94 – Tribute (3)

Tough meat can be chewed and swallowed, but tough life does not pass easily down the throat.

It would be nice if it melted away with gastric juice, but it does not stick to the wall of the intestine and go away.

Just as tar from cigarettes sticks to your lungs like dregs and gnaws at your life, the demons you slay are absorbed into your soul, and there is no sign of them ever harmonizing.

What it means is that I’ve been feeling a sense of incongruity ever since. It’s different from the feeling of not being able to control one’s own body that I felt when I first gained regenerative ability. It was closer to the mental side than the physical side.

A roaring inside as if swimming in the sea, a torrent of blood rushing towards the brain, and the heart beating wildly and loudly, like a hammer beating, and the speed was similar to that of wind blowing over a snowy mountain.

My heart as broad as the sea is gradually turning into a furnace that boils throughout the year.

I didn’t show it, but I suddenly lost my mind from the discomfort and tiredness. I couldn’t properly listen to what sounds around me, and I mechanically shoved the dish in front of me into my mouth.

After clearing the plate, I touched the area around my heart where I still felt a sense of incongruity. My heartbeat was still rough, and I felt like I was getting nauseous. Even so, I suppressed it as much as possible.

“I didn’t do this when I killed the secret demon…”

“At that time, I couldn’t help it. It was not a demon created in the other world, but an artificially created demon. It wasn’t a demon that was inherited, it was a being that would die as it were if it died in the first place.”

“Oh, is that so…”

I sighed and laughed bitterly. Fortunately, I no longer had to hear such terrible news that the devil’s power was greater than I expected.

I rubbed my tired eyes a few times and watched the conversation between the two mothers and daughters through the repetition of darkness and light.

“Huam~ I’m too sleepy, so I’ll sleep first.”

“It’s okay to go to sleep first. I’m sorry that I’ve been holding on until this hour…”

“Whoops, no matter what, my family’s kid is back, so I have to get up and see.”

After saying that, Monia roughly stroked Lilia’s hair and stood up from her seat. She conveyed her understanding and apologies to the others and said she would go to bed first. The way she waved her hand matched her innocent smile.

It seemed like he was waving at me too, so I smiled and waved at him too.

The corner of my mouth that had been pushed up went down again, and I covered my head. I had a bad headache.

Next to her, Stella touched her shoulder and asked how I was doing.

“Are you okay?”

“No, it’s not okay.”

There was no reason to tell a lie, so I said it honestly. Stella’s expression was blatantly concerned.

I don’t know how much time this friend has been with me, but I don’t know if he’s just saying things like this. Now that you’re seeing that kind of reaction all over again, it’s clear that you haven’t seen me for a long time.

To say that I’m not okay is not much different from saying that if there is today, tomorrow will come.

It looks like the truth at first glance, but it means that it is an uncertain thing.

“…Could it be because of me?”

Suddenly, Stella’s face turned pale. In her concern, her hand that was caressing my shoulder lost its way and she was at a loss.

“Did I stab you with a spear at that time…?”

“What?”

I couldn’t hold back a yawn and spat out absurdly.

This was another novel bullsh*t.

I couldn’t hold back my laughter. Just because she was in charge of the last wedge doesn’t make her responsible for all the pain I’m going through.

Nevertheless, he was soaked in victim consciousness and blamed the spearman for causing only a few drops of blood to be shed. It’s kind of funny.

Stella often did that even when she was Spica. If I got hurt while carrying out a mission together, I blamed myself, thinking it was all my fault. He was too sticky to be seen as the responsibility of the leader of the mercenary corps.

“Ha.”

There was someone who laughed louder than me, and it was none other than Lilia.

“That’s right, it’s because of you. I stabbed the devil with a holy spear and put it in myself, so of course it’s fatal.”

“Huh, I guess that’s right?! I still have the aftereffects… How bad are they? Does it hurt that much? Well, I cut my throat with a blade, but it doesn’t hurt…”

“Why are you doing this, boy?”

She must have been taken aback by the sudden timidity of the kid who had just been having a snowball fight and refuted every single word, and Lilia seemed to be taken aback as well.

Stella, who kept hesitating, made eye contact with me for a moment, and then he sneaked up to me and whispered in my ear.

