Snip.
Just like before, the scissors crossed in midair.
“So, are you heading straight to the hundredth floor?”
“Yes,” I replied, my reflection clear in the large glass window.
Over my shoulder, my orphanage director sighed, scissors in hand. “You could have rested longer before resuming your journey.”
“You sound like Hamustra. Or is it the other way around?”
“It’s true either way. When you spend so much time with someone else, you end up influencing each other.”
Hamustra, Kim Yul, and the director had spent plenty of time together in Cafe Planetarium. In time, it was inevitable that they would affect each other. Hamustra was no exception. It was the same for me and the Guardian. While I got my haircut, the Guardian waited beside me.
“Yes, I’m heading up straight away.”
“Alright.”
The director focused on my haircut.
“You’re a director again.”
The director frowned and coldly[1] replied, “Don’t say that because I manage the garden now. I don’t want to learn that the child I cared for has grown that way.”
I shrugged. “I wanted to help stop global warming[2].”
“This isn’t Earth, you know. About one hundred fifty years ago, a reporter asked a mountaineer a question. Why do you want to climb Everest? It’s easy to guess why the reporter asked that question. It was probably similar to why reporters rushed to ask Mr. Carlenbery why he wanted to enter the Tower just a few years ago.”
The director tilted his head.
“Why would someone who could live well for the rest of his life give up that kind of stability? Were you promised something for climbing it? What drives you to take on such a challenge? We just want to know. Tell us. The climber simply answered that ‘Because it’s there.’”
“Ah, I’ve heard that story, too.”
“Yes. When I was your age, almost everyone knew it. There were many parodies of it, too. ‘I bought the game because it was there,’ or ‘I ordered the chicken because it was there.’ I remember many bad jokes that were going around.”
“I guess the Earth was already pretty hot back then.”
“It was around the time that global warming was in its full force.” The director snipped away the hair with his scissors. The loose strands scattered in the breeze.
“You’re telling me this now because you want to ask me why I aim for the hundredth floor, right?”
“No, Gong-Ja. I don’t want to ask that.” With his usual slight frown, the director quietly added, “It’s because you can afford to give away what you have.”
That remark was unexpected.
“Me?”
“You have such a fine home, don’t you?”
Like the director said, we were at my home. It wasn’t the Garden of Withered Flowers, but the mansion where I usually lived on the twentieth floor. It was one floor below the Garden of Withered Flowers, connected by my building’s stairs, physically speaking, but it was sixty floors below the holy ground within the Tower.
“You also have such a beautiful garden.”
There was a reason I chose to cut my hair at home and not in the holy ground. I intended to leave no soil, water, or anything that the flowers didn’t need in the garden. Thus, my cut hair mingled with dandelion seeds in my mansion yard, not the garden.
“Having a home means you have to protect it for yourself and your family. Having a flower garden means you can care for others beyond yourself and your family. If you take this challenge, you must have a good reason and something you can afford to spare.”
“Something I can afford to spare?”
“Only those who can afford to share can take on challenges.” The director’s voice blended with the sound of the scissors. “You wouldn’t call it a challenge when someone lost in the desert finally drinks from an oasis. No one would call it a challenge when a starving child eats a loaf of bread found on the road. It’s just struggling against whatever trial comes your way.”
“You’re right.”
“Only those with the luxury of letting go of what they have can prepare for something new. When people can accept themselves as they are, only then can they embrace others wholly. Only when people have everything ready can they truly take on a challenge. I don’t question someone who wants to take on more challenges.”
Snip.
“I question those who can’t do that.”
Snip.
“Why did that person end up wandering in the desert? Why was that child starving? Why?”
Why?
“So I don’t ask why Marcus Carlenbery or Shawn McCallister gave up everything to enter the Tower. Likewise, I don’t wonder why the Scream-Gathering Sky aims for the hundredth floor. I just wonder…” The director sighed. “... Why did the twenty-year-old Kim Gong-Ja enter the Tower? That’s the only question I keep asking myself.”
I turned my head to check my hair. “Because the Tower is here... How is that for an answer?”
“That climber ultimately failed to reach the top.”
Snip.
The feeling of the cold scissors touching my scalp made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“He stepped outside the tent during a blizzard and vanished. Not even his body was found, so his friends and family held a funeral with an empty coffin. It wasn’t until nearly a century later that his body was found.”
“... I’ve never heard that before.”
“It’s always the words of a person that spread farther and last longer than the person themselves.”
Snip.
The director shrugged, staring at my reflection in the mirror. “Gong-Ja, why did you enter the Tower? Was it truly because the Tower is here?”