At that, Dear’s brows crumpled all at once.
“And why would it close?”
“...”
“No, hold on, it can even do that? We already made a contract. I have a contracted spirit, so what’s this path that swings open and shut like a shop keeping business hours?”
Endairon’s round little face puckered ever so slightly.
“A truly vulgar comparison.”
“It’s the truth, though.”
When Dear snapped at it, Endairon tipped its chin up and spun a slow circle in midair.
“This one exists always in the world of spirits, and you are the one who calls this one forth into reality. All of it is furnished according to your ability.”
At that, Dear’s lips pressed tight.
So in the end, what it came down to was that she wasn’t enough. A wave of injustice came rushing in on her.
Why? Why didn’t she get any better, no matter how hard she worked? Just when it seemed like she was improving, she’d look back and find the same spot waiting for her again, and she had no idea why.
She’d trained while everyone else slept. She’d trained until she didn’t have the strength to lift a single finger, and on the days when no spirit circle would form inside her no matter what she tried, she’d bang her forehead against a tree to pull herself back together.
She’d believed that if she had no talent, she could make up for it with effort. But now a doubt had crept in, right down at the root of that belief.
“...How much longer do I have to do this?”
Her voice came out small.
“Exactly how much longer until I can handle you? Is a day like that even going to come in the first place?”
When she said it with that gloomy look on her face, Endairon drifted over and lightly smacked her cheeks between its two tiny hands.
“You are a terribly impatient creature.”
“What?”
“When did this one ever say you had no talent?”
“Then why isn’t it working?”
“This one is not a sword you swing, nor a river that flows as you will it. You call, and this one answers. You lay a path, and this one follows that path to reach this place. Such is the principle of it.”
“...”
“And yet, what have you been doing these past thirty days?”
Dear couldn’t answer that easily. Endairon spoke on in that solemn voice, stretching its water out far and thin like a spider’s web.
“You tried to send it farther, to hold it longer, to drag out more power than before.”
And then it gave those threads of water a light shake.
“But when the branches sprawl out thick before the core has ripened...”
The water that had been stretching and quivering taut suddenly shattered, as if it had hit a wall and stopped dead.
“...the spring is bound to run entirely dry.”
“But waiting around for a spirit vein to widen takes way too long. You said ten years of training only makes it bigger by a fingernail.”
It wasn’t as if Dear didn’t understand what Endairon was saying. The invisible path that formed inside the body of a human who had contracted with a spirit.
The channel that drew a spirit out of the spirit world and into reality, that took in its power and converted it into workings. It was one of the very first concepts taught in basic spirit art theory.
“I’m telling you, I don’t have time.”
Call your contracted spirit often. Pass power back and forth. Grow used to one another.
Only after years at the shortest, decades at the longest, she’d been taught, would a summoner’s spirit vein change to match.
But for Dear, every single day was a crisis.
“Isn’t there a faster way? Even the hardest road has a shortcut somewhere.”
“There is no such thing.”
Endairon shut it down flat.
“By what means would one hurry along a thing that ripens by eating years? Tug at the stalk because a sprout has appeared, and the tree still will not grow any faster.”
“Still, spirit arts go back thousands of years, so there’s got to be at least one...”
“There is not.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. Not a single o...”
Endairon started to turn away as if it were all a bother, then added, almost absently,
“...not unless one grants a pure desire.”
“A pure desire? What’s that?”
“That which no filth has touched.”
“...”
“A longing not yet mingled with anything, and never once given over to another.”
Dear’s brow furrowed without mercy.
“Quit twisting your words up like that and say it straight. I asked what it is.”
“This one does not know the thing itself either.”
“How does that make any sense, not knowing?”
“To know a word and to know its substance are two different matters.”
Endairon shot back, shameless.
“What this one knows is only the record that long, long ago, those who wished to wake a parched spirit vein all at once went wandering in search of it.”
“So how did they get hold of it?”
“That much, this one does not know.”
“...”
“This one was born not so very long ago, after all.”
Dear’s jaw dropped and she couldn’t get it shut again. It talked like some ancient sage and had absolutely nothing to show for it.
“Then what was all that know-it-all act up till now?”
“The vast knowledge of the spirit world and this one’s age are separate things.”
“Fine, then I’m going to go look for this pure desire, or whatever it is.”
“Chasing riddles in the middle of a war is foolishness.”
“Right now, just knowing a shortcut exists makes me feel like I could go anywhere, you know?”
Dear curled herself into a ball and thought it over.
A spirit was, in its essence, the purest force of great nature, untainted by human greed or impure intent. But the human body was imperfect, and the more a person chased after desire, the more their spirit vein clouded over and twisted.
