The Last Ordinary Day
I'd been discharged, but they'd told me to rest at home for another two or three days and take it easy.
So in the spare time I had, I was hunting for someone.
I was throwing every resource I could muster at the search, and yet—
"How is there this little to go on…?"
I wasn't being arrogant, but my skills were solidly top-tier. I'd proven as much by securing the weapons I'd used at the Freedom Base this time around. I'd also cracked the supposedly airtight intelligence networks of the Hero Association, the Hunter Association, and the police.
Listing it all out like that made me sound like nothing but a criminal. Was that just my imagination?
Anyway.
The fact that someone like me still couldn't track down a single person meant this guy had truly cut every tie with the secular world a long time ago.
"Haa… I'd settle for just knowing which country he's in."
Even in the original story he'd barely been mentioned, so the only scrap I had was that around this point in the timeline he was holed up somewhere in a forest.
Fuck. How many forests were there in the world?
I fed the grainy, barely salvageable photo I'd managed to dig up into a search program and closed my laptop.
And the moment I did—
"Oppa! We're here!"
"Oh. You're back?"
School was out, and Lee Yeon-hui and Lee Yeon-ah came barreling into my house. Both of them knew the door code by now, so lately they'd been coming and going like it was their own place.
"Oppa, it's Friday, so let's go somewhere fun!"
Tomorrow was a day off, and Lee Yeon-ah was already pitching a Friday night out. At her age, she'd already gotten a taste for living it up on Fridays.
"Should we?"
Nothing was going right with my work anyway, so a change of pace sounded good. I started to get up—
"Are you sure you're fully recovered?"
Lee Yeon-hui looked at me, her voice laced with worry. She tried to sound fussy about it, but she was clearly concerned about my condition. It was pretty cute, so I let out a short laugh and swung my shoulders around with exaggerated energy.
"My body's all stiff and restless, so a walk might actually do me good. I'm not even that tired anymore."
"Really?"
As she answered, the corner of her mouth twitched upward just a little.
"Are you that happy I'm better?"
"Heehee. Unnie likes it."
"Sh-shut up! I do not!"
After a round of teasing Yeon-hui, I headed outside for the first time in a while, walking with the two of them through the middle of downtown. It was Friday, but it was still afternoon, so the streets were fairly quiet.
"Mom gave me her card and said to eat something delicious for dinner!"
"You don't need to use that. Just put it away for now."
I gently pushed down Yeon-ah's arm as she held the card up with pride, then turned to Yeon-hui beside me.
"What do you want to eat?"
"I… just anything—"
"Not 'anything.'"
"Unnie, you always tell me not to say that either."
Caught between Yeon-ah and me, Yeon-hui stuck out her lower lip in a pout. Watching her, Yeon-ah and I grinned like kids who'd just pulled off a successful prank.
"Hey! You two are doing this on purpose!"
"Hmm~ doing what?"
"I'm still little, so I don't really get it~"
"You, get over here! You're the one who made her weird!"
She swung her arms around trying to grab me, but I wasn't about to let myself get caught that easily. After a long stretch of bickering with an increasingly heated Yeon-hui, we finally settled on a snack place and had a light meal that doubled as an afternoon bite.
I thought everything would wrap up smoothly from there.
So this is shopping hell…?
Once we finished eating and stepped back out onto the street, we slid into shopping time as naturally as water flowing downhill. At first I trailed along after them, browsing and offering opinions—
This is taking forever…
—but the duration far exceeded anything I'd imagined, and I reached the point where I simply couldn't keep up. I wanted to invent some excuse and escape this shopping hell, but they weren't exactly overspending, so I couldn't even use that. They hadn't bought much of anything; they just seemed to enjoy looking around for its own sake.
"This is pretty."
"Yeah, it is. I like this one too."
Even after I'd gone to the bathroom and come back, their window shopping showed no signs of ending. They were completely absorbed.
"You already know the code to your own house. What do you need a keychain for?"
"Who said we were buying it? We just said it was pretty."
"Yeah!"
That thing? To my eyes it was just an ordinary keychain and scrunchie set bundled together.
"Want to look around more?"
I'd already been dragged all over and was exhausted down to my bones when I asked. Thankfully—
"I think we've seen everything. Let's go."
—she declared an end to shopping hell.
"Oppa, what are you doing tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow… is…"
There will come a day when you can think ordinary thoughts like "What should I do tomorrow?" When that day comes, you can think about it then.
The words rose unbidden in my mind, and a faint, powerless smile found its way onto my face.
"Park Yeon-chan?"
"Ah—I need the bathroom real quick."
"You just went."
"That was the small one. This is the big one."
"Ugh! That's disgusting!"
Leaving Yeon-hui's shout behind me, I retraced my steps back the way we'd come.
Yeah. If someone had granted me this time—then enjoying this ordinary day, even for just a little while, would be all right.
By the time we got home, the clock read seven. It was dinnertime, but none of us particularly felt like eating, so we decided to head to our own places. We were next-door neighbors anyway, so "going home" just meant opening a different door.
But before that—
"You two, come here a second."
I stopped Yeon-hui and Yeon-ah just as they were about to go inside and waved them over. They approached with question marks written all over their faces. I held out the small shopping bag I'd tucked into my eco-bag.
"Here. These are for you."
"…Huh?"
"This is…"
The keychain and scrunchie sets the two of them had been eyeing earlier.
"Yeon-ah gets the sky blue one. Yeon-hui gets the pink. If you don't like the colors, you can swap, and if you don't want either, the receipt's inside—just take it back and exchange them."
