Grandpa Becomes an Elf (1)
"A k-kid…? What?"
"Is that… a cigarette?"
From the very first impression, it was hard to process. A little girl who looked no older than an elementary school student sat with a cigarette clenched between her lips in place of candy, flashing a hearty grin — and Rosaria and Felix were thoroughly thrown.
They had expected that the so-called Third Princess would be in a situation similar to their own, but the sheer theatrical absurdity of her appearance left them speechless.
"You step outside for a bit. These folks look like they've come to see me."
"B-but, Your Highness—!"
"It's fine! Trust me!"
"Haa… Very well. However, should anything happen, I must insist that you shout for help at once."
After that spectacular entrance, the Third Princess — Estelle — cast a sidelong glance at the people remaining in the room, then asked Norton Giers, who had been standing awkwardly at her side, to clear out. Norton Giers was sweating bullets at the thought of leaving a member of the royal family alone, without a single guard, in the company of people who could burn the entire Great Forest — World Tree and all — to ash if they felt like it. But Estelle just thumped her own chest with a confident smile and told him not to worry, and in the end he threw up both hands and gave in.
Once Norton Giers had left, only the members of the Evergarden family and Estelle remained in the room.
"Hoo… *hiss* So. You came to see me, did you?"
A brief silence settled over them. The first to break it was Estelle, who stubbed out the cigarette she had been smoking in an ashtray that had somehow appeared.
"First of all, I would like to apologize for the chaos caused by our sudden and illegal intrusion into elven territory. It was an unconscionable act that could easily have sparked a major incident, but carefully navigating every protocol and condition before requesting an audience would have taken far too long."
"Haha! Bold as brass in your actions, and yet you've still got manners?"
"Of course, if manners alone could solve every problem, this world would be a peaceful place indeed — wouldn't you say?"
"Indeed. At the very least, I hope only that no bloodshed occurs here. I would be grateful for your understanding."
"There's a knife under those words. In a life that's long if you call it long and short if you call it short, I've run into that kind of tongue more times than I can count."
"You know, young lady? Even when you're wagging that tongue of yours, you'd do well to pick your targets carefully."
"I'll keep that in mind."
From the moment the conversation began, Freya lightly sparred with her counterpart, testing her reactions — and in doing so, she realized that the Third Princess before her was almost certainly not a native of this world. She was a transmigrator, just like Freya, her family, and Tene.
No ordinary person of this world would hold a conversation like this with someone who had brought a dragon along. That left two possibilities for the Third Princess sitting across from her.
First: she was someone with the sheer guts not to flinch even when a dragon came charging into the heart of her nation.
Second: she was a transmigrator like Freya herself, and simply didn't yet grasp how overwhelmingly powerful a dragon truly was.
Freya's assessment was that the elf in front of her was a healthy mix of both.
"Would it be all right if we got to the point? The tea you served was excellent, but I'm the sort who prefers to enjoy teatime at leisure, at home."
"That's more like it. Young people these days — you've got fire in you. Real fighting spirit, eh?"
"…You. What is your connection to Hansung Corporation?"
Of the two who had been carefully probing each other with light conversation, Freya was the first to cut to the real matter. The same Freya who had maintained polite formal speech with everyone until now stripped off the mask and drove a cold, blunt spike straight through the air.
"…Oh? In a situation like this, isn't the usual first question whether you're from the same hometown?"
"I'm not in the mood for word games. The connection is severed now, but I was deeply entangled with Hansung Corporation once — and right now, that puts me in a very foul mood."
Even under that direct hit, Estelle still smiled with easy, creased eyes. Across from her, Freya's usual gentle smile was gone. In its place was a gaze cold enough to cut anything in half, red phosphorescence smoldering in her eyes. This was not the Freya they knew.
Years had passed, a family had formed, and she had spent her days as a kind, fatherly figure — but before she met Darian, Freya had always been a person of this kind of charisma.
"…You asked what my connection to Hansung Corporation is? Then I suppose I ought to tell you."
Estelle, meeting Freya's gaze head-on, opened her mouth.
"Connection? Ha! What a joke. I'm using what's mine — and you call that a 'connection'? The sheer nerve of it."
"What's… mine?"
In that instant — the moment Estelle said mine — Freya's pupils trembled violently.
"…What did you just say? Mine? You said it was yours?"
"As far as I know… there's only one person who would call Hansung Corporation his own…"
"…It can't be."
And the others, who had been holding their breath and watching the exchange, suddenly found themselves reeling at what they had just heard, staring at one another in confusion.
"My ninety-three years of life. I started from the very bottom and ran myself ragged so the whole world would know my three-syllable name. Why would this second life be any different?"
"Ah, right. Introductions are late. My name is Kim Han-sung. That's my name, young friends."
The beginning of a legend.
