Chapter 20: A Saint Drinking Soju on a Rainy Day

There was a mother.

Of course, I was an orphan abandoned without ever knowing the faces of the parents who gave birth to me.

So, I’m not talking about my biological mother.

Yet, even someone like me had a person I could call “mother.”

No, it wasn’t just that I could call her mother.

As I mentioned earlier, there was a mother.

Suddenly, I felt a sound, like a child playing pranks, tapping against the outer wall of the building.

The sky poured out streams of water, as if a hole had burst open.

It was raining.

On cloudy days, some people might feel a sense of melancholy as they tread on the damp ground, but I like rainy days.

The sound of the rain, swirling around my ears, stirs a part of my soul, evoking emotions as if it symbolizes the very essence of a happier time.

Awakening to the world beyond my eyelids, I suddenly sat up in bed and opened a bottle of soju.

Ah, I wanted a drink.

I wanted to soak my body in alcohol.

Blowing into the neck of the bottle, I swung open the window.

Even as raindrops, carried by the wind, dampened the room without obstruction from the ceiling, as if an uninvited guest had arrived, I paid no mind and leaned out.

Facing the sound of rain that filled the surroundings with its monotonous rhythm, I gazed up at the dark, cloudy sky.

In truth, it wasn’t the rain itself that I liked.

I liked rainy days.

More specifically, I liked the memories of rainy days.

Using those memories as an accompaniment,

I gulped down the liquid in the bottle labeled “True Dew.”

Before I knew it, I had drunk more than half the bottle.

Ah, I’m getting drunk.

The wind is cold.

The rain is heavier than I expected.

With the dense mist rising far beyond the horizon visible to me,

I was engulfed in the illusion that the entire world might soon be submerged.

Human memory, lamentably, tends to lodge unhappiness more deeply in the mind than happiness.

Furthermore, memories naturally dissipate over the course of life.

Not wanting to truly forget those times, I would always recall the moments I shared with them whenever it rained.

Like digging through something buried deep in the folds of my brain,

Or clenching my fists tightly to hold onto sand that inevitably trickles through my fingers.

My mother was a somewhat strange person.

Perhaps “somewhat” is not a fitting word to describe her.

My mother was a very strange person.

You might even call her eccentric.

The fact that she thought of adopting someone like me was evidence enough.

Despite being close to forty, she maintained the youthful face of someone in their early twenties.

And yet, that beautiful face spoke in a manner reminiscent of an elderly woman in her seventies or eighties, which didn’t suit her appearance at all.

Her entire way of thinking could only be described as eccentric.

Yes, eccentric.

That was the word that perfectly defined my mother in a single stroke.

Mother was eccentric.

Mom was… eccentric.

“My son,” she would say.

“Yes?”

“When it comes to love, looks are like the preliminaries, and a good heart is like the finals.”

“…What?”

“When it comes to love, looks are like the preliminaries, and a good heart is like the finals.”

“No, I understand what you’re saying, but why bring this up all of a sudden…?”

“When it comes to love, looks are like the preliminaries, and a good heart is like the finals.”

“What does that even mean?”

Even thinking about it now, it was so random.

Human language isn’t like that of insects; you can’t just remove the head, thorax, and abdomen and still expect it to be recognizable.

Part of why she was called eccentric was because her actions often came without any preamble.

Mom, start from the beginning.

Even though I was reminiscing about beautiful memories, the absurdity of it all gave me a headache, so I downed the rest of the soju in my bottle, leaving not a single drop.

Compared to the days when I lived with the shadow of death hanging over me, I was much brighter during that time.

I learned to be grateful for the warmth of a beating heart.

The countless brown scars that once lined my wrists no longer bled with fresh, red streams.

I no longer cried endlessly.

I no longer hurled resentment at the world.

I no longer offered prayers to Jesus in a daze.

It was all thanks to my mother, who always worried about me, and her daughter, Eunha, who cared for me so well.

So, when my mom said strange things from time to time, it didn’t bother me in the slightest.

In fact, I might have secretly enjoyed it.

Even now, I treasure those moments deeply, treating them as beautiful memories of rainy days that I never want to forget.

“When it comes to love, looks are like the preliminaries, and a good heart is like the finals.”

“You know how our mom sometimes breaks down, right? If you don’t respond appropriately, she’ll keep saying that all day.”

“When it comes to love…”

“…Fine, I’ll respond. Uh, love. Right. So, you’re saying personality and heart are more important than superficial looks?”

“No, I’m saying you can’t even enter the finals without passing the preliminaries.”

“…”

Growing up under a mother like that, it might have been inevitable that I developed an obsession with appearances.

Why am I telling this story?

Well…

I turned on my computer.

To be more precise, since my computer is never really off unless there’s a power outage, I woke it up from sleep mode, and the monitor flickered back to life.

As the screen lit up with a brilliant light, what appeared before me was a logo expressing stories woven together like a rainbow in seven colors.

It was the title screen of Rainbow Tales.

The “Saintess” was walking through a fairytale world.

Perhaps to enhance the player’s immersion?

On its title screen, Rainbow Tales portrays events that lead characters to participate in battle.

There are default presets available, but players can also customize the backgrounds themselves.

Players who are particularly fond of their characters often commission professionals to create these backgrounds, paying them for their work.

But I created mine myself.

