“Rise, brother.”

Brother? Who is it this time!

Ye-rin sunbae’s graduation was over.

The finish hadn’t been as clean as I’d pictured.

I handed the girl the graduation gift and went home.

Once I was home I raided the fridge next door, at Mom’s.

I carried off a six-pack my father had been stacking up to drink, and went back to my own place.

And I drank it looking out at the Jangju River flowing proudly along.

One can, two cans, six cans.

Every can I emptied, I emptied out a memory with it.

The short, happy memories with Ye-rin sunbae.

Now it was goodbye.

I fell asleep sitting on the couch like that.

And then somebody woke me.

I got it right away.

A god.

“Who are you?”

I opened my eyes on the living room of a Western mansion, with a fire burning warm in the wall hearth.

A red carpet was spread across the living room floor.

The huge shelves standing along the study wall were packed full of old books.

In an empty cabinet I could see props too — a sword, a spear, a shield.

An elegant great house of a noble family.

A man was looking at me.

The man, with a nose remarkably straight and high, was a fine-looking gentleman in his mid-thirties.

He was wearing Burberry check.

Not so handsome it was a burden, but clean-featured enough that anyone who saw him would warm to him.

“Brother. I am the Knight of Seingalt.”

“A knight?”

Say knight and I thought of a man with shoulders spread wide and fierce eyes.

But the Knight of Seingalt in front of me was nowhere near that kind of knight.

His build was slender.

A thinker? A scientist? The smell of intellect came off him strong.

Hold on, the Knight of Seingalt would be…, the legend himself?

Out of a literature class I had taken for credit in college, a man’s name and the nickname that went with it came back to me at once.

Famous enough that there isn’t a person in this era who doesn’t know him either.

“That is right. Nova. Brother.”

Yes. Him!

“Isn’t it Casanova, not Nova?”

“You knew me, brother?”

“There was a time I truly respected you!”

In my past life he was the man that hot-blooded males held up as the ideal.

Males who wanted to be like Nova hyung were lying around by the truckload.

Giacomo Casanova.

His glittering life came back to me in the words of the hungry male adjunct who had recited it.

Born in the merchant city of Venice, an abbot at fifteen, and already a doctor of law at sixteen.

Not only that, he was outstanding at medicine, mathematics, chemistry and business.

He worked as the owner of a silk factory, and as a poet, a violinist, a fighter, a historian, a magician and an engineer.

Probability and statistics were his particular strength, and the story of him being handed the French state lottery to run is a famous one.

The best-loved playboy of the age…

And that wasn’t the whole of what he could do.

He dressed well enough to have put on the Burberry check before any other man, and he took women with a clean face and a sweet tongue.

With a philosophy all his own and his own charm, he made every woman he met love him.

He slept with hundreds of women in his lifetime and left not one bastard child behind him — perfect contraception, and he was famous for that too.

And this was the man who had come for me.

Why? Me?

A visit I could never have guessed at.

Casanova, turning up out of nowhere before the aftertaste of the breakup had even faded.

And on top of that, he called me brother.

Me, a brother? And why that, of all things!!!

“Does the pain of parting weigh on you, brother?”

“No. Not right now.”

With Casanova standing there, nothing as small as misery had room to linger.

I had respected him in the past, but right now I wanted some distance.

“Hmm…, I get a feeling off you like my own, brother.”

“M-Me? Come on~ no way~. I haven’t even kissed a—”

Yes I have.

I didn’t want to be associated with Casanova, but a feeling like my own kept catching in my ear.

I wanted to deny it flat out, and the denial wouldn’t come.

Ask me to put my hand on my heart and swear on my parents’ names that my soul was clean, and I couldn’t have done that either.

“There is no need for many words. A hero knows a hero, and a brother knows a brother.”

In one stroke I had been promoted to Casanova’s brother class.

I didn’t want to make excuses.

It isn’t something to brag about out loud either.

“Are you a god?”

“I am.”

“…Shouldn’t you be in hell? Or else, an evil god?”

“What are you saying? I placed third in the 1785th class of the Zeus Olympia Cup.”

“You did plenty of wicked things, didn’t you? How does a world-class playboy get to be a god!”

I honestly did not understand it.

By human common sense, Casanova ought to be rolling around in hell.

He is the master of adultery, and the whole world knows it.

This is Nova hyung, who loved married women more than he loved single ones.

If he doesn’t go to hell, who does?

“I committed no sin.”

What’s this? Where does this confidence come from?

“You confessed it in your memoirs. All those affairs with women who passed through. Married women, especially!”

“Adultery? What are you saying? I merely soothed the hearts and bodies of lonely, sorrowing women. Give food to a man who wants food and it becomes a good deed; the principle here is exactly the same. Does my brother not give food and comfort to the lonely and the worn out?”

Casanova’s pet theory shut my mouth.

