TCMED 13

Chapter 13

In the pitch-black unconsciousness, I thought to myself.

‘Right, when I reincarnated, the clerk at the counter told me about my karma.’

The Oligo people had lived lives so virtuous that they couldn’t be compared to my past self. So they would surely begin new lives in a better place than this.

But this fact didn’t bring me much comfort.

I could no longer call them by the names I knew, nor would I ever feel their warmth again.

All the pain they felt as they died now became my burden to bear.

I had to remember that pain, the trivial daily routines that had become memories, and their names and faces.

The world wouldn’t remember Oligo especially, except for me. So I had to live and remember.

The problem was that such memories made a person sink endlessly.

‘Ah, right. Now I get it.’

If souls weren’t to be extinguished but continually cycled, memories had to be erased so that people wouldn’t go mad.

With that final realization—.

“…….”

I opened my eyes.

My surroundings were dark and sticky. I was lying in a puddle of blood belonging to someone unknown.

In a forest with no lanterns, the only thing visible was the night sky.

That sky was no different from yesterday’s, yet I couldn’t feel the brilliant radiance I had once admired.

As I gazed numbly at the stars, I suddenly recalled the Reincarnation Bureau employee who had said he’d help me just once in this life.

I clasped my hands together and earnestly prayed.

“Please rewind time by just one week.”

I was already a soul that deviated from this world’s causality, having retained memories of my past life. What harm would adding regression do?

The moment my plea ended, a shooting star streaked across the Milky Way and fell.

Then, fluttering down before my eyes was a sheet of paper glowing white.

[Your request has been denied.

Reason: The request falls outside the scope of authority.]

I had known it was an impossible wish, after all.

Watching the paper vanish into specks of light after I had read it, I closed my eyes. Tears began to flow over the dried bloodstains on my cheeks.

Rustle.

At that moment, I heard something approaching from nearby, stepping through blood and fallen leaves.

Hee-hn.

It was Maximus.

After looking at my soaked face, Maximus bent his knees and lay down on the spot.

“…….”

I knew this was the greatest empathy and comfort a horse could offer.

So I crawled out of the blood puddle and embraced the neck of my only remaining family. For a very long time.

“……Now, I have to get up.”

I stood up, staggering.

I rummaged through Pell’s storage shed and found a shovel. I found a spot where the ground was soft and relatively undisturbed, and dug holes without thinking.

One by one, I buried them.

Pell, Leah, Michael, Enoch……. The body of Eve, whose future I had most anticipated, was outside the village, so I found her last.

By now, I could no longer tell whether what was falling to the ground was sweat or tears.

Thud.

The shovel, having fulfilled its duty by forming the last burial mound, fell to the ground.

Despite having labored for over a day without eating anything, I was in a strange state of wakefulness where I didn’t feel hungry.

“Haa…….”

I looked up at the sky. Morning was breaking.

“What should I do now?”

Nothing came to mind, so I just stood there blankly.

Until the sounds of horses, carriages, and people could be heard from afar.

The noise, drawing closer in a jumbled mix, began to distinguish itself starting with the loud bang of a carriage door opening.

Clop-clop, clop-clop.

The sound of horse hooves, still rolling steadily.

“……Lord Aion!”

“Saint, please!”

Voices trying to restrain someone.

And…….

“Thetis!”

A voice so familiar to me.

I turned toward the source of the sound. My friend, now with sacred white hair, was running toward me, staining the hem of her priestly robes red.

Was I seeing a vision right now?

“How did you get here…….”

“Titi.”

But the arms that held me had an unmistakably vivid warmth.

“It’s all going to be okay now. I’ll take care of it.”

Unlike her trembling voice, the arms supporting me were firm.

The strength drained from my body, which had finally found a place to rest.

Without resisting that sudden weakness, I closed my eyes.

* * *

Inside the carriage heading toward the Grand Temple.

Saint Aion Mitev quietly looked down at the person cradled in his arms.

“I never intended to bring you here like this.”

