A Saint With Silver Wings

Elisha gave a wry smile.

"Because I'm afraid that, just because I love him, I'll go and do something stupid all over again."

Elisha couldn't bring herself to hate Cedric, the man who had abandoned her. She still loved him — and it was precisely for the sake of that love that she had insisted on possession in the first place.

She knew all too well that she lacked the strength to cut him out of her heart completely, and so she had resolved instead to forget everything and choose dissolution.

The thought of going through it all again — yearning for his affection only to be cast aside, coldly discarded in the end — was something she couldn't bear even to imagine.

She let out a long, soft breath.

"Turns out Hoe-Bing-Hwan isn't for just anyone, huh. I'm a wicked woman down to the bone, apparently — if I can't have it my way, I'd rather not do it at all."

At her sulking tone, Sohee arched an eyebrow. Then Elisha burst out laughing, and Sohee caught the joke and let out a small chuckle of her own.

"Then I'd like to go right now, if that's all right?"

"Of course."

Before the Door inside the Wicheon Happiness Center, a Direct Reaper stood beside Elisha, who had chosen dissolution, checking her name with a blank expression.

"Elisha Brown."

Any guest who chose to forgo Hoe-Bing-Hwan and opt straight for dissolution had to pass back through the Direct Reaper's scrutiny. Elisha, standing at Sohee's side, took a step forward and answered.

"Yes."

As her answer ended, the reaper's eyes sharpened and bored into her. He seemed to verify something for a long moment, then gave a nod.

"Elisha Brown. You have chosen dissolution. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"Step through the Door."

At his words, Elisha drew in one deep breath and let it out. Then she turned around to look at Sohee.

Her final request of Sohee had been to see her off on her last journey. Of everyone she had come to know here — the only person with whom she had built any connection, however small — it had been Sohee.

"So Sohee. You know what I'm about to say. Don't you?"

"…Yes."

"Don't trust them carelessly. Keep enough distance that the reaper can't get his hands on you. That's an order."

"I'll remember."

Having once nearly come to serious harm at the hands of a dissolving character, Moon Jar did not look kindly on Sohee escorting departing guests. But watching a client safely on their way, and seeing the matter through to the very end after counseling them through their struggles, was the duty of a motel manager — and so Moon Jar had no choice but to heap warning upon warning.

Sohee, for her part, had learned something from her moment of carelessness in the past as well.

Always stand behind the Direct Reaper.

It was the minimal distance needed both to watch a character depart in peace and to protect herself at the same time.

Elisha stood before Sohee and let her gaze drop. She stared at her hand for a moment, then slipped the ring from her fourth finger — the engagement ring from Cedric, set with a blue diamond.

"Take it. For the room."

Sohee smiled and waved both hands.

"I don't take payment from guests who didn't go through with Hoe-Bing-Hwan. And you've already paid plenty."

"That's that, and this is mine to give."

"…Elisha."

"Take it. And please make sure it gets to that cook of yours — Kuku. Tell him I paid for all the fuss I made."

This much should do, right?

She took Sohee's hand and pressed the blue diamond ring into her palm.

It was hard to fathom what resolve it must have taken for a woman who had once given up everything for love to let go of this engagement ring. Sohee stared quietly at the ring in her hand, then lifted her head.

Elisha's eyes had grown moist and glistening.

"Thank you — for helping me leave without looking back."

And yet she didn't look the least bit sad. Having set down every last burden, she seemed to come to a decision and stepped right up to the Door. Sohee simply watched her.

No words of comfort, no farewell, not so much as a gesture of regret — Sohee only quietly clasped her hands together, the way one pays quiet respects at the funeral of a distant acquaintance seen rarely across the years, silently wishing her peace and well-being in her heart.

Elisha stepped into the Door with a lightness of step. As if it had only been waiting, a cool breeze came streaming out of the Door, and her long, beautiful silver hair billowed brilliantly behind her back.

A saint with wings of silver. Her ending took the shape of the most flawless saint imaginable from the very novel she had lived in. Sohee bowed her head quietly toward the Door she had passed through.

At the front desk, Sohee took out the Hoe-Bing-Hwan ledger and opened it. Just beneath the record of Dang Jaeik's proud, successful Hoe-Bing-Hwan, she wrote an entry that weighed a little heavier.

She hesitated a moment, then wrote in the space beside it: 'Blue diamond ring.' Then she shut the ledger with a soft thump and gazed blankly at the ring.

"Great Elder Moon Jar."

"What."

"What in the world is love?"

"What nonsense are you spouting. Now."

"…Love."

After closing her eyes and turning the word over and over — love, love, love — Sohee leaned back comfortably in her chair.