In the ruins of a village reduced to ashes, the Saintess clings to cold, lifeless corpses, wailing in despair.

Her father and her only older brother.

Both killed in a tragic accident during the war.

After losing her loved ones, she leaves the Vatican to paradoxically join the battlefield in an effort to end the endless war…

This is my own backstory, one that only I know.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but…

Just as my mom and Eunha saved me,

I wondered if I could save someone too.

Could I do that?

I was crestfallen, feeling powerless to do so.

Then Eunha suggested something to me.

In reality, it seemed impossible.

But in a game, built only from strings of 0s and 1s, there’s no responsibility for failure.

Because it’s just a game,

merely a form of entertainment,

even vicarious satisfaction was fine.

And so, I began the game, half as a joke.

Well… I guess I sound like an addict, which is a bit embarrassing, but the truth is, this game has become something I absolutely cannot leave out when talking about my life as a whole.

Oh. I made eye contact with the character.

She’s beautiful no matter how or when I look at her.

She has to be.

Because I made her that way.

I like beautiful things.

Earlier, I blamed my mom out of embarrassment,

but honestly, even without her influence, I’ve always been obsessed with beauty.

The kids who managed to leave the orphanage teeming with dozens of children and successfully got adopted into a family—

those who were “in demand,” so to speak—

all had one thing in common: exceptional abilities.

Put simply, children who excelled academically because they were smart or had some other unique talents were the ones who ended up in good homes and found happiness.

It makes sense, doesn’t it?

It would be strange for foster parents who choose to take in a non-biological child to specifically prefer someone plain or lacking in talent.

But well,

there are cases where a child gets adopted into a truly good family without displaying such talents.

No, everyone avoids saying it outright, but that in itself is already a kind of ability.

You could even call it an innate talent.

It’s beauty.

Though it feels a bit awkward to use such a word for children, let’s rephrase it:

Being cute and pretty.

And if, on top of that, the child is a girl, it’s like adding flowers to silk, a perfect embellishment.

Children who get into good families without doing anything are mostly, if not entirely, those with pretty faces.

This was all before I met Mom and Eunha.

At that time… I was starved for love.

Not that I was particularly unique in this; most children in orphanages are like that.

Emotional deprivation is like an epidemic among orphanage kids.

There’s no way children who haven’t even had basic vaccinations could resist such a powerful illness.

If only I were a little better looking,

or if I had been a girl?

If I had exceptional looks?

Would someone have loved me then?

When you think like that multiple times a day, or even all day long,

you become obsessed with beauty and start to envy the kids who are prettier.

Growing up in such an environment, my fixation on my appearance—

perhaps that was inevitable.

…Something Eunha once told me comes to mind.

She said every life is someone’s magnum opus.

I don’t even know the faces of those who created me,

and others might mockingly say I’m too attached to something as trivial as a game character,

but if I ever got the chance to create a life,

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

No, I’d want to create a child so lovable that the world couldn’t help but adore them.

Truly, someone who could be loved by anyone.

I,

the me who had lived a short life of just a middle school first-grader,

somehow managed to create the “Saintess.”

I stopped watching the replay of the Saintess’s journey and turned to the cracked mirror at the entrance of the room,

a mirror large enough to reflect my entire body.

Eyes the color of the sea, shifting between blue and light green depending on the angle, stared back at me, not from the monitor but from the reflection.

Golden hair, shining as though glazed with honey, hung over my worn-out clothes, falling like silk over a body whose figure couldn’t be hidden even by shabby garments, unmarred at the ends despite being handled carelessly.

My pale skin, as if untouched by dirt, had no blemishes despite a complete lack of care.

A body with curves so pronounced they could feel almost aggressive—

full hips and chest paired with not a shred of excess flesh.

Facial features, though unadorned with makeup, struck a perfect balance, neither too plain nor overly extravagant, with dazzling eyes and a refined harmony.

As I looked at that reflection, I recalled something Eunha once said about the Saintess.

You can’t help but love her. Whether you’re a man or a woman.

The Eunha who said that is no longer here.

Mom isn’t here anymore, either.

And so, having given up on being loved by anyone,

I wonder if I pitied myself in the end.

A life that could be described as reckless, if not outright indulgent, consumed everything I had.

The shadow of death loomed once again due to the consequences.

In the moment when I was ready to give up on life,

an inexplicable phenomenon occurred.

Is this a second salvation?

Or perhaps, like before,

it’s an illusion dangled before me only to lead to greater despair?

Either way, the result was that my life continued.

And thanks to that, I found something I wanted to do.

To bring out the feelings I had hidden deep within, the ones I would show no one,

I needed courage.

I stopped looking in the mirror.

Ignoring the soaked floor,

I stuck my head out the window once more,

looked up at the broken sky,

and let the words I yearned for the most crawl out of my mouth,

forcing them past my throat as if unclogging a stubborn drain.

“Can I be loved?”

It was just a question to myself.

The overwhelming emotions pressing against my heart wouldn’t let me endure the suffocation, so I spoke.

Not because I wanted someone to hear me,

nor because I expected an answer.

But then…

as if to respond to my words,

the rain that had been falling from the sky stopped abruptly, as if by magic.

To me,

in that moment,

it felt like a divine affirmation,

a perfect coincidence so timely that even a heretic like me couldn’t help but interpret it as a god-sent sign.

Overcome with emotion,

I shed a few tears.