“Brother~ I have come.”

“Nova hyungnim?”

“That is so. Brother.”

I woke up in my room at the family house.

No — the moment I had the thought that I’d woken, the space changed.

It’s Nova hyung’s great mansion.

I’d slept badly right up until Nova hyungnim called.

The room had been knocked through into the outer quarters next door and extended, and nothing was left in it of the past.

A king-size bed stood there, from that maker who says a bed is not furniture.

The windows were triple-glazed, and my mother changed the curtains often.

The insulation had been reinforced good and thick, and it was completely different from the old room.

It was finished in ocher paint that’s good for the body, so there’s no smell of mold at all.

A bathroom and shower room that owes a hotel nothing had appeared too.

It was a pleasant environment with even the air conditioning running, but I couldn’t get to sleep easily.

Ye-rin sunbae‘s face, from that afternoon, kept coming back.

I thought I’d forgotten it, but the trace was still there.

The business at dinner was the same.

My father’s line about approving the marriage I could pass off as a joke, but the karma points paid out after it disturbed me.

Why are my karma points handed over at my father’s saying he approves of a marriage!

It was certainly my father’s dark design, greedy for a pretty daughter-in-law.

“Nova hyungnim, you must have been busy. You said you’d come a month later and you’re late.”

“I am sorry. Brother. My body was frailer than I thought.”

Nova hyung, appearing after several months.

From the moment he showed up we were on hyungnim terms.

I understood that the apology was sincere.

What can you do. When the body is frail, even Nova hyung, first under heaven, would have had no choice.

“Brother~!”

“Yes, Nova hyungnim.”

“Use your points preciously. My brother’s points went out all at once and I had a hard time of it.”

“I’m sorry. Something came up that I had to use them on suddenly.”

I hadn’t done well either.

He seemed to mean the trade with Madam Dae Jang-geum.

I shook my karma points out to the last one then and got the low-grade cooking talent.

“High gods will come to you often from here on. Discern between them every time you make contact. A trade with a god always leaves a trace on the soul.”

“A trace on the soul? What is that?”

“Hmm…, brother. A trade with a god always has a price to pay. If the trace grows strong, it can turn into a god descending into you.”

“A-A god descending—”

“It means you and I becoming one. Brother~.”

Damn it! Get this wrong and I could end up a shaman.

Becoming an immortal is out, and becoming a shaman is even less wanted.

“Push and pull in moderation. Haggling back and forth is needed in trades with gods too.”

“With you too, Nova hyungnim?”

“Not with me.”

“Why? Couldn’t Nova hyung’s trace get darker by accident?”

“My brother and I are already bound by a loyalty of one percent. Tie your worries down.”

“So does that mean—”

“Brother~ do not worry. The divine world has far better water to swim in than the human one.”

“Ah! I see.”

When I worried that Nova hyung might descend into my body, Nova hyung shook his head coolly.

It didn’t seem to be a lie.

That soft way of speaking, always calling me brother, drew trust.

He is a man who became a god even by adultery, because he was sincere.

“Brother, looking at your face, I see worry. Is something the matter?”

The man is uncanny.

He caught my worry at once.

“The truth is, a few months ago I was betrayed by my first love. Well, I never confessed, but there’s the tacit kind, isn’t there. And I ran into her by chance today and it didn’t feel good at all.”

“You tested the water and got dumped.”

“It wasn’t testing the water, it’s that she saw a man with better conditions than mine and lost her head—”

“Excuses are ugly on a man. You are a loser.”

Whoa! Look at that fact-violence!

My pride was about to take a real hit.

But with Nova hyung I had to keep my mouth shut.

The women Nova hyung used to deal with were princesses and duchesses of one country or another.

“Reflect. To have the one whose heart moved with yours taken away is the same as losing a country.”

“A whole country…”

“Was it desperate enough to stake your life on?”

“That…, no.”

How was I to know Ye-rin sunbae would be that kind of brand-chaser.

