Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Editor: LiteraryGirl
Chapter 347
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The Inviter IV
A flower blood.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
Once, in so spring of the past, screams rang out in a train that had forgotten how to run.
It was the train Samcheon World had made their base of operations. And in the VIP car where the guild leader resided, screams resounded.
“Dang Seo-rin?! What happened?”
“I—I... Undertaker, I...!”
I checked on Seo-rin’s condition and shouted imdiately, “Nobody co in!”
They froze. The Samcheon World guild mbers who’d rushed in behind ca to a startled stop.
“Until I say otherwise, nobody enters! Nobody!”
“Y-yes, understood.”
I drew the curtains over the windows, making sure no sound leaked out. All the while, Seo-rin kept trembling violently, on her knees on the floor strewn with shattered mirror shards.
“Dang Seo-rin!”
“I-I’m different now. My flesh, yeah. I felt this itch, and look... Ahaha. Look, Undertaker, I...!”
Buds and vines.
Plants were sprouting from her body.
“Ah, aaah. Aaah... ah...!”
Crunch!
Seo-rin tore the leaf erging from her forearm with a shaking hand.
Yet it was so bizarre. Each ti a leaf was ripped away, there was the sound of fingernails cracking. Each ti a flower stem broke, red droplets of blood spattered. Even more unsettling was how her lacerated skin instantly regenerated within seconds, leaving smooth as if it had never been touched in the first place. řа𝐍o͍₿Еṣ
The more she tore at it, the thicker the leaves grew. The more she tried to rip them off, the tougher the stems beca.
“No! Don’t tear at it! Dang Seo-rin, get ahold of yourself! The more you rip it out, the deeper it’ll breed inside you!”
“Ah, ugh...”
Udumbara. The New Buddha virus.
“But it’s... look at this, Undertaker. It’s all prickling. See, this is just what’s on the surface! My blood, my veins, my bones, they’re all flowers already. All of them... Ah, with every breath, ugh, sothing falls inside my throat. Leaves. There must be leaves in there. Every ti my heart beats, sothing’s stuck. Undertaker, please. Help . Breathing—”
Seo-rin was quarantined.
She’d always found the New Buddha Church extrely ominous to begin with. Though the Udumbara virus nullified Awakened abilities—definitely a drawback—ordinary folks considered it no disadvantage because they gained a body that was practically invincible.
Despite that, Seo-rin despised the New Buddha virus and took an extre dislike to mbers of that faith, calling them “flower freaks”—unlike her usual self, who always cared about civilians while ruling over Busan.
“Seo-rin, I brought sandwiches again. Eat even just a little. If you stop eating altogether, you’ll really beco soone who only needs sunlight for nourishnt.”
Dang Seo-rin could not love flowers.
More specifically, she had an extre aversion to living flowers—fresh, blooming ones.
Even after she’d done her best to move on from the tragedy with her family, the sa remained true. She didn’t have a panic attack at the sight of fresh flowers, but she avoided them, not wanting to be around them herself.
Then ca Udumbara’s outbreak.
The phenonon of flowers blooming inside her own body struck directly at Seo-rin’s trauma.
“Your Excellency.”
Ji-won, who had taken on the managent of Samcheon World in Seo-rin’s stead, spoke to in the train corridor.
“How is the Great Witch faring?”
“She’s not there yet... She’s not in a state to converse normally. I need your help a bit longer, Ji-won.”
“It’s no trouble, Your Excellency the Undertaker. I’ll take good care of the guild here.”
“...Thank you. Truly.”
“Hmm.” Ji-won peered into my eyes. “Yes. Leave it to .”
After we finished discussing various matters, I returned to the VIP room—now effectively a sick room. Seo-rin didn’t even look this way where she lay slumped on the bed.
Black violets.
From the neckline of her clothes up along her throat crawled a vine, its tip bearing a flower bud so black it looked as though it might burst at any mont. Red blotches of blood blood across her bed, her blankets, even growing in dark stains along her clothes.
No doubt she’d exhausted herself overnight, harming her own body and then collapsing.
For several days, I too had noticed the beginnings of Udumbara infection, shoots sprouting from the back of my hand. When an Awakener was infected with the virus, their body would normally fully bloom in about two weeks. Once it reached full bloom, that was the end. The Awakener would lose their abilities.
In my case, I’d likely lose my regression power too.
“...Seo-rin.”
I sat in a chair to match Seo-rin eye-to-eye, but she still wouldn’t turn to look at . Right now, for her, only the relentless growth of those plants pulsating inside her body must have felt real.
“While I was making today’s lunch, I thought of sothing. How I want to kill them all... All those cultists who worship re flowers as gods. And the people who believe in and rave about it. I started thinking it would solve everything if I wiped them all out.”
“...”
“Yesterday, I actually tracked down the New Buddha Church monk responsible for Busan and secretly buried him. No matter how strong his regeneration is, at a hundred ters underground he’ll suffer in pain forever, don’t you think so?”
“...”
“I’m sorry.”
I gently embraced Dang Seo-rin’s body.
“Next ti, I promise... Never again.”
Aura wrapped around .
There was a pop and a splattering of red.
On the pointed hat she loved. On her cloak. On her broom. On her hardcover books. On her giant globe. On her retro cara. On the artificial flowers I’d given her.
As the world reddened in my final sight, it no longer mattered what color it stained, so long as we were colored together.
That happened.
Early sumr, in June.
We strolled together through the Garden of Fallen Flowers.
“How is it? Has a certain vibe, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Seo-rin nodded absently. Her breathing, which had been as ragged as if she’d run an intense cardio workout, was now fully calm.
Although she’d finally regained her composure, Seo-rin suddenly paused.
I noticed. “Ah... What’s wrong?”
