Chapter 57

"Oh, looks like they're holding an induction ceremony."

"Should we watch for a bit before we go?"

"I was cold anyway, so this works out."

"What church is hosting the event?"

"I think it's the Sun Cult..."

"If it's the Sun Cult, it's worth watching."

No matter which religion was holding an induction ceremony, they did not stop spectators even if they were not involved.

The more people took part in the induction ceremony, the higher the chance that a god would come.

"Thanks to that, we got seats too."

"There are more people than I expected."

"It's hard to draw a god's gaze with only one or two people gathered."

Though there might be cases like Jio, of course.

'Not every god is like you.'

Even though Jio's identity had yet to be confirmed, it was certain now that he was the bearer of some divinity.

More factors had been added and made things confusing, but there was no reason to deny the fact itself.

The Cha family had already moved to the seats for those involved in the event.

After looking them over, Yu Seongun offered Jio a seat.

It was a table at a suitable distance from the murmuring crowd.

"Shall we sit here?"

"Sounds good."

Whether being too close to humans was too chaotic or too burdensome, Jio went to the seat Yu Seongun offered as if he was glad for it and sat down.

Thanks to that, it was easier to talk.

'... Most of them are civilians, not Hunters, so they probably won't hear our conversation from here.'

Yu Seongun wet his throat with the water on the table and opened his mouth.

"Can you handle divinity?"

"By divinity, do you mean a god's authority?"

"You could say it's similar. Or, how should I put it... you could also call it something like a license."

"Ah, so it is a license after all."

"After all...?"

He was puzzled for a moment, but Yu Seongun soon added more.

"It's not strange to put it that way. You could see it as a god's license."

Divinity was different from what people commonly called holy power.

The power a human chosen by a god wielded with that god's help was called holy power, while divinity referred to the divine status a god possessed itself, as well as the authorities derived from it.

They were on completely different levels.

"..."

Jio, who seemed to be recalling something, spoke.

"If you mean the license, then yes, I received it."

"... You received it?"

"I was their only believer."

"..."

Yu Seongun instinctively realized it.

'... Is this a story connected to the blond, blue-eyed Jio I saw before at Cheonggyecheon?'

He had guessed that when Jio's personality changed in an especially pronounced way, his appearance changed too.

The image of Jio dyed platinum blond, like a fallen leaf that had dipped into water and changed color, still came vividly to mind.

'But because he was so strongly connected to water, I thought he was probably a god of the sea, or rivers, or ponds, something like that...'

For the sun to appear out of nowhere was rather interesting.

Even if Bi Sabeol had been here, he would probably have felt something similar.

What kind of story lay behind it?

"Receiving a god's license is impressive. It's not something that usually happens."

He sounded casually impressed, but as far as Yu Seongun knew, it was something that simply never happened.

No god gave their own status to a mere human.

'Why would they pointlessly do something that would make both god and human suffer?'

But Jio's voice remained blunt and businesslike.

"They said they did not want to be alone anymore."

"... The Sun God before you?"

"As their only believer, I interacted with them, ate meals with them, talked with them... and as the time we spent together grew longer, they seemed to become afraid of being alone the way they had been before."

"..."

"Then they gave me this license. They said they wanted to share what I saw and heard, and that it was half a gift. Though even if I call it a license, it does not seem to be something with a physical form."

Yu Seongun worked his lips.

'Should I say the previous Sun God was too weak, or that Jio is incredible...'

It was probably the latter.

Normally, a god was a unique being and did not feel loneliness simply because they were alone, so Jio had likely made that god feel such emotions through the process of interacting with them.

That meant Jio was indeed incredible.

'Besides, if he were an ordinary human, they wouldn't have pushed that burden onto him in the first place.'

Thinking along the same lines, it would be more accurate to say that because Jio had been a being close to a god's status from the beginning, the Sun God had recognized him as an equal, felt loneliness, and even given him divine status as a gift.

"..."

Though that would make it even harder to understand what Jio was.

