Ferid
I'd been driving on the highway for an hour. The scenery around us was nothing but mountains, an endless stretch of boredom. A wave of drowsiness hit me, and I let out a huge yawn.
"Haaam..."
"Fuck, there are way too many cars..."
What the hell is everyone doing heading to the other world at three in the afternoon on a Wednesday? It's not like they're commuting... Are they all going on a trip? No... tomorrow's Thursday, isn't it?
"..."
I had no idea why the traffic was this bad, but the thought of it taking another thirty minutes just to reach the checkpoint ahead made me want to scream. If I could, I'd shove every car out of the way... but in this tiny compact, I'd probably just scratch the one in front.
So I stayed quiet, crawling along behind the car ahead while staring straight forward. Humans... when the hell did they build these massive concrete structures? In front of the unknown rift that no one in this world had dared approach before, countless vehicles waited in line at the checkpoint to cross over to the other side.
I felt it all over again—how much the world had changed in just a year. Almost as if in a trance, I glanced over at Elphy sitting in the passenger seat.
"..."
(She's out cold...)
(She said she'd stay awake to watch if I was driving properly...)
She'd fallen fast asleep less than thirty minutes after getting in the car. Normally I'd have tickled her side with my right hand to mess with her and tell her to wake up, but... maybe it was the location. For some reason, I didn't feel like playing around.
(It reminds me of the old days...)
(This girl... for the first week after crossing over, she could barely sleep at all, could she...?)
I still remembered her silhouette in the middle of the night, sitting up alone and staring blankly out the window. Whenever I asked what was wrong, she'd always turn with a smile full of worry. Yeah. She must have had her own heavy burdens too. After spending nearly her whole life in that small, quiet village and suddenly being thrown into this noisy, chaotic world... I'd struggled, but she probably struggled even more.
Lost in thought, I reached over and gently fixed her messy black hood.
"Mmm... What? Are we there already?"
"No... We're just at the otherworld border. I wasn't planning to wake you. If you're tired, go back to sleep."
"..."
After my single suggestion to sleep more, a strange silence fell between us. The awkward atmosphere, so different from usual, made Elphy stare out the window as if deep in thought. She must be feeling complicated... If even I felt this way, how much worse must it be for her? I tried to think of something to say, but nothing good came to mind.
In that awkward silence, it was Elphy who spoke first.
"Wow... This place has changed a lot too. When we first crossed over, none of this was here..."
"Even the clothes we're wearing remind me of when we first met. Right?"
"..."
First met... She meant back when I stumbled into the village on the verge of death? This race had looked at me—with my half-dead, completely exhausted body—with eyes full of curiosity. Even while barely able to breathe, I couldn't forget those eyes peeking out from under her hood. Almost in a daze, I'd asked the old village chief about the one staring at me.
"You told the chief you wanted to meet me, right?"
"Ah... No! I mean... yes, but how did you...?"
"The chief told me. He said the man who crossed over from the other world seemed interested in you."
"He said you seemed like a decent person, so you should meet."
"..."
That damn old man... He said he'd set us up without making it obvious, but... Realizing something I hadn't known until now made my face burn with embarrassment. Still... thanks to the chief, I was able to get close to Elphy. At the same time, I learned why she always wore that black hood pulled over her head.
"You were the first. The first person to approach me, a demon..."
"So I was scared. I thought if you found out I was a demon, you'd definitely hate me..."
"..."
Don't mix words or bodies with demons. There was even a saying like that in the other world... so in a way, it was only natural. Maybe that's why I still remembered the first awkward Korean words she'd spoken to me.
I am an impure being with horns... Is that still okay?
Elphy must have spent day and night racking her brain with the chief, translating and memorizing the other world's language into Korean just to say those words. Even though she was an impure being that everyone hated, even though she had horns growing from her head... was it still okay?
Of course, back then I had no idea what her intentions were... But even if I could go back to that day, even if I returned to the moment she first took off her hood, my answer would be exactly the same.
"What did I say again? Something like, with beauty like yours, a little impurity doesn't matter? Huh?"
"No... That was just because you looked so down..."
"I thought maybe you had some kind of complex about your appearance because of your broken horn..."
"Hehe... Really? For real?"
"..."
Ha... Fuck. This is embarrassing. If I could go back one year right now, I definitely wouldn't have said that. I tried to avoid Elphy's eyes by staring straight ahead, but my slave just looked at me with a mischievous, sly gaze as if she found it amusing.
"Why? Are you embarrassed? Hm?"
"No... It's not that I'm embarrassed..."
"Your face is all red though?"
"That's... because you're touching my thigh..."
"Really?"
"..."
Ha... Fuck. I'm losing it. I can't even run away since I'm driving... I quickly pushed away the slave's hand that was slyly stroking the inside of my thigh.
"What? What's with that cute reaction? The tinting means no one can see from outside anyway, right?"
"No... Even with tinting, if someone gets close they can see everything...?"
