The Carnation Children
"Hey, there's an initiation ceremony. Let's watch."
"Should we take a look while we're here?"
"I was getting cold anyway. Perfect timing."
"Which church is putting this on?"
"Looks like the Church of the Sun…."
"If it's the Sun Church, it's worth seeing."
No matter which religion's initiation it was, outsiders were never turned away from watching. The more people who joined the ranks of the initiates, the higher the chance that a god might actually appear.
"Thanks to that, we managed to snag seats ourselves."
"There's more people than I expected."
"You can't catch a god's eye with just one or two people milling around."
Of course, there were exceptions like Ji-oh.
Not every god is like you, though.
Even if Ji-oh's true nature had yet to be pinned down with absolute certainty, it was already clear that he was the vessel of some form of divinity. New factors had only muddied the waters further; there was no reason to deny the fact itself.
The Cha family had already moved over to the staff section for the ceremony. After sweeping a glance over them, Yu Seong-un gestured Ji-oh toward a table set a comfortable distance from the murmuring crowd.
"Shall we sit here?"
"That would be fine."
Whether being too close to ordinary humans felt cluttered or simply burdensome, Ji-oh accepted the offered seat with what almost looked like relief. Conversation became much easier as a result.
…Most of them are civilians, not hunters, so they won't overhear us from here.
Yu Seong-un wet his throat with the water on the table and opened his mouth.
"So you can handle divinity?"
"If by divinity you mean a god's authority…?"
"Something like that. Or, how should I put it… more like a certificate."
"Ah. A certificate, then."
"…'Then'?"
Yu Seong-un looked puzzled for a second, then added,
"Calling it that isn't strange, I suppose. You could think of it as a god's own certificate."
Divinity was nothing like the holy power people usually spoke of.
Holy power was the force a human chosen by a god could wield with that god's help. Divinity, on the other hand, was the godhood itself—the very rank of a single deity—and the powers that branched from it. They were creatures of entirely different tiers.
"……."
As if something had just occurred to him, Ji-oh said,
"If you mean a certificate, then yes. I received one."
"…You received it?"
"I was his only believer, you see."
"……."
Yu Seong-un understood by pure instinct.
…This is connected to the golden-haired, blue-eyed Ji-oh I saw at Cheonggyecheon back then.
He had already guessed that whenever Ji-oh's personality shifted dramatically, his appearance shifted with it. The image of Ji-oh dipping his feet into the water and dyeing himself platinum-blond like autumn leaves changing color was still vivid in his mind.
But because of how strongly he was tied to water, I assumed it would be a sea god, or a river or pond deity….
For the sun to appear out of nowhere was genuinely interesting. Bi Sa-beol would probably have felt the same if he had been here. What story lay behind it?
"Receiving a god's certificate… that's impressive. It doesn't usually happen."
He made the praise sound casual, but as far as Yu Seong-un knew, it never happened at all. No god ever handed their own rank over to a mere human.
Why would any god deliberately do something that only makes both sides miserable?
Yet Ji-oh's voice remained flat and businesslike.
"He said he no longer wished to be alone."
"…The previous Sun God?"
"As his only believer I spent time with him—sharing meals, talking… After long enough, he seemed to grow afraid of being alone the way he once had been."
"……."
"And then he gave me this certificate. He said he wanted to share what I saw and heard, and that it was half a gift. Though even if we call it a certificate, it doesn't seem to have any physical form."
Yu Seong-un chewed on his lip.
Should I call the previous Sun God too weak for this… or call Ji-oh too remarkable…?
Probably the latter.
Gods were unique existences; they did not normally feel loneliness just because they stood alone. Somewhere in the course of their exchange, Ji-oh must have taught the god how to feel that emotion.
That made Ji-oh the remarkable one.
Besides, if he had been an ordinary human, the god would never have dumped such a burden on him in the first place.
Following the same logic, the more accurate view was that Ji-oh had already been close enough in rank to a god that the Sun God recognized him as an equal, felt lonely, and gifted him the godhood.
