My steps were heavy.
My body should have been lighter, having ascended to a higher realm.
And yet, my running feet felt so heavy.
Perhaps it was because the emotions weighing upon my heart were just as heavy, making even my footsteps feel leaden.
I ran.
In my heart, I wanted to smash everything apart and barrel through, but even I, crazy as I am, couldn't manage that.
So I just ran.
I was a bit worried about Moyong Huia, whom I'd left behind, but it couldn't be helped.
People around me looked at me with eyes wide in surprise.
Was my expression really that strange?
I didn't know.
Right now, I couldn't think of anything at all.
A place packed with people.
A site prepared to treat the wounded, and today as always, the physicians belonging to the Divine Dragon Hall moved without a moment's rest.
I passed them and moved my steps.
Walking just a little further, the one I sought came into view.
"Haa…."
Steadying my ragged breathing, I examined the one lying down.
She wasn't even lying on a proper bed. Those had long since been taken by the seriously wounded.
Since she had no grave injuries, she was simply lying on some unnamed cloth spread on the ground.
I approached carefully.
The moment I tried to take a step, she began to rise.
Slowly raising herself up as if tired, she soon swept her hair back with one hand.
She was radiant.
Even this chaotic space, even the noisy din around us—
merely by her presence, it all became meaningless.
Should I say she glowed?
She possessed that kind of power.
It had been the same in my previous life.
She shone so brightly that someone like me couldn't dare approach her.
Would now be any different?
It probably wouldn't be different even now.
It was just that I had changed, becoming someone who didn't let that bother me.
If you asked whether that was for the better.
I still didn't know.
"Haa…."
I hadn't even run that far; I couldn't understand why I was so out of breath.
Even though I'd attained a body that wouldn't tire from running for days on end.
Strangely, my breathing was rough.
Tak.
Taking one more step.
Perhaps having heard my footsteps even amid the bustling noise, her gaze turned this way.
Our eyes met.
Meeting those large pupils, the thoughts I'd been struggling to recall grew hazy.
"..."
"..."
Without either of us uttering a single word, we simply looked at each other.
What was I supposed to say?
Even as I moved my steps, I agonized thousands of times. I turned over and over what words would be most natural, what words would be easiest to speak aloud.
But no words actually came out.
Here I'd come, only to hesitate like a fool.
"...Did you run here?"
In the end, since I couldn't speak first, she spoke to me first.
"No, it's not like that. I was just training and wondered if you might be awake, so I came to check."
What a pathetic display of pride.
Crazy bastard.
What need was there for pride after coming all this way? This damned personality of mine would probably torment me until the day I died.
At least, the fortunate thing was that she smiled upon hearing my words.
Anyone could see it was a ridiculous excuse.
If I was going to be found out anyway, I should have just been honest.
I couldn't even understand myself why I couldn't do that.
"How is your body?"
Calming my wildly beating heart, I approached.
"I'm fine."
Hearing her answer, I knelt on one knee.
"...If anything's wrong, tell me quickly. The physicians are busy, so you need to say something in advance."
"I'm really fine."
"Then that's a relief."
Hearing my words, she looked at me and asked.
"Are you alright, Gu Gongja?"
"I'm fi—"
As I tried to answer, my thoughts suddenly focused on how she'd addressed me.
Not Gu Gongja-nim, but Gu Gongja.
It was merely a one-syllable difference, but the distance that single word created felt immense.
Had she seen my eyes waver?
The woman smiled bitterly, as if reacting to it.
"...Shall we step outside?"
The words spilled out naturally. It should have been the same voice.
Was it my imagination that it lacked inflection and felt slightly more mature?
"Where to?"
"Somewhere we can talk."
As she spoke, the woman rose to her feet.
I could have simply raised a qi barrier, but since she seemed to wish for it, I followed without a word.
We went outside and entered a quiet forest.
A day had passed since the raid, the dark shroud had lifted, and a clear sky met my eyes.
"The weather is nice."
"Yeah."
"It feels like it's been a long time since I looked at the sky."
"Really?"
"Yes. I haven't had the time to appreciate such things."
The woman, who had been gazing intently at the sky, turned her eyes toward me.
"You and I both... we didn't have time for that, did we?"
"..."
She was right.
I'd never had time to look at the sky and appreciate it.
Where would one find the time for such things while wandering through the Hell Realm?
That was precisely why I couldn't understand the Demonic Sword Queen, who had blankly stared at the moon.
Now...
I could faintly understand. What the Demonic Sword Queen had been looking at in the moon back then.
Perhaps thanks to my own subdued emotions.
