Because He Couldn't Swim

There was a reason Yu Seong-un always stuck close to Ji-oh's side.

The second you let your guard down, he starts saying and doing the most absurd things.

If he had simply been a mimic-type monster with a clumsy imitation of humanity, it would have been fine. No matter how he behaved, you would always know he was a monster. But Ji-oh's Portrait was unnervingly skilled at playing human.

And that makes people even more confused.

Your head might insist he was not human, yet your heart remained convinced that he was—and that dissonance was what sent chills down the spine. It was a different flavor of terror from the fear one felt toward ordinary monsters or Children of the Source.

It was pure urban legend material, really.

Yu Seong-un's job was to make sure that Ji-oh could blend in among humans without incident.

"Oops."

Splosh.

Yu Seong-un planted his foot on the soft, yielding floor.

"Feels kind of like jelly."

"It certainly does."

Kang Seo-dam, who had entered the dungeon right behind him, nodded in agreement.

"It's almost like looking at a low-viscosity slime, yet it supports weight remarkably well for something of the sort."

"If you scoop it up with your hand, though, it's just seawater."

Yu Seong-un flicked the water from his fingers and glanced at Ji-oh and Cha Ah-ra, who had entered with them.

"Oh, you're in?"

"Y-yes, yes… yes."

"No need to be so tense. We've got three A-class hunters here. You don't honestly think we can't protect one Cha Ah-ra, do you?"

"Three…"

"Yeah, three."

"Ah… r-right."

Having clearly learned a thing or two about reading the room, Cha Ah-ra quickly played along with Yu Seong-un's words. All the while she kept stealing glances at Ji-oh, who was surveying the dungeon—probably recalling the rule that you must never point out in front of Ji-oh that he is not human.

Well, Cha Ah-ra received the official notice too.

The notice repeatedly advised against questioning Ji-oh's identity. Cha Ah-ra seemed to have decided there was no point in getting on his bad side.

Still…

If his guess was correct, this dungeon was practically home to Giovanni.

"…Ji-oh, you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"It's your first time formally entering a dungeon, so I was a little worried."

"I was a bit nervous, but I'm not shaking nearly as much as I expected."

Platinum-blond Ji-oh pushed his black hood back and offered that signature gentle smile of his.

"The scent of the sea is quite pleasant."

"Come to think of it, you always did like the ocean."

As he said it, Yu Seong-un looked down.

"……"

An entire nation lay submerged far below.

"…Getting all the way down there is going to be a project. Ji-oh, can you swim?"

"To be perfectly honest, I cannot!"

"Why do you sound so proud of that?"

Given that the place was named the Abyssal Kingdom from the start, the hunters who visited were generally ones who could swim. Hunters who couldn't swim were rare to begin with.

"I didn't think of that…"

Yu Seong-un turned to the other two with a troubled expression.

"Cha Ah-ra? Father Kang?"

"Huh? Ah, I can swim, but… I'm only F-class, so…"

"I can manage without difficulty."

"Oh boy."

Yu Seong-un looked back at Ji-oh.

"Then either Father Kang or I will have to help you. That okay?"

"No?"

"Oh…?"

"There are any number of ways to get there without swimming."

"Why are there 'any number' of ways??"

"I learned an excellent technique from the elder of my household."

"……"

Wait just a second.

"…The elder of your household?"

"Yes."

"That—that elder is that guy. You know…"

"I shall treat him with the utmost care."

"Treat him with what??"

Without answering Yu Seong-un's baffled questions, Ji-oh pressed his hand to the floor.

In that instant—

"……"

—KRRRRRRRK!!

"……"

"There. Done."

Accompanied by a tremendous roar, a path opened straight into the heart of the sea.

"We can simply walk now."

"……"

"Shall we?"

Yu Seong-un and the other hunters stared blankly at the tunnel that had appeared in the ocean.

"Uh…"

The long, straw-like hollow even came complete with a thoughtfully constructed staircase. The path stretched quite deep; with a hunter's keen eyesight, they could confirm that it reached all the way to the Abyssal Temple.

Yu Seong-un, who prided himself on being the human who received the greatest affection from Ji-oh, asked,

"How exactly did you do that?"

"Seawater is still water, is it not? Heat it sufficiently and it evaporates."

"So you evaporated it?"

"Yes. Convenient, isn't it?"

"Because you didn't want to swim?"

"It isn't that I don't want to. I can't. This has nothing to do with personal preference."

"So you just… remodeled the dungeon…"

He had altered the very form of the sea because he couldn't swim. Yu Seong-un turned to look at Kang Seo-dam, a Child of the Sun.

"……"

"I cannot do that."

