When You Come Home After Years and Everything's Changed #2
I used to be the pride of our family.
That's not an exaggeration — my mom was the type to hang a congratulatory banner across the whole neighborhood over it.
But those days were long gone.
While the towers of Machun kept climbing higher and higher, I was crawling down into the gutter.
That was part of why I hadn't been back to my hometown in years.
Since I never called, my parents eventually stopped reaching out too, and we just occasionally confirmed to each other that we were still alive.
And now that same me was walking back to the family house.
The old home sat in a run-down quarter of Machun where the skyscrapers were visible on the horizon. Half-abandoned construction sites cluttered the area, and the walls were plastered head to toe in spray-paint graffiti — that kind of city.
"Of all the neighborhoods in the city, ours is the one redevelopment skipped, huh."
I mulled over that thought as I walked, and eventually a familiar stretch of street came into view. This was where I'd run wild as an elementary school kid.
Back then, that playground over there used to be absolutely swarming with children.
Low birth rates being what they are these days, the playground was…
"Hey! Arwen! Minsu's it — catch him!"
"Kim Elfrad is the tagger!"
Wait, there are a lot of kids?
That was a genuine surprise.
And what struck me even more was how many of them had pointy ears.
Half-elves?
Come to think of it, I'd heard that half-elf kids had been multiplying in every run-down rural town and old city district lately — one elementary school somewhere supposedly hit a nine-to-one ratio of elf-hybrids to native Koreans.
Korea had once been slammed below zero on the birth rate, and everyone had agonized over how to fix it — but then the rifts appeared out of nowhere, and the elves who emerged from them solved the problem for us.
The birth rate was at 1.7 now, wasn't it?
I was trying to remember whether "Arwen" really had been the most popular name for newborns when Oinoi let out a pained groan beside me.
"Hieeek…!"
"Oinoi? What's wrong?"
"The long-eared fairies are multiplying at an alarming rate, they are…! At this rate, native Koreans will surely vanish from the earth entirely, just like the master of this house, they will…! It is dangerous, it is…!"
Oinoi had disliked elves for as long as I'd known her.
The reason was… well, apparently there was some long-standing squabble between nymphs and elves. Something like that.
Anyway.
I was still musing on all this when I found myself standing in front of the house.
An old iron gate.
Apparently even a 21st century gone full cyberpunk had things that never changed.
"Mom, Dad, it's me. I'm home."
I let myself in with the key from the milk-delivery pouch and knocked on the front door — I'd forgotten the door lock passcode, after all. A moment later I heard movement inside, and a woman who had aged considerably opened the door.
"Well, look who it is. Ildo! No call, no nothing — what brings you here?"
"Hi, Mom. You're looking healthy. I heard you broke your leg."
"You're bringing up something from three years ago?! Come in already! And who's this beside…"
"Oinoi is Oinoi, she is…! Oinoi is a ditch water nymph born of summer, she is…! This honey-colored hair, bright as the summer sun itself, is the proof, it is…!"
At the sight of my mother, Oinoi threw both arms up in a grand, sweeping greeting. Naturally, my mother eyed this bizarre guest with more than a little wariness.
"Come in first. Your father's home too."
The house I hadn't seen in so long had changed in all sorts of ways.
A massage chair I'd never seen before now sat in the living room. The TV had grown even bigger and was mounted on the wall.
The kitchen fridge was new, and practically everything else had been swapped out too.
About the only thing unchanged was the couch.
The leather still had the hole I'd punched through it playing with the kitchen knife as a kid, which was oddly heartwarming.
Home.
I'd been nervous coming back after all this time, but home was still home, and I felt my shoulders relax.
"Is Irae still not home? She started university this year, didn't she? Which school did she say she got into?"
I cracked open the door to my little sister Ha Irae's room.
Given the hour, it was empty.
"Ha Ildo, so what exactly is going on with you? Are you living well? Who is this Oinoi? Are you even eating properly?"
Mom had come out with a plate of peeled fruit and was firing off questions one after another.
Dad, who had been sitting on the couch, didn't say anything, but he straightened his posture in a way that made it very clear he was just as curious.
I answered calmly.
"I'm doing fine. This is Oinoi — she's a nymph. I'm fostering her for a bit. You know the elves? She's a fairy, like them."
"This Oinoi wishes to use the computer, she does…! Because this Oinoi has lately taken an interest in a wondrous game called Minesweeper, she has…!"
Like a cousin or a niece visiting for the holidays, Oinoi went scampering — pitter-patter — toward the computer room. And the moment she disappeared from view, Dad cleared his throat.
"Ahem. Ahem."
When Dad cleared his throat like that, it was a signal that something serious was coming.
"Ildo. Are you still doing that awakener work? That dangerous, money-pit business of yours? Don't you think it's about time you quit and switched to something safer that actually pays?"
I knew this conversation was coming.
He'd been asking me if I wanted to change careers every time he saw me for years.
In Dad's eyes, awakener work was about the most dangerous job on the planet.
And honestly, there'd been some truth to that.
Of the first-generation rookies I started out with, barely half were still active in the field today.
Then Dad added, "Why not just come home and get a real job? I talked with President Lee over there — he said if you're a D-Rank awakener or whatever, he'll take you on as a crew chief right away. It's physical work, but it pays well and nobody's risking their neck."
"Hmm…"
"Ildo, you're twenty-seven now. When I was your age, you were already born and toddling around at two. Isn't it time you got married? You remember your friend Seongsik, right?"
Seongsik.
Park Seongsik?
