Chapter 1
0. Prologue
There was a time when we New Humans were revered as divine. Though we appeared no different from ordinary humans, there was a single distinction that set us apart. Our horns.
The two horns rising straight from our heads were our pride, a symbol that led humans to look up to us of their own accord. We gladly endured the agony of having our names called, living sacrificial lives for their sake, and we brought wealth and glory to those who regarded us with awe.
Yet that lasted only for a brief moment.
Once humans realized that keeping us close brought good fortune, they began capturing us indiscriminately. A severed horn was precious, but a living New Human was far more precious. The larger our horns, the higher the price we fetched.
And indeed, the larger our horns grew, the greater the wealth and glory we brought them. The number of us one possessed became a measure of personal renown and a sign of a prosperous nation. We were, in essence, good-luck charms.
We called ourselves the New Humans, but humans began calling us by degrading names instead. Living talismans, grotesque horned things, mutants, playthings for their pleasure. For the past several centuries, they have called us “monsters.”
Turmoil raged across the country and beyond as people fought to possess or destroy us. After a great war waged for several decades under the pretense of wiping out the monsters that caused the strife, we went into hiding. Centuries passed as we learned to live among humans, to act like humans, and, like humans, loathe and deny our own existence. Our history was no longer that of the New Humans. We had become monsters, nothing more and nothing less.
Instead of reclaiming our past glory, we fled to the farthest corners to escape mankind. There were many ways to flee from humans and survive, but one rule governed them all.
Never let your name be discovered.
A name was the nourishment that made horns grow.
Unless someone deliberately touched them, the two small bumps on our heads that had failed to become horns would never be noticed. Though we were born weaker than humans, there were plenty of humans born even frailer, so we could hardly curse our bodies. But our names could never be discovered.
A name was our greatest weakness. Not the human names given to us by others, but the “true” names that echoed in our minds from the moment of birth.
1. The Secret
When he was but a small child, Eden once asked his uncle why no one called him by his true name.
“Uncle, my name isn’t Eden, so why does everyone call me that? My name is—”
His uncle, who was always kind to a fault, quickly snapped. Before Eden could even finish his sentence, his uncle grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out of the house. Torrential rain was pouring down.
Everything had happened so fast that Eden couldn’t even cry as he looked up at his uncle. But his uncle did not look angry. He was pale and trembling with terror.
His uncle shouted at him, “Eden, your name is Eden! Do you hear me?!”
Eden burst into tears. It wasn’t. His name definitely wasn’t Eden.
His uncle’s large hands gripped his shoulders painfully as he spoke again. “Eden! Your name is Eden. What is your name?”
Shivering in the rain, Eden answered, “E-Eden.”
His uncle asked once more, and Eden gave the expected answer.
Clutching the boy, his uncle kept asking him his name, demanding over and over, “Again. Say it again.”
“Eden!”
From outside the room, he heard the name he was now accustomed to. Eden opened his sleepy eyes, and ignoring the voice calling him, turned over a couple of times under the covers.
“…Eden!”
When the voice sounded downright desperate, Eden pulled the blanket over his head and curled up. The roughly patched cotton quilt was far too thin to muffle the voice. Eden raised his hands and covered his ears, praying desperately that he could fall back asleep like this. But right after the shout came the dull thud of something falling, and Eden sprang up reflexively.
“Uncle!”
Eden hurried out into the living room and went to his uncle, who had collapsed on the floor.
“Nngh, Eden…! Here! Over here!”
Even as he struggled on the floor, his uncle motioned Eden over. Ignoring his words, Eden helped him up and led him into the room, laying him on the bed. Whenever his uncle had a seizure like this, Eden felt as if he were thrown right back to that rainy day. His uncle’s eyes looked just like they had back then, when he had been trembling in sheer terror.
His uncle kept glancing frantically around the room, clinging to Eden. Eden lowered his head, avoiding the blind obsession in that stare. Suppressing the urge to shake off the persistent grip, he sat beside the bed and checked his uncle over to see if he had been hurt when he fell earlier. Fortunately, there were no visible wounds. His uncle caught Eden’s hand.
“…Just once, please let me see them just once. I’ll keep it a secret that we met.”
As if someone might be listening in, his voice dropped low and trembled uncontrollably. It was rough, worn down by recent seizures that had grown worse and left him no time to recover.
“Please, just once… I even know their name. Please?”
Eden remained silent.
“Please let me see them just one more time. Please.”
His uncle’s voice grew thick with tears. Eden lifted his head and saw him muttering, unable to wipe away the tears streaming down his face. His whispered plea was heartbreaking.
“Then just tell me where Hesin is. J-Just once, please. I’ll come right back. Please? I have something to say.”
Please, won’t you? Please. The voice went on whispering, directed at a single person. Hesin. It was that name again today, as always. It was the name Eden had perhaps heard even more times than his own.
“Uncle! Please pull yourself together.”
“He… sin…! Please, just once…!”
According to the stories he had heard from the villagers, the name belonged to a young noblewoman his uncle had met while working at the imperial palace. Once she was chosen to enter the Emperor’s harem and they could no longer see each other, his uncle had risked death to correspond with her until he was caught. In the end, she, too, never became a concubine.
Eden did not know what had become of the noblewoman, but his lowborn uncle had suffered horrific torture in the imperial palace dungeon. And the aftermath was even more terrible. He felt it would have been better if his uncle had simply been killed. Though he could not begin to imagine what the torture was like, Eden ground his teeth whenever he saw his uncle suffering like this. It was an act of unspeakable cruelty.
“Hesin, ah… Hesin! Hesin!”
Eden silently held his uncle, who called out the name like a scream.
At his best, it happened a few times a week. At his worst, several times a day. Eden wasn’t curious about the face behind the name his uncle wailed. Had she, like his uncle, lost her mind, unable to endure the brutal torture? Did she miss him as much as he missed her?
Eden pitied his uncle deeply. He pitied himself, too, for having to comfort him like this. If it could bring his uncle peace, and if it would bring him peace as well, he would reunite the two of them if he could.
Yet Eden never made promises he could not keep. All he could do was wipe away his uncle’s tears and stroke his back until the man collapsed from sheer exhaustion and fell asleep. Eden patted his uncle’s back until the morning sunlight cast a warm glow into the room that had been tinged with blue.
Once his uncle collapsed onto the bed, Eden drew the curtains, exhaustion plain on his face. After soothing his uncle, he could never sleep, no matter how tired he was. He closed the door to his uncle’s room and dragged himself toward his workshop, as he always did. When he stepped into the utterly shabby workshop, sunlight was spilling over the bright, half-finished painting of flowers.
Appallingly enough, it was damnably ordinary morning. Eden let out a sigh and sat down in front of the painting.
“Ugh…”
Though their situation had only worsened over the years, he had to paint nothing but bright, fresh pictures. Their home, overflowing with gloom, was always winter, but for the flowers in Eden’s paintings, it was always spring. Even so, it was fine. He loved painting, and he loved painting flowers and trees even more.
Yet every so often, just as he was doing now, Eden had to steady his breathing for a long while in front of the painting he loved so dearly, fighting back the urge to tear it to shreds. The strain of his unchanging reality was pushing him to the breaking point. It felt as though he had swallowed a red-hot stone.
Eden steadied his ragged breath and glared at the flowers blooming in profusion across the canvas. No matter how wretched his reality remained, he had to take up the brush. Damn it, damn it. Eden shut his eyes tight and clenched his fists. Under no circumstances could his gloom ever show in his painting.
He kept his eyes closed for quite a while to quell the burning heat inside, then picked up the brush. His wrist seemed to ache beneath its weight.