“...No, um. I just— It’s strange.”
She turned her head slightly, pretending to look around at the surroundings.
It was likely only then that she realized I had been holding her hand.
We silently agreed not to ntion the sensation of our fingers interlaced. Nor the flow of our heartbeats passing through our palms.
“All these flowers... they’ve really all wilted. Hmm, why is it only this place? Is this an Anomaly too?”
A graceful change of subject, smoothly done.
As expected of Seo-rin. Considering she’d been briefly exposed to her trauma in a disconcerting situation, it was quite skillful.
“I don’t know. I can’t say the cause for sure.”
“Huh...”
I waited a short seven seconds.
It was on purpose. In conversations, silence can be advantageous or disadvantageous. Clearly, in this case, it was the forr.
People only feel uncomfortable with silence when they’re unsure of the other person’s goodwill.
Yes, that was enough.
Around the ti her trauma’s aftershocks had all but cleared, I approached a flower remnant nearby.
“Dang Seo-rin, I’ve got a confession to make.”
“Huh?”
“I brought you here, but I’m actually nearly clueless about flowers.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Do you know what this flower is?”
“That? Um...”
Seo-rin bent down and gazed quietly at the dried-up flower, or rather, the fallen bloom.
Determining the species of a dead flower, with its color entirely faded and its petals shriveled, wouldn’t be easy. However, Seo-rin had worked at her family’s flower shop for many years, as both mascot and clerk, and so she swiftly recognized the identity of the fallen bloom.
“I’m not entirely sure if it’s ranunculus or peony... but looking at the leaves, I’d say it’s peony. It’s been dead a while, though.”
“Peony. I’ve heard of it.”
“Yeah. People who’re a bit older like them. They often grow them.”
Her voice picked up so life.
“Sotis you get custors who are sick of rose bouquets, right? When I recomnded them peonies, they loved it.”
“Yeah? What color do they co in?”
“Everything from white to wine-red. They go well with roses too. Their flower aning is ‘shyness,’ so it’s cute. But if you bundle only white ones, it can feel too solemn, so in our shop, we’d mix in pale pink and pink.”
“This flower.”
“Huh?”
“What color do you think it was?”
A blink. “This one? You an this exact one?”
“Yeah.”
“Ehh, no way to know color. They’re all dried-out brown. Just look at them.”
“Still, guess for fun.”
“Huh...” Seo-rin’s gaze turned serious. “Then I should look at which flowers were planted nearby. Since it’s near the entrance, they probably wouldn’t start off with sothing too flashy... so maybe white?”
“White.”
“Yes, people often confuse peonies with garden peonies because the nas are so similar.” Seo-rin cleared her throat for a bit of silly, smug fun. “If it were , I’d plant white peonies right at the garden entrance to greet visitors with a broad ‘flower smile.’ Otherwise, I don’t see much reason to start with peonies at the entrance.”
“Excellent.”
I let go of Seo-rin’s hand. She let out a tiny sound in response, but I acted as if it was nothing, placing my two palms gently around the fallen bloom she’d identified.
“White peony. Are you sure?”
“Um... Undertaker? What are you doing—?”
“Let’s check.”
“Huh?”
Dark Aura trickled out from between my fingers. I needed to save my Aura usage to avoid Awakening Leviathan, but—
This much was okay.
Sssrrrk.
That jet-black Aura spread along the flower’s dead stem into the soil. Monts later, that which had surely been dead turned a shade of light green.
Next to , Seo-rin drew a breath.
“...Ah.”
Light green crept upward, gradually reaching the bud of the once-wilted flower, hidden in my cupped hands. We still didn’t know what color it was.
“I’ll count to three, then let go. One, two... three.”
When I released it, there it was.
A snow-white peony.
Seo-rin’s lips parted. From them ca a breath, but it was nothing like her earlier ragged panting. It was sohow more delicate.
“Oh. So it really is white...” I mused. “Guess a flower shop clerk knows her stuff. How about this here? Ah, I think I can guess it too. A rose, right?”
“...Yeah, a chaleon rose. A wild variant.”
“What? That’s a thing? So what color?”
“...Peach.”
A flower blood.
“How about this?”
“...Moran, a tree peony. Pale pink.”
A flower blood.
“...It’s a patterned orchid, purple.”
A flower blood.
“Lipstick dodan, bell heather... White, but at the edges it’s tinted red like balsam dye.”
A flower blood.
“Campanula... A bluish color with a faint purple mix.”
“Moran.”
“Angel’s trumpet.”
A flower blood.
A flower blood.
A flower blood.
We walked quite far.
Looking back after we’d gone all around, the garden lay in full bloom beneath the early-sumr sun.
Seo-rin stood and looked at the newly flourishing garden wordlessly, as if her feet were rooted to the ground.
“Ah.”
Could a flower that had already withered ever bloom again?
“Agh... A-ahhh...”
Could a scorched ruin ever again yield a song?
“...Ah...”
Dang Seo-rin shed tears.
She wiped at them with her long witch’s sleeve, but they overflowed no matter how hard she tried.
At last, the temperature of the soil had caught up with the heart.
“I— I... My little siblings.”
“Yeah.”
“My siblings kept begging to just abandon the shop and run away with Mom and Dad, but I told them... I told them to trust their big sister, that you can definitely keep the shop open and still survive... But then, I... I... I had this thing about guilds and kept chasing after this dream of forming one... By the ti I ca back, no one was ho. I went to the shop, and—”
“It’s not your fault.”
“If I just hadn’t, then—”
“It’s not because of you.”
“Why...?”
She took a long breath.
“Why, even though everything ended up like this... even though the whole world is like this... why are flowers still so beautiful...?”
That was the cry of a human voice.
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