaps I can’t grasp them properly because I’m not Demonic?”
Children of Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Months Publishing
The copyright to this book belongs to the author and 14 Months Publishing.
To reuse all or part of the contents of this book, written consent from both parties is required.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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