If the Sun God had judged him to be an equal, did that not simply mean he was another kind of god?

At minimum, he was a being of high enough status to contain divinity.

How was he supposed to define that?

'What the hell are you?'

The more he dug, the more unknown stories came up, so he wished someone would please organize it all into one answer.

* * *

The preliminary briefing proceeded quickly.

"It isn't taking as long as I thought."

"Perhaps the schedule is tight."

"It could be. They need time to educate the prospective priests."

Basic ranks.

The definition of a priest.

How such priests should act, and what virtues they needed.

After a light explanation of those who served gods, the talk continued on to matters related to the induction ceremony.

Most of it concerned the education and benefits the prospective priests would receive.

"After all of you have spoken with your families, the prospective priests will follow me and move to the next location. Prospective priests without guardians may come to me in advance."

When the dark blond priest spoke, several children timidly approached him.

The bold-featured priest, the sort who might appear in a fantasy film, took charge of the children.

His distinctly Western facial lines and curly hair left an impression.

In Korea now, Western features like that were easy to find, but perhaps because he was a priest, his atmosphere was different.

Jio's gaze, which had been examining the presiding priest, reached the children under him.

"It seems those children did not have family come with them."

"Well... family is the most universal form of human organization, but in this era, there are more people who don't belong to those kinds of blood-based groups."

Yu Seongun nodded as if he knew what Jio was wondering about.

Jio, whose knowledge of humans was somewhat vague, might know that "humans form family communities," but there were always exceptions.

"You can see that most of those children are noticeably less clean, right?"

"I can."

"They're probably carnation children who Awakened as priests."

"What is a carnation child?"

"I suppose you could call them orphans who actively search for guardians."

On the outskirts of the city were the poor, who were Grade 4 citizens, and there were also quite a few children who had been deliberately abandoned.

It was to the point that the place was called a trash can for throwing away people.

"Among them, carnation children are children who advertise themselves on the streets to find guardians who will take them in."

"They advertise themselves?"

"Yes. A child who wants someone to take them in holds a flower. A child whose circumstances are a little better holds a real carnation. Otherwise, they fold a flower out of tissue or paper... As long as it looks the part, the meaning gets across."

The so-called "carnation children" were a culture created immediately after the Great Catastrophe, when many orphans were being created.

"The Great Catastrophe happened in spring, and after that, there was a day called Parents' Day... a day when children gave carnations to their parents. So they made carnations to honor their deceased parents, but when it came down to it, they had no one to give them to."

Adults who felt pity for that situation began taking in children holding colored-paper carnations, one by one.

The clever orphans who saw that folded carnations they had never intended to make and went out into the streets holding them, and that was the beginning of the "carnation children."

"Honestly, I don't know that much either. It happened about one or two generations before my time..."

"I see."

"In any case, starting from there, even now, among orphans, children who want to be adopted prepare carnations that way. Whether they fold carnations out of tissue or colored paper, pick flowers blooming on the street, or work hard to get money and buy one carnation... it means, 'Please take me in.'"

"It does not seem like they go through a proper adoption procedure, so is there no risk of the adoption being dissolved again?"

"Why wouldn't there be? It's one of the social problems that even appears in elementary school textbooks. They say that right after the culture of carnation children first appeared, there were many children whose adoptions were dissolved that way, so there was an uproar for a while. There's no reason things would be any better now."

No one seriously intended to adopt a carnation child.

"The carnation children themselves don't, either. Right after the Great Catastrophe, people may have adopted them out of pity and tried to treat them like family, but now it's just... hiring free workers? That's closer to how it feels."

"..."

He did not know why he heard such shocking news every time he came to this damn hometown.

'The world has become very frightening.'

If he was not careful, someone might cut off his nose while his eyes were wide open.

Physically.

"But could those children not be ordinary orphans rather than carnation children?"

"Even if they Awaken as priests, temples usually take responsibility only for carnation children."

"Why is that?"

"Because they're good labor?"

"..."

Where had children's human rights gone?

