Requiem of Subdued Souls

The evil spirit was horrified.

“Y-You, how did you get….”

“You must be surprised. You wouldn’t have known it while you controlled the doll that contained Princess Ajin’s soul. Why? The answer is simple.”

Seol Young said,

“After being possessed for a long time, the spirit acquires an aura very similar to the original owner of the body. Didn’t I say that earlier? But the opposite is also true.”

“…..!”

The face of Princess Ara turned pale. Zaha said to the evil spirit inside of her,

“Seol Young-rang told me, ‘This is a unique spell. One is like many, and many are like one. So it is hard to figure out the exact number of spirits from the outside. Perhaps at least one of the evil spirits has managed to sneak away and is active elsewhere.’ Hearing that, I began to have doubts and played along.”

“You should have seen us connect Princess Ajin and the doll before the ceremony started in the secret room, right? At that time, the Princess’s living soul had escaped and entered the doll.”

Seol Young looked at the twelve dolls.

“Moving stealthily, lying flat, and hiding without anyone noticing her. The Princess is quite good at that, right? She was amazing this time too. She got so good at hiding that eleven spirits didn’t notice that she was hiding inside the twelfth doll.”

“Ehh.”

Priness Ajin was a little happy.

“I told the Princess. ‘Everything is just a game. Go inside the doll and stay hidden no matter who holds it. Keep quiet and fool everyone until I tell you to.’ Then the Princess became very excited.”

Of course, she was.

Princess Ajin nodded her head, and Seol Young said to the doll,

“The game is over, so you can now go back to your body.”

“Yes.”

As he stretched out his hand and removed the spell, Princess Ajin’s spirit, which was inside the doll, was slowly pulled back into her own body.

The Princess’s body fell asleep again. And the evil spirit only clenched its teeth as it was watching this.

Seol Young glanced at the evil spirit.

“You had to take care of your eleven friends and control the dolls. In addition, you must have been so excited that we broke the eight ghost stories and set them free. That is why you failed.”

“Shut up!”

The evil spirit yelled.

“I did not fail! Everything you are saying is a lie! Who will believe your words?”

“They will us.”

Zaha said.

The evil spirit followed his gaze and turned its head. Beyond the overgrown bushes were three people standing.

The Queen, the nanny, and Zaun.

Their pale faces said they had heard everything.

“…!”

The face of Princess Ara turned white.

“H-How…”

“You called for them earlier, so I sent a nice spirit for them to come here.”

Zaha said while swinging his sword round and round.

Right.

The three of them waited for good news and stayed in a guarded place, and then suddenly, the place turned bright.

At the same time, the guardian circle that Seol Young made had disappeared.

Did they find them?

They came out with a smile, and a golden light guided the path. They followed it until here, and they heard everything.

“….”

The evil spirit revealed everything in front of them, and now it realized how wrong it was.

The evil spirit’s eyes turned mad for a second, and Princess Ara’s form flashed and vanished.

She reappeared behind the Queen and pushed her down. Then she drew a dagger and aimed it at the Queen’s neck.

“Do not get closer!”

The evil spirit shouted.

“Everyone get out of here! Leave the two Princesses and the dolls behind! If not, I will stab the Queen to death!”

Her voice, full of anger, rang out.

“If that happens, you people will be charged with the sin! If the two Princesses unanimously state that you people stabbed the Queen to death, who wouldn’t believe it?”

The evil spirit swung the dagger wildly to prove it wasn’t lying.

At that moment, the hand of the child that was running wild was caught.

“…?”

The evil spirit looked startled when it realized that it was the Queen that was holding its hand.

Everyone was shocked.

The Queen didn’t learn martial arts. She had a weak body, and she wouldn’t even glare at people, which was why she was known to be clumsy.

Rather, it was an uncalculated move.

While holding the hand of the child tightly, the Queen said,

“Child… you will get hurt.”

They were words of genuine concern from a mother to a child. And it stirred the hearts of those who listened.

Hatred appeared on Princess Ara’s face.