The guy was famously the ugliest boy in the neighborhood. It was practically routine for the girls to bicker over who got to say "Look, your future husband's walking by" whenever Seongsik passed.
But he'd always had a decent character.
He wasn't much of a talker, but he was so hardworking that the adults in town liked him even more than kids his own age did.
I was picturing Seongsik saying he was going to work construction after graduating high school when Dad dropped a bombshell.
"He married an elf woman named Eilena this time around, and they've already got two kids. Lovely wife, very kind. You know his parents have their difficulties, right? She's an absolute treasure to her in-laws."
Is this real life?
That Seongsik married an elf?
And apparently it wasn't just Seongsik.
Dad kept hammering on about how my friends Yongmin and Hyunjun had also married elves, had kids, and were living happily. I felt myself spiraling toward a full-blown panic on multiple fronts.
"Wait, why are the elves marrying my friends at this rate?"
Every so often, MeTube's algorithm would surface videos of Korean men married to elf women.
The men were never much to look at and their jobs were never stable, but there they were, living blissfully with their gorgeous elf wives and rubbing salt in everyone's wounds.
I'd always filed it away as other people's problems.
So elves and Koreans really were getting married at a staggering pace, huh. It hit me anew.
"So, Ildo. Are you seeing anyone?"
I wasn't.
And right now, I wanted to focus on what I actually wanted to do with my life, not on dating.
But I couldn't exactly come out and say that.
I was, in many ways, an unfilial son who had worried my parents for years.
Having neglected the family home this long, I couldn't bring myself to answer — and Dad spoke up.
"As it happens, your old man's got someone in mind. The daughter of that moving-company president I mentioned. She's got real backbone, cheerful and kind-hearted. We've already agreed between us to marry our kids to each other. President Lee says he'd be glad to have me for an in-law."
Oh no. Sigh.
I had no idea these kinds of promises were being made behind my back.
Still, "Let's marry your son to my daughter someday" was the kind of thing parents just said to each other all the time.
It was small talk — like telling an old acquaintance you hadn't seen in years, "We should grab a meal sometime." Except Dad's expression was dead serious.
"Honey, by any chance do you have a photo of President Lee's daughter?"
"Hmm? Well, yes, I do…"
Swoosh—
Mom held her phone out to me.
Truth be told, I wasn't entirely uninterested, and so the instant I saw the photo, I froze like a meerkat staring down an eagle.
"Gah…!"
The frowning woman on the screen was none other than the girl who'd shaken me down for my gift certificates back in middle school!
Her hair was black now, and she was dressed modestly like a proper, diligent citizen — but the ancient grudge over that 10,000-won gift certificate burned bright, and I recognized her in a heartbeat!
The ground seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
And then Dad said, "Honey, that's the elder daughter. The one we promised to marry to Ildo isn't the eldest — it's the younger one. Show him the younger daughter's picture. Her personality is exactly what I wanted. A bit flashy in appearance, mind you."
Swoosh—
Mom tapped the phone screen.
A moment later, the face of President Lee of the moving center's younger daughter appeared on display. And the second I saw it, I couldn't help but recoil in sheer disbelief.
Because it was a face I knew very, very well.
Blonde hair dyed yellow to the roots.
A bored, listless expression.
"Lee Jina?"
The daughter President Lee was talking about was C-Rank hunter Lee Jina — the same Lee Jina who'd cleared several C-Rank rifts alongside me! Was the world always this absurd?
Come to think of it, she did seem suspiciously well-informed about my mom and dad.
And honestly, the whole reason I'd come back to the family house in the first place was that that delinquent of a woman had once needled my conscience with "It's been a long time since you visited home, hasn't it?"
"You two know each other?"
Dad's face lit up.
It was the look of a man who thought everything was falling neatly into place.
"Wonderful! She should be arriving soon with the rice delivery — you two go have a nice long talk!"
Beep beep—
A car horn blared from outside almost on cue.
Dad clapped me on the back. "That'll be the delivery! Go out and take the stuff and bring it in!"
When I stepped outside, a woman in a leather jacket was climbing down from the cab of a one-ton box truck.
She had a canned coffee in her hand, and when she saw me, her brow creased slightly.
"Oh. It's you. Whatever. There's a washing machine and a ton of rice, so take them."
Lee Jina unloaded the washing machine and the rice from the truck with practiced ease.
I channeled every last drop of mana into carrying the brand-new washer into the house.
Jina then leveled the machine and installed it with smooth, professional efficiency, and watching her left me genuinely astonished.
This was not the work of someone who'd done it once or twice.
Well, she is a moving company's daughter, after all.
"A part-time job? Doesn't C-Rank awakener work pay you plenty already?"
"You. Come here for a sec."
Swoosh—
Lee Jina grabbed my arm.
The grip was stronger than I'd expected, and as I found myself being dragged helplessly along, Dad called out behind us.
"That's it! You two have a good long chat!"
I had a strong feeling it was not that kind of conversation.
Lee Jina stopped in an alley a short distance from the house.
The walls were covered in murals someone had painted with embarrassingly amateur skill — nothing I remembered from my childhood.
Had someone been trying to imitate those artsy mural villages?
The kind of thing that happens to every neighborhood as its people trickle away, I suppose.
Swoosh—
Lee Jina shoved her hands in her pockets like the street thug she'd always been, scowled, and swept her eyes across our surroundings.
Standing there in that exact pose, I felt the old nightmare come rushing back — the day my allowance, saved up to buy game items, was confiscated in the form of gift certificates.
Thankfully, my wallet contained no gift certificates today, and I screwed up my courage to ask.
"And what exactly do you want to say?"
