The Father Who Came Home Limping
Murmur murmur—
The sound of people coming and going was loud and bustling. The departure hall of Incheon International Airport was packed even at this early hour of the morning.
We were waiting for Father right now.
It was the very next day after our sudden trip to Seoul. Mother hadn't scolded us nearly as harshly as I'd expected—she'd simply told us to keep her posted from now on whenever we went somewhere.
A few days ago, we'd received another settlement from the agricultural cooperative.
The week had flown by.
We'd decided that this round of money would cover this month's interest payment, plus the land rental fees for Grandfather and me—but even after all that, there was a truly staggering amount left over.
So on a whim, I went ahead and booked Father a direct flight home.
Business class, of course. The good stuff.
He'd suffered for his family all this time. He deserved at least this much comfort.
"Honey!"
Among the crowd of travelers dragging their suitcases out into arrivals, a man came walking toward us with nothing but a battered old backpack slung over his shoulder.
I recognized him instantly.
That man was my father.
Mother spotted him too, waving her arm high and calling out to him again and again.
"Honey! Over here!"
Worried he might walk right past without seeing us, she kept waving. She looked so radiant.
Grandfather, delighted to see Mother so happy, waved along with her.
But unlike the rest of my family, I could only stare at the man awkwardly.
In Seo Ji-on's memories, his father had always been impeccably dressed—neat and presentable. A man who smiled proudly, handsomely.
The man returning home today looked nothing like that.
Clothes and shoes worn to shreds. Shoulders slumped in a way that robbed him of all presence. An expression frozen stiff despite the excitement clearly shimmering beneath it.
This was a man who had shrunk smaller and smaller, working day and night in a foreign country for a family he couldn't even see.
And then, decisively—
Clump. Clump.
—he couldn't even walk properly.
How was I supposed to describe the sight in front of me?
It felt like something had seized my throat and squeezed the air right out of it.
The moment that man's eyes found Mother and me, though, his face lit up like the sun.
"Honey! Ji-on! Father-in-law!!"
Wham—
Hurrying over to us, Father swept Mother into his arms.
Then he spread his arms toward me as well.
"Come here, son. It's been a while. Let me hug you."
He was beaming, as if he were being rewarded for all the hard time he'd endured.
"……"
Well, fair enough. Once his son grew any taller, hugging him wouldn't be so easy.
……Fine. There's no helping it.
I stepped forward and threw my arms around him.
"I missed you, Father."
Clatter. Clatter.
A barbecue restaurant near the airport.
The ribs were disappearing at a remarkable pace.
"Mr. Jang—dear. Eat slowly."
"That's right, dear. If we run out, we can just order more."
Father, glancing nervously at the waitstaff, finally spoke up.
"We don't have much money. We should eat fast and get out of here."
At his words, Mother put on a pained expression and said carefully, "Honey. Things have been hard, but—well, they've gotten much better lately. So it's fine to eat more. After this, we're even going to a café for dessert. That's what we do now."
"I'm sorry… what?"
From the restaurant, we moved on to a café. The menu board was packed wall-to-wall with drinks I'd never even heard of.
What should I order?
After agonizing over the menu for a good while, we settled into our seats and were quietly sipping our drinks through straws when—
"Whaaat?!"
Father let out a startled shout, then immediately clapped a hand over his mouth. Collecting himself, he turned to Mother and spoke in a measured voice.
"Honey. On the phone, all you said was that the farming was going well and I should come home to help. Why didn't you tell me the amount of money involved was on this scale?!"
Halfway through, he'd apparently worked himself up again—the pitch of his voice climbed at the end.
"I thought I'd just be lending a light hand with some crops, but you're telling me the workload has piled up into a mountain."
Taxes, consumption, expenditures—everything down to the accounting.
An unbroken stream of jargon came pouring out of Father's mouth, words I could barely follow.
Apparently the instincts of a man who'd run his own business in his prime didn't fade easily.
At this level, I felt like I could trust him with the farm outright.
Though there was one problem we'd need to solve first, of course.
"Father."
"Hmm?"
He turned his head the instant I called out to him.
A foolishly devoted father. A father so devoted to his family that he never thought to look after himself.
I looked at his leg and asked, "What happened to your leg?"
The moment my question landed, Father subtly slid his leg sideways out of view, angling it where I couldn't see it. He even hunched his shoulders slightly, as if ashamed of the limb itself.
"There was a minor accident right before I flew back… hahaha. It looks pretty bad, doesn't it?"
Urgh.
Something surged up from deep inside me.
"It doesn't look bad at all."
Somehow, the corners of my eyes felt hot.
I had never had a father before.
My Master had played a similar role, but only for a very short time—after all, he'd passed away cleaning up after the explosion I caused.
Had Father endured that kind of accident all alone, in a foreign country, too?
Shaking off the feeling, I asked him, "Father. What do you say we get you to a hospital first?"
"Hmm, well, the thing is…"
The reason he hadn't gone was absurd.
"……Your health insurance got terminated?"
So the result of all those years spent abroad earning money was that he couldn't even visit a hospital freely.
The wound on Father's leg had clearly gone untreated too long—it was festering, and the smell of spreading infection reached us even from a short distance away.
"You're going to the hospital. Right now."
"But that costs a lot of money. If I just re-register and wait a few days—"
"You said it could take a week or more! You can't stay like this. We're going. Now!"
Humans died so easily.
Left one inflammation like this untreated, and that was enough to kill a person.
At 1st Circle, I still couldn't use healing magic. Right now, the only place Father's wound could be treated was a hospital.