“Don’t you understand? I am not your daughter!!”

The Queen stared at her and said,

“When my daughters and I went out to see the plum blossoms in the park, I told Ajin not to pick the living flowers and go after the dead ones… it was you, not Ara, right?”

The hand of the child stopped.

“When I read a book until late at night, even when you were dozing off next to me, you would open your eyes and look around when I would cut off the wick of the candle. When I would stay at the Buddhist prayer place and sweat, you would always fan me from behind. When you saw the monkeys raised by the maids, you couldn’t take your eyes off them. It wasn’t Ara, but you, right?”

The Queen said.

“It is fine. It is definitely different. Looking back, I know each and every one. I can tell the difference between you and Ara now.”

The child tried to swing the dagger again, but the Queen didn’t let go of its hand.

“You will get hurt. Child…”

“Do not call me like that!”

The child yelled.

“Lia! Liar! Everyone is the same! You are pretending to be nice, so I wouldn’t hurt your daughters!”

“You…. Isn’t it true that you have been living as my daughter all this time?”

“I was just acting to buy your favor! There was nothing but hatred in my heart!”

“Still, I don’t hate you!”

The Queen embraced the child with her other hand.

“Sorry. Despite being together for this long, I couldn’t recognize you.”

“Let me go!”

“It’s strange. You obviously tried to hurt both the Princesses, but I don’t feel any hatred towards you….”

“Let go! Let me go!”

But the Queen only hugged the child tighter.

“How hungry you looked when you were possessed?”

She patted the child on the back and mumbled,

“How painful was it? How scared, how much hatred. How much you missed your mother….”

The Queen closed her eyes with a pained expression. Her eyes were filled with tears.

“Let me go! Let me go now!”

The child struggled.

The Queen was known to have a frail body, but she was gentle, and she loved her kids so much.

No matter how evil the spirit was, she must have felt some affection while acting as her daughter.

‘Well, that kind of life wasn’t bad either.’

The evil spirit thought so.

It was a story about being happy. In its head, the evil spirit thought that kind of thinking wasn’t right.

However…

Warm arms. Soft touch. Affectionate words.

Since the child was so hungry for them, it couldn’t help itself.

“Let me go!”

The evil spirit yelled….

The limbs that had been violently moving gradually lost strength.

The child slowly closed her eyes as the Queen continued to hug her. As if it was trying to feel this warmth a little more.

“You cannot be evil until the end, and you cannot be mad until the end…”

Seol Young mumbled.

Even if it was an evil spirit that had a grudge for decades, even if it was a ruthless spirit that was able to continue its act even though its soul was being burnt…

In the end, they couldn’t give up the humanity that was deep in their hearts.

So, in the end, those who couldn’t rise to the position of stepping on others were those who were called the weak ones in the world.

Seol Young knew them better than anyone else because he himself lived among the weak.

In the midst of silence, the Queen spoke,

“It is Sarira. Everything is originally empty. No sorrow, no pain, no hunger, no senses, no thoughts, no actions, no consciousness….”

It was a sutra.

The Queen explained the contents in an easy-to-understand manner as if she was talking to a child.

“No age, no death. There is no such thing as NO. That is liberation.”

Her quiet voice spread out, and the Queen’s face contorted in sorrow and pain.

But as she chanted the sutra, her face gradually turned softer. It was the state of being lost. She had entered a state of non-existence.

“Our hearts will be free like this without being caught anywhere….”

. ｂｅｄ𝚗ｏ𝚟𝚎𝚕.𝚌𝚘ｍ

Over Princess Ara’s face, another child’s figure could be seen. It was a face that said all of its anger and hatred had died down.

The Queen hugged the child and said,

“So now, forget your fears and enter the realm of perfect nirvana.”

And the form of the child was engulfed in light. The eleven dolls were standing around in a circle.

All eleven children, who shared the same wavelength, were all surrounded by a dazzling light.

And they began to disappear.

They had forgotten the pain and the suffering, and they turned into light as they vanished.