"Oh? So from far away it's fine?"
"Who cares if they can see? A slave is just giving her master a leg massage because he looks tired, right? Yeah? Isn't that it?"
"..."
Ha... That damn woman... She calls it a leg massage but why is her hand climbing higher up my thigh? Instinctively sensing danger, I immediately shoved the naughty hand away.
"What? Why are you rejecting me? Are you getting hard or something?"
"Ahem...! N-no... That's not the problem... By the way, this is sexual harassment. You know that, right?"
"Sexual harassment? After you made me suck it this morning?"
"..."
Fucking hell. Even though I couldn't look to the side while driving, I could easily imagine what kind of face she was making. Picturing that shit-eating grin in my head... how should I put it... it gave me this strange sense of defeat, a weird feeling of humiliation. Since I was driving, I decided to push those thoughts aside for now.
"No... That's..."
"Okay, I get it~ You want me to stop teasing you, right?"
"By the way, isn't your phone ringing? Aren't you going to answer?"
"... Huh? Phone?"
"Yeah. It's been going off for a while. It's from Kim Minhyuk."
"..."
(Kim Minhyuk?)
(What? Did something happen?)
It sounded like an important call... but I'd been so busy getting sexually harassed that I hadn't even noticed my phone ringing. While keeping my eyes on the road, I listened to the familiar voice coming through the speakerphone.
"Yeah... I'm at the checkpoint right now."
"What? You left really early, huh?"
"Yeah, it's the first day so I just got ready and left early... Is something wrong?"
"Huh?"
"You called because something happened, right?"
"..."
What the hell? Why isn't he answering? Something feels off... Sure enough, the bastard hit me with the classic "let's meet up and talk."
"What do you mean, meet up and talk? You're not even my manager anymore."
"Well... um... it turns out I'm in charge of you again, haha;;"
"So... let's drink together and talk in person..."
This was ridiculous... And then the bastard hung up.
"Hey... Hey...! What the hell? What was that?"
"There's a text. He says to come to this place instead of the one he first told you about."
"What?"
Ha... That son of a bitch. I was already getting annoyed thinking about how far out of the way I'd have to go... but when I checked the new destination, it actually cut ten minutes off the trip.
"What the... Gridleaf Interchange 16-1? Where the hell is that...?"
"It looks like... a hotel or something?"
Ferid? Fweh-herid? The strange pronunciation that was half Ferid and half something else was pretty hard for me to imitate... Which made sense, since it was from the other world's language.
"Elphy... Ferid? What did you say Ferid means again?"
"I just told you! It means grid pattern."
"And it's not Ferid... Here, repeat after me. Fweh-he..."
"Feh-he..."
"Not Feh-he... Put your tongue more like this... like this, inside..."
"..."
Fuck. Just because my pronunciation sucks a little, I'm getting absolutely roasted by a native speaker... Anyway, Ferid, one of the so-called contact cities close to the human world, was quite famous as a tourist destination.
The spectacular scenery that unfolded the moment we passed through the checkpoint was so breathtaking that even I, who had been wearing a sour expression, and Elphy, who had been eagerly explaining, were both stunned.
"Whoa... This is insane."
"It's nothing like the pictures... Right?"
"..."
I knew I should answer... I should agree with Elphy right away... but the unbelievable sight before my eyes left me speechless.
(What the hell is this...?)
(No way... The leaves are actually covering the entire sky...?)
I'd thought it was just typical tourist trap exaggeration... but the leaves and branches really were covering the whole sky. It looked like a land made of greenery was floating above us. The massive scale created a giant ceiling that blocked the sunlight pouring down to the ground. But thanks to the holes deliberately left in between, the city wasn't as dark as I'd expected.
(This is amazing...)
(They must have climbed all the way up there and cut the branches into perfect squares... right?)
The ceiling of greenery had square holes in it like windows. It looked exactly like a chessboard, with patches of green and sky alternating in perfect rows. Beneath the perforated leafy canopy, pillars of light poured down like waterfalls.
"Hey. What are you doing? The light changed."
"Oh? Uh... yeah."
"What's wrong? Where's your head at?"
"You didn't even answer me just now... Are you seriously that shocked by the other world?"
"..."
Seriously the other world? Then was the place I was in a year ago a fake other world? Anyway... she really was from the other world, acting all proud about it. She kept saying Ferid was one of the top ten scenic spots in the other world or something... The way she talked, you'd think she was the mayor of Ferid... But this was her first time here too.
"W-well, that's true, but..."
"It's like sharing a sense of pride as someone from the other world, you know?"
"..."
As fellow otherworlders... Normally I would've just let it slide, but because of the hood she was wearing, it didn't sit right with me. With a somewhat bitter smile, I drove deeper into the landscape that felt even more unreal than a fantasy game. It was a dreamlike world where square patches of sunlight and greenery intersected like something out of a fairytale. Faced with her bright, innocent smile, I could only nod.
"Yeah... It's the best in the other world."
"Right?"