Aion cupped Thetis’s cheek with one hand and carefully wiped away the flowing tears with his thumb.

Even if she had cried out loud, there was no one here who would dare scold her, yet Thetis sobbed silently.

The fact that she made no sound, not even a groan, even while unconscious, was the part of Thetis that Aion found most heartbreaking.

“Titi.”

As if whispering so as not to wake her, he murmured the pet name and tightly embraced Thetis’s trembling body.

“Thetis…….”

If you ask someone where their life began, most would point to their earliest memory.

But for Aion, the starting point of his life was the very moment he, as a young boy following the old master monk, witnessed a silver-eyed girl jumping over the temple wall.

Aion was the only child born to a couple who had struggled with infertility and prayed to the gods, vowing to offer their child to the temple. His parents were devout people, and because of that, Aion spent most of his life in the temple.

But in retrospect, Aion was a child who truly needed an environment where he could be raised with individual love.

For the young boy, memorizing scriptures and earning bread was easy. However, prayer time was always a trial for him.

After reciting Mitev’s prayer, he had nothing more to say.

One could say he had no desires.

<Aion, your parents have…….>

He realized something was lacking in him when he heard the news that his parents had all died in a robbery at his family home.

In the trembling embrace of his master, the old monk, Aion simply kept his eyes closed.

He wasn’t particularly sad.

At some point, the children his age in the temple began to leave his side, one by one. He didn’t mind that either.

Aion had nothing that could be called ‘I’.

His parents, the doctrine, and his master had taught him to abandon his will and obey, and he lived his entire life as instructed.

Then he met Thetis.

Thetis was the first rebel Aion had ever encountered in his life. The doctrine that had been his lifelong standard of conduct was trampled that day, along with the wall Thetis had jumped over.

From that day on, when a single gesture telling him not to tell the adults and to stay quiet sealed his lips, Aion was drawn to Thetis.

<I’m Thetis, what’s your name?>

<……Ion.>

Omitting one syllable from his name when he told her was the first act of rebellion Aion had ever committed in his life.

At the same time, he was certain it was the best choice he had ever made.

<Titi, why can’t I feel anticipation for what lies at the end?>

On a winter day, on the eve of the Pilgrim’s Path, he had impulsively confessed this, and Thetis gave him a small goal: the Star of the Southern Hemisphere.

That alone would have been enough, but Thetis seemed to want to give him something more, and she took a very long time choosing her words.

At just fifteen, she seemed to be sifting through very old memories, Aion had thought at the time.

<You know, Ion, I hope you don’t become nothing at that end.>

Thetis enunciated each word slowly.

It seemed as if she didn’t want to make a single mistake, or perhaps she hadn’t quite sorted out her own thoughts.

<I know that you monks consider completing the Pilgrim’s Path itself as a proud achievement in life and a starting point for a new life. And I understand that. But I…….>

<…….>

<I hope that even after you return from the Pilgrim’s Path, you’ll still be Ion. I dare to hope that you won’t be forcibly shaved down or shave yourself down there, and that you’ll return with most of your current self preserved.>

<Why?>

<Because, a person should be themselves before anything else. You must protect yourself above all else. Got it?>

The waves that swallowed five or more times with each crash, the raindrops that constantly stole body heat, the despair of seeing no end.

What had saved Aion on that arduous Pilgrim’s Path was this memory.

Because to live as ‘Ion,’ he had to return to Thetis.

Thetis was the only person in the world who called him ‘Ion.’ Even his god, Mitev, could not call him that.

Becoming a saint unexpectedly on the Pilgrim’s Path delayed their reunion, but he endured it because his means to protect Thetis had increased.

The fissures and the surge of monsters disrupted all his prearranged plans, but that was also fine.

If even this was for Thetis, he welcomed it.

“Thetis.”

In every moment, Thetis protected him simply by existing. Now it was his turn.

Aion lifted Thetis’s hand and pressed his lips to a wound he hadn’t noticed before.

Until the white light seeping through her small palm completely healed the wound.