“Fighting to survive or to protect has existed since long ago. But belief is a choice. If you believe it’s justified, then it is, and if not, then it isn’t. I don’t really know what your righteousness is.”
Levia said quietly. Those words held neither condemnation nor defense. That’s why it was frightening. I don’t know why.
I went back in front of the drawing and picked up the charcoal. My hands still trembled. I don’t even know how I’m holding this. Slowly, I added a collapsed flag beneath the throne. An old, torn form. It was tilted, and though color wasn’t expressed, I pressed the lines so the torn grain would show.
There was no one beneath it. Only traces remained.
Levia took a step closer. Though restless and not knowing what to do, he didn’t stop me.
“Is that the last?”
His question was unexpected. But I soon understood what those words pointed to.
Whether there was more left to draw in the picture. No, it was asking whether there was more to face in these remnants of memory.
I looked at the hand holding the charcoal, then quietly shook my head.
“I don’t think… it’s over yet.”
In the end I put down the charcoal as if throwing it. My hand stopped trembling and started going numb. I don’t know what to do.
The throne I’d drawn was still empty, and the shadowy form became no clearer. The dream I’d had, those sounds, those shouts. I definitely heard them, but I still couldn’t tell whose voice it was. But those words alone were clear.
‘Must be killed.’
I thought those words might not have just been a war cry. Someone truly believed someone had to be killed, and I was either within that, or on the opposite side. A position that had to make decisions about someone’s life. That responsibility, that memory was following the current me and weighing me down.
“Is it… okay to keep drawing this?”
I asked cautiously. What caught at the end of my words was fear, but also a heart seeking permission. I don’t know what continuing to face this would mean for me. But I felt I shouldn’t run away.
Levia slowly sat beside me. With his head lowered, he very lightly brushed the edge of the drawing with his fingertips. It was a movement so careful you couldn’t even say he touched it.
“Goodness, this is really going to be serious.”
Regrettably, Levia didn’t answer my question. He was looking at me, but at the same time seemed to be looking at a different me. I don’t know what that was.
Levia slowly reached out his hand, and that hand approached my face. Then with his fingertips he covered my eyes. That movement was gentle and tender, but held an inexplicable eeriness.
“If I leave you like this, you’ll completely collapse.”
At those words I felt like my heart would drop, but I couldn’t avoid it. Levia pulled me as I was and imprisoned me in his arms. Soon pat-pat, gentle gestures followed.
“Really, it can’t be helped.”
“Levia-nim?”
“From now on, every morning after you receive and drink the dew, I’ll hold you like this.”
He spoke too leisurely. His voice was calm, and his dry embrace somehow seemed to hold warmth.
How strange. Why does it feel like something is filling up?
“Because your soul seems like it might break, I don’t want to let pretty you be ruined. Understand?”
At his words I couldn’t bring myself to ask more. No, there was nothing left to ask. To a degree that surprised even myself, I savored the tranquility. I closed my eyes and chewed on it. I couldn’t run away or hide.
“…Yes, I’ll do… that.”
The fear still hadn’t completely disappeared. The sensation of something remaining like a hangnail at my fingertips was vivid. But his tenderness numbed everything.
I thought he was like a tree. Even though I haven’t given anything, won’t give anything.
***
That night, the dream didn’t continue again. Instead, until I fell asleep, the drawing circled in my head. Not blood and orders, but the weight of the sword and the grain of the flag. And the traces placed beneath the throne.
I lay on the bed and quietly regulated my breathing. The fear hadn’t disappeared, but even just that made me feel I could endure for now.
Levia was sitting on the opposite side of the bed. He hadn’t turned off the light and said nothing. But I could sense his presence. He was quite worried about me. He devoted enough care to keep watching like this.
I closed my eyes and thought quietly. Would I someday remember all of those parts? Would I accept them? Not yet. But today, I’d gotten a little closer.
The charcoal powder remaining on my hands had already been wiped away, but that sensation still remained at my fingertips.
That wasn’t memory but the current me.
***
The wind was calm. The sunlight cast on the moss was warm, and the forest’s scent was no different from yesterday. The Dryads did their work quietly as always, and the inside and outside of the nest was tranquility itself.
But I was uncomfortable. There was no reason. Just the feeling that everything was excessively quiet. The rhythm of breathing, the intervals between steps, even the weight of the teacup I held in my hand were too precise, so I felt rather like a piece that didn’t fit this space.
Everything surrounding me was quiet, but only I made sound.
Until I finished eating and a Dryad set down tea, I didn’t say a word. Levia wasn’t visible.
Was it because of yesterday’s events? Levia was even more extreme. As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, he made me drink the dew and held me tightly for a long while. Then he told me to rest well and didn’t do the ‘adorning’ he did every day. The Dryads too made rustling sounds and just watched me from afar.
