[Episode 132]
“You suddenly appeared and what kind of conversation were you talking about…”
I sat down and gently shook Laurent’s body as I answered. There was no sign of Laurent waking up.
“My pretty one will come soon too. See you at the same place I saw you before.”
“Laurent…”
“Ah, this kid couldn’t hold on to my energy and just passed out.”
“Ah…”
“It will happen if you leave it alone.”
I thought he wouldn’t lie because he was a god, but he didn’t want to leave it on the cold floor like this.
“You have to go. I can’t be out there like this.”
Arma held out her hand. When I held out my hand, Arma quickly grabbed it.
Then I felt like my soul had been pulled out and I was being forcibly sucked somewhere. I closed my eyes tightly in embarrassment, then woke up.
The place I was in was no longer the duke’s hallway. It was the pitch-black place where the gears used to be.
“God…?”
“You can call me Arma Arma.”
The child flapped its wings and flew forward. I too walked behind him, frowning.
“Suddenly, what kind of conversation…”
“I thought of a way to separate you from the other world and the baby who protects this place.”
“…yes?”
Separation did not make sense. Arma smiled brightly as I blankly opened my mouth.
“How you can fully become Eirin and the child who has supported this place for a long time so that you do not fall apart will become fully Chamiso.”
The footsteps following Arma stopped spontaneously. In the distance, I could see gears spinning with a squeak.
While I didn’t see it, the cogs seemed to roll with more difficulty. It didn’t seem strange when it collapsed.
“See that gear?”
“Yes…”
“Each of those gears is the life you’ve been through so far.”
Arma took my hand and started moving forward again.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the huge gear as I slowly walked along Arma.
There were dozens of cogwheels gathered together. It was a big and small gear. The one in the middle was the largest.
“All of that is your rough life.”
“…why.”
“It is the number of the world that you, the unfortunate one, have created.”
The gear on the top left was almost collapsing. It rusted and lost its color, and every time it went back, it dropped countless amounts of iron powder.
“The world has an end.”
“…it’s over.”
“Just as a novel has an end, it will perish if the main character of the story you created disappears.”
“…”
I pursed my lips and closed them again. I wasn’t sure what to say.
“The world created by beings like you is not always perfect. Ninety out of a hundred perish. Of the remaining ten, more than half perish when the main character’s story is over.”
“…”
“Even if only a handful of them disappear, the world will be led by the remaining beings.”
The more I heard Arma’s words, the more my head hurt. I didn’t want to admit that my whole life had been used.
“And a god is assigned to that handful of worlds completed like that.”
In the end, the process is to obtain a handful of normal worlds to give to God.
The added voice was terrifying.
“…then.”
What about people like me who have repeated a hundred unhappy lives to create a hundred worlds?
I swallowed the words that I couldn’t say because the reality I was about to learn was terrible.
However, Arma continued the story as if to solve my curiosity.
“The soul of the ‘dream child’ who lives in the swamp of misfortune to create the world is destroyed while repeating dozens of lives.”
Arma told me that the human soul is not very strong, so even if you erase the memory from the body, the soul remembers everything.
“So the necessary process is extinction. In fact, it’s called the washing process. The soul of the ‘dream child’, which can no longer be reborn, is torn into pieces to create a new soul.”
“…under.”
“Like taking seeds from a dying plant to grow a new plant.”
I was speechless at the words he added.
Doesn’t that mean that the soul has no rest even after death?
I felt terrible that a child who had to live an unhappy life for someone else had to be unhappy even in death.
“Actually, your life should have ended at Cha Miso.”
“…”
“But your wish eventually created another personality. Even the star keeper who manages and collects you wouldn’t have expected that.”
“…That means.”
Are you saying I created this inner young Cha Smile?
“Cha Miso made you.”
“…yes?”
Are you saying I’m not a body? I looked at Arma with a trembling gaze.
The shocking fact made the back of my head tingle. As my breathing slowed down a little, Arma came over and placed a small palm on my forehead.
“To be exact, Miso Cha divided you and herself into two. To not collapse.”
We were already in front of the cogs. Behind Arma, the young me… no. There was a young Cha Miso.
“When the hell…”
“The day we met the Byeolkeeper.”
It was not Arma who answered, but young Cha Smile.
“I didn’t want to die. So I desperately rebelled…”
“…”
“I was here when I came to my senses. And you made the world instead of me.”
“What…”
When I hesitantly backed away, young Cha Mi-so smiled faintly.
“You are my loneliness.”
“Then what am I…?”
“Of course it’s Eirin and it’s a tea smile. Arma-san said that I made you is wrong because we who were one were only separated that day.”
Arma shrugged at the words of young Chamiso. The information that came in at once was not convincing.
“Think carefully, did you really only read the novel [Adopted and I was mistaken!]?”
“…I am.”
As I covered my head with both hands, young Cha Miso smiled bitterly.
“I…”
My head hurt as if it would break.
“I put locks on many memories from you to protect you. So that you will not fall apart and live as a happy Eirin.”
“…why?”
“This is what you and I have longed for. A world where my brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and maids-in-waiting, who are kind and affectionate fathers and sisters, all love me.”
So you’re saying that it was all made up of my imagination and forced to happen?
It was just when I touched my forehead.
“Once the additional guests have arrived, let’s get together and talk.”
Arma quickly blocked the gap between me and young Cha Mi-so.
I just nodded my head obediently because I couldn’t properly organize what I had to say or what I wanted to say.
“But an additional guest…”
“If you come, you should pretend to be popular, pretty.”
“…It looks like a serious conversation is going on.”
When I turned my head to the familiar voice, Lucillion and my father were there.
“dad…?”
“Eirin.”
Dad naturally lowered himself and opened his arms to me. I reflexively tried to run, but my steps stopped abruptly.
‘Did I make that figure too?’
Because I imagined and hoped, did everything come true like the dream I hoped for?
“Eirin.”
A friendly voice was heard.
“It’s okay, come here.”
Hearing my father’s voice, I took a deep breath and approached slowly.
I thought it might be a lie, but I wondered if my dad would accept everything.
“Now that all the main characters are gathered, shall we begin the story?”
My father squeezed me in his arms and squeezed my forehead. Arma was clinging to the young Chamiso.
“Right now, Cha Mi-so’s personality is split into two. One is the young Cha Miso who controls the Cha Miso so that it does not collapse.”
“….”
“And the other one is Eirin from that side who somehow tried to live in loneliness.”
Arma said while looking at me and the young tea smile.
“Originally, ‘Dream Child’ is managed by a wanderer called ‘Byeoljigi’. Normally, it’s not easy to get the soul of a dreaming child out of a starkeeper.”
We nodded our heads at Arma’s words. Then Arma grinned.
“But now it is a special situation. Eirin’s wish created a perfect world through the control of young Chamiso.”
“A perfect world?”
Lucillion asked back.
“huh. Because when making the world, our smart babies even made a wonderful and wonderful god to help them and a bowl to put it in.”
Arma thumped my chest and said. The eyes of little Cha Mi-so and I were round at the same time.
“In conclusion, you can be free. Instead…”
Arma’s eyes slowly reached mine.
“You must die, Eirin.”