"Yeah, figured."

Please, Ji-oh.

What hunter in the world remodels a dungeon just because they don't want to swim?

The fact that he could remodel a dungeon at all already put him far outside the realm of hunters. At that point there was no reason for him to visit dungeons in the first place. The entire purpose of dungeons—and of hunters visiting them—simply vanished.

It's like having Bi Sa-beol, the richest man in Korea and leader of the Collector Guild, send his part-timers out to collect scrap paper so he can pocket five thousand won for pocket money.

If he was going to do things like this, what was even the point of the "Seo Ji-oh" identity? Did he truly have zero intention of pretending to be human? Was this a warning not to pull any half-baked tricks? Yu Seong-un felt himself sinking into a deep quagmire.

The silver lining is that Father Kang and Cha Ah-ra are both doing their absolute best to look the other way…

Confirming their silent agreement to pretend none of this had ever happened, he turned back to Ji-oh.

"Ji-oh, everyone here is trustworthy, so I'm going to be blunt."

"Please, speak freely."

"This kind of thing is a little much to pass off as within human limits."

"But I am an ordinary human…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. We all know that very well, so don't worry about that part. It's just…"

Yu Seong-un took a deep breath.

"Other people might get scared of you or misunderstand, so I'd prefer you didn't show off your abilities too much in front of anyone outside our group. Does that make sense?"

"I understand. Thank you for looking out for me."

"Right…"

Cha Ah-ra watched with something like pity as Yu Seong-un desperately tried to keep his composure while delivering the lecture. And to be fair, Yu Seong-un himself found his situation rather pathetic.

Here I am, a mere human, giving social skills training to an entity of the Source whose very nature I can't even identify.

Outside the Collector Guild headquarters, "Seo Ji-oh" operated at a lower, more human-level intensity, which made this somewhat manageable—no, even now the pressure was so immense he felt his whole body might burst.

Thank goodness Ji-oh believes himself to be human…

In a way, the plan to separate "Seo Ji-oh" from the "Black Cloak" had succeeded. The situation wasn't bad.

The pressure is definitely lighter than when he's inside the guild building, so yeah—this much is fine.

In a pinch he could always compare him to S-class hunters. At that tier they were practically walking natural disasters. The problem was that Ji-oh wasn't even human to begin with, and that was the part Yu Seong-un had to work on.

"Ordinary hunters can't just casually remodel someone else's dungeon like this."

"I see. That must be inconvenient."

"…Yeah…"

"But you all have me, so there's no need to worry."

And Ji-oh himself was thinking nothing of the sort. Changing the dungeon a little hardly counted as unethical, did it?

No one had died, no one had been injured, and no one had been hurt. Ji-oh's ultimate positive mindset refused to bow before something as trivial as human limitations.

Limits existed to be overcome. Giovanni had conquered his inability to swim with the power of the sun. He considered it a remarkable personal growth.

"Shall we be off?"

If this solidified his concept even further, so much the better.

Ta-da.

Anyway, what was good was good.

Giovanni was dead.

"……"

If anyone asked whether he had been in his right mind after that, the answer was no.

The farewell Iser had been preparing had been a little warmer. In his mind, age would settle into Ji-oh's hands; crow's feet would gather at the corners of his eyes; that back, once as straight as a divine statue, would curve; and that once-firm body would grow endlessly thin.

Ji-oh would die watching countless people give thanks for his life. His breath would gradually thin, those eyelids that had always been so kindly lowered would close, and that heart—still beating, however slowly—would sink into silence…

"…Where was Teacher's body?"

"In your stomach, I would imagine."

"……"

"And in the sea."

None of it had come to pass.

"…How old was Teacher?"

"A little over thirty years after he was born."

"How long is that, really?"

"Humans, if raised in good conditions and properly cared for, can live past a hundred."

"And if they're raised in ordinary conditions without proper care?"

"Unless they suffered continuous abuse, about eighty, I suppose."

"Teacher did not even live half as long as I have."

He had been far too young.

"Only thirty years."

"Yes. Only thirty years."

"I thought it would have been longer than that."

It left him hollow.

"A hundred years, two hundred years… There was simply too much chaos, too much happening, for all of it to have fit inside a mere thirty years…"

Giovanni had spent his entire life saving people.

"Why did no one speak up for him? He truly saved so many lives. He held onto dying breaths and rescued cursed existences. The people Teacher saved… didn't they say thank you at the time? Some of them even wept with joy at his touch."

His sister agreed.

"You're right. Ji-oh was a very kind person. He saved a great many humans and merfolk."

"But when he died, no one stayed by his side."

He had not been someone who should have been allowed to die like that.

