Chapter 55
The road was a little quieter than usual because it was the weekend.
Kim Yang was standing on the sidewalk beside it, waiting for the others.
An idol concert.
As an SNS influencer, it was something she definitely wanted to go to, so this was a great chance.
After checking her makeup on her phone to see how it looked, she took a selfie and posted it.
[First concert viewing. So excited.]
The post was just a short caption and an expressionless selfie, but the response was explosive.
Kim Yang stared at it and felt pleased.
For someone who had spent her whole life in the closed-off place called Shinseondowon, SNS gave her a sense of freedom beyond anything she had imagined, like discovering the sea for the first time.
“Ahem, excuse me?”
“…….”
While waiting to see when Kim Juseon would arrive, a man quietly approached her.
Judging by the guitar slung over his back, he seemed to be in a band.
“We’re doing a guerrilla performance today. Would you maybe come check it out?”
Kim Yang shook her head.
A transparent pickup line.
It was the kind of thing she often ran into at clubs where people went dancing.
“Ahem, isn’t that a no?”
“Hah.”
A short sigh.
“I have a boyfriend.”
After she coolly said that, the man scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.
“Ah, a-ah. I see.”
“Yeah. He’ll be here soon.”
“S-sorry.”
After bowing and leaving with a regretful look toward his group, the man went away. Judging from the flyer, they really were doing a guerrilla performance.
‘When is he coming?’
But then she suddenly grew curious.
‘Did he rent a car?’
He’d said the buses to get there would be packed, so they should use something other than the bus.
‘Or a taxi?’
But it was a bit far, and that stingy boss didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d take a taxi.
With a vague sense of unease, Kim Yang scanned the road and worried about how Kim Juseon would arrive.
“Hey, Kim Yang!”
“Wooooooow! So fast! So fast, boss!”
A familiar voice came from the sidewalk, not the road.
When she snapped her head around, there was Kim Juseon riding a bicycle, with Lenea crammed into the fruit basket.
And beside him was Maria riding an electric kickboard.
“…….”
No matter how you looked at it, this was really not okay.
Kim Yang had a sudden urge to ditch them and head straight for the guerrilla concert, but she barely held herself back.
Even as Kim Yang’s expression gradually hardened at their utterly unimaginable entrance,
the people themselves were smiling proudly in front of her.
“See? I told you I could beat an electric kickboard too. How many minutes has it been?”
“The map on my phone said it would take an hour, but we got here in thirty minutes! That’s super fast, boss!”
“This is really fun!”
“Hoo.”
After taking a calm breath, Kim Yang asked as best she could,
“Wh-what?”
“What do you mean? We’re going to the concert.”
“O-on this? R-riding this?”
“Then what are we supposed to take? Taxis are expensive, rentals are expensive, and buses are crowded.”
“…….”
It wasn’t even that far away, so she’d wondered why they were preparing from early morning.
So that was why.
Lenea tapped the basket she’d been stuffed into and asked,
“W-what is this? T-this is illegal.”
“It’s fine. We’re elves. They just think of it as weird behavior and ignore us.”
“…….”
As long as there was a tree, elves would at least lie down under it.
It was the third floor, where there was a meme that cats and elves would have gone extinct ages ago if they hadn’t been cute.
People around them tended to let their odd behavior slide.
“Stingy bastard.”
“No, I had no choice but to do it this way.”
The wronged Kim Juseon began explaining.
“Originally, I was going to rent two bicycles. You and I would ride, and the two of them would ride on the back.”
“B-but?”
“But this old lady says that even after living for 1,902 years, she still can’t ride a bicycle. Maria’s the same.”
“Maybe she just can’t ride it!”
Lenea reached out and pinched Kim Juseon’s face. Juseon ignored her and kept talking.
“So we had no choice but to rent an electric kickboard too.”
“J-just. R-rent one more. We can r-ride together.”
“She can’t. The old lady can’t drive at all. She keeps falling over.”
“What else was I supposed to do! I’ve spent my whole life doing nothing but running!”
“Anyway, after some practice Maria was able to ride the electric kickboard. As for Lenea, even if I said I’d carry her, I still couldn’t bring a bicycle or kickboard for you to ride, right?”
“…….”
“So this is how it ended up.”
Kim Yang wanted to slap the boss’s smug face, as if he’d solved some enormous mathematical problem.
Noticing the mood, Kim Juseon hurriedly added,
“But now you get to choose! Ride on the back of the bicycle, or take the electric kickboard.”
“……Haa.”
Kim Yang glanced at the electric kickboard Maria was riding, then sat on the bicycle’s rear seat without hesitation and wrapped her arms around Juseon’s waist.
“G-get going.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
“Ring-ring! Go, boss!”
* * *
“Wow, the line is ridiculously long.”
We arrived at today’s venue after a grueling three-hour ride.
This dome-shaped venue had 20,000 seats, and could also hold at least 5,000 people standing.