“If you’re really sick, can I nurse you tonight?”

“Don’t get sick and grow well. It’s not that painful.”

Nursing without being able to cook? Healing magic was her only way to recover. You should be able to believe

I’m not sick enough to be taken care of by someone, and most of all, I feel uncomfortable because I feel guilty.

“But…”

“I can hear everything. What kind of nursing is nursing? Over there, Wiz, a candidate for a hero, must be lonely. Do you want to go and sleep together?”

Stella glared coldly at Lilia.

I can guess why the emotional rift between the two deepened, but I didn’t bother because I thought it would be an annoyance.

“Because Wiz is not a child… It’s a bit different from an immature girl who can’t live without seeds, right?”

“hahahaha… I don’t want to hear from you flirting so vulgarly with a guy you just dated out of guilt.”

I was impressed by the expression that they had just met.

Where does a relationship start?

Does it start from meeting?

Or is it time?

Does the relationship get deeper and longer as the beginning gets farther from the time I am staying now? If so, if you accept the old saying that a person passing by on the street is also a bond, then perhaps I have the longest relationship somewhere in the world that I do not know about.

If a relationship begins with a meeting, Stella and I are not that deep. She was separated from her once by her death. Although they met again recently, this cannot erase the void created by the disconnection.

“What kind of thoughts did you have in nursing, so you say it’s vulgar? The flower witch? Isn’t your head the most vulgar?”

“Think about what you’ve done in the meantime. The nobility of our great warrior candidate is so high, I should let the world know that I’m going to spend the night with the man I just met.”

The relationship I built with Spica was severed when I died. If you look at it that way, Stella and I must be right now, just as Lilia said.

However, if there are regrets and lingering attachments between the two of us, it becomes ambiguous even to see it as disconnected. It’s like a bloody, thin thread that connects a thin relationship.

At least for me, lingering feelings, regrets, and obsession exist.

“Who would believe that rumor?”

“It’s more fun to believe because it’s a rumor. And now you said it’s a rumor? Do you have any idea how ridiculous you are?”

“It was you who did the absurd thing, not me.”

What can I do? I am a human too.

He knows what I’ve been through, walked through the same era as me, and lived with me.

There is a consensus that only she and I can feel.

Anyway, I’m a person who doesn’t want to be deprived of what I have because I have little. Perhaps others are similar. I love what I have, but I want to stop being taken away even if I die.

‘The feeling of jealousy is really fun. It’s not just between lovers, it happens between things and people, between friends, and even between family members. If you look at it like this, you can see that jealousy occurs between all ties.’

I yawned and looked at the Prophet. I looked at him and he looked at me too.

‘Because a certain kind of bond is formed between people the moment they have a relationship. Love the other Malone!’

I ignored the monologue in my head.

The eyes peeking out from inside the hood were terrifying.

“Was the secret kiss with the servant sweet?”

“What, what…?!”

Stella said something quite shocking. Lillia also opened her mouth in surprise that she had absorbed the shock as well.

“Doing such a thing… Who is calling someone vulgar?”

“That’s not what I want to do…!”

Lilia looked at me as if asking for help, but I ignored it. It’s two people I wish I could figure it out

“Isn’t she waiting to play at night? Our flower witch… She’s also a flower, so she’s lewd.”

“Shut up!”

The headache gradually got worse. If you continuously vibrate your ears, will it feel like this? The blood rushing to her brain was hot.

‘Oh love! How sweet is this! Have you ever felt Ah, I never received one when I was young, so maybe I don’t know what love is. The people over there who care about you are the ones who love you! How is it? Do you feel good?’

The pupils inside the hood moved slightly. I also turned my eyes in that direction. It was a window leading to the outside.

‘And our love too! How is it? Do you feel good? This beautiful story of falling in love and becoming one!’

As time passed, the window functioned more like a mirror than its role, but my face gradually disappeared from the window and the stars outside arrived.

‘You love me too! Accept my everything! If you accepted my death, why can’t you accept anything else?’

As the stars moved out of their orbit, they rearranged and a line was drawn between them.

‘I’ll give my whole life… Huh? Of course, no returns! My master.’

The lines come together to form a single character.

‘Silence’

Looking at the Prophet again, he put his fingers where his ears would be and tapped the hood a few times. Then he put his finger on his mouth.

