Chapter 44

  Hidden Monsters (III)

  "Uhm," I tried pretending to stutter, but truth be told, I was still properly terrified, so I just... stuttered, no pretending needed. "I'm sorry. That was insensitive of me."

  "..." She looked at me oddly for a moment, as though 'updating' the knowledge she had of me. Should I not have apologized? Haah, I can't help it, honest; it's like my second nature. When you're selling people stuff, rather than arguing with them when they get mad, you just sort of make it your habit to keep saying, 'I'm very sorry, Mr./Mrs.,' until they go away. Or ask for your manager.

  "Everything okay?" I asked after she remained silent for nearly half a minute.

  "Explain to me the measuring."

  "Explain... the measuring?"

  "Yes."

  "... uh. Okay. I'm just taking the length, width, and height of the shack--I mean of the amazing room I plan to build."

  "Why?"

  "Because I need to know how many materials I'd need and where I'd lay them down."

  "Why?"

  "... because that's how houses are built."

  "Oh." she seemed genuinely curious, which... I don't know what to make of her, actually. Was she truly 6? I mean, yeah, she looked the part, certainly, but she did not behave the part... except for now. With a bit of adult apathy mixed in. "How long will it take you to build it?"

  "Uhm, a week, maybe? I'd have it built already, but I didn't expect the Sect Master to send you here so... quickly."

  "The Sect Master."

  "Yes."

  "Whom you insinuated was my father."

  "..." gah. Why did I remind her?!

  "He's not."

  "Khm, yes, I should have known someone as cute as you couldn't be fathered by someone as ugly--" just... what am I doing? Luckily, she didn't seem to care.

  "My real father is dead," she skipped over my tiny little insult of the head honcho.

  The wind blew as though in concert with her voice, lifting up the strands of her black hair. It was long, almost reaching the back of her knees, swaying ceaselessly.

  There was a sudden melancholy to her that was entirely unfitting a child; it was as though a weight beyond my comprehension pressed against her, and she could barely hold herself back from crumbling underneath its stubbornness.

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  "He was killed," she added, her eyes locking with mine. Beyond the veil of apathy, beyond the veil of certainly-not-a-young-girl, there was, well, a young girl. Pain, rage, agony... the rods sticking out of her heart, the ones I am intimately familiar with.

  "... I'm sorry," I said, temporarily discarding my straying thoughts. Perhaps she was sent here as a spy, or maybe the Spirit Sage did indeed believe I had some magic ability to accelerate her cultivation, but regardless of all that, at the moment she was merely a young kid on the brink of crying. "I had a friend who lost her dad young, too," I said, smiling as kindly as I could. "She always tried to be strong in front of me, but... it ate her up. I've always regretted not being there for her when she needed me. So, if you ever need someone to talk to, or yell at, or cry with... I'll be here."

  "..." She fell silent, her oddly colored, partly purple and partly silver eyes examining me. "I can yell at you?"

  "As loud as you want," I said.

  "And I can say anything I want?"

  "Anything you want."

  "You're stupid."

  "..." Hey. System.

  You're messing with me, right? When you put those 'Apathy', and 'Just', and 'Lonely' traits, you're just messing with me, right? 'cause, otherwise, how the hell do you explain that playful grin plastered all over her face?! Epic apathy?! Do you even know what EPIC APATHY even means?!!

  "And ugly."

  "..."

  "And old. And your beard is weird. And you're weak. And…"

  "... and what?" Look, it's a 6-year-old girl. Am I going to blow my top off because she insulted me a few times? I mean, yes, but I'm gonna do it like any other self-respecting adult: in the privacy of my own room, when nobody's watching.

  It's sort of like that time you finally realize you're getting old, you know? When kids stop saying to you 'Hey dude' and 'What's up, man?' and instead go 'Excuse me, sir'.

  Ouch.

  That brought back some... pain.

  "... nothing. I was just wondering whether I should tell the Sect Master what you think of him."

  "I'd rather you didn't."

  "Hm. You have to talk with me every day, then."

  "Very well, I will talk with you every day," yeah. She very much is a kid, no doubt.

  She battled back an encroaching smile, spun around, and left.

  I... don't get her.

  I'm not even sure whether she's just one person, or perhaps a few lodged inside of her head, and just one of them happens to actually be the age-appropriate girl.

  Regardless, it seems par for the course in this world; kids are treated as props, sort of like capital investments back on Earth. She doesn't even have a name and is instead just called 'Light'. Only ever seen as a Demonic Inheritor and not much else.

  Haah.

  This is the difficulty of this world, and something I'm struggling to adjust to. It's not just cruelty--cruelty exists back on Earth in spades, too. In fact, I'd actually wager that there's just as much if not more cruelty back on Earth, at least within specific spaces.

  But it's this divorce-like approach to most things, this staunch belief that the pursuit of immortality offers an excuse to discard all else. Maybe it's just me and my very much alien outlook on this world, but I can't shake the feeling that I don't want to become like them.

  I don't want to be a saint, mind you, just taking in strays and giving them everything without asking anything in return. I'm very much banking on my beloved disciples to take me over the finish line, wherever that line may be.

  And maybe I'm even reading too much into these things; the kid's been here for, what? A day? Do I really know her well enough to assert her circumstances or the state of her heart?

  I barely know myself, spending days re-examining what I thought I knew. Yet, despite being in this world for six months now, I am almost no closer to understanding my role in it than I was on day one.

  Maybe it really is to just find random monsters and have them retool me into a monster of my own; maybe emotions are entirely unnecessary, and attachments just an 'extra', and the only thing that matters to them is my ability to create arts and methods, while the only thing that matters to me is their ability to carry me beyond this corner of the world.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe...

  I stand up and dust off my robes, glancing back down the mountain and at the lining rooftops of the sect. I never thought I'd have to ask myself a question I stopped asking a long time ago: who the hell am I, and what the hell is my purpose in this world?