Pinocchio (2)

Though Geppetto is now Nidavellir’s finest craftsman, in the past he was just another struggling artisan who could barely make ends meet.

Back then, Nidavellir was quite different from now, with far more sounds of hammering metal.

Everyone honed their metallurgy skills and crafted cold weapons like spears and swords.

For Geppetto, standing in the midst of such competition, it was difficult to overcome his formidable rivals.

He had essentially given up, mass-producing unremarkable items just to barely scrape by.

Still, that was fine.

It was enough to live with his family.

But…

“I’m sorry, dear. I shouldn’t be leaving like this.”

He felt the lack most keenly when he desperately wished for more.

“Our child… please take care of him.”

After losing his wife like that.

Geppetto spent some time wallowing in despair. But that didn’t last long.

He still had something left. So he picked up his hammer once again.

‘I must raise Pinocchio.’

He needed to work even harder than before for the child who lost his mother at such a young age, too young to understand.

Send him to a good school, show him good things, feed him good food.

He increased his production from 100 mass-produced swords to 200 while lowering the unit price.

He traded effort for money.

But…

“Pinocchio…?”

He lost his child to an unexpected accident.

It wasn’t a matter of having money or not. Misfortune comes like a sudden gust of wind, destroying what’s precious before disappearing.

It was just a simple cold.

The child had just gone to school as usual, with only a slight fever.

Yet as if extracting payment for that small fever, Geppetto’s child returned as a cold corpse.

The cause of death was drowning.

They said he had fallen from a bridge into the river while stumbling around, dizzy from the fever.

How absurd could it be?

A human life could vanish so easily.

“Hahahahaha!”

Geppetto laughed. Despite pouring everything he had into it, a moment’s negligence had rendered it all meaningless.

The clothes prepared for the child.

The toys prepared for the child.

The many gifts he’d planned to give as the child grew older.

Yet so simply.

How could it be so simple!

The meaning of life disappeared. Geppetto extinguished the forge’s flames.

He came home drunk every night.

That was fine too. He had plenty of money saved up for the child anyway.

Every night he crawled home drunk, calling out his dead wife’s name and his dead child’s name.

‘This won’t do.’

Geppetto knew it too.

Nothing would change by living like this. If he was going to waste time like this, why stay alive?

“He’s not dead.”

The child was dead. But Geppetto’s heart hadn’t died yet.

As if this much wasn’t enough to satisfy him, he couldn’t bring himself to choose death.

“Pinocchio is not dead!”

Geppetto remembered. Pinocchio’s smiling face, his crying face.

All those moments of suffering and loneliness, joy and delight.

Then he would create. He would recreate the child who had lost his physical form.

So he would never forget. So he could remain forever, never truly dying.

“Hmm hmm hmm♫”

Geppetto rekindled the forge’s extinguished flames.

He worked every night without rest, just as he had when his family was alive.

He made dolls from metal.

He made dolls from wood.

He made dolls from ore.

He made dolls by sewing cloth and stitching leather.

In a trance-like state, Geppetto made dolls every night.

Anything he could get his hands on would do. On days when he ran out of materials, he molded the child’s form from clay.

He made dolls capturing every expression of the child, as if recording them. He invested his entire fortune in utilizing every material available to capture that warmth, that vitality.

And then one day.

“Dad! Are you still busy? When will you ever play with me?”

One of the dolls spoke to him.

At first, he thought it was an auditory hallucination. So he ignored it.

“Don’t ignore me!”

But the doll clung to Geppetto, whining.

The touch of hard wooden pieces.

He couldn’t even remember what kind of wood he had carved it from.

“Dad, what’s my name?”

“Pinocchio…”

Still unforgettable.

The doll looking at him with exactly the same expression as the child in his memories.

Geppetto’s heart, which had been burning with rage at the world, finally calmed its flames.

“Pinocchio…”

Geppetto embraced Pinocchio.

Though it felt like hard wood, nothing could be warmer than this.

Pinocchio laughed and acted like a child. So Geppetto believed his child had returned to life.

He surely thought the gods had given him a chance because of his sincerity.

Their old life returned.

Geppetto earned money for Pinocchio, and Pinocchio lived according to Geppetto’s wishes.

But before long, even Geppetto had to realize.

“Pinocchio! What, what is this?”

“I fell in the water on my way! It took me so long to get back!”

He wasn’t human.

That much couldn’t be denied.

And he was different from the child too. He couldn’t show reactions beyond what Geppetto remembered and had created in the dolls.

Geppetto still remembered.

He remembered all of the child’s expressions.

But Pinocchio couldn’t make expressions beyond what Geppetto had created in the dolls.

This was especially true for expressions of complaint and sadness.

Since Geppetto had unconsciously avoided making dolls with such expressions, wanting to remember only the bright moments.

Pinocchio was not his child. He was just a puppet mimicking one.

“You should have been more careful.”

But that was fine too.

Pinocchio had already become like a son to Geppetto.

How could he fear a child who laughed and chattered for his sake?

However, that only applied to Geppetto. As word spread about the child’s special nature, vermin began to gather.

They pressured Geppetto to learn about the miracle of life creation.

They threatened him with force and tempted him with money. But he didn’t yield.

How could he hand over his son as an experimental subject? That was unthinkable.

But those trying to coerce and threaten Geppetto grew increasingly powerful. Despite Geppetto’s promise to let his son live happily, they had to become fugitives.

