DKFTI 23

***

‘It’s cold.’

Upon arriving in Genzar, Sibel realized Leviathan’s words were not empty talk. He directly experienced the biting cold.

Genzar was far harsher than what Leviathan had said. Not only the cold, but all road leading to it were barren.

He almost suspected that the flower photos sent earlier had been fabricated. But one thing he liked about this place was the scenery. The blue sky, the white ice, the frozen surface of the blue lake. Everything in sight was dyed in blue, and that gave him a refreshing sense of openness.

“Is there less to see than you expected?”

Leviathan asked Sibel, who had been staring at the lake for a long while. Certainly, it was a place too full of desolation to be called the castle of a ‘Great’ Demon King. But rather, compared to a noisy demon king’s castle reeking of human traces, this seemed to suit Leviathan better.

When Sibel shook his head, Leviathan faintly smiled.

“Genzar is the land with the oldest name in this world.”

“Is it a place with a long history?”

Yet there were no great buildings, no traces of people living here. Only emptiness filled the land.

“It is the land blessed with God’s mercy. That is the meaning carried in the name Genzar.”

“God?”

Was it some sort of mythology? It was quite interesting. As Sibel’s eyes lit up, Leviathan, staring out at the endless vast land, continued speaking.

“When the beings called demons first came into existence, they were pitiful creatures without even reason.”

“Pitiful creatures?”

“Even humans of primitive times considered monsters more wretched than livestock.”

“Ohh.”

“God, who pitied the monsters that lived hidden in darkness and were called the world’s scourge, shed His tears upon this land.”

Leviathan was in the present, yet his wistful eyes seemed to linger somewhere in the distant past.

“After that, monsters gained reason and began to think, and by wielding magic they became powerful demons.”

“A mythology of demons then.”

“Demons who received such grace all loved God.”

Leviathan’s words, spoken while gazing far away, carried a certain tone. Soon he turned his head back to look at Sibel.

“Everything you see was left behind by Him.”

When he thought of this land as a legacy left by God, the place that had looked only barren began to appear wondrous.

Could God really exist? In a world where demons existed, would there not also be God? It was the moment when the worldview inside Sibel expanded.

“Did He like the cold, maybe?”

At Sibel’s sudden remark, Leviathan blankly looked at him and then let out a small laugh.

“Unfortunately, the frost that settled on this land was not His will.”

“Leviathan-nim, have you ever seen God?”

The story Leviathan told was so vivid that Sibel felt he were someone who had actually encountered God. So he asked, and eviathan smiled strangely.

“Are you curious?”

“Uh, of course!”

“That is…”

Sibel gulped down his saliva at Leviathan’s slow, trailing words.

“I will tell you next time.”

“Ah, that’s unfair!”

As Sibel jumped with wide, round eyes, Leviathan began to walk. Sibel quickly chased after him.

“Did you see God? Are there any mysterious relics?”

And he hurriedly threw questions at the back of Leviathan’s head.

“How old were you, Leviathan-nim? Where did God go? Did He return to the sky? Like in the myth of the fairy’s robe?¹

He had many questions. If it was the demons’ God, was he a Demon God? Or perhaps another god? If he wanted to know why demon kings were born this way, did he need to start with the mythology? Sibel’s curiosity grew.

“Ah, this is the flower from the photo you took, Leviathan-nim!”

As they approached Leviathan’s castle, Sibel spotted the flower he had seen earlier and was delighted to see it. He quickly ran toward it, even faster than the master of the castle himself.

“How did it bloom in such a cold place?”

Sibel looked at the flower as if it was a miracle, and Leviathan looked at Sibel in amazement.

“It must mean that spring is returning.”

“Spring?”

“Genzar was once a place full of greenery.”

“Huh? Really?”

At Sibel’s incredulous expression, Leviathan nodded as if it were natural.

“Everything will find its place again.”

“Its place?”

Leviathan’s puzzling words piqued Sibel’s curiosity. He glanced at Leviathan and at the wide lake stretching behind him.

Somehow he felt a déjà vu. As if he had once gone through this exact scene here.

The sight of Leviathan, a dot against the vast and barren land, strangely touched a corner of his heart.

Sibel almost asked if he was not lonely, he didn’t know anything about him, so he couldn’t understand why he thought that.

As Sibel turned around, Leviathan also turned his head to follow his gaze. After staring at the lake for a long while, he spoke.