From an orphan boy who polished the shoes of traitors for pocket change, to the man who built the greatest corporation in the Republic of Korea.
A single star shining brightest over Korea.
The first chairman of the Hansung Group.
Kim Han-sung.
"G-Grandpa?!"
"Grandfather?!"
"It was Grandfather?"
"Grandpa too?!"
"…What?"
And so Freya's own grandfather, Kim Han-sung, was burning through his second life in this new world of Starlight of Dawn.
He had always believed he had lived a life without regrets.
Starting as an orphan with neither father nor mother, he had run without rest to this very day.
He could still vividly remember those freezing winter days — scraping by as a shoeshine boy, pinching every coin, his stomach pressed flat against his spine, staring up at the bright stars in the night sky and swearing he would succeed no matter what. And somehow, he had come this far.
From the moment Japan, the defeated nation, withdrew and liberation arrived, through the flames of war that rose again and left Korea in ruins — he had clung to life with stubborn, grinding tenacity.
To avoid being dismissed as an illiterate, he did hard labor at the docks in the morning and attended night school in the evening. With a battered English dictionary falling apart at the seams, he couldn't even spare a candle — so on nights when a bright moon rose, his nose would sting with emotion as he read by moonlight and taught himself English.
Living like that, he scraped together every scrap of money he could and opened his first shop. Leveraging the port's advantages, he sold goods coming in from neighboring Japan and steadily grew the business. Before long he had something that could honestly be called a company, and then he launched into trade in earnest and founded an enterprise.
He was a man with an exceptional instinct for seeing through to the essence of things. He jumped into any market that looked profitable faster than anyone else — and if no such market existed, he was a master at carving one out himself.
And so the nobody orphan became someone every person living in Korea knew by name.
Now, lying on a hospital bed, he quietly sensed his fate approaching — and a flood of regrets rose up one after another.
Three years had already passed since he stepped down as chairman, and still the internal wars over interests within the company never ceased. They were his own blood, and yet he had raised such shortsighted fools who saw nothing but money. How foolish he had been.
Having lived fiercely since childhood, he had taught his children the importance of competition — but he had never meant for them to draw blades on family who shared the same blood. By now, though, it was far too late. He was nothing more than an old man meeting his end alone in a hospital room.
Feeling his heart rate slow beat by beat, he found himself thinking of one particular person.
A grandson from a branch family, yet gifted beyond anyone else. From a young age the boy had been thrown into the brutal succession struggle by his parents' ambition. He displayed such outstanding talent that even political figures tried to suppress him with every dirty trick they could muster — and the boy simply sidestepped every scheme as if it were nothing, steadily building his own position rock-solid.
Then one day that boy said he had fallen in love, demolished every foothold he had built, and left the company. Kim Han-sung had thought it such a waste — and yet, deep in one corner of his heart, he had quietly cheered him on.
Perhaps it was because the wife he had married in a political match, who had passed away before him, had always been more a mutually beneficial arrangement than a matter of love. Having never once experienced that blazing emotion called love himself… looking back, hadn't he been a little envious of that boy?
Even after cutting ties with the company, the boy never cut ties with him. Whenever they met and talked, the smile he wore — one never seen within the company walls — always left Kim Han-sung quietly pleased.
He had even gotten to meet a somewhat unconventional but reliable granddaughter-in-law, and adorable great-grandchildren.
Starting three years ago, when he first entered the hospital, they would visit his room from time to time and talk about all sorts of things. He chatted with them, read the books his great-granddaughter recommended, and calmly put the remaining pieces of his life in order — until at last the end arrived.
Kim Han-sung.
With fading eyes he watched the hospital room door burst open and the nurses shouting something he could no longer make out, and he thought:
Even if there were a second life — I would still aim for the very top.
With that final resolve, his heart at last took its rest.
Born 1931. Died at the age of ninety-three.
And so the story of Kim Han-sung came to a full stop.
His body, growing cold, seemed to float gently upward — and then a soft warmth enfolded him.
He had never believed in any god while he was alive, but as he drifted in that sensation he thought, Is this heaven?
"…Huh? This isn't heaven."
His mind snapped into focus. Wide, bright eyes blinked. Warmth returned to hands and feet that had been draining of color, and a heart that had been slowing to a stop was now pounding hard inside his chest.
Sensing something was wrong, he sat up at once — and discovered he was not in the hospital room he had been lying in moments before, but waking in a bed draped with fine, luxurious fabric.
"W-what in the world…? And what is this v-voice…?!"
In his shock he opened his mouth, only to be hit with another jolt: instead of the deep, plain voice of an old man, what came out was a sweet, melodious tone like a songbird's chirp, as cute as jade beads rolling across a table.
Then Kim Han-sung twitched a pair of long, pointed ears.
And so he began the second act of his life —
in the body of the elves' Third Princess, Celebrian Estelle.