They wandered the world carrying only the sense of duty to protect.

But in the end, they failed.

The powerless Geppetto lost Pinocchio to an evil king.

Of course, he had no intention of giving up. For the first time in his life, Geppetto created not mass-produced weapons, but the finest weapon an individual could make.

He decided to become the greatest craftsman solely to save his child.

If he couldn’t rely on anyone else’s help, he would have to save him himself. Then even someone as weak as himself would need to create a weapon powerful enough to accomplish that.

But…

“I’m home!”

“…”

Despite such determination from Geppetto, Pinocchio returned home on his own feet. With the same bright smile as always.

But…

He was covered in blood.

Pinocchio, made of wood, couldn’t possibly bleed.

It was someone else’s blood.

Then whose blood was it? No, whose blood “they” were was obvious.

“How could this…”

Pinocchio had slaughtered everyone in the royal palace, including the king.

What other way could there be? How many people must he have killed to get here through such tight security?

Only then did Geppetto realize.

Pinocchio wasn’t a being created by his wishes.

He wasn’t created by thoughts of his son, but born from everything Geppetto had created.

Pinocchio had blades all over his body like a hedgehog.

That form was familiar.

It was the shape of the swords he used to mass-produce and supply.

Broken swords emerged from Pinocchio’s body like a reversed flow, falling to the ground, and new swords sprouted from within like new flesh growing.

“You weren’t human after all.”

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“What I created wasn’t my son but a weapon…”

“…?”

Pinocchio tilted his head.

As if not understanding what that meant, as if not knowing what he had done. He had simply acted as Geppetto had wished.

Knowing that Geppetto was trying to meet him again, he had broken through prison bars and destroyed everything in his way to get here.

“I don’t understand.”

“Pinocchio.”

Geppetto realized that Pinocchio wasn’t a son created by his wishes but merely a weapon.

But that didn’t mean Pinocchio wasn’t his son.

Then he should scold him.

That was his role as a parent.

But the words wouldn’t come out. He felt terror at the burning village scene behind Pinocchio.

“Wasn’t this what I should do? Then what should I do?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re too different from us…”

“Is that so?”

“…”

The words he finally managed to speak were mere fragments.

Geppetto had to admit that he was now being careful not to upset Pinocchio.

“Today…”

“Yes?”

“Let’s sleep for today since we’re tired. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Okay!”

Geppetto lay awake that night. That’s how he knew.

He knew but didn’t stop it.

When Pinocchio slipped out of the house.

Perhaps because the moment he turned a blind eye to the wrongdoing, he realized he no longer saw Pinocchio as his son.

Children are far more sensitive to emotions than adults think.

Yes, Pinocchio must have known too. After all, weren’t they family?

Family notices even the smallest changes.

That’s why Pinocchio left Geppetto’s side. Geppetto knew this but didn’t stop Pinocchio.

Regret always comes too late, that’s why it’s regret. Geppetto regretted turning a blind eye that day.

He should have properly scolded him.

He should have properly welcomed him.

Because he couldn’t do that, Geppetto lives here now like a ghost.

“I’m a coward. A person who couldn’t muster the courage to even knock on the door, just standing blankly in front for decades.”

Hoping that Pinocchio would come to find him first.

“Help me.”

But now he understood. It wasn’t just Geppetto who lacked courage.

Pinocchio must have been just as anxious, watching Geppetto from outside the window.

He finally realized that.

“This time, I want to end things properly as a parent.”

If both were cowards.

Then at least he, as the parent, should naturally be the one to show courage.

*     *     *

The story ended.

I threw my unfinished fifth cigarette of the storytelling into the brazier, closed my eyes, and made the sign of the cross.

This would surely be difficult.

There might be no benefit at all.

Yet I’m trying to do this. I need to steel my resolve.

‘I’m about to walk a difficult path.’

If I looked away, if I just pretended not to know, nothing would happen.

Geppetto would continue waiting for his child who might return someday, and I would go to stop the harbinger that would lead the Empire to direct destruction while solving the corruption eating away at my body.

‘It will be hard. Even just following behind will surely be overwhelming. I can’t guarantee the outcome will be good.’

Perhaps I’m poking a hornet’s nest.

Leaving things alone might produce better results.

Eventually, after leaving Nidavellir and entering Rubia, the city where it rains, to solve the problem of <The Corruptor>, they wouldn’t even meet.

Then there would be no confrontation between them and no catastrophe.

‘But I want to do this. I want to prove it even this way.’

This second chance given to me didn’t come without a price.

It’s an opportunity created by the sacrifice of someone who lived more brilliantly than anyone.

Then I should repay that grace.

In the way practiced by someone I respected most throughout my life, though that existence remains forgotten by all others.

‘So, our Lord who left traces in the Pantheon Temple, please bless this lamb to guide the flock along this treacherous path.’

I open my eyes after the brief prayer.

I am a heresy inquisitor.

One who does dishonorable work.

But this time I’m taking a different path from my usual one.

“Now then, let’s go correct those regrets in whatever way we can.”

Yes, right now, purely.

I intend to walk the path of a shepherd who leads and cares for those who suffer.

I made my decision.

I forcibly swallow the blood rising in my throat from the corruption’s effects.

I don’t have much time left.

Yet I decided to do it.

Though it will be tough, let’s reconnect this awkward father and son.

Just as my heaven reached out to me who had nothing.