Chapter 75 (2/2)

“I’ll distribute time to you.”

The eleven subjects came again. Myohan recalled how O Shin had made all the trees stop at once while dancing in the wind, so many years ago.

“I will give each of you two out of 24 hours.”

The yellow eyes looked at the men on their knees then he stopped while looking at them.

“But there are 13 of you…”

The man looked bored as if he wasn’t interested at all. He just watched O Shin do his thing with his arms crossed. Myohan thought he should at least try to look like a subject.

“I don’t need time,” Myohan said.

The man’s eyes sparkled as he looked at him. Myohan yawned and stretched his back. His body felt sore after recovering from sickness.

“I’m not your subject, after all.”

“Even if I give you both the sun and the moon?”

He didn’t hesitate to nod. He wasn’t interested in getting time. He was grateful that he was alive and didn’t want a bothersome job. Plus, he wasn’t the god’s subject.

“Then…”

O Shin smiled as if he had known the boy would say that. He looked at him with affection.

“To you, I will give the power to control all of my subjects.”

“Including me?”

The man asked, clearly not liking it. The god smiled playfully; he lifted Myohan’s chin, kissed his cheek, and looked at the man.

“Let me ask…”

This time, Myohan couldn’t dare to say he didn’t need it. The man still looked irritated about it, and his wavering eyes were deadly.

But the god looked at them and said, “You can’t not like…”

The man frowned, but the god didn’t mind. He just went on teasingly.

“Being managed by another human, when you’re a human yourself, right?”

***

To jump to the conclusion, O Shin gave Myohan control over the twelve. Well, the job didn’t require much. He listened to coward Ja’s advice, woke up Chook as he was almost always sleeping, talked to scary In, and tried to soothe Myo and his bad mouth. He made Sa, who hated the cold, do his job, verified the truth out of many lies that O said, and made Mi, who cried every day, stop crying.

At least it was fine with a smart Yu and the mild Hae. Drunkard Sul and trickster Sin were the problematic ones.

Well, actually, none of the subjects were easy to deal with. They all hated Myohan. They were jealous of him as he was loved by the god and often bullied him. When he fell ill and became a cat, they said he was half-animal. They seemed to think it was wrong that he was the favored one when they had been serving the god for so many years. But the one with black eyes was an exception. The only exception.

“You’re putting up with it well.”

The man was always an onlooker. When Myohan was fooled by O and wandered in the forest, when Sin tricked him and locked him up in a cave, when Hae took his food, he was just watching all of that from afar.

“Putting up with what?”

“Your anger. You are very patient, for a human.”

His eyes seemed to be wondering when Myohan would finally snap.

“You can tell on them, the god will take care of it for you.”

“I’m not mad.”

However, Myohan was not going to give him what he wanted. He didn’t feel bad about it; he wasn’t thinking of letting out his anger on the gods, and he wasn’t going to tell the god about it. It would be foolish, and the god was already busy enough.

“It’s only right for them to do it.”

Myohan didn’t deserve to be mad. At least he thought so. He was still alive only because the god had helped him, and the subjects were just doing their job. They were working diligently (actually, not that diligently), and Myohan could understand how they were feeling about him.

“Although it’s a little bothersome…”

He was just a little bothered because his days weren’t as peaceful as they used to be, but that was all. He said so and stretched his back.

The man looked at him and said, “Funny.”

That was all. He went away without saying more, and the days that followed weren’t that much different.