I had to get stronger. I had to get richer.
Steeling my resolve, I told him, "Don't worry about the money."
"Ji-on, I know my son made some money with his successful little farm, but farming income doesn't come in on a regular monthly schedule, you know."
"Not monthly, no."
"Exactly. No matter how big a windfall you've made, you really ought to be saving—"
"It's weekly."
"……Hmm?"
The word bewildered practically materialized on Father's face.
"We harvest every week. And the cooperative settles payments with us every seven days."
Father's soul left his body entirely.
"So let's go. The hospital. Right now!"
"How could you not come to the hospital until it got this bad?"
"Haha…"
The emergency room near the airport. The process of disinfecting the festering wound and suturing the torn flesh dragged on, and the doctor clicked his tongue throughout the entire procedure.
"An infection this severe must have hurt terribly."
Of course it had hurt. Of course it had been agony.
He hadn't been able to close his eyes even on the plane, the pain refusing to let him rest. What good were a comfortable seat and fine meals when bone-piercing pain drowned out every sensation?
And still, he'd meant to endure a little longer.
In a few more days, he would have qualified for health insurance, and the hospital bills would have dropped by dozens of times over. Surely he could have held out just a bit more—
But his son's pestering had worn him down, and here he was in the emergency room.
When he explained the situation, the doctor gave a small smile. "You've raised a filial son, sir."
Putting your health first, without fretting over the money. It sounded obvious—and yet it was something people struggled to do. Some died because they couldn't.
The doctor glanced over the chart. "Mr. Seo Jae-mun. We've finished the treatment, so you can settle the bill and head home. We'll give you your prescription along with it. Shall I book a follow-up appointment?"
"No, thank you. This hospital is too far from home."
"Then you can simply ask a clinic near your house to remove the stitches. Take care."
Seo Ji-on's father—Seo Jae-mun—tentatively moved his newly painless leg, then rose from the bed.
In the distance, he could see his family gathered at the payment counter. Above all, he saw his remarkable son, who had grown by leaps and bounds in the blink of an eye while he'd been away.
Swallowing a bittersweet smile, Seo Jae-mun walked slowly toward them.
"Son. The treatment's all done."
"That's a relief. They said there's no serious damage?"
"That's right. Take the medicine properly, and in about two weeks they just pull the stitches out and we're done."
He caught the relief washing over his son's face.
Had the boy truly shot up all that much? Grown to the point where he no longer needed his father's sheltering arms?
Seo Jae-mun was lost in thought when someone tugged at his sleeve.
"Father."
It was his son. Seo Ji-on.
"What is it?"
"……Don't be in pain. You need to heal up fast so you can come help me."
It was as if the boy could read his very thoughts.
Your son still needs you.
Faced with his son looking up at him with those innocent, guileless eyes, Seo Jae-mun found himself speechless. All that escaped him was a hollow little laugh.
Stroking Seo Ji-on's head, he said, "All right. Dad will help you with everything."
Yes.
Everything is going exactly as planned.
And with that—Father recruitment: complete.
Heh.
I hugged Father tight and smiled—a smile where no one could see my face.
"……You managed all of this by yourself?"
We had come out to the fields to hand the farm over to Father. And his mouth had fallen open.
1,650 square meters of farmland.
It was supposed to be 1,650 square meters, but it was bigger than I'd expected. Especially if you were managing it alone.
Maternal Grandfather, who had come along with us, patted the stunned Father on the back. "M-Mr. Seo, don't you worry—my zucchini farming's about to wrap up, so I'll be coming up to lend a hand real soon. Your leg's hurt, after all. You can take it slow and learn as you go."
Heartened by Grandfather's words, Father's spirits rallied at once.
"I'll give it my best shot!"
His voice rang out with vigor.
Thank goodness he wasn't daunted or put off by it all.
Meanwhile, the crop demand the agricultural cooperative was requesting just kept climbing. It was probably about time to purchase more land.
And of course, I'd need to inscribe it as Mana Land as well.
Which meant reaching the 2nd Circle was non-negotiable.
"Looks like it's back to training, then."
That said, the mana control training I needed now was markedly different from before.
The 2nd Circle wasn't simply about handling twice as much mana as the 1st. It required grasping deeper principles—perceiving, interpreting, and accepting the mana within everything visible to the eye, for instance.
At this stage, what mattered most was meeting as many people as possible and racking up as much experience as I could.
Right now, the greatest experience available to me was simply encountering lots of people.
Which meant, for the time being—school life, more or less.
"Shall we head in soon?"
I was just getting up to leave when—
Beep—
A light honk sounded. The culprit was a black sedan.
"That car…"
It was the one that had driven me home yesterday. The car of Honorary Chairman Choi Tae-seok.
Tap.
An elderly man soon stepped out of the car and came walking toward us, right into the middle of the field.
"This is my first time seeing it in person, and it truly is a fine, spacious plot of farmland!"
That's Chairman Choi Tae-seok for you. The man had an exceptional eye.
Wait, but—why was he already out of the car? We only said goodbye in Seoul yesterday!
As I stood there flustered, Secretary Jang Woo-jin, who'd been following behind Chairman Choi, waved at me.
"The doctor said rehabilitation exercise is best started as soon as possible."
"So I thought I'd try my hand at some farming starting today—and the trouble is, I don't know the first thing about it."
Chairman Choi, who looked as though he'd put on a bit of flesh in just a single day, beamed as he added, "Looks like I'll be taking you on as my teacher from now on, Ji-on my boy!"