I knew Prism’s status was high, but seeing it like this made me marvel all over again.
Even though they’d given us VIP tickets, we still had to line up to get in, so we moved too.
“Let’s take a car on the way back. My butt hurts.”
Lenea grumbled, rubbing her backside with both hands.
At first she’d been laughing and saying it was fun, but after being crammed into that basket for three hours, she must have been suffering.
“My stomach’s a little……”
Maria, who had been riding the electric kickboard, apparently wasn’t used to this world’s transportation either and got motion sickness.
The only one who looked relatively fine was Kim Yang.
“Kim Yang, were you okay?”
“I, I was fine.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty good at driving.”
But she wasn’t going to ride back on a bicycle.
“Don’t worry. They’ll pick us up from here.”
Weren’t we here thanks to Seohajin’s connections? Couldn’t we hitch a ride home in a van or something?
Or at least pay for a taxi…….
She pressed the return button in the app.
Soon enough, they’d come collect the bicycle and electric kickboard themselves.
A little while later.
“No, if you put wasabi in soy sauce and dip konnyaku in it, it really does feel like you’re eating sashimi.”
“Y-you’ve gone senile.”
“No, it isn’t! Maria said so too! B-besides, Maria has never had sashimi because it’s too expensive!”
While we stood in line killing time with trivial chatter,
“…….”
Maria alone was clasping both hands tightly together in prayer.
“Are you praying? There aren’t any gods on the Razesta Continent, are there?”
“A-ah, well—”
Maria smiled awkwardly.
“I was praying to Lord Ducarion. I just, well, felt like I wanted to hold on to something—anything.”
“Well, there’s nothing strange about that.”
Even Buddhists have 108 prostrations, after all.
Her prayer was less an appeal for blessings than an act of gathering her resolve.
It seemed she respected the holy knight Ducarion quite a lot.
At my words, Maria’s face turned bright red. With a click, she opened the locket around her neck, and a dashing holy knight’s portrait appeared.
“This is Lord Ducarion. He was the benefactor who saved me when I was young, and he’s the holy knight I respect most of all.”
“…….”
“He traveled with two fellow holy knights, and among them he was always the one who held everyone together. He was kind, gentle, and widely admired—truly a wonderful man.”
“What happened to him now?”
At my question, Maria gently closed her eyes and smiled softly.
Even so, she cherished the locket in both hands.
“Divine power. In other words, the power of a human who has reached divinity. Put differently, it’s a power somewhat too great for a human body to contain.”
“…….”
“Surely, they were exhausted. Their grand saga ended with the sealing of Arhelak.”
At her words, Lenea beside her quietly whispered an explanation.
“If you handle more divine power than you can endure, your body turns into divine power and vanishes.”
“…….”
A painful truth.
I wondered if I’d unintentionally touched a bitter wound, but Maria smiled brightly.
“That’s what makes him even more admirable. He fulfilled his duty until the very end.”
“I see.”
Holy Knight Ducarion.
I had never seen him in person, but considering how much he influenced the people left behind, he must have been a truly wonderful man.
‘But he looks kind of familiar.’
He seemed oddly familiar, and yet not familiar at all.
As I was still feeling uncertain about it, it was finally time to go in, so we moved on.
“Wow! There are so many people!”
“Hold my hand.”
I took Lenea’s hand, since she already had her headset on and was blocking out some of the noise.
The other two also kept themselves from being swept away by the crowd by clinging to my clothes.
After entering the dome, the VIP tickets let us move through a less crowded passage.
After sitting down, I felt uncomfortable.
“……You can tell, can’t you?”
“I-it’s intimidating.”
All the people in the VIP section had Prism merch, T-shirts, and even cheering light sticks in hand.
Meanwhile, we were just sitting there in our usual clothes.
It was like going to a soccer match in the home team’s jersey, only to end up in the away team’s seats by accident.
“Ahem, would you like a light stick? Just wave it along with what we’re doing.”
A fan I’d never seen before even handed me a light stick.
“Ooooh.”
While the old lady waved it around, marveling that something sparkly could be so interesting,
“All right, Spectrum everyone! Let’s practice the cheering chant for a moment!”
The avid fans in the front VIP seats, light sticks in hand, were giving instructions about something.
‘Wow, we know people here.’
The five people who had come looking for us after hearing that Seohajin was one of our members were over there too.
“It’s him! Kuub-kuub! Rice cooker!”
“Ssh, Ms. Lenea. Don’t tease him.”
Mr. Kim Deokgu was there too.
Long black hair, and the same unchanged build.
I’m so glad he seems to be enjoying himself…….
“Huh?”
Something overlapped in my mind.
“Huh?”
My instincts were telling me not to, but my reason was furiously pursuing the truth.
“Huhhhhh?!”
The smiling face explaining the cheering chant.
And.
The portrait inside Maria’s locket.
The moment those two faces overlapped perfectly in my mind—
“Ducarion?”
I was able to reach the truth of divine power.
The story continues off the page
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