The Guild Master-nim’s voice strangled my throat as if it were a strong hand, and I couldn’t say anything. I anxiously put my feet together and just looked down.
When I was a beggar, when I wore nothing, my feet were always dirty and sometimes bled. That rough period still remained on my feet like scars. Calluses and scars. That was the trace of poverty left on me.
Even though I was covering those feet with nice leather shoes, I felt as shabby as if I were naked in front of the Guild Master-nim.
“Looking at you now, it’s not that you don’t know you did wrong…”
“……”
“Why did you do it, Carl Miduka?”
At the Guild Master-nim’s words calling me, I realized for the first time that she had never once called me by my name. I know it’s ridiculous to compare with Jack. He was a child without a surname.
But, even so, it hurt me. Irrationality easily wounds people.
“I, I…”
I just smacked my lips several times and couldn’t even lift my head. Shame. Resentment. Wretchedness. Despair. All of it opened its maw wide and was swallowing me whole.
“Whatever you say, I have no intention of listening to excuses.”
What a cruel person.
“What you did to Jack is unforgivable. It was something that could have killed him. If that had happened, I would have had to put you in prison with my own hands.”
“……”
“Although you didn’t directly lay hands on him, that doesn’t make your wrongdoing any lighter.”
The Guild Master-nim stood up from her seat. I was afraid she would bring an axe to drop my head right now.
“But you’re young.”
At the voice filled with guilt, I lifted my head. She was looking down at me with a somber face. Even though I had almost harmed Jack, the child she cherished, her eyes held pity and responsibility. At that gaze, my throat that had been completely blocked opened up.
“Guild, Guild Master-nim…”
“As long as I’m your guardian, your actions are also my responsibility.”
“Are you… forgiving me?”
The Guild Master-nim’s gaze became somewhat cold. It seemed it wasn’t the answer she had hoped for from me. I had failed the Guild Master-nim’s test once again.
But when she hadn’t told me anything or taught me anything, how could I give a wise answer? I was always called a genius, but in front of her, I fell to become a fool the likes of which the world had never seen.
“Forgiveness isn’t something you beg from me but from Jack. Because Jack is the one you wronged.”
“……”
“Carl Miduka. I’ll clean up the mess you made. I trust you won’t let what you’ve learned leave your mouth.”
The Guild Master-nim stood up from her seat and patted my shoulder. I knew this was the mercy and opportunity the Guild Master-nim was showing me.
It was a remarkable thing not to drive out the perpetrator despite a major conflict among the children she had taken in, and even though it became a life-threatening situation. Especially since I had no proper guardian to protect me. Since the Guild Master-nim was the one who picked me up, it wouldn’t be strange if she threw me away again.
“…Yes, Guild Master-nim.”
“Good. You may leave.”
It seemed that was all the Guild Master-nim had to say to me. I stood up weakly from my seat and trudged out.
“Haha…”
I felt like the ground beneath my feet was collapsing. No, it had already collapsed and I was falling. No matter how much I flailed my legs in the air, there was nothing to catch me. Since I had fallen due to my own scheme, it was a trap of my own making.
But in the end, the reason I didn’t completely die was because the Guild Master-nim tried to take responsibility. Even if the scales of affection were endlessly tilted toward the other side and not me, the fact that I wasn’t abandoned proved that responsibility.
It was devastating. With everything I had done until now, I couldn’t tip the scales of affection.
The beginning of my efforts was to prove my usefulness. Also to repay her. Those two reasons ultimately came down to one thing. Because I wanted to receive the Guild Master-nim’s affection. I wanted her to become my guardian, my parent. I wanted a solid fence, complete affection that I had never once received.
“Hahaha… Haha… Ha.”
Avoiding people’s eyes, I entered a small warehouse full of dust and crumpled my body inside. Only then did tears flow from my eyes. That unfamiliar thing that had dried up so long ago, once it burst, flowed down like an overflowing river.
People are born into the world with pain and crying. After birth, they grow up receiving love in their guardian’s hands.
“It hurts… It hurts…”
In my pain, tears continued to flow from my eyes without stopping.
Why doesn’t an affectionate touch to care for me come? Have I still not been born?
But I already knew. Not everyone in the world experienced such a blessed birth. I was already breathing and living in this world. This pain wasn’t the pain of birth but the pain experienced from living. In the end, now obtaining affection depended on my own efforts.