"... Don't look at me like that. It's scary when you condemn me with your gaze. To begin with, Grade 4 citizens who have been abandoned without any real poverty relief policies don't get hired easily by ordinary businesses. Unless it's production labor in some back alley, maybe."

"Is it hard for Grade 4 citizens to get formal jobs?"

"To begin with, Grade 4 citizens have been stamped with the bad label of 'pests who came blindly into the city without even having the ability to support themselves and planted themselves there.' Not all of them are like that, but they usually don't have the will to work either."

"..."

"Even if you pay them properly, their efficiency is low, and citizens view them badly too, so unless a business wants customers to curse them out, no one will take them in. Grade 4 citizens have that bad of a reputation. It's because they're seen as receiving the city's protection without making any proper effort."

Companies that hired Grade 4 citizens received bad looks from the citizens.

They asked why anyone would give opportunities to leeches who lazed around doing nothing like bedbugs while trying to share in the city's interests.

"By the same logic, just because a child from the slums manifests as a priest doesn't usually mean a temple will take them in. Their chances of being chosen by a god are low, and temples don't have the capacity to diligently take care of slum children while taking on public disapproval... That's the idea."

"The calculations are very clear."

"Unlike other Grade 4 citizens, carnation children have their willingness to work confirmed through the 'carnation,' and since they're still young, citizens don't view them entirely badly. Unless they've already been chosen by a god, if a mere Awakened orphan is at a place like this, there's a high chance they're a carnation child."

"..."

Jio made up his mind.

'I should just watch the induction ceremony and run back into my frame.'

What a harsh world.

It was too tear-jerking and frightening to live in.

It was not that he felt no pity, but Jio was simply an adult who had only grown older, not someone ready to resolve by himself to overturn such a social mood.

Wishing the world would become a little warmer, Jio looked around.

His intention was to distract himself, but his heart became calm sooner than expected.

"..."

"Why? Since you're in the same Sun God line, is something resonating?"

"I was thinking that it is warm, so it feels nice."

For some reason, he felt welcomed.

"Especially that divine statue..."

"..."

"...?"

He was certain his eyes had met those of the statue that bore the form of a goddess.

Jio blinked about twice.

'What is this, a ghost story?'

His judgment was quick.

'Nothing happened.'

He decided to write it off as seeing things.

"The statue is impressive."

"I feel like there was a pause just now, but I'll let it pass, because I don't want to get mixed up in the affairs of gods in the body of a mere human."

"Thank you."

He had not understood Jio's discomfort, but from the standpoint of a mere human, Yu Seongun gritted his teeth and dodged the miracle that had come down right in front of him.

He too, in the end, was a member of Collector.

Yu Seongun had clearly seen it too.

The gaze that had openly poured down when Jio praised the atmosphere of the temple and the beauty of the statue.

Yu Seongun had never felt such a direct divine gaze.

'Please cause miracles like this when I'm not around.'

He did not want to get involved in the slightest.

"Our dear Cha family seems to be talking too, so why don't we join them?"

"Sounds good."

And so the two of them pretended not to notice the god's gaze with every fiber of their bodies, but the priest who served her could not do the same.

There was a priest looking wide-eyed at the two as they tried to head toward the Cha family.

'We're screwed.'

Yu Seongun thought that without meaning to.

The dark blond priest clearly seemed to be a high-ranking priest presiding over this event.

If he was important enough to appear at a place like this, he was surely one of the priests who served close to a bishop.

In other words, he was someone who could not possibly fail to know where the Sun God's gaze was directed.

"..."

"..."

A strange tension drifted through the air.

"..."

With a face that seemed to have realized something, the blond priest gave a faint bow of his head.

Perhaps because his features were so strong, the movement looked especially holy.

Yu Seongun realized what that bow meant.

'He figured it out.'

It seemed he had realized that Jio had divinity.

"Jio."

"Yes, go ahead. I'm listening."

"Should we go back even now?"

"If this is the sort of problem that can be fixed by doing that."

"Probably not...?"

Yu Seongun wanted to clock out.