“Where are you going?”
Geuru sniffed, inhaling through her nose as she looked up at the man.
Tears welled up, and in her blurred vision, the face of a familiar man came into view.
“*Hic!*”
It was the face of her father, whom she had longed to see all this time.
In an instant, her eyes turned red and her nose stung. Soon, tears fell like pelting rain, and the child’s face became soaked.
“I’m going to find Mephi... *hic*... but it’s raining... *hic*!”
Geuru gulped and wiped her face.
Sheyer bent down to meet her eyes with an unreadable expression.
“If you mean Mephisto, I shall make you a new one.”
“*Sniff!* But if you make a new one, that’s not Mephi... There’s only one Mephi.”
“The appearance and behavior will be the same.”
“Still...”
“Why?”
It was a difficult question.
If someone looked like Dad and acted like Dad, why wouldn’t he be the same person as Dad?
Geuru fidgeted and said uncertainly,
“Just because. There’s only one heart...”
Geuru clutched the hem of her clothes tightly and hung her head low.
She couldn’t raise her face because tears were streaming down so heavily.
Words she couldn’t bring herself to say, not knowing how Sheyer would react, lingered in her mouth.
So please, give back my one and only Dad to Geuru...
Looking down at Geuru sniffling with tears and snot, Sheyer replied as if quite intrigued,
“You say something similar to what Mephisto once said.”
“*Hic*... Mephi?”
Geuru’s eyes widened roundly as tears streamed down.
“He did. Long ago.”
Sheyer gazed into the distance as if recalling old memories, then reached out his hand.
“If you say so, let us go find Mephisto.”
“...?”
Geuru blinked with a blank face.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Geuru hesitated over whether to take Sheyer’s hand, then mumbled abruptly as if spitting it out,
“If Geuru finds Mephi... I’ll chase Mister away from Dad.”
So she had been about to say, “You and I are enemies,” but Sheyer spoke with a truly puzzled expression.
“You? Can you?”
“Y-yes, I can! If I use Jomuljomul in Yorang...!”
“Ah, like this?”
Sheyer grabbed Veilark by the scruff and lifted him up.
The ugly hamster, dangling limply as he was lifted, had a face burning bright red with shame.
Geuru glanced at Veilark and said dejectedly,
“More... more pretty than that...”
Veilark, back in the basket, opened his mouth with an expression as if struck in the head.
‘That kid actually had the aesthetic sense to think I’m ugly?’
While Veilark was reeling from this new revelation, the child obediently took Sheyer’s hand and pulled her bicycle with the other hand.
Then Sheyer lifted the bicycle with his other hand.
As the basket threatened to tip over, Veilark and Lukespher quickly scurried onto Geuru’s shoulders.
Sheyer looked at Geuru’s tiny hand.
“Is this what they call satisfaction?”
“Uh-huh. My heart feels warm, like it’s cooked through, and it feels like a worm is tickling inside my chest.”
Sheyer placed his hand on his own chest. The corners of his mouth rose slightly.
“So it is.”
“Then that’s right. *Sniff!*”
“I see. This is also good.”
He spoke like a scholar in high spirits. Or perhaps like a young boy on his first outing.
Then, just as Jurim had done, he lifted Geuru into his arms and wiped her eyes.
Strangely, the rain seemed to avoid them.
Likewise, people seemed to make a wide circle around them, as though completely unaware of their existence.
Geuru looked around in wonder, then sniffed and spoke in a nasal voice,
“Mister needs to go to kindergarten. There’s so much I don’t know.”
“You mean the educational institution you attend?”
“Uh-huh. You have to learn what you don’t know. The teacher said not knowing isn’t anything to be ashamed of.”
Sheyer nodded his head seriously.
“If I must go, then it is good to go.”
“...!”
Geuru’s face was quite shocked.
Sheyer was the first adult who had ever said he would go to kindergarten willingly.
‘...A good person?’
Even though he stole Dad?