Which made desire one of the things a spirit summoner was supposed to keep farthest away from.
‘But it said a pure desire.’
Pure is pure, so what’s with the desire?
All through school, Dear had practically lived buried in the library. If a spirit art could be turned into money she read about it, whatever kind it was, and she’d even dug through ancient texts she had no hope of understanding yet.
And even so, this was the first she’d ever heard of a ‘pure desire.’
‘It said an old record, didn’t it.’
In that case, there was a good chance it was a concept that had died out by now.
When she happened to lift her head, she saw that the moon had tilted low. Her hour with Aiden was almost up, and she could tell.
Reluctantly, Dear got to her feet.
“Guess I’d better head back.”
Then she tucked a protesting Endairon, who didn’t want to go back at all, into the spirit stone and pulled her hood down low. She squeezed out through the narrow gap beside the waterfall, and the cold night air brushed her face.
She’d have to move faster than she had on the way in.
Dear hurried down along the stream. She’d made the trip countless times over the past month, so even with the moonlight thin, finding her way wasn’t hard.
But then there was a problem. Dear stopped dead.
A soft crunch of footsteps. Someone was moving beyond the brush. Probably another person who’d snuck out the same way she had.
A moment later, a man’s low whisper reached her.
“Hey. Hurry up.”
“...Hang on.”
“Hang on for what this time?”
Dear reflexively ducked behind a big tree. If anyone caught her wandering outside camp at this hour, she was finished.
Luckily, the pair over there seemed to be sneaking around too, because their voices stayed pretty quiet.
“Can’t I just not go?”
“After coming all this way?”
“Now that I think about it, it’s kind of...”
“Kind of what.”
“It’s just kind of like that, okay.”
“You crazy bastard.”
A low laugh followed.
“You scared?”
“It’s not that I’m scared.”
“Then what is it.”
“It’s my first time, that’s all.”
Without really thinking about it, Dear curled up smaller.
Wherever they were going, it made no difference to her as long as they didn’t spot her. The man muttered irritably.
“That’s exactly why we’re going.”
“...”
“Somebody’s offering to take your virginity off your hands. What could possibly be better than that?”
Dear, who had been holding perfectly still, blinked wide.
...Take what off his hands?
“Keep your voice down.”
“Who cares? Is being a virgin a crime?”
“Shut up.”
“And what’s with that face. What are you, some holy knight sworn to keep his purity?”
Dear quietly poked her head out from behind the tree.
Some distance off, she could make out two grown soldiers.
One was leading the way, thrilled about it. The other clearly wasn’t feeling it at all, glancing back over his shoulder every few steps.
“Let’s just turn back for tonight.”
“No chance. Do you know how much money I saved up for this?”
“I didn’t pay anything.”
“Which makes it even better for you. All you have to do is show up in person, remember?”
“...”
“It’s only because it’s your first time. Once you’ve done it, you’ll see it’s nothing.”
The soldier in front gave his friend’s back a hard shove.
“You go in there and graduate nice and clean.”
Dear’s eyebrow twitched.
Clean.
“Wouldn’t it eat you alive, guarding your purity out here and then dying before the war’s even over?”
Purity.
“That’s why I’m telling you to hurry up and go while you’re still a virgin.”
Virgin.
“...”
Dear’s eyes grew wider and wider.
Something flickered through her head.
It was what Endairon had said only a little while ago.
That which is untouched by filth. That which has not yet mingled with anything. A longing that has been given to no one.
And then.
A pure desire.
“...”
Dear’s mouth slowly fell open.
No way.
‘Pure.’
Clean. Chaste. Not yet mingled with anyone.
‘Desire.’
The longing to mingle with someone. And a state in which those two things exist at the same time.
A human being who hasn’t experienced it yet, but who wants it.
“...I’m supposed to go pluck somebody’s virginity?”
Dear mumbled it out, dazed.
One of the soldiers up ahead flinched and spun around.
“What was that. Did you hear something just now?”
Dear clapped both hands over her mouth.
“Hear what?”
“Sounded like a person’s voice.”
“It was a bird. Move it. If we’re late, all the women will have gone in for the night.”
The two of them moved off again.
Plastered flat against the back of the tree, Dear watched them go.
Her mind was racing.
No.
Hold on.
Even so, that would be way too...
‘Vulgar, wouldn’t it?’
She could practically hear Endairon beside her, delivering that warning in its most solemn voice. Right. There was no way spirit arts worked on some bizarre trick like that.
Shaking her head hard, Dear slipped back into camp right on the changing of the guard.
“동정” means both “virginity” and “pity,” which is why Endairon’s lofty phrase “a pure desire” lands where it does.
