Thud. Thud. Thud.
The man walks. He walks slowly, a sword lodged in his chest.
He walks toward the terrified Englishmen and natives.
In the silence, the Spanish soldiers move aside on their own. No, they follow beside him as if entranced, or even sink to their knees.
One Spanish soldier, collapsing to his knees, says,
“L-Lord… Lord… forgive me… F-forgive me…!”
When the man’s indifferent, detached gaze brushes over him, the soldier shudders as if electrocuted and collapses.
“Lord, I have sinned greatly against You. Please forgive these sinners, these ignorant sinners…!”
“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us… And lead us not into temptation…”
The Spaniards wail, struggling even to grasp the hem of his clothes. When a finger, just regenerated after being severed, brushes one man’s face, he weeps like a baby.
“Lord, Lord…! Please, please!”
“Uaaaah…!”
But the man merely casts the occasional glance at them and says nothing more. He simply advances quietly, one step at a time, toward the Englishmen.
The Spaniards try not to obstruct his path, yet gather around him desperately, like children crying out for their mother.
But wherever there are believers, there are always unbelievers among them.
“A-are, are, are you all insane? An Indio mongrel is the L-L-Lord? The Lord would side with the English? Fuck(Mierda), there’s no way!”
One unbeliever staggers toward the man. At that sudden, spite-filled shout, everyone’s eyes turn cold, but the one who stops them just as they are about to beat the unbeliever down is…
“Stop.”
…the man himself.
“Kkeuuaaaaaaagh!”
At the man’s command, everyone flinches. In that moment, the unbeliever finally draws the sword at his waist and swings it at him.
At the same time, the man starts the chainsaw in his hand and thrusts its blade straight into the unbeliever’s neck.
Tutututung!
The carbide teeth of the chainsaw grind against the Toledo steel breastplate, sending sparks flying in all directions.
“…”
“…”
“…”
It lasts only an instant.
The unbeliever’s flesh and blood turn to pulp, and he soon collapses.
Thud.
The man looks at the fallen corpse, then slowly pulls the sword lodged in his chest free. He drives it into the dirt, then looks around.
“…Are you afraid of me?”
At the man’s words, everyone’s bodies twitch. Not only the Spaniards gathered nearby, but the Englishmen, and even the natives who do not believe in Christianity.
Only then do they realize.
Just now, “everyone” present understood what the man had said.
To the Spaniards, it seemed he had whispered in Spanish; to the Englishmen, that he had spoken softly in English; to the Algonquians, that he had addressed them gently in Algonquian.
“M-my God…”
The last faint possibility that the miracle before their eyes is false vanishes. And so the surviving Spaniards cling all the more fiercely, all the more desperately, to the One who has manifested before them.
“Stop… doing this.”
And at that single sentence, they scatter again in all directions, as if light were driving back darkness. Even so, they sob and plead with him not to abandon them.
After watching them for a long while, the man approaches Eleanor first. Eleanor, who has been kneeling, sees his chest through the torn gaps in his clothes.
A chest that has become white and clean, without a single wound.
“Ah, ah… I dare beg forgiveness for my discourtesy until now…”
“You have never been discourteous to me, Eleanor.”
Ah.
His voice reaches me.
Eleanor bursts into tears as she looks down at the ground, and the man wipes her tears away, helps her to her feet, and says,
“Those people…”
“D-do you mean the Spaniards?”
“…Please support them. Gather the injured, wash them clean, and bring them to the farm shed. I will take care of the rest.”
“B-but, just now they tried to kill you…”
“Eleanor, I told you, didn’t I?”
“…”
“If one must search for a reason for a person to save another person, is that not too sad?”
“…Ah, aaah.”
“Please save them, Eleanor. Just as I saved you.”
“I-I will help too!”
“Me too!”
While Eleanor holds the man’s hand and weeps, the others rise first and advance toward the Spaniards. They willingly take the arms and shoulders of the enemies with whom they had been killing one another until moments ago and help them up.
And then, one more person approaches the man’s side on his knees.
“Mr. Huet?”
“Yes, it is I. A sinful lawyer before you…”
“Calm yourself.”
“How, how could I possibly calm myself now?”
“…”
“…”
The lawyer Thomas Huet shuts his mouth, trembling all over as he rises. Then he walks to the spot where the excavator had been belching smoke until moments ago. The man follows him as well.
As Huet walks, he carefully picks up the sword that had been driven into the ground, the sword that had pierced the man’s heart.
Then he goes to the soldier still trapped between the wire mesh and the excavator and asks,
“What is your name?”
It is a question so trivial as to be almost meaningless, but at that question, the soldier cries.
“…R-Rómulo, of Seville…”
At those words, Huet nods solemnly and raises the sword from a moment ago.
“…This holy sword belonged to Rómulo of Seville.”
Then he removes the scabbard from the soldier’s waist, sheaths the sword, and offers it to the man.
“And… now it is yours.”
“…What are you doing?”
“This place is now holy ground, and this sword is a holy sword. One among us may become a saint, and this sacred tale will be recounted without end.”
Huet kneels again, his eyes shining.
“Therefore, I will see to it that every single thing of this moment is not forgotten. That sword, and the name of the man who possessed it.”
“…”
At Huet’s words, filled with emotion, the man merely wipes the eyes of the dying Rómulo.
“Do not cry.”
“My, my sins…”
“Sins will be judged by the Lord in heaven. Are you afraid of the Lord?”
“…Ah!”
