Little Pink Starfish

The sky had completely darkened.

After hearing everything Saetbyeol and Geahrzimen said, I barely ate dinner and left the guesthouse.

The first time I set foot here was last year. Back then, it had been quite warm. It was late summer edging into early autumn, and the leaves were starting to tint red. Now, still not quite the end of spring, only cool breezes passed through the thickets.

As I wandered aimlessly, a hill appeared.

I slumped down there and began to sort through my tangled thoughts.

The hero’s daughter wanted to contract with the Demon God…

Geahrzimen had clearly said so. But I wasn’t sure if it was really true.

After all, to Vanessa Bernstein, the Demon God’s neck must have symbolized the full stop to her father’s struggle. Why would she want to contract with the Demon God her heroic father killed? No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t understand.

Could it be a lie…?

How likely was it that Saetbyeol and Geahrzimen were lying? Saetbyeol could perceive my innermost thoughts, but I could not read his. If the time we spent together was a cruel game beyond human limits… No, that couldn’t be.

If it were, he wouldn’t have told me such an absurd story.<I must meet the Demon God.>

Saetbyeol said.

<If a low demon of hell committed sins, punishing her is my duty, not the One and All Savior’s. And if despite countless sins someone must save her, that too is my responsibility, not the Savior’s.>

Saetbyeol said he would see the Demon God himself and judge everything.

<Will you join me?>

He asked if I would join him.

I couldn’t answer.

Saetbyeol’s purpose was too overwhelming for a mere human like me. I was nothing but a fellow human slaughtered by the Demon God. So I was simply filled with hatred. I was not strong enough to punish the Demon God, nor could I even conceive of saving her.

<Aren’t you curious?>

Sensing my thoughts, Saetbyeol asked.

<The demons were designed by the One and All Savior as adversaries. Creation is the act of producing uncertainty between order and disorder. The Savior deliberately created beings that would oppose his will, and the demons were such a design.>

The world’s most perfect state must have been when the One and All Savior existed alone.

Countless dimensions and universes are imperfect, filled with stars disappearing and forming repeatedly. So the most perfect state was that primal state where the Savior existed alone.

Creation is the act of making the world imperfect.

Filling the world with creatures that can never be perfect is just the process of throwing the perfect world into an imperfect context. The Savior wanted to observe the imperfections of creatures.

Therefore, good had to exist. The Stars, led by him, represented the goodness creatures should follow. At the same time, evil must also exist. If creatures lived only for goodness, they would be nothing more than products made by the Stars. There needed to be beings embodying evil to tempt creatures.<Those are the demons…>

Demons are made of evil.

They are proud, stingy, jealous, angry, lustful, and ready to sacrifice everything for greed. But they are so lazy that they simply languish in hell.

In other words, demons were created to spread the Seven Deadly Sins into the world.

The Demon God was the first to graciously lead such demons.

Though Saetbyeol was King of Hell, he suppressed demons by force and was born as an angel symbolizing the Savior’s right hand.

So the Demon God was the first legitimate leader produced by the demons in their entirety.

Demons calling that legitimate… that’s absurd.

I looked up at the night sky and sighed deeply.

My mind was too tangled.

According to Saetbyeol, the Demon God was in a state no different from an ordinary human, enslaved by Vanessa Bernstein. Saetbyeol said Vanessa chose that Demon God as her Star and entered her country’s CYB competition.

It was probably true. Vanessa Bernstein was a solo artist who won America’s CYB. When I first visited Han Iro’s home, I saw a broadcast about her on TV. Vanessa claimed to have contracted with a Star whose seal she didn’t reveal… like me, if she revealed her seal, it would cause quite the stir.

In any case, the Demon God must be powerless, but just knowing her existence made my insides twist painfully.

If the Demon God didn’t exist…

If she hadn’t planned the invasion of humanity…

…countless casualties wouldn’t have happened.

My father wouldn’t have died so tragically.

A soft breeze swept past me as I thought this.

<Eunyul.>

At the same time, a voice came from behind.

For a moment I thought Saetbyeol was following me, since Mika’s voice was almost identical to his, only differing in tone.

<What are you doing here alone?>

Mika’s appearance was also nearly identical to Saetbyeol’s, differing only in hair length and wing shape.

Just arriving here on Earth, Mika’s white wings rippled with the wind. Silencing her fluttering hair, Mika approached me. I hesitated, then sighed and asked her.

“Did you know? That the Demon God is in the human world?”

Mika’s expression stiffened.

She looked at me with wide eyes, then forced a bitter smile and moved closer.

<I didn’t know.>

She said that sending the Demon God to the human world was the One and All Savior’s unilateral decision.

<Had I known, I would have opposed it. No matter if it was my father’s will, sending the Demon God to the human world is something I could never accept.>

Sitting beside me, Mika said:

<My father told no other Star that the Demon God was in the human world. Probably, I’m the only one who knows this. Had I not heard it from Saetbyeol, I would have believed the Demon God was still imprisoned in heaven.>

“Why did the One and All Savior send the Demon God to the human world?”<There could be many reasons.>

Mika smiled.

<The human world is peaceful now. Humanity, united while the Gates were open, is still competing only within the framework the Stars set. Before the Gates, humans constantly fought over all sorts of things: race, disability, even sexuality. On one side of Earth were lavish festivals; on the other, oppressive dictatorships.>

I knew this too.

Before the Gates opened, humanity was always at odds. It was probably the context of all history before the Gates.

Ironically, the Gates united humanity. Humans had never faced such supernatural threats, and the monsters and demons that emerged through the Gates awakened them.<So for the Demon God to just watch this peaceful world must be the greatest humiliation.>

“But that can’t be the only reason she was sent to the human world.”

The One and All Savior surely didn’t send the Demon God just to watch her suffer. The One and All Savior I had seen was no petty being.<Of course not. My father is kind to all creations and…>

…also ruthless.

Mika added.

<Saetbyeol probably won’t admit it, but my father and Saetbyeol have similarities.>

“What similarities?”

<Curiosity.>

Mika answered flatly.<Creation is the result of the highest curiosity. Saetbyeol is the only being who dares oppose my father with that curiosity…>

“So you’re saying the One and All Savior was curious about how the defeated Demon God would survive mingled in the human world?”

<Probably.>

I was left speechless.

The One and All Savior is beyond my understanding. Wouldn’t he simply annihilate any threat to the world he created, no matter how small? To him, the Demon God was like a fly. If a fly came near me, I wouldn’t hesitate to swat it.<And Saetbyeol first met you in the form of a fly.>

Mika shrugged.

<You seem very confused… But to offer a modest opinion, I want you to join Saetbyeol. He wants to find the Demon God and get answers: why she invaded, and what she realized in defeat. But really, it’s not Saetbyeol who should get those answers, but humanity.>

Humans must understand why the demons invaded their home.

And explore what the Demon God learned through humanity.

Mika was telling me this.

<So I hope you, as a human, will join Saetbyeol.>

As a human living in this era, meeting the being who marks the end of the old age and beginning of the new.

Because ultimately, this is human history.

Not the demons’.

Not the Stars’.

It is all human history.