A certain rocky path where the wind blew.
That path led north.
No, rather than a path,
it was a narrow crevice running along the rock.
Below, the darkness was deep,
and the wind scraped through the cracks in the stone.
When a pebble rolled down from beneath Raen’s foot,
the sound only vanished after a long while.
Raen spoke first.
“Maho.”
Maho did not answer.
She was walking while looking straight ahead.
Her steps were not slow, yet there was no sense of haste in them.
Raen spoke once more.
“Back there, why did you act like that?”
Maho clicked her tongue.
“Tch. Noisy.”
Raen continued without stopping.
“They’re good people. They even gave us food.”
Maho shrugged once.
“That was me treating them kindly enough.”
Raen narrowed her eyes.
“To Rangnan, too.”
Raen cut herself off briefly,
then added, more sharply,
“All you did was threaten him.”
Maho stopped walking and half-turned her head.
Her expression was close to disgust.
“Ah, enough, enough.”
Maho waved a hand once.
With that single motion,
the air around them seemed to grow slightly hot before quickly settling.
“Just tell me where Roan is.”
Raen jutted out her lips.
“Hmph.”
Raen nudged a pebble away with the tip of her foot.
Then, as if speaking reluctantly, she spat out,
“Well… it doesn’t seem like he’s moving right now.”
Raen’s gaze went far,
beyond the rocky path.
“Is he resting?”
Maho said curtly,
“Good.”
When Raen raised her head,
Maho added,
“It’ll be troublesome if he gets too far away.”
Those words seemed directed at Roan,
and at the same time, at something else.
Maho’s steps grew a little faster.
The pebbles on the rocky path were crushed beneath her feet with a grinding sound.
Raen caught up one beat later.
“But, Maho.”
“What now?”
Maho did not look back.
Her answer was blunt,
but her steps slowed ever so slightly to match Raen’s.
Raen continued.
“Aren’t you and Roan friends?”
Maho let out a breath.
“That’s right. So what?”
Raen did not hesitate.
“Then why do you keep saying you’ll… kill him?”
At that moment,
Maho’s foot stopped.
It was not only her foot that stopped upon the rocky path.
The surrounding air grew warm once, then quickly cooled.
It was an extremely subtle change, but Raen noticed.
Maho was silent for a while.
A pebble fell into the crevice between the rocks.
Even until that sound faded into the distance,
Maho did not open her mouth.
Then Maho said in a low voice,
“…That guy.”
The words broke off abruptly.
Only after swallowing another breath did Maho continue.
“He’s no different from my brother.”
As soon as those words ended,
Maho looked ahead as if avoiding Raen’s gaze.
As though the words she had spoken with her own mouth made even herself uncomfortable.
“I’ve known him since we were kids.”
Maho’s voice was still rough,
but it was not only rough.
Amid the sounds striking and bouncing off the rocky path,
something heavy flowed mixed within.
“He was softhearted by nature.”
Maho laughed shortly.
It was not a sneer.
Just a laugh that came out like a bitter breath.
“He couldn’t say harsh things to others. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t even kill an ant.”
Even after hearing that, Raen could not immediately refute it.
Because the name “Demon of the Moon”
fit so poorly with the description she had just heard.
Maho continued.
This time, shorter and firmer.
“Even now, he’s living in pain.”
Maho’s gaze turned to the side.
She looked at Raen.
Raen’s body stiffened ever so slightly.
Whenever Maho looked at Raen, it was with eyes that seemed to be checking something.
Maho said lowly,
“And yet.”
“He keeps taking people’s lives. And… he’s adding to that suffering.”
Maho’s fingertips
brushed once over a meaningless surface of stone.
The rock there grew lukewarm for a moment, then cooled again.
Without taking her eyes off Raen, Maho added quietly,
“Rather than leaving him to live in that kind of pain…”
The end of her words broke off.
Maho’s jaw tightened by the smallest degree.
As if putting the next words into her mouth itself was unpleasant.
“…with my own hands.”
Raen looked up at Maho with an expression that did not understand.
Her brows rose slightly,
and her lips remained half parted.
Maho endured that gaze for a moment.
Then, turning her eyes forward,
she continued as if grumbling.
“Well.”
A sound like a sigh.
“For now… I’ll watch and see whether Rangnan can really do it.”
Raen’s eyes widened a little more.
Maho added,
“He said he’d keep him captured. Instead of killing him.”
Those words did not sound as if they were meant to persuade Raen,
nor as if she were making excuses for herself.
It was simply a voice confirming once more
a deal already made.
