Once, as an atheist, I walked into a Christian church. The three-hour sermon was filled with gifts of wisdom and the blessings of faith.
The sermon was wonderful, deeply inspiring.
Unfortunately, I had no need for religion to grant me miracles, nor did I believe the Lord truly loved everyone. I entered that classroom only to prepare for a certain day.
That certain day was a stifling afternoon, a room flooded with brilliant sunlight, and Yuanyin curled up on the sofa, silent for no apparent reason.
I was ready. Ready to begin a wonderful sermon.
Zen stories, words of wisdom, and assurances that the Lord loved you-I knew all those lines by heart, as though they could spill effortlessly from my lips.
But when I stood before Yuanyin in a cleric's robes, when her pain-filled silence and eyes whose depths I could not fathom confronted me, I suddenly could not utter a single one of those stories or bullshit lessons, not even something like "the Lord loves you" or "the Lord will forgive you."
The sunlight divided Yuanyin and me into shores of light and shadow. My robes were scorching hot, the side of my face flushed beneath the sun, and after all that time gathering my thoughts, all I managed to squeeze out was one useless word: amen.①
God, tell us the reason
It is hunting season
And the lambs are on the run
Searching for meaning②
①: The closing word of a Christian prayer, expressing the hope that every prayer will be answered as wished.
②: The approximate meaning of an excerpt from the song "Lost Stars":
Almighty God, can you tell me,
why, in the height of hunting season,
the weak lambs keep fleeing endlessly,
yet still dream of finding meaning in their existence?
(Part one)
I was ready.
Standing beneath that building laden with memories I thought I could abandon, memories that had instead rooted themselves deep in the ocean of my subconscious, I was ready to face Toji Zenin.
The four-story residential building had lights on in every home. Only unit 07 on the second floor remained completely dark.
I walked ahead, with Megumi holding the hem of my clothes and following close behind.
I had walked through that narrow stairwell countless times, but never once had I trembled as relentlessly as I did that day.
We climbed to the second floor and stopped at the entrance. Now only a door stood between us and Toji.
The moon shone bright among sparse stars, and the autumn wind rustled. The child behind me pressed close, and I could feel him shrink back in unease.
We had actually talked on the way there.
The question was cruel. Once laid out in the open, there was no way to avoid it.
Megumi asked me what we would do if he had done it deliberately.
I said we would find out exactly what his intentions were, and whether we could accept them, tolerate them, or forgive them.
Then the child asked what we would do if he had not meant to.
I rejected that outright. Impossible.
If Shiu Kong had not lied to me, if the past was not tainted with falsehoods, then Toji, already a father, had no reason to abandon us.
At first, that seemed to settle the question. But the moment reality hit, the utopian fantasies we had entertained along the way were torn to shreds.
What we saw when we opened the door made Megumi turn around and leave.
We had imagined how a reunion between father and children might go, but none of those possibilities were as chilling as the scene before us.
Scattered liquor bottles, horse-racing tickets everywhere, and cigarette butts soaking in a bottle, giving off a rotten stench.
If all of that was not enough to dishearten a child or make a calm, mature adult like me recoil, then the actions of the father inside-the one we had waited for, searched for, and looked forward to seeing-were what truly mattered.
Toji lay on the sofa, facing its back, fast asleep.
He was asleep, perhaps sleeping very soundly. Otherwise, why had he not heard the door creaking as we pushed it open in apprehension? Why had he not heard the doorframe's pained groan when Megumi slammed the door on his way out? Why had he not heard the glass soda bottle I was carrying hit the floor and shatter?
-Toji Zenin, what can you even hear anymore?
I had no idea where that sudden loss of control came from. Without a shred of reason, I drew Quasar, removed the suppressor, and fired three shots at the ceiling.
-If you cannot hear any of those heartbreaking sounds, then surely, Toji Zenin, you can hear a life-threatening roar right beside your ears?
My irrationality was deafening.
The gunfire sent Megumi rushing back in panic and made Toji bolt upright.
Toji snatched Quasar away. "Yuanli, what are you doing?!"
I pulled Megumi into my arms, covered his ears, and asked Toji in return, "What are you doing?"
Had my gaze been too sharp? He slumped back onto the sofa like a deflated ball.
That damned refusal to talk.
I uncovered Megumi's ears and led him into my room. As I closed the door behind us, I heard the child say in disappointment, "Let's go. Don't bother asking. He's just forgotten us."
I understood how Megumi felt.
We were like people who had worked through a problem with complete confidence, only to check the solution and discover that our method was right but our answer completely wrong. We did not want to touch the problem again. Giving up that point and making up for it elsewhere was the reasonable thing to do.
But I could not accept it. I had already missed my chance with Yuanyin. Was I going to miss my chance with Toji now, too?
"Megumi, give me a little time to ask him and try to salvage this, all right? If Toji really doesn't want to live with us, I'll take you away."
The child sighed and gave the faintest nod. "One hour. If he's still like this after an hour, stop lying to yourself, Yuanli."
I left the room and returned to the living room. By then, Toji had covered his head with a cushion, and Quasar was lying on the table.
"Toji, can we talk?"
Toji rolled over, turning his back on me and refusing to cooperate.