“Jack. You’re this way.”
In the end, what I chose was to treat Jack well, who received the Guild Master-nim’s affection.
Someone might say I was foolish. They might laugh that I was rotting my smart head. But people had things they absolutely couldn’t give up. For me, that was the Guild Master-nim’s recognition and affection.
That’s why I hated Jack, who was by the Guild Master-nim’s side without doing anything. I loathed him and… I envied him.
I admit it now. At the root of the anger I had toward Jack, envy toward Jack was inherent. That’s why I had to tear Jack down.
But I didn’t have this acknowledgment back then. I just cried quietly in the warehouse and cried again. I continuously worried about how to break through this situation of falling into an abyss.
Now it was impossible to slander and remove Jack. This incident wasn’t directly connected to me thanks to secretly instigating it from behind by borrowing others’ hands. All I did was push appropriate information into people’s ears.
Who would think a mere 10-year-old child was behind this incident? The people who were used also just heard information from me and probably didn’t think they had been manipulated by me.
But the Guild Master-nim wasn’t in that position for show. Now that things had turned out this way, the Guild Master-nim would watch me more closely. And that would be close to monitoring me in case I did something to Jack, not about how well I did.
There were several paths I could choose. One of them was to leave this guild altogether. Because in the first place, I had earned the displeasure of the person in the highest position, so advancement could be considered hopeless.
But for me, who had something I absolutely couldn’t let go of, there was only one path I could choose. If I treated that guy well… wouldn’t the Guild Master-nim also see me differently?
Because I had stayed up for several nights worrying about what to do, both my eyes were dyed bright red with all the blood vessels burst. That appearance seemed like the evil spirit that the Guild Master-nim saw in me, so I helplessly contorted my face.
No matter what happened to me, time flowed relentlessly.
Jack ended up going on missions with that beast cub he had rescued. It wasn’t even a secret that Jack borrowed the beast cub’s abilities rather than his own abilities. Since he brought results that he couldn’t produce with the abilities he originally had, it was reasoning anyone could do.
When the beast stuck to Jack and wouldn’t leave, the upper ranks showed reluctance. But if they gave him individual missions, he would completely give up, so they had no choice but to be troubled. That beast only followed Jack’s orders. In the end, the upper ranks decided to utilize the two together.
Anyway, as the number of missions the two completed piled up quite a bit, Jack’s position also naturally improved compared to before. However, in my eyes, he was still just useless Jack who couldn’t properly accomplish anything with his own abilities. I did spread rumors about him behind his back, but I didn’t feel guilty since I was telling the truth.
Even so, I endured and tried to treat him well. Of course, since such a thing had happened, it was natural for him to be wary of me. But it didn’t matter what Jack thought of me. The target I needed to look good to wasn’t that guy but the Guild Master-nim behind him.
But the 100th anniversary ceremony. I couldn’t endure just that time. It wasn’t because I hated seeing Jack flaunting the Guild Master-nim’s favoritism right in front of me. …Right, I can’t say there wasn’t that, but still, that was bearable.
What I couldn’t endure was… my own wretchedness. Those words, that even a scarf worse than a rag would please the Guild Master-nim if he made it himself, those words pierced my lungs. That damn scarf, if I did it, I could have done it better. I could knit a scarf and even a sweater.
But the reason I didn’t do that was… because I was afraid the Guild Master-nim would throw it away if she knew I made it.
Even though there was Fortuna who could make it better, entrusting it to Jack was because she knew he would do it in a mess. Expecting the Guild Master-nim to get angry at Jack saying what kind of thing is this to give as a gift after receiving it.
But what came from Jack’s mouth was affection filled with conviction. Absolute affection that I couldn’t obtain, that someone naturally held in their hands. It was materialized before my eyes once again.
If only that guy had good abilities, if I had seen him make some effort, if that were the case… I might have had a not-bad relationship with Jack. Thinking that, I consoled myself that I wasn’t such a petty person.
But it wasn’t so. After time passed again, when I saw Jack’s abilities, anger arose in my heart. The disguise technique he showed was excellent enough that I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t always observed him closely.
Moreover, the sight of him skillfully smiling and using a honey trap to lure a man was something I never thought I would see from Jack. Because he had always been an incompetent who hid behind that beast and sucked on his backbone.