Maho looked at Raen again.
This time, only very briefly.
Before the words could continue any further,
Maho began walking again.
“Don’t worry about useless things. Let’s hurry.”
Maho and Raen set out on the path once more.
For a while, Raen could not say anything.
The words “with my own hands”
followed her longer than the sound of footsteps on the rocky path.
The wind blew harder.
The sound echoing from the crevice split loudly once, then lowered again.
As Maho walked, she did not put her hands in her pockets.
Clenching and unclenching her fists,
she arranged her fingers as if practicing how to “draw something back.”
For brief moments, lukewarm heat leaked from her fingertips,
then cooled as though she were scolding herself.
Looking down into the darkness below,
Raen felt she finally understood where the words “with my own hands” were directed.
So she asked no more.
Swallowing her question, she merely matched her footsteps to Maho’s.
As long as Maho’s hands did not stop, the conversation would not be over, either.
—
Inside a certain cave enclosed by rock.
Roan did not move.
It was not because he could not move.
It was because if he moved,
that sensation felt as though it would return.
The wall was cold, and the air was damp.
From afar came the sound of dripping water.
Once.
And after a short while.
Once more.
Between those sounds, Roan’s breath was shallow and ragged.
Faint tear tracks remained on his cheeks.
The dried marks lay thin upon his skin, impossible even for him to hide.
Roan looked down at his hands.
His palms, his fingers.
There was no blood, no wound.
And yet his hands were heavy.
As if something invisible still clung to them.
The sensation of having gripped someone’s neck rose in his mind.
It had been warm.
The pulse had beaten faster than he had expected.
And—
from within it, something had flowed into him.
A fragment of the moon.
A current that was cool yet undeniably present.
The moment it traveled up his fingertips, passed through his arm, and seeped into the inside of his chest—
the other person collapsed.
The feeling of breath simply being cut off.
As if the world had quietly erased one person.
Roan bit his lip.
He did not know the name.
They had not exchanged words.
In the final moment—
bewilderment and resignation had remained in those eyes.
More horrifying was what came after.
What flowed in was not only the “power of the fragment.”
For a very brief instant,
yet deeply—
all of that person’s memories brushed past him.
An unfamiliar sky.
An unfamiliar voice.
The wind of a place he had never been.
And calling out to someone,
one short name.
Roan could not even hold on to it.
He had no right to hold on to it.
But merely brushing past was enough.
His guilt grew greater not from the fact that he had “killed,”
but from the traces of a life lived entering his body and remaining there.
Roan closed his eyes.
“…I’m sorry.”
The words struck the wall and scattered softly.
There was no answer.
Instead, silence settled.
Within that silence, Roan swallowed his breath.
He had already gripped far too many necks.
And he would have to continue doing so.
That fact pressed down on his chest like breath itself.
The more he breathed, the deeper the sin seemed to seep in.
Roan curled his fingers into a fist.
His nails dug into his flesh.
It was because he thought that if it hurt, he might regain a little of himself.
It was then.
Within the silence,
an extremely low voice overlapped in his ears.
‘It’s all right.’
Roan’s breath stopped.
No one had spoken.
And yet, clearly—
it had come from inside him.
That voice continued like a whisper.
‘After all… you’re going to make it again.’
‘Into the world you want.’
Roan shook his head.
Over the tear tracks,
he felt something hot well up again.
“Stop…”
But the voice did not disappear.
Softly, sweetly, as if it had been by his side since long ago.
‘Seonhwa, too,’
‘will come back.’
The moment that name emerged,
Roan’s chest bent sharply once.
He could not draw in breath.
It felt as though his throat were blocked.
Roan endured for a long while—
and at last, in a very low voice, almost like a prayer, he said,
“…Seonhwa.”
It took time for that one name to leave his mouth.
Because each time he called that name,
everything he had lost seemed to come back to life all at once.
Roan leaned his forehead against the wall.
The cold dug into his skin,
but without that cold, he felt as though he would melt away.
“…Your world.”
The end of his words trembled.
“I’ll restore it.”
That vow was not comfort.
Nor was it an incantation to cover his guilt.
It was simply—
words meant to hold himself together.
Roan opened his eyes.
The trembling that had remained within his pupils
settled, just a little.
In its place, something else took root.
Something firmer, and colder.
Do not move.
Right now, he must not move.
Telling himself that,
he swallowed the warmth left in his fingertips and the traces of another person left inside his body.
And over the things he had swallowed,
he covered them once more with a thin layer of resolve.