Chapter 20

EP.20 The Saint Who Drinks Soju on a Rainy Day

There was a mother.

Of course, I was an orphan abandoned without even knowing the faces of my birth parents.

So, I wasn't talking about my biological mother.

But even for someone like me, there was someone I could call mother.

...

No, it wasn't just someone I could call mother.

As I mentioned earlier,

there was a mother.

Suddenly, I felt the sound of raindrops hitting the building's exterior, like a child playing, drumming continuously.

The sky, as if a hole had been torn, was pouring down streams of water.

It's raining.

On cloudy days, when the drizzle soaks the ground, some people might be enveloped by a sense of melancholy,

but I like rainy days.

Because the sound of rain swirling around my ears, like a symbol of happier times, stirs a certain sensitivity in a corner of my soul.

Awakening to the world beyond my eyelids, I suddenly got out of bed and opened a bottle of soju.

Oh,

I wanted to drink.

I wanted to soak my body in alcohol.

Blowing my horn, I flung open the window.

Like a guest feeling the cold, the raindrops, unimpeded by the building's ceiling, entered the room at an angle, driven by the wind, without caring that they were gradually soaking the room.

Facing the sound of raindrops filling the surroundings and playing a monotonous tune,

I looked up at the black sky, heavy with dark clouds.

Actually, I didn't like the rain itself.

I liked rainy days.

More precisely, I liked the memories of rainy days.

Using them as a side dish,

glug glug, I drank the liquid in the bottle labeled "True Dew" coolly.

I've already finished more than half a bottle.

Oh, I'm getting drunk.

The wind is cold.

The scale of the rain exceeded my expectations.

With the mist rising densely beyond the horizon in my field of vision,

I was enveloped by the illusion that the world was about to be submerged in water.

Human memory, unfortunately, tends to embed unhappiness deeper in the brain than happiness.

Moreover, memories are the kind of thing that naturally evaporate as life progresses, so I always recalled the days with her on rainy days, not wanting to forget those times.

Like digging up something that tries to hide deep in the wrinkles of the brain,

or like gripping sand that slips away no matter how hard you try.

My mother was a bit strange.

Perhaps the word "bit" doesn't suit her at all.

...

My mother was very strange.

She could be called eccentric.

For example, the fact that she thought about adopting someone like me,

or that she maintained a young face like a college freshman even as she approached forty,

or that she spoke in a grandmotherly tone that seemed to belong to someone in her seventies, which didn't match her pretty face,

or that her beliefs were a bit eccentric.

Yes, eccentric.

That was the word to define my mother in one sentence.

Mother was eccentric.

Mom, was eccentric.

"Son."

"Yes."

"In love, appearance is like a preliminary round, and character is like the main event."

"Huh?"

"In love, appearance is like a preliminary round, and character is like the main event."

"No, it's not that I didn't understand, but why are you saying this all of a sudden...?"

"In love, appearance is like a preliminary round, and character is like the main event."

"What is this all about?"

Even now, it seems really random.

Human language is different from that of insects, which can be recognized even if their head, chest, and abdomen are separated.

She was called eccentric because her actions often lacked any warning.

Mom, start from the beginning.

Even though I was recalling beautiful memories, my head started to hurt, so I drank the remaining soju in one go.

...

...

...

Compared to the days when I lived with the shadow of death, I was quite brighter back then.

I learned to appreciate the warmth of my pulsating heart,

and no longer did the brown scars on my wrists produce anything red and beautiful,

and I no longer cried endlessly,

or vented my resentment towards the world,

or just prayed to Jesus in a daze.

Mom always worried about me, and so did my sister, Galaxy, who took good care of me.

So, when Mom sometimes said strange things, it didn't bother me at all.

In fact, I secretly liked it.

To the point where I still keep it deep in my heart, never wanting to forget, treating it as a beautiful memory of a rainy day...

"In love, appearance is like a preliminary round, and character is like the main event."

"You know, Mom sometimes goes off the rails. If you don't answer her properly, she'll keep saying it all day."

"..."

"In love..."

"...I understand. I'll answer. Oh, love. Yes. So, you mean that character and heart are more important than just the surface appearance, right?"

"No, if you don't pass the preliminary round, you can't even start the main event."

"..."

"..."

Perhaps it was a natural progression that I became obsessed with appearance, growing up under such a mother.

The reason I'm telling this story is...

Well,

I turned on the computer.

More accurately, I turned on the monitor that had gone into power-saving mode, as the computer is always on unless there's a power outage.

The screen that appeared with a bright light showed

a logo that expresses the story being woven with seven colors like a rainbow.

It's the loading screen of Rainbow Tales.

The 'Saint' is wandering through the world of a fairy tale.

Perhaps to enhance the player's immersion,

Rainbow Tales shows the events that lead the character to join the battlefield on the loading screen.

There are preset backgrounds, but users can also set their own.

People who are attached to their characters often pay professionals to create these backgrounds...

I made it myself.

In a village where only the charred remains are left, the Saint is weeping over the cold bodies of her father and her only brother.

They died in an accident during the war.

Losing her loved ones, she leaves the Vatican to end the tiresome war, paradoxically joining the battlefield... It's a setting that only I know.

Embarrassingly,

just as Mom and Galaxy saved me,

I wondered if I could save someone,

if I could,

if I had the ability to do so, feeling dejected,

Galaxy encouraged me,

something impossible in reality,

a mere sequence of 0s and 1s,

so that I wouldn't have to take responsibility if I failed,

because it's a game,

just for entertainment,

even if it's only for vicarious satisfaction,

that's how I started the game,

though it might make me sound like a game addict.

It has become something I can't live without throughout my life.

Ah, the character and I made eye contact.

She's beautiful no matter how I look at her.

She has to be beautiful.

Because I made her that way...

I like beautiful things.

I blamed Mom a little just now,

but even if it weren't for Mom, I was already obsessed with beauty.

...

The children who successfully get adopted into someone's family,

the so-called 'well-sold' children,

all had outstanding abilities.

For example, they were smart and did well in school... or they had special talents that set them apart from others and found happiness in good families.

It's understandable, isn't it?

It would be more strange for foster parents, who decided to raise a child who isn't their own, to want a mediocre or unremarkable child.

However,

there are cases where children get adopted into really good families without showing such abilities.

Well, people whisper about it, but it's already a kind of ability.

It could be called a talent determined by nature.

Being beautiful.

It's a bit awkward to use that word for children, so let's say...

cute and pretty.

And if the child is a girl, it's like adding a flower to silk,

it's the best of both worlds.

Children who get adopted into good families without doing anything are mostly, if not almost all, pretty.

This was before I met Mom and Galaxy.

Back then, I... was thirsty for love.

It's not just me; most children in orphanages are like that.

Affection deficit is like a kind of epidemic among children in orphanages.

Children who haven't even received simple vaccinations can't resist such a powerful disease.

If I had been a little better-looking,

or, if I had been a girl?

If I had had outstanding looks?

Could I have been loved by someone?

Thinking about this several times a day, or even all day,

I became obsessed with beauty and envied pretty children.

Growing up in such an environment, it was perhaps natural that I started to care about my own appearance.

...I once heard from Galaxy that

every life is a masterpiece created by someone.

I don't know who created me, but

even if others might mock me for being too serious about a game character,

if I were to conceive a life,

I wouldn't want to make someone as unattractive as me.

I wanted to create someone that anyone in the world would love.

To be loved by everyone.

I,

a young boy who had lived a short life as a middle school freshman,

somehow,

created the 'Saint.'

I stopped watching the Saint's journey,