"Teacher should have closed his eyes in an older body, lying on a warm bed, surrounded by a great many people. Isn't that how it should have been? He lived so devotedly for others. Someone like that should have been allowed to go more gently, bathed in sunlight…"

"The death you imagined only happens in fairy tales, it seems."

"…It didn't have to be a fairy tale…. What I described was a situation that could have been realized at any time, even outside of fairy tales. It was only… that much. I wasn't asking for a miracle. I didn't wish for a human to live as long as a merfolk, and I didn't try to bring the dead back to life."

How grand a request was that supposed to be?

"Humans die anyway. No matter how good the environment they grow up in, no matter how carefully they're cared for, their lifespans are so short that they die in the blink of an eye. If someone spent that brief life without rest, pouring out blood and sweat, shouldn't they at least be allowed that much of a blessing?"

"And did you receive that blessing?"

"……"

No.

"…No…"

He had respected his teacher—the person named Giovanni.

Ji-oh had been both a priest and a doctor. Iser had learned the virtues of a priest from him; Aria had learned the skills of a physician.

Because they had learned from Ji-oh, both of them had treated humans with genuine excellence as well.

"It wasn't. In the end, it was just…"

But not a single human had known how to be grateful.

"…In the end, they're a race that discards even the kindness of one of their own—Ji-oh's kindness—in a single moment."

"Humans are so fickle. They're different from merfolk in many ways."

Merfolk lived for over a thousand years. Perhaps because they were born for such longevity, merfolk were unflappable in the face of incoming stimuli, not overly sensitive to emotion, and not easily changed.

And precisely because of that, when a merfolk did acquire a stimulus, an emotion, or a change, they carried it for a very long time.

"…Ah…"

Iser already knew that "that something" would be Giovanni.

"Please, why… why—you can't do this… you can't…"

"……"

"You can't do this, Aria…"

That was why he had hoped the man would meet a sweet and gentle death.

"Why do I have to carry this memory for the rest of my life…?"

He had known that every single moment of that short life—the life of the person who resembled sunlight, soft and warm like a thick blanket—would ultimately be something he had to hold.

And so he had been at peace. At the very least, someone as splendid and wonderful as Giovanni was a human worthy of being cherished by merfolk.

"Aria, I ate him."

A merfolk had eaten a human.

"Why? Because I was hungry. Those vulgar humans locked him and me in a narrow tank…! Ji-oh couldn't even die! Giovanni was rotting away in pain and cold, and I was hungry! I ate him!!"

And the Children of the Sun had laughed as they watched.

"They said that in the end a merfolk is still a merfolk no matter how well they imitate humans—just a monster that eats people…!!"

"……"

"…Are we monsters?"

His only sister answered.

"Everyone is a monster."

"……"

"Except for Teacher… everyone was a monster."

"…I see."

Ji-oh had been human.

That much was certain.

"…I miss Teacher…"

"So do I."

For a very long time afterward, Iser could not open his mouth. He felt that if he did, the Giovanni he had swallowed would come pouring out.

He felt as though the entrails he had chewed and swallowed would try to escape, that the eyes would shed tears, that the mouth would scream or hurl curses at the merfolk.

And now that he had finally opened his mouth, what Iser carried—after going around and around—was still Giovanni.

"Sister."

"…Honestly, I think I hate you."

"I don't think I've ever seen you hate anyone before."

"I'm not even sure this emotion is real."

"I'll accept it gladly. Even that is a change Teacher created."

"I'm going to cover the sun with the sea."

Her words were arrogant, yet Iser knew they would soon become reality.

"Once the whole world is covered by the sea, Ji-oh will be able to remain in the ocean forever."

"……"

"And merfolk, after all… are ultimately part of the sea. Just like the pictures of merfolk he always used to draw…"

"……"

"…You know."

Aria was wearing a pure white coat.

"…I don't even know what I want anymore, Iser…"

It had been Giovanni's.

"……"

"……"

A long time passed after that.

A very, very long time…

"Did you have another nightmare?"

"……"

Round black eyes.

"…Priest Cha I-sol."

"I'm not a priest yet."

"I am not human."

"Why not?"

"…I wonder…"

Why had he not been?

"What if I had been human?"

We had a future once.

"…I sometimes indulge in such fantasies."

"You are human right now."

"I am a merfolk. As I told you when I brought you here."

"But you're human?"

"……"

"What's the difference between a human and a merfolk, anyway? I don't really get it."

"That is…"

There were countless differences, yet because today was a day he would meet Teacher, his mouth simply would not open.

"…You have a point."

What difference had it been, exactly?

How large a difference, really?

(To be continued)