“One day, when the green leaves are thick, He will be there in front of the melted lake.”

The cold wind seemed to suddenly turn warm. His fingertips were still numb from the cold, but strangely enough, that was how it felt.

The lake Leviathan saw now seemed different from the frozen mass of ice in Sibel’s eyes. Thinking that, he found himself drawn to the past Genzar Leviathan was picturing.

Surely this place held many interesting stories. He looked forward to the bundle of tales Leviathan would share from now on.

That day, Sibel drank the warmest tea in the world inside Leviathan’s castle and laughed for a long time.

Perhaps because Leviathan was a fellow demon king who understood him, or because he was simply friendly toward him, Sibel always felt safe and was at ease when he’s by his side.

So Sibel spent a long times in Leviathan’s castle making new memories, and as a bonus, he gained much advice needed to manage his own demon king’s castle.

Leviathan has always been a good teacher to Sibel.

***

In a world where the rights of demons are at rock bottom, surviving as a Demon King was no easy task. So, even today, despite bearing the title of King, Sibel was sweating bullets.

“This thing called farming, you see, the field has to be good. The field. You get it?”

“Hm.”

Ruru, holding a hoe, wagged his tail as he looked down at Sibel, who was working the soil with a hand hoe.

“Quite the strange tool you’ve got there.”

“Right? This is called a hoe, but my memory is fuzzy, so I’m not sure if this shape is exactly correct.”

Sibel started boasting to Ruru, who had crafted the hoe just as he had described it.

“You have to dig it in like this. Look, you dig a hole like this, put the seed in, and cover it with soil.”

Sibel was in a strange mood.

“That’s really amazing.”

When Ruru clapped, Sibel proudly shrugged his shoulders. “What is so special about this?” Anyone who had lived as a modern person would know this as basic common sense. Basic common sense.

“But, Demon King.”

“Mm?”

Chop, chop, chop. The lively sound of digging resonated through Demon King castle’s garden. Beads of sweat rolled down from under his straw hat.

“Why are we doing such troublesome work,?”

That was what Ruru was curious about. Why was a high-ranking demon like him plowing a vegetable garden?

“It’s not like we’re out overturning humans, and I can’t believe the thing in my hands is scallion seeds.”

Fox demons were naturally clever and greedy. Ruru was a particularly smart one among them.

“But Ruru, there’s a reason for this.”

Sibel straightened his bent back and looked up at the sky.

“Any great deed always begins with a warm meal.”

Eyes full of emotion, a soft voice, and deep gaze.

“…What kind of nonsense is that?”

It doesn’t work.

Sibel coughed awkwardly. The truth was, there was no special reason they had made a vegetable garden in the castle. It was simply a hobby tied to the dream of a romantic country life, and also to improve the quality of meals served at the table.

In a situation where tributes were not coming in, procuring human food ingredients wasn’t easy.

“Is this edible?”

From a distance, Raccoon asked while rolling a stone he had pulled from the ground with his fingers.

“It’s not…”

He was about to say it wasn’t edible, but before he could, the stone was already crunching between Raccoon’s teeth. Sibel swallowed down the answer he had meant to give.

“As long as you’re happy, that’s enough.”

“Why can’t he even tell the difference between a stone and a vegetable?”

Shanti, who had been carrying a sack of seed potatoes, stuck out his tongue at Raccoon. Lately, Shanti and Raccoon seemed to have gotten quite close.

“Hey, Pu! You’re going to get in trouble if you keep jumping around in the dirt like that!”

Shanti was like the mom of the demon king castle. Taking care of Pudding and Raccoon every day, it was routine for Shanti to raise his voice at them.

1. The story is called “선녀와 나무꾼” (The Heavenly Maiden and the Woodcutter).
   A poor but kind woodcutter sees a group of heavenly maidens (선녀) descend from heaven to bathe in a pond on Earth. The maidens leave their magical feathered robes on the shore. Without this robe, they cannot fly back to heaven. The woodcutter takes and hides one of the robes. The maiden who owns the hidden robe cannot return home. The woodcutter appears, comforts her, and eventually, they marry and have children. They live happily for years, but the heavenly maiden always longs for her home. One day, while the woodcutter is away, she (or one of their children) finds the robe that the woodcutter had hidden away. The moment she puts on the robe, all her heavenly powers return, and she is compelled to fly back to heaven, leaving her human family behind. ↩︎