I couldn’t find much of a rebuttal.

I’ve heard there was never a woman who hated Casanova.

Every woman Casanova met got the same love, they say, and it made no difference to him where she came from.

Being told that it might count as a good deed taught me something instead.

Ah, the subtle and profound world of karma points!

“What is the Jade Emperor Cup for Ascension to Immortality, then? The one who came last time said he took the grand prize in it.”

“You don’t know the difference?”

“No. I don’t.”

How would I know a thing like that?

I have no idea why they take turns showing up in my dreams and carrying on like this.

“Do you like soccer, brother?”

“More or less.”

“I’ll explain it simply. The Jade Emperor Cup for Ascension to Immortality is the Asian Cup, and the Zeus Olympia Cup is the European Cup.”

“…, that’s it?”

“What further explanation would you want?”

Nova hyung’s eyes, as if he couldn’t believe I didn’t follow even that.

How am I supposed to understand the world of the gods from a line like that?

“Is there an Africa Cup and an America Cup too?”

“Naturally. People live in different places and come from different ancestors, so isn’t it normal that the gods are different too?”

“Well, that’s…”

I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask whether they really sorted themselves out with junk like that.

The fact that I had regressed at all already made no sense.

“But I belong to the Asian Cup, don’t I? So why do gods from Zeus’s side, the European Cup, keep coming to see me?”

“Brother. You are shared.”

“What???”

“There is such a thing. Brother~ it is still a secret, so find it out for yourself later.”

I’m not an open wi-fi network in a subway station, and he says I’m shared.

I have never given permission to anybody.

There was clearly some kind of mistake going on.

“But why did you come to me? There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason to call on me…”

They said Casanova had a great many talents, but I wasn’t especially envious.

I’ve got a talent or two of my own these days.

“In living through this world, knowledge is always better in greater quantity. Brother, I want a fair and even exchange of equal value with you~.”

“Are you after my karma points?”

“I am. Would my brother not share out some of these points of his that have gone up so sharply lately?”

“Are you repairing the house?”

Chris Barnsdale, the linguist god, came to mind.

He got points and fixed his house.

But this house didn’t look as if it needed any more points…

“I am not.”

“Then why?”

“My vigor has been failing lately…, I need medicine.”

“Vigor? Do gods run short of that too?”

“Brother, gods and humans are not much different. We have no flesh, that is all; we live feeling joy and anger and sorrow and pleasure, the same as you.”

The moment the words joy and anger and sorrow and pleasure came out of Casanova’s mouth, one thought flashed through me.

It couldn’t be that, surely — I held on to that and asked anyway.

“That medicine doesn’t happen to be the one that starts with Via, does it?”

“…”

Nova hyung shut his mouth.

I didn’t ask any further either.

For a man, it’s a heartbreaking story.

I heard that in his last years Nova hyung couldn’t get it up, and that he lived out those years as a librarian in some noble family’s country castle and died there alone.

Dead or alive, it(?) was the problem.

“Your girlfriends…, there’s more than one or two, isn’t there?”

“…”

No comment, as expected.

Haah. The man has no answer even in death.

He got to be a god and the habit still would not leave him.

“What are you going to give me?”

“Oh! You could share the points out? Brother!”

“Depends what you put on the table.”

Color came into Nova hyung’s face.

It was clear the gods came to me because they needed something.

They couldn’t just extort my points as they pleased.

I wasn’t going to throw my weight around, but when there was something to take I wanted to take more of it.

“Brother~ what do you need? A clear head for judgment? Mathematical thinking? A hand for business? Or else…, the know-how???”

That last know-how shook me badly, but I held out.

Either way I’m a man who went through three hot love affairs in my past life.

“Nothing else? Something special, something that really pulls at me~.”

“Hmmm…”

Casanova, sunk in thought.

Watching him work at it, I licked my lips.

“If my brother hands over one percent of the points he earns, settled monthly… I will copy you every piece of know-how about life I have learned to this day.”

“What? C-Copy?”

An enormous offer — everything in his life up to his death, copied over.

My heart went hot.

You’d be an idiot not to take this.

“Well? Doesn’t it pull at you? Every month, an update to the newest version is possible.”

Nova hyung’s voice dropped low and confidential.

Wow…

The man knows how to sell.

One percent isn’t that much.

That last part, the update to the newest version, especially!

Which would take in whatever somethings are going on with those unidentified goddesses he says he is seeing now…

The wall in my heart came down with a crash.

“The contract is concluded. I look forward to working with you. Nova hyung!”

“Ohhhh! Brother! May the blessing of Zeus be with you, even in death!”

Zeus, said to be the biggest womanizer of the Greek gods.

Nova hyung, that blessing of yours…

I’ll take it quietly and in private!

But why is Nova hyung so openly thrilled about it?

Is one measly percent really that good?

(End of Chapter 44)