I nodded. No reply was sent.

“You didn’t mean to do that? I’d pretty much believe that. I’m not the kind of person Eva would be…”

“Everyone.”

The Prophet raised his voice quietly.

“It’s too late. Let’s go to sleep and decide later which of the two is more vulgar.”

“I’m not going to jump to conclusions. Don’t take it seriously.”

Lilia let out a deep sigh.

“Yeah… I guess I’ll have to. Iva, come here.”

“Hey Prophet, I think this has already been concluded? Can’t you sleep at night without a man?”

“Don’t talk bullsh*t! There’s no room to sleep anyway. You guys are filling up the guest room, and Eva is… Well, he doesn’t sleep.”

It’s not that I don’t sleep, it’s that I can’t sleep. Lilia asked for my understanding, looking at me with an apologetic expression, as if she was tired too. She had no intention of asking her to sleep today anyway. She doesn’t even have to be sorry.

I don’t take other people’s kindness for granted, nor do I take it for granted.

I’m not so shy that I don’t know that putting me to sleep is a very laborious task.

“What are you talking about. Iva, just come over here. I’ll explain to Wiz.”

“What are you both talking about?”

I turned around and saw the Prophet.

“You can just hang out with men.”

The Prophet was still silent.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yes, that’s good. I have him with me for the night.”

It was a neat conclusion.

**

No matter how much it was, there was no more space to stay in the house for Monia and Lilia, the two mothers and daughters. It was possible to use the attic, but it was not a good environment because the various visions were too strong.

That’s why we came out under the sea of stars.

“By the way, why did you think I was a man?”

The Prophet asked as he was accustomed to entering the tent.

The reason is simple.

It was because I remembered a theory I had read before.

In each episode, the gender was revealed, but in his case, it was not revealed no matter how often he appeared.

I thought it was unusual for this writer to hide the gender and age of a person, so guessing his identity was one of the main games among fans.

One of them is the male prophet theory.

In the work, it was described that men’s magical talent was overwhelmingly inferior to women’s.

There was a setting that the seat where he could tilt the world’s fate with him was not necessarily made up of only women.

And gradually the setting for the first prophet was also released.

His descendant was Darm Akera.

And Akera organized and systematized magic under her mother and introduced magic to the world. The existence of a mother is mentioned separately from the Prophet.

Then the prophet must be a man.

The first Prophet was a man, so why is it that the Prophet is not a man this time around?

No matter how much it is, it can be said that a man appeared as a main character in a lily novel, but rather, it can be said that his identity is tightly hidden.

It was almost certain that a riot would break out if a man appeared for no reason, and that’s why I couldn’t throw away the original setting.

It is said that it was hidden by absolutely hiding the identity of the prophet.

It’s a theory that I once said and got hit hard by Spica, but inside me, this is accepted as the unwavering truth.

“Just by feeling.”

Actually, it’s not a feeling, but a conclusion based on past experiences. In the end, it was my intuition that I believed, so it wasn’t wrong.

“That’s right. It’s just like what Master said.”

The Prophet muttered something.

He is definitely a man.

See he still has no rebuttal. Even in this case, if it is not a man, there is a problem.

“…Devil of Reversal. You certainly have excellent senses. You can sense that something is wrong before it happens to your body, and you know what kind of wind a hasty answer to madness will blow, and you respond hastily. Avoided.”

Look, he is also affirming my intuition. To begin with, the skeleton is too masculine. It may be a distortion caused by the hood of cognitive impairment, but no matter how much I think about it, I only see him as a man in my eyes.

Is this the danger of prejudice? Once you think you’re a man, you can’t imagine the possibility of another gender.

No, I don’t even have to think about it. It would be more rude to call someone the wrong gender.

“But you misunderstood one thing. It’s hard to even call it a misunderstanding… But anyway.”

The Prophet suddenly lowered his hood.

Emerald-colored hair down to the nape of her neck, pearl-white skin, and unusually long ears, all of which possessed a beauty that was different from the norm.

It’s like the stereotype of an elf that I saw for the first time after coming here. And those red lips, high nose and jawline.

It was very feminine.

“I am a woman, not a man.”

“Wow, this is wrong.”

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