Weed ~The One’s Gardener~ - Chapter 24

“Weed, I thought you were going to die. How can I not ask anything after seeing that? Everything… I heard everything. It was me who asked them to tell me everything, so it’s not their fault.”

He had used a great amount of power from his main body.

He grew a tree that soared high into the sky rapidly, but it took a toll on him as he ended up coughing up blood and collapsing. Although he never intended for her to witness him in such a weakened state, it seemed like she had seen the worst of him.

Uncertain about how much she knew or understood, Weed refrained from saying anything hastily. Weed had been silent since earlier, pondering the situation.

In response to his quietness, Hana spoke calmly.

It was a good thing, so it was still a good thing, right? However, she didn’t let go of his hand, and an eerie tension filled the room, leaving a sense of foreboding.

“I told you, I’m not the kind of person who needs that kind of goodwill. You don’t have to trick me. For me, it is better to know it outright than to be comfortable without knowing anything. Weed, if you had told me the situation, the matter would have been easily resolved.”

While talking, she gently caressed the back of his soft hand. From the time he woke up until now, she had been speaking in a calm voice that seemed different from what she was going to say.

And from her calm lips came something he never wanted to hear.

“I will be the sacrifice.”

“Hana, what are you talking about?!”

Kicking the blanket and jumping out of bed, he grabbed Hana’s shoulder. Even though she groaned at his strong grip, he didn’t let her go.

He had to ask her.

Did she really know what she was talking about? Could it be that the priests had deceived her, or did they threaten her with anything? In the first place, a normal person would never say yes to something like this easily.

“Are you kidding me? It’s not funny at all. Don’t you ever say that again!”

“Weed, I’m alright. After all…”

“Do you know what it means to be the sacrifice? How can you say that?”

“I know that I get summoned here by mistake. I’ve heard it all about why I came here. Yet, Weed kept telling me that it was a mistake that I came here and that there was nothing I could do…”

“So, are you going to die now? Who in the world wants to die?”

“Then, does that mean Weed doesn’t want to die either?”

“I am different!”

“What is different?”

Weed could not answer.

The priests had been asking him the same question countless, but his response remained consistent. As he felt irritated by their persistence, the priests couldn’t comprehend his reaction, so they continued their attempts to persuade him.

Perhaps this was the expression of a person who couldn’t persuade the person who was about to die? He was making the same expression as the priests he had seen so far.

He knew that this kind of persuasion was futile. He needed more time.

Hana still had plenty of time left to live. She had mentioned being busy before and taking time off, so she likely had important reasons to return to her responsibilities.

At the thought, he brought up something that might hold significance for her.

“You have work to do, don’t you? You have a reason to go back. Wouldn’t you be too late to go back to see your benefactor within two months? Shouldn’t you see her before she dies?”

Hana stiffened for a moment.

There was an ambiguous expression as she kept her lips shut, unknown whether she was persuaded or not. She then raised her head to face him before uttering in a slightly trembling voice.

“Um. When did I ever tell you that my grandmother was going to die?”

“That…”

No… it certainly was not the case. He had never heard of such a thing.

What he heard was that she only had two months. And when he heard that it was to meet her grandmother, who was her benefactor, he just made up the whole story himself that her grandmother only had two months to live, and she had to go back.

He thought so all along.

“That’s okay since it was a formality anyway. It was something I wanted to do, so it wasn’t such a big deal. It’s just… I just needed comfort in my heart.”

Hana fiddled with Weed’s hand on her shoulder.

“I actually thought I was dead. Although I hadn’t lived doing good things, I thought I at least got into heaven because of luck or some kind of mistake. Is the place I lived in a higher dimension? It’s funny. For me, this was a much more ideal place. The surroundings are beautiful. Not only that the people are kind and the food is delicious, but I don’t feel pain. There are all sorts of novelties, and there is nothing to worry about…”

She laughed lightly, but that dry sound gave off a very sad and ominous feeling.

“Weed. My grandmother… she died a long time ago.”

“What? What is that…”

Weed didn’t understand. He couldn’t loop his head around what she was saying.

“I wanted to visit my grandmother’s grave before I die.”

What was she saying? She was still saying things he didn’t understand.

“Two months… I have about sixty days left until I die.”

It was like giving a death sentence to a liar.

“…That was the time I had left, Weed.”

Weed withdrew his hand from her shoulder and took a few steps back, feeling utterly bewildered. The information he received was so perplexing that his head began to spin.

As her words were incomprehensible to him, his head was dizzy from all the words he didn’t understand. At the same time, his vision blurred and he couldn’t see anything. It felt as if he was on the verge of passing out, but he couldn’t succumb to it.

The voice that echoed in his ear felt cruel and haunting.

In this place, sacrifices always arrived either in old age or on the brink of death, like they had come here to meet their end, and everyone’s life concluded in this very spot. The chosen ones embraced their fate as sacrifices willingly.

Throughout history, the summoning ritual has never failed, and this time was no different. Hana’s arrival here was by no means a ‘mistake.’

“I can’t live long. I’m dying.”

A dying life… they got chosen as sacrifices.

No matter how much he tried to deny it, it was useless. The summoning ritual was extremely successful.

10. Shin Hana

“Shin Hana., what the hell were you doing at home? You’re not even answering the phone.”

In the early evening, as soon as Hana stepped into the front door, her friend remarked about the time.

Having just woken up, she quickly fix her messy hair to greet her guest. As she accepted the gift from her friend, Hana led her into the empty house, which had already been cleaned up.

Her friend deserved to be annoyed. It was because she hadn’t heard the doorbell, the knocking or even the ringing of her phone nearby, so her friend had been waiting outside the door for over an hour while she was fast asleep.

Despite this, as the homeowner, Hana welcomed her guest without offering an apology. She had someone else she needed to apologize to today.

“Come in.”

The house was devoid of any furniture except for a couple of crates filled with random junk huddled in one corner. Oddly, there were an excessive number of flower pots for a single house, and even the bed seemed to have been removed, leaving traces of someone sleeping on the floor.

Despite the less-than-ideal meeting place, Hana wanted to be a gracious host to her uninvited guest.

Just as she planned to offer a drink, as she moved towards the refrigerator, her friend looked out the window and let out a disgusted voice.

“Hey, who is that guy?”

“Who?”

“Outside!”

As Hana followed her gaze and glanced outside, an unusually staggering man was pacing around the house. It seemed that she could see the man from a high place, or was it perhaps that the man stood somewhere she could see it on purpose?

“Aahh… that guy hasn’t left yet.”

“What? Is that the guy you were talking about, the stalker? What’s wrong with him? I think he’s crazy.”

“I guess. I threw a water bottle at him to make him go, but he picked it up and drank it. There was medicine there.”

“A total nutjob! Report him! But what medicine? The medicine you’re taking?”