In my past life it was a one-sided love that only brushed past me.

“Then that’s that. Cling to a tie that brushes past and you cannot make a great love. Brother~.”

He threw it out as comfort, and it wasn’t the slightest comfort.

That’s only true for you, hyungnim!

What do you say to a man who got his enlightenment out of women and became a god?

Next to him I’m still a loser.

“Brother! You are the brother I chose! Have courage! Conquer the human world and let us settle the divine world together!”

This uncle is dangerous.

The human world he means there is certainly a word that covers women and nothing else.

I didn’t want to be put on a level with a specialist killer of married women.

I am a peace-loving human being who likes legality, as far as that goes.

Still, Nova hyung’s spirit was good to see.

Even while borrowing points off me and carrying on a precarious life(?), he didn’t lose his momentum.

“Nova hyungnim. Is there no latest update?”

I took the pulse of what he’d come about today.

I was curious about the contents of Nova hyung’s latest update myself.

“Heh heh heh. Brother~ at last. As it happens, I came to bring my brother happy news.”

One look at his face and he’d certainly landed a big one.

That confident expression is the mark of a conqueror.

“Which goddess is it?”

For men shooting the breeze in the middle of the night, talk about women is exactly the thing.

Whether this was inside a dream or reality no longer mattered.

I watched Nova hyungnim stroke that sharp jawline with his hand, my eyes bright.

“She is a woman you cannot see here, in the human world.”

“Naturally. She’s a god~.”

“She had many wounds. She was betrayed by the one she loved for a hundred years.”

“Whoaaa…, a hundred years? Is a love like that possible?”

“She was like morning dew, like the tender blade of grass that opens on the first day of spring. Her eyes were always moist, like a sky with rain in it.”

Never mind the description, which goddess is it!

I was curious about the loves of the gods.

“Have you heard of that being, by any chance?”

“What being? Is it a goddess I know?”

“You have probably heard of it. These days it is introduced a great deal in the human world, in films and in books.”

“Hera? Athena? Thetis? Aphrodite? Who?”

“Can you see the president whenever you like? What about European or Arab royalty?”

“How would I? I see them on TV or the internet sometimes.”

“It is the same with the goddesses I just named. They swim in different water from us.”

“Ah! So that’s how it…, then what being are you talking about?”

At my question Nova hyungnim grinned.

What is it, that smile so full of superiority?

“An elf.”

“Whaaaaat? A-An elf???”

“That is right. She was the queen of the elves, and now she is a god — Adonia Gracias Adlania~ well? Isn’t the name a killer, for a start?”

“…”

The name wasn’t the problem — the word elf was what shocked me.

The world of the gods is vast, they say, but I hadn’t known it went as far as fantasy races.

An elf, in this world! And a queen at that!

An elf? Then are there dragons too? What on earth am I listening to right now?

I looked at Nova hyungnim with confused eyes.

“There really are elves in the world of the gods? You picked up the elf queen who became a goddess?”

“Brother!”

“Yes. Nova hyungnim.”

“Everything human beings imagine exists somewhere in the universe. It is because it exists that you are able to imagine it. Do not forget this point.”

“!!!”

That’s a truly astonishing thing to say.

The meaning of it — that everything human beings imagine can be imagined because it exists — was enormous.

Easy to say, but a hard matter to accept.

“One more reason I was able to become a god like this…, is that even after I died there were many who knew my name and praised it.”

Yes, I grant you that.

I was included among those praisers.

“Brother~.”

“Yes, hyungnim.”

“Love requires technique too. I hand over my latest version and go; see it and take much enlightenment from it, I pray.”

“Yes? The latest version? What are the contents? It isn’t a stuffy sermon, is it?”

“Heh heh heh. You will come to know naturally. Well then~ I will go. My time with her draws near.”

Nova hyungnim seems to have fallen deep in love.

Color ran and ran across his face.

The enviable hyungnim…

He was like that alive, and dead he was more remarkable still.