I should have sat quietly and calmly, then waited with perseverance until he was willing to speak, just as I had stayed beside Yuanyin when she was angry all those years ago.
Wearing someone down through sheer endurance-I was good at that. My longest record was three days without food or water and five days without sleep or rest, until Yuanyin had no choice but to talk to me.
But now my time was limited. Sixty minutes. Once that time was up, I would have to choose between Megumi and Toji. It was the worst possible situation. Megumi was so young that, even with a mature soul, he could not live on his own.
And Toji, once he left the cage that kept him in check-did he really have a future?
Time passed, second by second, minute by minute, while the silence continued. Ten minutes went to waste just like that.
No. Calm and reason were utterly useless.
I needed an opening. Something like...
Making him sit up and face me.
I swore I had not done anything so rude in several lifetimes.
I crouched, gripped two legs of the sofa, and, without changing my expression, tipped the entire sofa upright.
I had to admit, it was as easy as moving a child's chair. But it was also strange enough.
As the sofa tilted ninety degrees, Toji slid off it and landed sitting on the floor. He looked somewhat stunned, but there seemed to be something else in his eyes, too.
I picked up the cushion beside him and placed it behind me, clearing away anything he could hide behind. "Please, Dad. Tell me. Why won't you come home?"
Moonlight streamed in, dividing us.
His green eyes, identical to mine, looked at me with guilt.
"Is it because I'm a monster? Is that why you want to avoid me, Dad?"
His eyes widened slightly. That pain-filled gaze and its unfathomable depths frightened me with their familiarity.
How had that "certain day" come around again?
I felt my heart hammering just beneath my vocal cords. Everything before me slowly overlapped with that memory.
I was no longer in control, because I had suffered a crushing defeat that afternoon, and that afternoon was where I had come to a standstill.
I knew all too well what would happen next.
Perhaps I would still manage nothing more than an amen, then lose my chance to understand Yuanyin and Toji at the most crucial moment. Because afterward, they would hide their wounds away so completely that I would never have a chance to heal them.
They would keep going with those wounds, while the pain spread silently, gradually eclipsing my presence.
I lowered my eyes, feeling how unpredictable life was.
Toji would remain silent, and I would remain helpless.
The opportunity was right before me, even waving at me and saying it would not wait forever. Yet I could not reach out.
The philosophical stories and theological lessons in my head were utterly useless, because not one of the books I had read told me what to do when someone I loved fell silent in pain.
Time seemed to move faster. As the moment of parting approached, a sudden spark of courage rose in me, perhaps because I knew we were about to separate, and by our next meeting, death would stand between us.
I stepped forward and hugged Toji. Then I thanked him for giving me the fatherly love I had never received before.
At my words, Toji's tense body slowly relaxed. He hugged me back tightly and said, his voice catching, "But my existence... is a mistake..."
At that moment, those words suddenly sent an endless stream of knowledge and reasoning flooding back into my barren, helpless mind.
(Part two) A mistake
[Yuanyin, can you tell me whether my existence is a mistake?]
Toji had not lifted the stone lid, because he did not know the deceased's ashes were kept beneath the marble slab. He simply sat upright, staring blankly at the gravestone without a photograph, and helplessly asked his beloved wife that question in his heart.
It was his first time climbing that mountain.
He had climbed at midnight, feeling his way up the mountain path in the dark. Even with his Heavenly Restriction, he repeatedly lost his footing. He remembered every lurch of weightlessness and skipped heartbeat, then drew connections from them.
But whenever those connections led him to that child, his despair surged.
Toji Zenin had experienced despair three times in his life.
The first was at ten years old, when he was declared to have a Heavenly Restriction.
The second was when Yuanyin died.
And the third was because of Yuanli.
Using the hem of his clothes, stained with someone else's blood, Toji wiped clean the marble slab before the gravestone. Then he reverently pressed his forehead against it until the stone grew warm.
He had nothing left to say to Yuanyin, apart from that first question.
Toji Zenin could not understand whether his existence was right or wrong.
He had never read books or attended a proper school. He had not even been allowed into the Zenin Clan's school.
A person's earliest memories began at five.
At five years old, the world in Toji Zenin's eyes was only as large as the Zenin Clan. He knew flowers, grass, trees, and jujutsu sorcerers.
At ten, disaster struck, and his world was destroyed in an instant. When it was rebuilt, it had shrunk drastically, leaving only a small courtyard, the Heavenly Restriction he despised, and the forever-unattainable prospect of becoming a jujutsu sorcerer.
At fifteen, at eighteen, throughout his entire life before meeting Yuanyin, Toji Zenin's world had never escaped that courtyard. Not until he had a family.
His family was an isolated island in that ocean. Shipwrecked, he had struggled through countless hardships to reach it and make his home there. He thought he would never drift again. He thought he could cast aside that curse.
He had never imagined that the island, too, could sink beneath the sea. Fortunately, a little wooden boat had pulled him out of the water. It looked sturdy but was weak within, riddled with holes. He did not care. He would patch her up. Even if the waves came, he could protect her.
But the problem was that he was a termite. His existence was the very reason the little boat had holes.
He had harmed his daughter, made his daughter cursed by heaven just like him, all because of her bloodline.
That truth was what broke Toji Zenin.
Before you continue