Only then did her face come more clearly into view.
The outer corners of her eyes drooped slightly more than usual.
The face that always seemed to hold a bright smile had vanished, replaced by a calm air.
It was a look different from the Wi Seol-a I had come to know in this life—more familiar, and yet sadder.
Feeling that, I asked.
"Since when..."
"Wait a moment."
Just as I was about to ask what I wanted to ask.
She cut me off and blocked my words.
I looked at her doubtfully, wondering what she was doing.
"I have something to say first..."
"What is it?"
I wondered what she was going to say.
Was she going to hurl curses she couldn't before?
If so, I could take it.
A few curses were nothing... as long as she wasn't drawing a sword, that much was fine.
The moment I thought that.
"I'm sorry..."
She offered me an apology.
"What?"
"I'm truly sorry..."
It was an unexpected statement.
The very fact that she was apologizing to me.
"What are you suddenly apologizing for?"
"...I'm sorry..."
"Why are you doing this?"
Seeing her eyes tremble as if she were about to cry.
I didn't know what to do.
Why was she suddenly trying to cry?
"Hey, why are you—"
"It took me too long to learn of the things you did for me, Gu Gongja."
"...!"
"...I'm sorry. Even if it's late... I'm truly sorry."
My heart dropped with a thud.
It felt as if a long dagger had flown into my heavily crushed chest.
'How?'
My thoughts spun madly at her words.
How did she know?
No, what does she know?
How far, how far does her knowledge extend?
"...What do you mean? Don't cry, calm down first."
Was she talking about what happened in the 'Demonic Realm'?
No, that's something no one but me would remember.
Moreover, it was something I wished no one else remembered.
If not that, then perhaps what happened during the war?
Whatever it was, I wished she knew nothing.
"What are you talking about? I... don't really understand."
"...I'm sorry for making things hard for you."
"No, I told you to stop apologizing."
"..."
At my words, she looked at me plaintively.
What meaning lay within that gaze?
My head throbbed.
How much did she really know?
'Could she even know that?'
It couldn't be.
It mustn't be.
She mustn't know.
That I had become a demonic human for her.
I wished with all my heart that she didn't know.
"Stop apologizing... I don't want to hear that from you."
"..."
It wasn't as if I had wanted to hear such things.
I had thought someone had to do it.
I had simply thought I was the unlucky one who got caught up in it.
I had agonized over it, regretting to the point of death, wondering why the hell I had to be the one to do it.
But in the end, I thought it was fine.
Thinking that the one before me might have been a little more at ease because of it.
That was enough.
"...It's all in the past."
"..."
The woman flinched at my words.
It was all in the past.
Something that never happened.
Something that should never have happened.
"From now on, it can be made so that it never was."
"..."
The more I spoke, the sadder her expression grew.
Why?
Why was she making such a face?
I couldn't understand.
I didn't know what she knew, but I wished for that too to become something that never happened.
That was what my current life was for.
"Gu Gongja..."
"Hmm?"
"Are you happy now?"
"...All of a sudden?"
"Yes."
I couldn't understand the intent behind her question.
Asking so out of the blue if I was happy.
'Happiness.'
I asked myself, but it was difficult to answer readily.
"I don't think I'm particularly happy yet."
Honestly, I didn't even really know what happiness meant.
I'd never had the time to contemplate it peacefully, neither in my previous life nor in this one.
It was a world where nothing was over.
For me to ponder such things.
After all that had accumulated was resolved.
When it was time to empty my suffocated heart and slowly look around me.
Wasn't that a question I could only contemplate then?
"What about you? How about you?"
"Me?"
Hearing my question, the woman held a smile.
"I'm happy... at least for now."
Her smiling face was so beautiful it felt as if it could shake the core I'd steeled with a thud!
But I thought that smile seemed somewhat forced.
As I observed that smile.
"I have something to ask."
Now I wanted to get to the main point.
There were many things I wanted to hear.
Perhaps she understood my intent; she straightened her expression.
Seeing that, I asked.
"...Since when?"
The meaning of this question was literal.
Since when had it been?
Since she had become the Divine Sword of her previous life rather than the present Wi Seol-a.
I didn't think it had been from the moment we first met.
The girl who had handed me a potato back then had clearly possessed eyes that knew nothing.
"I want to know. Since when it was you."
"..."
Hearing the question, Wi Seol-a quietly closed her eyes for a moment.
She seemed to be organizing her thoughts.
A few seconds passed, and Wi Seol-a opened her eyes again.
And she spoke to me.
"It was probably around a few days after you returned to the present, Gu Gongja."
