I Just Wanted to Avoid Death - Chapter 2
Yeshion.
The name, without even a common surname, was not originally his. His true name was Han Yeseong, and he was an ordinary person living in South Korea.
Then, one day.
Yeseong ignored the signal and was hit by a speeding car.
As his consciousness gradually faded, he thought it was all over. But then when he opened his eyes, he found himself in this place.
From that day on, a single scene began to repeat itself.
When Yeshion comes to his senses, a person called the ‘Saintess’ cries and runs away from him. Before long, Archpriest Eldis arrives. Then Yeshion is mercilessly killed by his hand.
“I didn’t realize it when I heard the name Yeshion.”
Eldis, and the saintess.
Only after hearing those names did Yeshion realize where he was and what situation he was in.
There was a 19+ rated BL novel called ‘In the Name of the Saintess.’ This novel heated up social media for several reasons.
The author’s writing was so vivid that you could picture the scenes in your head while you read the novel. Additionally, the main character as well as the secondary characters were all psychopaths.
‘Wasn’t that the novel where the saintess was later imprisoned in the basement of the temple?’
Yeshion scratched his head, trying to recall the plot. Though he had skimmed through the novel, he couldn’t remember its precise contents, but he still remembered the gist of it.
The novel’s title is ‘In the Name of the Saintess’, and being part of the BL genre, the saintess is not a woman.
The main character, the ‘shou[1],’ comes from the slums, and had a difficult time earning a living. Knowing nothing about divine power, the Archpriest Eldis, approaches him. The novel begins with Eldis asking him to become a saintess.
What follows is mostly the shou adjusting to life in the temple. The naive shou is tossed around by the beast-like gongs[2] and the secret power struggles between the temple and the imperial palace.
‘Then he meets the Crown Prince and gets involved with him.’
Their entanglement was not a narrative entanglement, but a physical one.
The setting of ‘In the Name of the Saintess’ was too heavy for the characters to be narratively intertwined. However, the shou, being as bright as sunshine, was seen as the gongs’ salvation.
‘The shou and the gongs were involved for a long time… but in the end, the shou tried to escape…’
The shou tries to run away when he realizes he can’t handle the two gongs. However, he gets caught and ends up living in captivity.
Due to the various themes and explicit scenes, the most common comments on the platform where it was launched were: [Is the author in their right mind?] or [This author needs their s****l preferences checked.]
‘Yeshion’ is a villain who appears early on in the novel ‘In the Name of the Saintess.’ He threatens not only one of the main characters, Archpriest ‘Eldis Paveloka’, but also the saintess.
“He even dies at the beginning of the story.”
Yeshion stared into space, his eyes cloudy.
Although he was a villain, he did not have a prominent role in the story. He was mentioned more often by name than the times that he actually appeared in the scenes.
Whenever any incident or accident occurred, it was mentioned in passing that ‘Actually, the deceased Yeshion did it.’
Despite dying early on in the story, his name recurs even in the latter parts.
Just the name.
“If you wanted to give me a chance, you should have at least returned back to my childhood.”
It was heartbreaking enough that his life ended in an accident, but even in the novel of the man that he possessed, he was repeating the man’s death.
He felt sad, angry, and sorrowful.
“Yeshion!”
As Yeshion was expressing his sorrow, Eldis, whose anger rose up to the tip of his head, approached him with a loud voice.
It seemed that ten minutes had already passed.
Yeshion stood up and faced Eldis.
“Is it true that you dishonored the saintess?”
How should he answer this time?
During the seventeen times he had died, it’s not as if he did nothing.
He had tried to explain that it was a misunderstanding, he had gotten angry. He even tried apologizing when he remembered that the original ‘Yeshion’ never apologized. By the tenth time, he had even cried out of frustration.
But no matter what he did, Eldis killed Yeshion.
‘I have nothing left to say…’
Yeshion quietly stared at Eldis. Unlike the past instances where he had felt nothing, Yeshion’s glare bared his resentment toward Eldis.
It would be strange if he still felt nothing after being unjustly killed seventeen times by the same person.
“Answer the question, Priest Yeshion. I asked if you dared to dishonor the saintess.”
Yeshion looked at Eldis without saying a word.
What was the point of resenting or hating him? This time, he would die by his hand again.
For the first time, a hint of resignation shone in Yeshion’s golden eyes as he looked at Eldis.
“…Kill me or not, do as you please.”
T/N
[1] ↩
[2] ↩