"……."
Which only made the identity of the being called Ji-oh even harder to pin down.
If a sun god had judged him an equal, that meant he was simply another kind of god. At the very least he was an existence of high enough rank to contain divinity.
How was he supposed to define that?
Just what the hell are you?
The deeper he dug, the more unknown stories surfaced. He desperately wished someone would just summarize the whole mess into one neat answer.
The preliminary briefing moved quickly.
"It didn't take as long as I thought."
"Maybe the schedule is tight."
"Could be. They still need time to train the apprentice priests."
A simple hierarchy. The definition of a priest. How such a priest ought to behave, what virtues were required….
After a light explanation of those who served a god, talk turned to the initiation itself. Most of it concerned the education and benefits the apprentices would receive.
"Once you have finished speaking with your families, the apprentice priests will follow me. Those without guardians may come to me ahead of time."
A priest with deep golden hair spoke, and several children shuffled hesitantly toward him. A thick-featured priest who looked as though he had stepped out of a fantasy film took charge of the children. The Western facial lines and curling hair were striking.
Western faces were not rare in present-day Korea, yet something about him being a priest made the atmosphere different. Ji-oh's gaze, which had been studying the head priest, drifted down to the children beneath him.
"Those children don't seem to have any family with them."
"Well… family may be the most common form of human organization, but these days there are far more people who never end up in that kind of blood group."
Yu Seong-un nodded as if he already knew what Ji-oh was wondering about.
Ji-oh's knowledge of humans was fuzzy in places; he probably believed "humans form family units," yet exceptions always existed.
"You notice most of those kids look especially unclean, right?"
"I do."
"They're probably carnation children who awakened as priests."
"What is a carnation child?"
"Orphans who actively go looking for guardians, I guess you could say."
On the outskirts of the city lived the 4th-Class Citizens—the poor—and a fair number of deliberately abandoned children among them. There was even a saying that the place was a trash can for dumping humans.
"Among them, carnation children are the ones who stand on the street advertising themselves so someone will take them in."
"They advertise themselves?"
"Yeah. A child who wants someone to take them home carries a flower. Kids who are a little better off hold a real carnation. Otherwise they fold one out of tissue or paper… as long as the form is there, the meaning gets across."
The so-called "carnation children" were a custom born right after the Great Cataclysm, when orphans had suddenly flooded the world.
"The Great Cataclysm happened in spring. Not long after, Parents' Day arrived—the day children used to give carnations to their parents. So the kids made carnations to honor the parents who had died, only to realize they had no one left to give them to."
Adults who found the sight heartbreaking began taking in the children one by one, each of them clutching a paper carnation. Clever orphans who saw this started folding carnations they had never intended to make and standing on the street with them. That was the beginning of the carnation children.
"I don't know the details myself. It was a generation or two before me…."
"I see."
"Anyway, from that origin, orphans who want to be adopted still prepare a carnation the same way—folding one from tissue or colored paper, picking a flower growing by the roadside, or scraping together money for a single real carnation… It means 'Please take me with you.'"
"It doesn't sound like they go through proper adoption procedures. Isn't there a risk of being abandoned again?"
"Of course there is. It's one of the social problems that even shows up in elementary school textbooks. Right after the custom first appeared, so many kids were cast off again that it caused a huge uproar for a while. There's no reason it would be any better now."
No one seriously planned to adopt a carnation child.
"The carnation kids themselves know it too. Right after the Great Cataclysm someone might have taken them in out of pity, intending to treat them like family. These days it's closer to… free labor recruitment."
"……."
Why did every visit to this homeland of his bring such shocking news?
The world really has become a frightening place.
Blink and someone might steal your nose right off your face—literally.
"But those children could simply be ordinary orphans rather than carnation children, couldn't they?"
"Even if they awaken as priests, the temples usually only take responsibility for carnation children."
"Why is that?"
"Because they're good labor?"
"……."
Where had children's rights gone?
