This may be a rather trite question, but let us consider it for a moment.
Among the elements that define existence, what is the most important?
If you were to ask this question to someone who attended church, they would answer without the slightest hesitation: the soul.
Because God had forgiven the sins clinging to human souls, mankind could finally be rid of original sin and return to being clean human beings.
But if you asked someone a little more realistic—say, a merchant who supplied grain in bulk to the Prah Territory—he would pretend to ponder it out of consideration for his social reputation, and then quietly confess his true thoughts in the end.
A contract, he would say.
In a merchant’s eyes, in the end, a contract was the most important thing that defined existence.
Because the value of money, the marketability of goods, and even a person’s life were all things that only came into being when society agreed upon them and made a contract.
One silver coin is worth fifty copper coins, and one gold coin is worth two hundred silver coins—who decided that?
Society did. More precisely, those who moved the economy, merchants included, decided it.
Of course, the exchange rates themselves were set by His Majesty the Emperor and the loyal subjects who followed him, but the detailed rates that changed every week were implicitly decided by merchants who carried gold and silver coins around.
Since war broke out in such-and-such place, daily necessities are sold for twice their usual price; since there was a bumper harvest somewhere, grain is bought for half its usual price.
In that sense, in the end, perhaps everything has its existence determined by mutual contracts.
However.
If you asked that question to me, who had watched people surrender their selves to God and fall into fanaticism, and people who considered money the highest value and would sell even their souls to the devil if need be—
Originally, I would have defined it like this.
For beings of the material world, existence is the body.
Because for most people, aside from a special few who can see or feel souls, the body is everything.
Are you happy because you received a gift?
That is not happiness from receiving a gift; it is a chemical reaction caused by hormones that appear in a happy situation fondling your brain.
Are you sad because someone close to you died?
That is not sadness because you can never see that person again; it is tears shed out of fear that, due to social pressure, you might be branded strange if you do not cry.
Of course, you would feel sorrow. But as someone who has died once, I want to tell you that your tears do not reach the dead.
When you die, it is over.
To be more precise, there are lucky bastards like me who get to start again even after dying, but the fact that your past life ends remains the same.
I do have parents, but they are not the head of a knightly family in this life or a noblewoman who powders her face excessively because of her illness.
My true parents are always the ones from before I was born into this world.
My mom and dad, who were Koreans who existed in my life on Earth.
That is a truth that remains unchanged even now.
And that is why my belief that the definition of existence was the body changed.
If the definition of existence is the body, then why, even though my body has changed, do I consider the parents of my previous life my true parents?
The flesh, bones, skin, heart, and organs that make up my body were all inherited from the parents of this world.
Not even a single molecule of mine is connected to Earth, so why do I sometimes feel nostalgia for Earth because of things that happen in this world?
That is because—
“Existence is, in the end, memory.”
—Memory?
“Yeah.”
I answered casually to the “former” demon, Garkul, who was preening his wings with his beak.
“In the end, all beings are subordinate to memory. I’m not religious, so I don’t really believe in things like God forgiving souls.”
—Heh. A human noble, and yet you would deny religion?
“Pretty much.”
—I like that.
Caw.
The crow looked at me with eyes as bright red as they were at odds with the color of his feathers and spoke.
—You have even less faith than I did when I was a demon. Is that because you see this world as a play?
“...You’re saying the same thing as Hwaryeong. Since when have I thought of this world as a play?”
When I turned my head and denied it, the crow, perched on Hwaryeong’s leg as it came kicking toward me, looked up at me.
—Jin Prah, my master.
“...Can you not call me master? It’s seriously cringey.”
—Why is that? When you fought me, did you not charge at me with the ambition of making me your slave?
“You were the one who charged at me, and I was just standing still. And honestly, when I said all that master-and-slave stuff back then, I was just a little pissed off and speaking emotionally.”
—Like when you swung your fist at this beastkin?
“...Yeah. Though because of that, I’m about to die this time.”
When I sighed and agreed with Garkul, the crow twisted his beak and sneered at me.
No, how could he make such a human expression with a bird’s face?
Birds shouldn’t have the muscles to make expressions.
“Anyway, I don’t know why you asked me that question, but as you requested, I tried to answer as honestly as possible. So.”
I pleaded with the crow, who was sneering at me with a serious gaze.
“...Please help me?”
—After putting on all those airs, you are still human after all. How servile you become before death.
“No, I don’t really care about dying, but if people say I got beaten to death by a friend, that’s kind of, you know.”
—What is ‘you know’ supposed to mean?
“It fucking sucks.”
—Ah, I see.
Nod, nod.
At my unfiltered words, the crow nodded with an arrogant expression that said he understood.
The sight of it felt like a doctor examining a mentally ill patient, and I did not like it at all.
How could a mere crow make such an infuriating face?
—Well, it is not as if I used that bastard’s authority, which I hate using, to slow time simply so I could mock you as you died.
“Then?”
—You and I have already formed a contract as master and slave, so I came to help. If the master dies, the slave must die with him.
“I don’t remember signing a slave contract with your name on it.”
—Think of it as the spoils you won from defeating me in the grimoire.
“So you’re saying you’re just going to gloss over it like that and not tell me why you became a crow?”
—Do you not want my help?
“No, sir. I spoke out of turn, Lord Crow.”
—Hmm. Seeing you act as servile as I had so long desired is not quite as pleasant as I expected.
Flap!
The crow beat his wings and took off from Hwaryeong’s leg.
Then he immediately settled down cozily on top of my head, like a bird nesting there.
When the crow’s sharp beak touched my scalp, a curse slipped out before I could stop it.
“Ah, fu—”
—Fu?
“Fu... any food around? My mouth feels lonely.”
—You are on the verge of death, and yet you say your mouth feels lonely?
“I like eating.”
—Hmm. My master truly is an unusual human.
“...”
Fortunately, perhaps because becoming a crow had lowered even his intelligence to the level of a birdbrain, he did not seem to realize I had been about to swear.
Was it all right for a former demon to be fooled so easily by human malice?
“So may I humbly ask, ask about asking, why you have landed on my head?”
—As a slave, I shall dutifully answer that nonsense. It is to use my authority.
“Authority? Ah, that black mist thing?”
—That merely looked that way because my demonic flesh had been turned into an amorphous mass by that bastard.
“Then you’re saying it originally didn’t have the form of black mist?”
—Before I was sealed in the grimoire, back when I had a body, it was like this.
Peck.
The crow’s beak dug in frighteningly deep and struck down into my skull.
“Eek!”
—Do not make such a fuss. You should not even feel pain.
“Aaaaah... You’re right?”
—When I was a demon, I used my authority by stirring through the heads of souls fallen into hell with my fingers.
“Ugh.”
I imagined Garkul’s old form—roughly something like Abiyan, a being with the appearance of a demon-like human or a human-like demon—stirring his finger through the head of a soul wailing in hell.
It was no different from a scene in a cheap B-grade horror movie where a supporting character mouths off and then gets grotesquely murdered.
—Hmm. I was worried it might not work, but perhaps because we formed a contract, it works well, unlike before.
Stir, stir.
Feeling the sensation of my brain being toyed with by a crow, I grimaced.
“...So what exactly is your authority, that it can get us through this situation?”
—The crisis right now is occurring because you cannot dodge this beastkin’s kick, is it not?
“That’s right.”
—Then I will make you dodge it.
“Excuse me?”
—I will have you overcome this predicament with the definition of existence you spoke of—in other words, the power of memory, you bastard of a master.
Immediately after that, I came to know what authority the crow possessed.