Chapter 51

EP.51 The Saint Ponders What Love Is

What is love?

My head became a jumbled mess.

I felt as if the sound of my dormant brain, which had been quietly sleeping, was now fervently spinning and flowing through my ears.

What was I thinking so deeply about?

It wasn't anything special,

just a sudden curiosity about what love really is.

I didn't really want to give a dictionary definition.

I didn't want to talk about chemical reactions like the effects of phenylethylamine,

nor did I want to discuss the romantic ideals that people often talk about.

If I had to find the closest definition of love for me,

the first thing that came to mind would be maternal love.

Even though I wasn't her biological child, what my mother showed me

was undoubtedly close to love.

Mother and love.

The key created by these two keywords led me inside the door.

A solitary island, which only I could enter and which no longer existed in the world, greeted me.

A memory of a rainy day.

I was staring blankly at the sky outside the window,

and my mother said to me,

"Son."

"Yes."

"You deserve to be loved."

"..."

"By everyone, not just me and Yuna."

Now, looking back,

the reason I often had bizarre thoughts was largely due to my mother's influence.

After all, children tend to resemble their parents.

Anyway, my mother always said things I couldn't understand.

She once said that human language is different from that of insects because if you separate the head, chest, and abdomen, you can't recognize the form.

On that day, she again pulled out some unexpected words.

Usually, I would have just nodded along, thinking she was saying something strange again,

but perhaps because of the rain, or for some other reason, her words

pierced the deepest part of my heart, right into the center of my worries.

If I had to compare it to a target, it would be a perfect bullseye.

She wasn't a fortune-teller, yet she could hit the core with her passing remarks.

I responded like a frog hit on the back of the head by a stone thrown without thought.

"Really?"

"Of course. Don't you believe me?"

"To be honest."

Now, the word 'love' makes me feel uncomfortable,

but back then, I was an extreme case of a love-deprived patient.

There was a beggar who never felt full no matter how much he ate or drank.

Someone who craved love but couldn't even face it,

a fifteen-year-old boy whose every thought started with 'someone like me,'

and who was deeply entrenched in feelings of unworthiness.

"Why. Even the hymns say so. You were born to be loved."

"But that's just a song."

"A song you sang yourself."

"So what?"

"It's nothing special. But it was because of that song that I decided to adopt you."

"You've said that five times already."

At the orphanage, the church sometimes had events where sponsors would attend.

She was talking about one of those times.

She said she could hear my voice clearly.

And that it made her so happy.

She said that in a choir of almost twenty, she could only hear my voice.

It sounded unbelievable,

but since it was my mother, I just accepted it.

My mother was someone who could do anything.

She was definitely showing me love by saying such things.

That day, she must have seen that I was having obvious thoughts and was trying to give me courage.

Anyway, thanks to such a mother, I learned about love.

Or rather, a type of love.

Love, I think, is something that doesn't expect anything in return,

but only hopes for the best for the other person and guides them on the right path.

It's formless yet clear,

intangible yet distinctly felt.

A mere illusion that exists,

something that can't be described in words or shown physically.

So, people get confused, I guess.

Compared to the vividness of the word 'love' itself,

it's like a mirage that appears and disappears.

Even I, who witnessed it, wondered if it was just a mirage on a summer night.

My mother, who always gave clear answers to everything,

I thought her words were wrong in this case.

And that feeling has continued for ten years.

If I had the right to be loved,

and if someone had whispered it to me over the course of ten years,

I probably wouldn't have become so twisted.

Well,

it's a bit ridiculous to blame others now.

If you want to be loved, you should first become lovable, and I, who made no effort in that regard, can only make excuses.

And the question I threw to myself from afar came back to me.

What is love?

And why was I pondering what love is?

I stared blankly at the word feast that filled the client chat window.

[Rebecca the Witch: LoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLove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