"Flowers? Do you need seeds, not seedlings? As the weather is getting warmer, more people buy flowers, but it's been a while since someone bought seeds. Very well, choose an image from this album that suits your heart, young lady, and I'll give you the seeds of that flower."
I also remembered the name of the first flower I ever planted in my life, one that I thought I had completely forgotten.
"Did you choose this one? It's the perfect flower for spring. It's good and pretty, isn't it?"
"No, the name is."
"The name?"
"I like the name."
"Ah... it's beautiful. The name, Daisy." [1]
The name of the flower was the daisy.
I planted daisies.
How could it be that the name had no value if Daisy had planted daisies? I realized only now. I thought I didn't feel any affection for the name "Daisy", but that wasn't true. It wasn't a name that defined me; it defined the moments that had led up to here. My choices, my hypocrisy, my regrets. All of them were mine. The more these moments accumulated, the more solid I became.
Perhaps tomorrow I would be something else. But today's "I" was the best I could try to understand at this moment. Initiative in life begins with knowing myself. I know myself. Therefore, I will take the initiative in my life!
Power seemed to inhabit the cracked soul. I opened my eyes without remembering when I had closed them.
"At this moment..."
While I quietly breathed without panicking, a great warmth invaded my head.
"Good job."
Rue, who spoke suddenly, gently stroked my head. An unusually affectionate look closely observed my condition. I also looked at my body in silence. My palms were soaked with cold sweat. It wasn't just the palms; sweat was dripping down my chin and was trapped between my knees. Even my clothes were damp, so it was as if I had played with water in the river.
However, there was something apart from that which was important. My soul that was in danger of breaking... is now more solid. The life expectancy, which I had predicted at three years, also seemed to have doubled.
How the hell? I knew I had just been enlightened about something. If I were a simple knight as in the past, I would have shouted with joy at my new way of thinking. But enlightenment could heal the body, but not the soul. The soul was difficult to break and impossible to heal. At least as far as I knew.
Rue removed his hand from my head and said, "Your eyes contain confusion. Is this the first time you've experienced your mind and body becoming one?"
"Body and mind?"
"To put it in simple terms, it's the process of achieving perfect control over the body and becoming a semigod. You've just entered the first of the stages."
What? Perfect control? I was so surprised I almost choked.
A semigod. The status held by the great magician Mephisto and Dian Cecht. Those who had reached the semigod level were historically recorded. Neither the founding emperor of the great wizard, the Penrotta Empire, nor the numerous masters who had been called heroes, had such a title.
I had heard there were only two such people in the current generation, including a religious leader who was revered as a god. A level that neither Raphael nor the saint could reach.
"What about me?"
Rue's forehead wrinkled when he heard my question. However, the look that seemed ready to criticize me soon regained its composure. "Miss Daisy, your body seems to have reached a quite useful level. Didn't your master teach you about body and soul when you achieved this for the first time?"
Although I got a bit angry at defining my abilities as "a quite useful level," I decided to stick to the important parts since the atmosphere seemed to control it.
"I don't have that."
"You don't have one?"
"Yes. I don't have a master."
It's not that there was no one at all; rather, it was more like they were everywhere. Anyone who gave me a single piece of advice could be called my master, if I thought about it, so I didn't have a single master.
"Oh, that's quite incredible. Does that mean Miss Daisy learned to use the sword on her own and survived the battlefield only with those skills?" With a wry smile, Rue rubbed his chin. He was looking at me with very amused eyes, and to me, the person involved, it wasn't funny at all.
"How... did you know I was a soldier?" Because I never told him I could use a sword.
When I looked at him cautiously, Rue lightly flicked the tip of my nose as if telling me not to think anything ridiculous. "Our cute Miss Daisy has the air of a knight, who wouldn't know?"
"Don't try to turn this into a joke, I know nothing about you."
"Those who wield the sword for a long time surely acquire a habit in their lives," Rue replied, shrugging a bit. "When you're on alert, you throw your right shoulder back and change your posture as if you were ready to draw your sword." Then, playfully, he tapped the back of my left hand. "You habitually touch your right hip as if to check your sword."
I couldn't give any answer. Rue's points were true: he knew it because he had noticed I was a left-handed swordsman.
"The way you grit your teeth when you're in a disadvantageous situation. It's like a child's, that's why it's so funny."
"Mmh."
I raised my head with reverence, mind and body. Rue's eyes, looking at me, contained a rare mix of emotions that was not usually visible. Benevolence. There was a sense of mercy in his eyes!
Without any reason, Rue was in a very benevolent state. This was a rare opportunity. I moved my lips seriously so as not to miss the moment.
"Mr. Rue, I have a question. It's very important, so I want you to answer it without joking."
"I don't want to."
"You said the state of mind and body is divided into four stages."
"And you just ignored my refusal."
"I heard that when you become a semigod, not only do all your scars and wounds heal, but most weapons cannot hurt you." Fortunately, Rue seemed to be listening to me. "Does that... also apply to the soul?"
If the body was reborn as a vessel for a God, wouldn't it be correct for the soul to be reborn also as something worthy of one? Rue's dark eyes deepened. "Are you curious?"
"Yes."
"If you're curious, kneel down and say, 'Please tell me, master'."
If he thought I couldn't do it, he was wrong. I knelt down and said with gritted teeth, "Please tell me, master. My lord."
He responded with a discouraged face. "It's possible." Then he continued his comments with strange eyes. "But it's impossible if you don't have enthusiasm. At least in terms of probability. Why? Does Miss Daisy want to be a semigod? Do you have a bad soul?"
His harsh voice fired an arrow into my heart.
"Do you think the other three walls will be easy if you accidentally cross the first wall? Do you think you'll naturally ascend, living halfway as you do now? Do you wish to be granted the body of a semigod and be the luckiest maid in the world, enjoying heaven and earth at the same time, in body and soul?"
What an irritating man. "I can't refute it."
But apart from my wounded pride, his mockery was a hundred times right. The unexpected revelation had felt so sweet.
"If it were easy to complete the four stages, the world would be full of semigods." Furthermore, I had a short life. Even if I had the advantage of being further ahead than the others, it still wasn't enough time to master both my body and my mind.
"I almost became a vain hope." Rue has a fierce tongue, but he says nothing false. That's why it's even worse.
When I got up from my seat, I made eye contact with him and said, "Thanks to you, I realized many things, Mr. Rue. I'm going back now. Thank you for your help today and good night."
As I walked toward the door, Rue called me. "Miss Daisy." I stopped with the bedroom door wide open. You're surprisingly weak-hearted. You're trying to apologize for being rude, aren't you? I turned to look at Rue with such warm thoughts.
"The sun is up. We're late for work. Thanks to you."
He was lying, right? I got home at the fastest speed I could.
In front of the entrance, the head maid, neatly dressed from head to toe, awaited us with a fierce smile. "Miss Daisy? You've been late twice. Your salary will be cut."
And my salary was docked. Dammit! But today's bad luck didn't just end with a salary cut. The lies Rue told her were the result of another hell.
"Starting today, we'll begin a small twenty-minute-a-day training session. To live with people in a city, you must be common and ordinary, not special. I will develop Miss Daisy's lack of sociability and ethical conscience."
I thus lost twenty minutes of my lunch break. Dammit! This is not a life of initiative. I hated the maid. After that, time passed quickly and the morning of the day we were to leave for the capital dawned.
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[1]: For those who don't know, the name of the flower 'margarita' in English is Daisy.