“Well then~.”

Nova hyungnim left his goodbye and vanished like smoke.

He seemed considerably busy.

But I envied him terribly.

At times like this I get curious about the world of the gods too.

“What on earth am I supposed to look at?”

I thought about the latest version Nova hyungnim said he’d left.

He hadn’t told me a thing about how to run it.

Fwapaaaaash!

Just then, a film caught on my retina all at once!

“Uh! Uh-uh-uh-uh!”

A cry of surprise burst out.

I had the illusion of a 3D screen playing.

It started in first-person mode.

I could feel the eyes opening and closing.

In front of me a truly beautiful woman was gazing blankly at a lake, sunk in sorrow.

That slender figure is the masterstroke.

An aura of melancholy covers the woman.

It’s a bearing that stirs a man’s instinct to protect.

It’s only her back, but really…, it’s a picture in a frame.

Long silver hair past her waist blew softly in the wind.

A scent beyond words reached my nose.

The ears that had been hidden were pointed.

It was certainly the elf queen Nova hyungnim had spoken of.

It plainly wasn’t me, and the playback and the pull of it were perfect enough to fool me into thinking it was.

“You grieve, and so the lake too has lost its words. What is the matter? You whom I have never once seen in the world of the gods, and seem unlikely to see again~.”

Nova hyungnim’s greasy voice came through.

True to first-person mode, it came out of my mouth.

“Forgive me. Wanderer…, it is only that the time behind me…, is like a flowing river and like the wind, and I fell into thought for a moment.”

The woman’s lines were no less than his.

They were like dialogue out of a medieval novel.

And so the film began.

Nova hyungnim kept a slight distance from her and put his eyes where hers were.

“Because it hurts, it is time. Because it flowed, it is memory. Because those exist, our tie is here.”

Nova hyungnim’s lines began.

He put into his voice an energy that matched the elf queen’s own.

Quick improvising.

And so the two of them carried the conversation on.

Nova hyungnim mixed tall talk and sincerity in the right measure, and the elf queen took it all in meekly.

The two of them kept the conversation going without a stop.

Philosophical thinking, like the reason for existence, got into the conversation too.

This uncle really did have tremendous intellectual ability.

In the middle of it, the moves started for real.

To my ear they were greasy lines and dad-joke material, but the elf queen laughed herself helpless.

In one day he had her hand.

I granted that he really was a player.

By the second day the two of them were kissing, and deeply.

Yes, these days two days is a reasonable pace, I understood.

But on the third day.

“Oh boy! Wh-What is this!”

A scene came into view that was flatly adults-only, and it startled me.

The elf queen, who for all her noble standing had loved a lower creature, a human half-elf.

Even the meeting had been the half-elf’s engineering.

He meant to complete his hatred of the elves by corrupting the queen.

One day it all came out.

The half-elf was a vicious playboy.

The elf queen, sunk in despair on the day she learned everything, offered her own body up in flame and jumped to the world of the gods.

She had accumulated so many karma points that she became a god at once.

But even as a god she couldn’t easily forget the pain of that love.

And then came the fated meeting with Nova hyung at the lake of the gods.

And…

“N-Nova hyung! You blessed-even-in-death hyungnim, you!!”

With that sweet tongue and that desperate sincerity(?), he drew the elf queen into the bedroom.

With a shy smile, the elf queen didn’t let go of Nova hyungnim’s hand.

Ah! My fantasy about pure elves shattered to pieces.

“Ohh! Ohhhh! Ohhhhhh!”

The film went on playing.

Exclamations burst out of my mouth one after another.

The vividness of that 8K ultra-grade picture led me into a world of shock and of being moved.

Dry swallows went down, more than I could count.

I touched the Elf Queen with my hands and with my lips…

Nova hyungnim, handing over a top-grade secret like this without holding anything back!

Nova hyung!

I’ve respected you from way back, hyung! Truly!

This beautiful friendship! We must never change!!!

(End of Chapter 56)