"…Don't look at me like that. Being silently judged by you is terrifying. Look—4th-Class Citizens have been left to rot without any real relief policies, so ordinary companies won't even hire them. Back-alley production work, maybe, but nothing better."
"Is formal employment that difficult for 4th-Class Citizens?"
"From the start they carry the ugly label of 'pests who barged into the city and planted their butts there even though they can't support themselves.' Not every single one is like that, but a lot of them also have no will to work."
"……."
"Even if you pay them a fair wage their efficiency is low, and the public eye is hostile, so unless you enjoy getting cursed out by customers you don't hire them. The reputation of 4th-Class Citizens is that bad—simply because they receive the city's protection without putting in any effort of their own."
Companies that employed 4th-Class Citizens drew dirty looks from ordinary citizens. Why give opportunities to parasites who loafed around and tried to carve out a share of the city's benefits without doing any work?
"In the same vein, temples don't automatically take in a child from the slums just because they awakened as a priest. The odds of receiving a god's choice are low, and they don't have the leisure to keep looking after a poor kid while absorbing all the bad publicity… that kind of calculation."
"Very thorough accounting."
"Carnation children, unlike other 4th-Class Citizens, have already proven their will to work through the carnation, and they're still young enough that the public gaze isn't entirely cold. Unless they've already received a god's choice, an orphan who's only awakened and shows up in a place like this is very likely a carnation child."
"……."
Ji-oh made a decision.
I'll just watch the initiation and then bolt straight back into the picture frame.
This harsh world—it was enough to make him cry and too frightening to live in. Sympathy stirred, yet he was merely an adult who had grown old; he had no intention of single-handedly overturning such a social atmosphere.
Wishing the world would grow a little warmer, Ji-oh looked around. He had only meant to scatter his thoughts, yet his heart settled far faster than expected.
"……."
"What? Something resonating because you're the same Sun God line?"
"I was thinking that it feels warm, and that makes me glad."
For reasons he could not name, he felt welcomed.
"Especially that statue…."
"……."
"……?"
He was certain his eyes had met those of the goddess-shaped statue.
Ji-oh blinked twice.
What is this, some ghost story?
His judgment was swift.
Nothing happened.
He decided to treat it as a trick of the eyes.
"The statue is magnificent."
"There was definitely some kind of blank just now, but I'll pretend I didn't notice. As a mere human I have no desire to get tangled in the private affairs of gods."
"Thank you."
Yu Seong-un did not fully grasp Ji-oh's discomfort, yet from the standpoint of an ordinary human he clenched his teeth and deliberately avoided the miracle that had just appeared before his eyes. He was, after all, a guild member of the Collector.
Yu Seong-un had seen it clearly as well—the gaze that had poured down openly the moment Ji-oh praised the temple atmosphere and the beauty of the statue. He had never felt a god's attention so directly before.
Please, make these miracles happen when I'm not around.
He had no wish to get involved even a little.
"It looks like our dear Cha family is still talking. How about we go insert ourselves?"
"That sounds good."
And so the two of them pretended with every fiber of their bodies not to notice the god's gaze—yet the priest who served her could not do the same.
A priest was staring at the pair who had been about to head toward the Cha family, eyes wide as saucers.
We're screwed.
The thought rose unbidden in Yu Seong-un's mind.
The deep-blond priest was clearly one of the high-ranking clerics overseeing the entire event. Anyone who could appear in a place like this had to be a priest who served at the bishop's side.
In other words, he was someone who could not possibly miss where the Sun God's gaze was directed.
"……."
"……."
A strange tension hung in the air.
"……."
As though he had realized something, the blond priest gave a faint bow of the head. The strong impression of his face made the motion look especially sacred.
Yu Seong-un understood the meaning of that bow.
He noticed.
He had sensed that Ji-oh possessed divinity.
"Ji-oh."
"Yes, I'm listening."
"Should we leave right now?"
"If that would actually fix anything, then yes."
"…Probably not, right?"
Yu Seong-un suddenly wanted to clock out and go home.
(To be continued)