"I'm leaving you because I love you too much. Because I don't trust myself not to love you anymore. Because I know so well that if I were to lose you a second time, I'd fall apart completely…."

She had always thought the idea of breaking up because you love someone was utter nonsense. But now Sohee found herself thinking that, maybe, just maybe, she could begin to understand it a little.

"Elisha is… remarkable, I think."

"And what are you fixated on now. Tsk. Tsk."

Moon Jar seemed to have grown somewhat used by now to her personality — curious about everything, wanting to know everything.

"…To love someone so much you'd give up everything for them."

Sohee sank into thought for a while. Then she began combing through her own heart, turning every corner of it over.

Was there even a seed of a feeling like that anywhere inside her?

Something that could burn so hot, blaze so fiercely, and then crumble into ash… something she could hold in her hand and yet want to grip tighter, to never let go of for even a single moment… such a wondrous emotion, if it existed.

…

When she arrived at the conclusion that she probably didn't have it, Sohee somehow felt a pang of disappointment. The thought that she might never once, in her whole life, get to love that fiercely left her a little despondent. Wasn't that just unfair?

Then again — couldn't it be lurking somewhere, in some unseen corner of a hidden nook in her heart? She examined herself intently, as though pressing a magnifying glass up to her own heart.

As Sohee's eyebrows kept twitching this way and that, Moon Jar let out an exasperated laugh.

"As if a green little sprout like you could ever know."

At that, Sohee's eyes flashed. Which meant —

"Great Elder, have you ever been in love like that? I'm not joking — someone you'd shatter your own jar and ascend to heaven itself just to protect?"

"…"

"There was someone, wasn't there?"

Sohee leaned in close beside him. Not with the bright, sparkling eyes of a middle schooler asking her student-teacher to 'tell me about your first love,' but with the deeply furrowed brow of a graduate student who'd just hit upon a research topic called 'What Is Love?'

"Even if I told you, you wouldn't. Understand."

"I might, though!"

"You watched Elisha Brown madly, desperately in love right before your very eyes, and love still didn't make sense to you. So you think my explaining it in words would help. At all?"

"…"

Her enthusiasm fizzled out in real time, hiss by hiss. At Moon Jar's words, she turned her gaze inward with utter sincerity.

So Sohee. Am I really a lost cause when it comes to understanding love?

Just as she was throwing herself headlong into this bout of ruthless self-examination, Moon Jar, apparently unable to bear it, spoke first.

"Hmph. There have been a few moments. When I wanted to shatter. This jar."

Sohee stared at him in surprise — this confession from Moon Jar, who she'd thought wouldn't give her a single word.

"About five times. Recently."

"R-recently?"

Five times, no less? Was love really the kind of thing that could start that easily, end that easily, and throw away its very life that easily?

Sohee's eyes went round as saucers, and she yanked her chair right up beside Moon Jar.

"Then how am I supposed to know?"

"Every time Sohee spouts nonsense, I could simply shatter the jar right then and there —"

"Oh, come ON! Great Elder!"

Feeling thoroughly played, Sohee huffed, spun on her heel, and marched out. Moon Jar laughed for a good long while, clearly delighted.

"Ha, hahaha. Ha. Ha."

Only after confirming she was completely out of earshot did Moon Jar stop his stiff, mechanical laughter. Alone at the front desk, he murmured to himself.

"If I didn't have the fun of teasing So Sohee, I don't know what I'd do."

While Sohee was still grumbling to herself, urgent reports were pouring in one after another at the Hoe-Bing-Hwan Hotel — the busiest place in all of Wicheon, where characters came and went in endless streams.

"Say that again?"

Behind his glasses, the hotel's General Manager Chunrok's eyes glinted sharply. The genial expression he usually wore for guests had vanished without a trace, replaced by an icy stare that left the Vice Manager and secretaries unable to make so much as a sound.

"…An official directive has come down from Wicheon's higher authorities,"

"It has."

"And they say the reincarnated protagonist we sent back… is in danger of being pushed aside."

"…"

Chunrok simply stared at the chief secretary delivering the report. He understood the words, but he couldn't bring himself to accept them. The protagonist, in danger of being displaced? What kind of absurd nonsense was that?

Into the frozen atmosphere, Vice Manager Dongi seemed to steel himself and spoke up.

"The reincarnated protagonist we returned is Enoch Hamington, the protagonist mage of The Mage Is Too Good at Farming. A man who died unjustly after serving his country with devotion — and upon reincarnating, he spent this life pretending to have no magical talent while pouring all his magic into agriculture: advancing farming methods, developing pesticides, and —"

"Just the conclusion."

Vice Manager Dongi swallowed hard and continued.