Chick 254

254

“Where are you off to?”

Sniffling, Groo looked up at the man.

Through the tears clouding his eyes, he saw a familiar face.

“Hrng!”

It was his father’s face—the one he’d missed so much.

Instantly, his eyes reddened and the tip of his nose tingled. Soon, tears streamed down his cheeks like pouring rain, soaking his face.

“I was going to find Mephi—hic— but… it’s raining… hic!”

Groo swallowed hard, scrubbing at his face.

Shea lowered himself to meet Groo’s gaze, wearing a puzzled expression.

“If you mean Mephisto, I can simply make you another.”

“Snf! But if you make a new one, it won’t be Mephi… There’s only one Mephi.”

“The appearance and behavior would be the same.”

“Still…”

“Why?”

It was a difficult question.

Even if he looked and acted the same as Dad, why wasn’t he the same person?

Groo fidgeted, answering softly, lacking confidence.

“Just… because there’s only one heart inside…”

He clutched at his clothes and hung his head.

He couldn’t look up, tears streaming down his face.

He wanted to say what he couldn’t, unsure how Shea would react.

So please, give me my one and only Dad back…

As Groo hiccuped with tears and sniffles, Shea looked down at him in wonder.

“You sound quite like Mephisto.”

“Hrng… Mephi?”

Groo blinked, wide-eyed and tearful.

“Yes. Long ago.”

Shea gazed into the distance, as if recalling old memories, and stretched out his hand.

“If you say so, let’s go find Mephisto together.”

“…?”

Groo blinked dully.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Groo hesitated, debating whether to take Shea’s hand, then muttered as if spitting the words out.

“If I find Mephi, I’m going to drive you out of Dad.”

He meant to say, “You and I are enemies.” Yet Shea only looked genuinely puzzled.

“You? Can you really do that?”

“I—I can! If I use Mold and Shape in Yorang…!”

“Ah, like this?”

Shea grabbed Bailach by the scruff and lifted him.

Bailach, dangling awkwardly, his ugly hamster face flushed with embarrassment.

Groo glanced at Bailach, then spoke dispiritedly.

“A little… prettier than that…”

“…!”

Back in the basket, Bailach’s mouth hung open, as if struck.

‘So, he actually had the judgment to think I was ugly?’

Reeling from this new realization, Bailach stared in shock while Groo obediently took Shea’s hand with one, dragging his bicycle with the other.

Shea picked up the bike with his other hand.

As the basket began to tip, Bailach and Lucifer scrambled onto Groo’s shoulders.

Shea looked at Groo’s tiny hand.

“Is this what they call satisfaction?”

“Mm. It feels warm, like your heart is being baked through, and it’s like worms wiggling inside your chest.”

Shea placed a hand on his chest, the corners of his lips lifting slightly.

“I see.”

“That’s what it’s like. Snf!”

“So it is. This too pleases me.”

His tone was like an old scholar, faintly elated—a young man on his first outing.

Then, just as Joorim would have, he picked Groo up and wiped his eyelids.

Strangely, it seemed as if the rain bent to avoid them.

And people, too, skirted around them in broad circles, seemingly oblivious.

Groo looked around in wonder before sniffling and speaking in a nasal voice.

“Mister, you should go to kindergarten. There’s lots you don’t know.”

“The institution you attend yourself?”

“Yeah. If there’s stuff you don’t know, you have to learn. Teacher says it’s not shameful to not know something.”

Shea nodded earnestly.

“If one should go, then it’s best to go.”

“…!”

Groo looked as if he’d been struck.

Shea was the first adult ever to agree so readily to go to kindergarten.

‘…A good person?’

Even though he took Dad away?

While Groo struggled with confusion, Shea spoke again.

“The last child I made was much like you.”

“The last?”

“I mean Mephisto.”

The supreme god and emperor awakened in the snowfields had created countless loyal children.

His children built mountains, split the earth, filled the sky, and channeled water and fire.

Various forms of life arose and faded, but none had moved Shea’s heart.

To him, everything beyond the snowfield was transient—a handful of dust.

As he averted his gaze, the negative emotions created by living things took shape as “corruption.”

Corruption tainted the land.

Eventually, it threatened even his own snowfield.

It would not do for mere dust to threaten his snowfield.

He created his last child in order to restore the snowfield to its primordial state.

To this one, he poured his special power and made an heir.

He did not grant a name, knowing any lifeform that called to him would disappear before long.

But the child gazed wistfully at other worlds and chose a name for himself.

“Please call me Mephisto. Father.”

Perhaps it began then, when, shyly, “Father” was spoken for the first time.

That child, more susceptible to emotional corruption than any other, one day drove a sword into his chest.

“A god who cannot comprehend all things and look after them is nothing but a disaster.”

The child was crying.

The emperor did not die, but he retreated to the snowy origin, becoming a silent watcher.

Yet the world he’d made rumbled along, rickety and unsteady.

Until, that is, his second child built the Tower.

Before he could purify his world, the Tower ended it in corruption.

Even then, Shea watched with stoic detachment.

Nothing had ever meant anything to him.

Shea looked at his left hand.

By synchronizing with the mind of what he once thought “just a dust mote,” the wall he had built around himself had crumbled.

The affection Joorim began to feel merged into him, soaking slowly as drizzle soaks a coat. He was tainted.

Perhaps that was why.

“I just didn’t want you to be in danger.”

“…Dad isn’t in danger.”

“But I was emotional. In my world, emotions cloud reason, lead to mistakes, and threaten my place. Emotions were always dangerous to me.”

He spoke pensively.

Now, looking back, all he had really wanted was to cling to his solitary pinnacle.

He simply wished to blow away the dust-motes at his feet, never pausing to wonder at the thoughts and feelings hidden in each speck.

---

At that time, Mephisto hid himself in a snowy corner.

After being captured by Dominic, Mephisto had hastily created a dungeon and slipped away into hiding.

In the wide, snow-blanketed plain, it would be hard to find a chick hidden deep in the drifts.

‘So I’ll be fine.’

That’s what he told himself—though he kept catching the distant growl of Karmirak.

Mephisto was still far too young and weak to face an SSS-class Familiar.

The little chick sniffled and sobbed.

‘How long can I keep hiding?’

Mephisto’s shoulders slumped.

But what frightened him now was not Karmirak.

Terrifying images kept rising in his mind.

Again and again, as if a memory had been inserted, he saw himself in human form, sword in hand, amid a snowy field not unlike this one.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to recall, but in his mind he already saw the little hand holding a sword.

On the transparent blade—like a shard of ice—drops of blood were falling, one by one.

He knew the owner of that blood without thinking.

‘Father.’

This was the memory of when Mephisto turned his blade on his father.

At the same time, the sword fell from Mephisto’s hand to the snow.

Fine white hair scattered in the icy wind like snowflakes.

His eyes burned with unbearable heat. The child wept, inconsolable.

When Mephisto stabbed his father, fragments of that memory flickered in and out. The little chick cradled his bursting heart with his wings.

‘Parricide.’

That was what Bailach had called him.

What had once baffled Mephisto, he now understood.