The Ten Talents

Previously, in my view, the simplest explanation to why Mark wouldn’t want to do the civil service exam was that his family was pressuring him into it. However, with that, it seemed that his family had essentially given him free rein to do as he wished, given that his sister was taking responsibility of their business. Wait, his sister…? Perhaps….

“Do you get along well with your sister?”

Mark’s eyes remained unfocused for a moment as he exhaled deeply, before finally returning to looking me in the eye.

“I get along fine with her.”

He is being dishonest somehow. Is he lying by omission? That said, I’m not sure I’ll be able to dig into this much as an outsider. Unless….

“Really? Then why do you resent her so much?”

Mark looked uncomfortable at the question. Bullseye.

“What are you talking about?”

I would never get him to become a disciple unless I could figure out some angle to persuade him from. With his connections, he would have been immeasurably valuable. That said, almost any action I took could be considered by him to be evidence of my genetically engineered status as opposed to evidence of me being a prophet. I needed to dig deeper. I’m just making educated guesses at this point, but my intuition says this is the right track.

“You think that taking on the responsibility of the family business is more difficult than your path as a civil servant, right?”

“Wouldn’t anyone?”

If that’s the case….

“Do you regret pushing that onto her?”

“What…?”

No, that’s not the full picture…. At this point, Mark was fully glaring at me. He stood up to leave.

“It’s been fun to get this stuff about the family off my chest, but I don’t need to be psychoanalysed by a strange Mod I met on the street. You can stop now.”

I’m sorry, Mark. I’m afraid I can’t do that. I had a best guess, and it was time to run with it. This was my last shot.

“Aren’t you just afraid of failing?”

It certainly wasn’t a tremendous deduction, but it had sufficient emotional impact to keep him here. Mark, who was right at the door, halted in his tracks. His voice went dangerously low.

“You’re a monster.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you ever regret that?”

“… I don’t think so?”

Mark turned to look at me again, his once-shining amber eyes seemingly lightless and dead.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m scared. I don’t want to fail after talking big about taking a different path from the family business. I regret throwing it all onto my sister. I’m worried that it’s cheating to take this exam with Mod blood running through me. So what? You don’t know me. You don’t know my problems. You’ve never met my family. You’re meddling for some incomprehensible reason, but you know nothing about the context in which the problem exists.”

He closed the distance between us a little. His voice contained the rumble of uncontrolled rage and self-pity. His voice contained sin itself.

“I’ve already told you, Elysia. No matter how smart you are and no matter how monstrous you are, you are still a human. You can use that freakily expressionless Mod head of yours to cold read me all you want, but you will never be able understand me. You will never understand anyone as long as you keep acting like an insufferable doll.”

I stared him down, silent. Tension seemed to envelop the room as our little staring contest continued. But still, through it all, I only had one thought.

This man is pathetic.

I decided to break the silence myself. Potential disciple or not, I was not going to allow a human to speak to me with such impunity.

“So, you’re blaming that ‘random Mod’, now?”
“Huh?”

Mark looked honestly taken aback.

“Aren’t you just a coward?”

“… What?”

“I was wrong, this has nothing to do with your family. You’ve brought up a half-dozen reasons that you can’t do this exam involving a half-dozen people, and yet all it boils down to is the fact that you’re too much of a coward to do something on your own without nepotism in your corner.”

Mark’s expression darkened even further.

“You know nothing about me.”

“Have you ever heard the Parable of the Ten Talents?”

Mark looked baffled at the question.

“Isn’t that from that one religious text? It’s about three servants who get investments from their master who told them to bring back a return. The two that brought a return were rewarded, and the one who hid the money and then brought it back with no profit was punished.”

“Good memory, as I would expect from the direct descendent of a genetically engineered person and a University of Meryka graduate. I do hope, however, that you applied that memory more effectively to your civil service studies, because you’re wrong on one point.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Why are you bringing up some random old religious text?”

I don’t know. It’s as if my mouth is moving on its own. My chest is hot. My heart is pounding. This is more intense than anything else I’ve felt while on Earth. Ah… is this that feeling? Anger? I glanced into the window, and I was able to see my reflection. The woman I was looking at was glaring back.

Oh, so I can look like that too?

“Mark, the point you got wrong is that the master never actually told them to do anything with the money. He entrusted them with it without telling them what to with it.”

“What? So, the moral is that the master was an asshole?”

“Perhaps he was. But that isn’t the point. The point is quite simple really.”

I approached Mark until our faces were right up to each other. However… suppressing the violent urges boiling up in my core, I exhaled deeply. Be kind, Elysia.

“Mark, the point is that the world is unfair. If you don’t use what you have, then that unfairness will only be amplified.”

Mark took a step back. His expression was unreadable, and his face was scrunching up. At this point, I didn’t care about making him a disciple. That goal might have been distorted from the start. As I watched tears begin to well up in Mark’s eyes, I softly spoke once more.

“Mark, your family is worried.”

Indeed, what kind of a prophet would I be if I couldn’t comfort the crying man in front of me.

Mark took a seat again, and I took a knee next him to meet his level. I lightly grabbed his shoulder and looked him in the eye.

“You’re right, I don’t know anything about you. So, I want to learn more.”

I was never going to be able to convert him from the start. Given the collapse of most miracles, from the moment he suspected me to be genetically modified, that outcome was dead. Therefore….

“It might be selfish of me to say this, Mark, but I feel like my father would be disappointed in me if I left you. Come on, I’ll take you home. I’ll walk with you the whole way.”

Taking deep breaths to suppress his tears, Mark looked at me. Anyone would have called his tear-stricken face ugly in comparison to his normally relatively handsome visage, but in my eyes this was far more beautiful than anything I had yet seen from him. Finally, he spoke.

“No… I need to do this on my own.”

You know, I feel a little unneeded sometimes. Despite feeling a little left out of the problem that I had just spent an afternoon getting invested in, I nodded. I spent the next thirty minutes sitting with him, making occasional chatter as he slowly calmed down. Eventually, Mark was ready to leave.

“I’m sorry for treating you like that Elysia, I understand you were just trying to help me.”

That’s not true. The Lord is dying. I’m dying. I need your belief to live. There was a lot I wanted to say but couldn’t. It would be pointless and would only ruin his recovered mood.

‘Be kind’, huh? Is it worth it? I really don’t know.

“It’s fine, Mark.”

A certain expression that I couldn’t recognise passed over his face.

“I will repay the favour some time. Here’s my contact info-”

Mark’s voice trailed off, apparently recalling that I still lived in the stone age. Despite that, he smiled. I suppose I really ought to convince the Lord to permit me access to an E-watch.

“It’s fine, I’ll promise that we’ll sort it out. See you again soon, Elysia.”

“See you again soon”? Is he just using it as a figure of speech? No…. What exactly does he have in mind here, I wonder…? Ignorant to my confusion, Mark Bellon left the room.

And so, that marked the first time on Earth that I made an expression.

===

Elsewhere, a man was looking at security footage of a certain young woman and man in the Strait Fourth Library. While there were no cameras in the private room, the footage of their chess matches was sufficient to pique his interest.

“That woman… how fascinating.”