While Geuru was confused, Sheyer opened his mouth.
“The last child I created was very much like you.”
“The last?”
“I mean Mephisto.”
The sublime god and emperor who opened his eyes in the snowfield had created many loyal children.
The children made mountains, split the earth, filled the sky, and filled the water and fire.
In the meantime, various lives were born and perished repeatedly, but they never once stirred any emotion in Sheyer.
To him, everything except the snowfield was merely a clump of dust that would soon perish.
While thinking so and averting his gaze, the negative emotions created by lifeforms took physical form as ‘corruption.’
Corruption defiled the land.
And finally, it threatened even his snowfield.
It was undesirable for a mere clump of dust to threaten his snowfield.
The reason he created his last child was to return the snowfield to its primordial state of rebirth.
Sheyer had specially poured his own power into creating a successor.
He did not give it a name. After all, no life would remain to call him; they would all perish anyway.
But the child peeked at another world, admired it, and named itself.
“Please call me Mephisto, Father.”
Perhaps it had begun from that moment when he first said ‘Father,’ as if embarrassed.
The child, more vulnerable to emotional corruption than any other child, one day plunged a knife into his chest.
“A god who cannot comprehend all things and look after them is merely a calamity.”
The child was crying.
The emperor did not die, but was reduced to one who returned to the primordial snowfield and watched over it silently.
Even so, the world he created continued creaking along.
Until Sheyer’s second child built a tower.
Before he could purify his world, the tower had ended the world tainted by corruption.
Even that, Sheyer watched emotionlessly.
To that extent, he had never placed meaning in anything until now.
Sheyer looked at his left hand.
As his consciousness synchronized with that of a mere clump of dust, the wall firmly surrounding him crumbled.
The affection Jurim began to feel assimilated into him, seeping in gradually like clothes dampening in a drizzle, corrupting him.
Perhaps that was why.
“I merely wished for you not to be in danger.”
“...Dad’s not in danger.”
“But you were emotional. In my world, emotions cloud reason and cause wrong choices; they were dangerous things that threatened my position.”
He spoke as if reflecting on himself.
Now that he thought about it, perhaps he had merely wished to protect his sublime position.
So he had merely wanted to blow away those mere clumps of dust.
Without ever comprehending what thoughts and emotions each of those clumps of dust held.
*
At that time, Mephisto hid his body on one side of the pure white snowfield.
After being captured by Dominic, Mephisto had hastily created a dungeon and hidden inside.
Because finding a white baby bird hidden in the snow on a vast snowfield covered thickly with snow would be extremely difficult.
‘So it’s okay.’
Even while thinking so, he kept seeming to hear Karmilak’s growling cries from somewhere.
Mephisto was still too young and weak to face an SSS-class bloodline.
The baby bird sniffed back tears and snot.
‘How long can I hide?’
The intimidated Mephisto’s shoulders slumped heavily.
What Mephisto feared now was not only Karmilak.
Because terrifying thoughts kept surfacing.
A scene of himself, having become human, holding a sword in his hand in a snowfield exactly like this one, kept flashing through his mind like a flashback inserted by someone.
The baby bird squeezed his eyes shut to avoid remembering as much as possible, but in his mind, he already saw the sword held by a small hand.
Over the transparent blade, which seemed made of ice shards, someone’s blood dripped down drop by drop.
He unconsciously realized whose blood it was.
‘Father.’
This was a memory from when Mephisto aimed his sword at his father.
The moment he realized this, clack, the sword fell onto the snowfield.
Feather-like pure white hair fluttered like snow in the wind bearing a chilling cold.
His eyes grew so hot he couldn’t bear it; the child was crying sorrowfully.
The memory of Mephisto stabbing his father leaked out like flickering flashes. The baby bird embraced his seemingly bursting chest with his wings.
‘Unfilial child.’
Veilark had said that.
Now he finally felt he understood those words he had been unable to understand all this time.