I'd known what they were looking at, but I'd picked the colors purely on instinct, so I added that. For some reason, though, both of them just stared blankly at the packaged sets inside the bag.
Huh? Had I gotten the wrong thing?
"Ah, maybe I mistook—"
"Wow! Oppa, thank you!"
"Wah—!"
Just when I thought she'd frozen, Yeon-ah suddenly launched herself at me. Whether it was because of her recent awakening or just my imagination, she seemed stronger than other kids her age.
"Is this the right one? I didn't buy the wrong thing, did I?"
"Yep! It's right!"
Phew. Thank goodness. There was no sadder gift than one the recipient thought was useless. If I'd known she'd be this happy, I would have just given it to her on the spot. I'd prepared it as a little surprise, but apparently that hadn't been necessary.
Once Yeon-ah finally calmed down from her excitement, we said our goodbyes one more time at the front door.
"Oppa! Bye! See you tomorrow~"
"Yeah."
I waved at Yeon-ah, and she beamed as she slipped through the door. I was about to head inside myself when—
"Park Yeon-chan."
"…Yeah?"
Yeon-hui's voice stopped me. I turned to look at her.
"Thank you. I'll take good care of it."
"……"
Unlike her usual furrowed brow, her face was smooth, the corners of her mouth gently lifted. Her blonde hair caught the apartment lights and shone like a jewel, and combined with a smile far too mature for her age, it created a strangely captivating atmosphere.
The story always mentioned her looks as top-tier—so even as a bud, she'd already been something special.
I stared at Yeon-hui for a moment, lost in it—
Smack!
—then slapped my own cheek to snap myself out of it.
"Huh? Hey. Are you okay?"
"Just driving off some demonic energy. Uh… well… it's not anything expensive, but use it well."
"Okay. Thank you."
Looking at Yeon-hui's smiling face again, I felt a strange swell of pride.
So that was it.
Yeon-hui could smile like that too.
Could I allow myself to think that I'd protected that smile? Maybe I just didn't know, and the me from the last world had also…
I shook my head hard, cutting off the useless train of thought before it could go any further.
"See you tomorrow, then."
"Yeah. See you tomorrow."
And so a day that felt ordinary, and yet somehow a little different, came to an end.
Late that night.
Past the day she'd gone shopping with Park Yeon-chan, Lee Yeon-hui couldn't fall asleep. She kept turning the pink scrunchie and keychain over in her hands.
It wasn't a flashy design by any means—if anything, it was understated. But it had caught her eye because she genuinely liked it. And knowing that Park Yeon-chan had bought it for her made it feel somehow special.
She tapped the keychain with her finger, and a thought suddenly struck her.
Why did he give me the pink one…?
Even their mom usually gave pink gifts to the younger sister. Their tastes happened to be the opposite of what people assumed, so the two of them were always swapping presents. She'd never told anyone, but she liked pink.
Thinking about it, a smile slowly bloomed across her lips without her noticing.
He's pretty sharp, I'll give him that.
If she said that out loud, he'd get all full of himself and grin that annoying grin. Imagining it only made her smile widen again.
Twelve-year-old Lee Yeon-hui still didn't understand what the feeling she was experiencing actually was.
While Yeon-hui was giggling alone under her covers, Yeon-ah sat at her desk with the hairpin and scrunchie laid out before her, gazing at them with a distant expression—one that never appeared on her face in ordinary moments.
"Oppa is the same no matter where he is."
In that faraway look, sorrow and joy coexisted in contradiction, and the moonlight filtering through the window made her seem almost luminous.
"Oppa… I really love you…"
She confessed her love in a voice full of longing, then pressed the scrunchie gently to her forehead and closed her eyes, as if savoring its warmth.
My body recovered quickly, to the point where everyday life was no longer a problem. The rest period flew by in the blink of an eye, and it had already been two weeks since I'd returned to school full-time.
It was only about two months, but I guess I've gotten attached to this school.
It felt like I'd slipped back into ordinary life. I couldn't quite bring myself to say I hated that strange feeling, and it left me with mixed emotions. Summer break was coming up soon anyway. I'd coast through and then never see this school again.
Still… maybe it'll remain as a memory later on.
I was lost in that sentimental thought when—
"Oppa! What are we doing after school today?"
"School hasn't even started yet. You got caught by me yesterday playing around without finishing your homework. Homework comes first today."
"But summer break is almost here anyway—"
"Almost here?"
"I'll do it! Break is almost here, so I can't fall behind on homework!"
Listening to the two sisters banter beside me, a laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
"She's been getting weirder and weirder. Must be that strange guy's influence."
And Yeon-hui sent that look straight at me.
"What! Who is it?! Who's the weird guy giving Yeon-ah strange ideas?! This oppa will teach him a lesson!"
I ignored her stare completely and played dumb, and Yeon-hui let out a deep sigh.
"Right. Why do I even bother talking to you."
She said that, but a faint smile was tugging at the corner of her mouth too. Then again, Yeon-ah's recent turn toward slyness probably wasn't entirely my fault.
"You've gotten a bit stricter lately yourself, haven't you?"
"What? I've always been like this."
Not stricter, maybe—just a little calmer. Normally she would have snapped right back at full volume, but the quiet way she answered made me wonder. Adults always said kids grew up in the blink of an eye. Was this what that felt like?
The three of us talked the way we always did as we made our way to school, same as any other day.
Without the slightest idea that this ordinary life was about to become our last.