“Do not be afraid.”
The man holds Rómulo’s hand.
“I will stay by your side.”
“…”
“…”
Before long, Rómulo sheds tears and closes his eyes.
He never opens them again.
And yet, he looks utterly at peace.
Lastly…
“I, I, I did not know it was like this…”
Manteo, head bowed, slowly walks over and collapses to his knees. The other natives who followed him also do not dare raise their heads in fear.
“I repent…! Yes! I was only baptized; I did not truly believe in You! I thought that even if we did not believe in the Great Spirit the Europeans speak of, we had lived well generation after generation since the days of our ancestors. But…”
Bang!
Striking the ground, Manteo weeps.
“The Englishmen were right in everything they said. Tell me. Are You truly, truly the great God they serve? Or…”
“Shh.”
“…”
“I am not God. I am merely another created being.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Only then do all those kneeling raise their heads and look at the man’s face.
A man who is nothing.
Like Melchizedek of Genesis, a mysterious figure with no father, no mother, and whose identity no one knows.
Nemo.
His name will not be forgotten. His traces will not disappear. The flame of faith kindled by him will never fade, nor be extinguished.
“…Eleanor?”
“Ah… Yes, yes?”
“Have all the patients been moved?”
“Yes, Lord Nemo!”
“Then let us go.”
He is the one farthest from the forces of death, the noblest one upon the earth, the one who tends enemies like kin and cherishes wanderers like friends.
He will be immortal.
Everyone present believed it without a doubt.
***
…
…
…
I killed a person for the first time in my life…
Hooooo.
Let’s calm down.
I washed the blood from my hands clean and laundered my ragged clothes in cold water. Bullet holes, slashes from swords—it was a total mess. Would the clothes be repaired after midnight too?
Then I gripped the sink and stared into the mirror for a while.
More precisely, at my chest where my heart was.
“…It’s really clean.”
The sensation of the blade piercing exactly through that spot is still vivid. I cannot forget the feeling of all the blood draining out of my body, the place where I was impaled burning with pain.
My internal organs squirming and touching the blade, and the cold blade disturbed like that then moving again through hot blood and flesh inside me, cutting it apart…
Gulp.
I swallow again.
“Fuck… I really lived through that.”
—“O you who shall be immortal across the ages, now a new world calls to you.”
—“Immortal one, will you become a pioneer of the New World amid infinite blessings? Or will you become a slave to fate?”
The words from the opening flicker before my eyes again. For some reason, it kept going on and on about immortality, so I thought something seemed suspicious…
“…But I never imagined it literally meant this.”
It was “immortality” in the literal sense. Not a metaphor, not an implication—just actual immortality.
I do not die.
Even if my heart is pierced, even if my arm is cut off, even if I am shot.
I have only just realized that fact, and on top of that, I even experienced my first killing. What reason would someone born in twenty-first-century South Korea have to kill a person? In a country where even executions have not been carried out for over twenty years.
A while ago, I was not in my right mind.
Adrenaline was coursing through my whole body, and fear and my sense of reality were half-paralyzed as I drifted this way and that. I blurted out whatever words came to mind and acted however occurred to me… uh…
What did I do again?
First, uh, some soldier said something to me, so I killed him. And then the soldier who had stabbed me with a sword was crying with this incredibly anguished look, so I comforted him a little… right…
After that, I treated the Spaniards. Though by treatment, I mean simple things like setting bones, applying splints, putting disinfecting alcohol around the wounds, and giving them antibiotics.
Literally first aid.
But when I was wrapping bandages, what did that man who was supposedly the Spanish governor or whatever say?
…He probably cried, right?
…
…
…
—“Ah! The Lord’s love, embracing even His enemies! How truly great! O, our Savior…!”
—“I-I shall convert from Catholicism at once! I, Vicente, have only now opened my eyes belatedly like the Apostle Paul, so please accept my repentance! Ah, Lord! Lord!”
…What did I answer?
—“I did not attack you because you are Catholic. On our side, there were even natives who do not believe in Christianity, weren’t there? Religion is not the issue.”
—“Th-then… why on earth…?”
—“If I had done nothing, the powerless Englishmen and natives would have died. And please stay still. Your wound will open.”
So the governor’s reaction was…
—“Aaaah! Aaah! Aaaaaaaaah!”
…It did not come out as human speech.
Honestly, I’m not sure whether that was a cheer he let out while half in ecstasy, or a groan because it hurt when I wrapped the bandage.
The others were roughly the same.
If they were normal patients, especially people who had never experienced modern medicine at all, they might have demanded to know what bizarre thing I was doing. But they just wept and gulped down the filthy bitter medicine like honey.
And while Eleanor and I tended to the patients together, the others would not listen at all no matter how much I told them to go rest. Everyone kept praying outside the farm shed and singing hymns until their throats were about to burst.
Even the natives, not knowing what was going on, performed something like a traditional ritual, and yet the people who called themselves Christians said nothing at all when they saw it. This is the scene of racial harmony…
…
What is this?
So what I’ve done so far is…
1. Come back from the dead.
2. Kill an unbeliever.
3. Comfort the enemy who stabbed me.
4. Treat the soldiers who attacked me.
…
…
…
Now that I think about it, that is how it turned out.
…Uh, uhhh?
I feel cold sweat pouring down my spine as if someone opened a faucet.
How is everyone going to think of me now?
What happens to me now?
What… am I?
This is a map of Roanoke and its surroundings! It was also created by author Count of Water!