I feel like I’ve been left alone for no reason. In any case, it seemed I should do something. Unable to settle down alone, I got up from where I was sitting and picked up the charcoal placed on the wall inside the nest.
On the wooden board were layers of drawings I’d made over the past few days. Swords, throne, torn flag. But today nothing was drawn.
This won’t do. I grabbed a different wooden board. And drew again.
I quietly pressed the charcoal. A line was drawn. This time it was a person’s shoulder. Upright posture, broad back. Moving my hand slowly, I added hair and collar. The sensation in my hand was gentle, and the lines were natural. A somehow familiar form was being completed.
I could tell who that form was without asking. It was Levia.
I drew his hands, and going down his arms I drew his knees and ankles. That form was a sitting posture with one hand placed on his knee. And finally, the face. Following the natural order of drawing, I stopped.
The charcoal wavered at my fingertips. The reason I stopped while trying to continue the line wasn’t clear. For some reason it felt wrong to draw the eyes, nose, and mouth.
I didn’t move my hand for a while. No, I couldn’t move it. Even though I knew that face, I couldn’t draw it. The moment I drew that line, it felt like something would become irreversible.
I put down the charcoal. The charcoal powder remaining on my fingertips trembled faintly. When I lowered my head, the incomplete form quietly gazed at me. A being without eyes, without a mouth, without even expression. That blank space felt strangely heavy.
Perhaps I was hesitating at the very act of recalling Levia’s face. Somehow I felt that such an act itself was even impious. Yet at the same time I was tenaciously rummaging through memories.
It’s really strange.
Levia watched over me, conversed with me, and sometimes threw incomprehensible words. I asked Levia, resisted, hesitated. All those emotions accumulated, and at the end of it this form remained. Yet not being able to draw the face—did that mean I wasn’t ready to face it?
Just as I was about to take my eyes off the drawing, I felt a presence from behind.
“You stopped drawing.”
A familiar voice. I turned my head. It was Levia. He was already standing behind me. The other drawings were still propped up entangled here and there, and there was no distance between me and them.
I faced Levia. Strangely, I wasn’t surprised. Rather, it felt natural for him to be here. Because I was drawing Levia. Because I’d brought him to mind, as if he’d actually appeared.
“Because I can’t remember the face.”
I said that. It wasn’t a lie. Though the reason my hand stopped drawing wasn’t just because of form, those words weren’t wrong.
“Why? You’re looking at it right now.”
“Somehow, I feel distant. Even though I’m looking, it feels like I need to look more.”
“That’s a really strange thing to say.”
“I also think this is strange. Including the fact that I just realized this now.”
Levia tilted his head. He looked at the drawing briefly, then soon turned his head toward me.
“How much more do you think you need to look at me?”
“Continuously, continuously.”
“At that rate, you won’t be able to finish this drawing?”
He pointed at my unfinished drawing with his hand and smiled. Those words were quiet but precise. I didn’t answer. And I didn’t deny that either.
I decided to leave the drawing in that state. I got up from where I was sitting and walked close to the bed. The teacup the Dryad had left had cooled and the tea’s fragrance had long since disappeared. The teacup in my hand shook faintly, but I didn’t drink.
“Will I… be able to finish this?”
I suddenly asked that. My gaze was fixed on the teacup, but my words were clearly directed at Levia.
It wasn’t just referring to the drawing. It was words I’d piled up in a complete mess and postponed—all the ambiguous things that even I couldn’t explain.
Levia didn’t answer right away. After pausing a beat, he quietly walked toward me. There was no sense of incongruity in his movement, and that presence was light like the forest wind. And he stopped before me.
“It’s okay. Until you think you’re finished, I’ll watch over you.”
Those words left a long lingering resonance.
I slowly raised my head. Levia was there. Just in that place. Without any purpose or coercion, looking at me in his natural form.
“This… seems to remain inside me.”
“I see. That’s possible.”
“Will this… also disappear?”
At the question I threw, Levia shook his head.
“That’s yours, and you already know everything. What are you so afraid of?”
Those words weren’t false. At least, as far as this forest was concerned. I opened my eyes without a name and remained here without remembering anything. During that time, no one demanded my past from me. Levia was the same.
But I know. That’s not because this forest exists without knowing the ‘outside.’ It’s because Levia chose it that way.
Levia Rishian is an old being, a being who has watched everything for a long time. The very fact that such a being deliberately said he would accept me approached me strangely heavily.
“Then….”
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t continue the next words. Because I already knew. Remaining here isn’t a choice. I’ve simply just not left yet.
I myself knew that best.
I quietly looked toward the drawing. Levia without a face. A silhouette made only of black lines. That form seemed like it would never be completed.
No, no. It’s not the end.
I was startled and barely swallowed words that almost spilled out of my mouth. The drawing had stopped, but the charcoal soot remaining on my hand still felt like a scar.
What’s not the end?