"...A few days?"
Just a few days?
There was barely any difference. Perhaps that was why.
I could somewhat understand the oddities Wi Seol-a had shown until now.
The moments when she had exuded an inexplicable atmosphere and left me bewildered came to mind one by one, as if I were fitting together puzzle pieces.
'How on earth?'
So did that mean Wi Seol-a was a regressor like me too?
'Then in Sacheon as well...'
Breaking through the formation that surrounded the secret pavilion of Geumcheon Yeonga in Sacheon.
And the unknown physical abilities I'd seen—were they all....
"It's different."
"...Hmm?"
While I was gradually organizing things in my head.
Wi Seol-a abruptly expressed a negation.
Had she read my mind?
"What do you mean, different?"
"I... am in a different situation than you, Gu Gongja."
"How so?"
As if needing to straighten out my thoughts, Wi Seol-a continued.
"Unlike you, who completely went back against the flow of time and fully assimilated with your current body... I am merely parasitizing this child."
"Parasitizing?"
"The owner of this body is still this child. I'm merely borrowing it."
In other words.
The present life's Wi Seol-a was still there.
And the soul of the previous life's Divine Sword was attached to her, much like Sir Noya in my body.
"That's..."
What was the difference?
If a soul went back against the past and entered its original body.
Wasn't that ultimately regression too?
Precisely speaking it was different, but I thought the big picture was the same.
'Wait.'
Then another thought suddenly occurred to me.
Wi Seol-a seemed to know what had happened to herself.
I didn't know what method had been used for her to end up that way.
But it seemed as though she had come here by exerting her own power.
Which meant.
"...Was it you who sent me back?"
The reason I had been able to return to the past through regression.
Could it have been the Divine Sword's power?
At my question, Wi Seol-a widened her already large eyes as if surprised.
But soon made an expression that seemed pitiful.
"No... I couldn't do that."
'So it wasn't her after all.'
I had wondered if I could learn the secret of my regression. But it seemed Wi Seol-a wasn't the one.
Should I consider that a relief?
As I was trying to think so, Wi Seol-a continued.
"If I could... I wanted to do so even if it meant pouring out everything I had... but I wasn't a vessel capable of bearing that much karma. Sending me to this place in this state was the limit."
The Divine Sword was unquestionably the strongest under heaven of that era.
The only one who had defeated the Heavenly Demon who single-handedly killed the Three Lords; it couldn't be helped.
But if even such a Divine Sword couldn't do it.
'Then just who was it?'
The World Tree had said it wasn't the one who did it.
What little I knew was that the World Tree had a precedent of regressing Yeonilcheon itself.
Which meant such a thing was possible.
Which in turn meant that only a being as powerful as the World Tree, called the master of the world, could regress a single human.
'So then. Who the hell?'
I still didn't know.
I knew that this world wanted something from me now.
How could I not know? It was plain to see from how things were progressing.
The situation was already shitty enough, and that just pissed me off even more.
The one thing I could call a relief.
Was that I had been able to see the person before me at least one more time.
Just as I was about to set this aside to think about later.
"Do you wish to know...?"
I had to freeze at the Divine Sword's words.
"...What?"
"The one who turned back your time... do you wish to know who it was?"
"You... you know who turned back my time?"
"I know..."
My eyes widened at her words.
I wondered how Wi Seol-a could know that.
But if she knew, I wanted her to tell me.
"If you wish to know, I can tell you."
"Of course, then tell me—"
"However... you may regret hearing it."
Just as I was about to tell her to speak immediately.
I had to frown at Wi Seol-a's warning.
I might regret it?
Checking my expression, Wi Seol-a slowly approached me and spoke.
"Even so... will you hear it?"
"..."
Those words made me hesitate, absurdly so.
That I might regret hearing it.
Just what was entangled with my regression that would make me regret it?
On one hand, those words sounded somewhat frightening.
But stepping over that, it didn't take long to decide my answer.
"I still have to hear it."
It wasn't as if I had regretted things only once or twice until now.
Running away because I was afraid of that was something I was already sick and tired of.
I had to keep moving forward.
"I knew Gu Gongja would say that."
Hearing my answer, Wi Seol-a wore an expression that seemed to say she'd expected as much.
"I will tell you."
Just as I was waiting for Wi Seol-a's words.
Whiiish...
A wind blew from behind.
It was a spring breeze.
"The one who turned back your time... was not me."
As if riding the wind that shook her hair, she began her tale.
The third spring I had faced since my regression.
On this day, I finally.
"The Heavenly Demon."
Learned of the being who had sent me back.
"It was her."