Chapter 1
When I was young, a shaman told me, “Just looking at you, it’s obvious you’re fated to spend your whole life cooped up in a room.”
Of course, I didn’t think much of it back then. It was simply terrifying to watch an unfamiliar woman with a face caked in white powder lower her voice and mutter those words. At five years old, I was far too young to reflect on the meaning behind what she said.
“Kevin, are you feeling ill? You spent the whole day running around outside.”
“I’m not sick. I just don’t like it.”
Later, the nun told me that after that day I refused to take a single step outside the orphanage for several days, terrified I might encounter the shaman again. She said I could only fall asleep after desperately clutching the hands of the other children each night.
It must have been around then that I began preferring to read books alone in my room rather than going outside to play with friends.
It wasn’t that the encounter had traumatized me. Even after enough time passed, I simply found staying quietly indoors far more appealing than venturing out. It simply suited my tastes better.
“Hey, Kevin. Let’s play another round!”
“Too much hassle. I need to read now.”
“What’s with that guy? Acting all superior even though he’s just an orphan brat. We played ball with him a few times and now he thinks he’s too good for us.”
“Such a buzzkill. Let’s just play by ourselves.”
In truth, I genuinely couldn’t understand it. There were plenty of fun things to do inside, so why risk getting hurt by playing outdoors?
My friends avoided me, calling me a killjoy, and the adults said I had the mindset of a little old man, but no matter what anyone said, that was how I felt.
—Screeech. Crash!
“Oh—oh no, Junseo!”
“Teacher! Junseo got hit by a car!”
After the boy who had secretly tried to exclude me went to fetch the ball and was struck by a car and killed, my conviction only grew stronger.
The outside world was dangerous. The shaman’s words lingered in my mind as well. Even though he had tried to leave me out, I hadn’t hated him enough to wish him dead. Yet because I had gone outside to play, had he died in my place?
It felt as though I had passed my misfortune onto him.
Watching a person get hit by a car right before my eyes, I made a firm resolution.
When I grow up, I’m never leaving the house.
Of course, that resolution proved meaningless.
The reality I faced the moment I became an adult was far from kind.
“Congratulations, Kevin. I always believed in you.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
Studying had suited me well enough, so I had no trouble getting into a prestigious university everyone recognized. But the real problems began after that.
The ten million won self-reliance grant—which I had thought was quite generous for the government to give an orphan—had less than half remaining after I secured a studio apartment.
I had student loans, so I could keep attending school if I chose, but that wasn’t my money. It was someone else’s debt I would eventually have to repay.
“Kevin, want to hand out flyers with me today? It’s easier when you’re there.”
“Sorry. I have a shift.”
In the end, I had no choice but to work to cover living expenses. Missing even one scholarship would cause my debt to balloon into the hundreds of millions, so I couldn’t afford to slack off on my studies either.
Unlike high school, where I could study as if I were simply playing around, there was literally no room to breathe at a top university if I wanted to keep my scholarship. Being first wasn’t impossible, but it was hardly something I could take for granted. The world was full of brilliant people.
More than the difficulty of the material itself, the obsessive fear that I might fall behind if I slipped up even once wore me down the most.
“Hey, you idiot! Get your head in the game!”
“…I’m sorry, boss.”
“If you’re going to work like that, quit right now!”
University life felt like hell every single day. I was forced to do work I hated and paste on smiles I didn’t feel. Even having to study major textbooks instead of the books I loved left a bitter taste in my mouth.
In the middle of all that, I often found myself thinking:
I really don’t want to go outside.
The only place I could rest comfortably without anyone’s interference was inside my own home.
It was around the second semester of my third year of university. I had grown used to the miserable cycle of part-time jobs and studying, collapsing like a corpse the moment I got home and falling straight to sleep.
Right before drifting off one night, a thought struck me.
When you think about it, this isn’t even my house.
What if I got injured at work or had some sudden large expense and couldn’t pay the rent? The landlord could demand I vacate, and I would have to. If I got kicked out with no money left, I would end up homeless.
Yes. The studio I had thought of as my only sanctuary was not my house at all. I was simply paying to temporarily occupy someone else’s space. It was not a place that belonged solely to me, where no one could drive me out.
From that day on, I had a clear goal.
“I need to buy a house.”
The goal of acquiring my own home.
It was an utterly ordinary, realistic objective with not a trace of romance, but to me it carried special weight. At the very least, owning a house would mean never having to worry about being evicted. Eventually, I might even be able to fulfill that childhood dream of never taking a single step outside.
Once I had a purpose in life, a small spark of energy returned to my tedious routine.
“Look at you, smiling for once. You’re actually tolerable now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, man. Female customers have increased a lot thanks to you. It’s almost a shame we’re closing. I transferred an extra two hundred thousand won, so treat yourself to something good.”
“Thank you, boss!”
Small blessings began to appear. As vitality returned to a life that had once been pure endurance, positive changes showed up in various ways.
Of course, my belief that I should never go outside remained unchanged.
“Wait, you’re really closing the shop? Why?”
“Something came up. I can’t keep doing this. Might as well sell while business is good and get a decent premium for the rights.”
The store I had relied on throughout university went under. Curious why they would close a thriving business, I later learned something bad had happened in the owner’s family.
Even the professor who had taken a liking to me and suggested graduate school suddenly fell ill and announced his retirement.
By this point, it started to feel ominous. One or two coincidences could be overlooked, but three times was too much to dismiss as chance.
All the misfortune around me seemed to stem from the fact that I kept leaving the house. I wasn’t exactly an occult enthusiast, but if these things kept happening, it only made me uneasy. Quite apart from anything supernatural, staying indoors meant I wouldn’t witness horrible things. My childhood resolution grew even firmer.
I really must never go outside.
After graduating from university, I entered the job market. The most important factors for me were, naturally, salary and whether remote work was possible.
I knew the conditions were demanding. Finding a position that satisfied both was no easy task.
Yet in the end, at least one company in the world offered good pay and allowed remote work.
“Let’s see… excellent academic background, high GPA. Very good. The applicant’s name is… Kevin, correct? That’s quite an unusual name.”
“Yes! I’ll work hard!”
“No need to work hard. Just don’t run away. I’d like this new hire to last at least a year.”
“…Pardon?”
The problem was that it turned out to be an absolute black company. I could understand the logic—if remote work eliminated commuting time, it was only fair to expect that much more output than office staff.
“Why doesn’t this ever end even after twelve hours?”
The real issue was that the workload was one and a half times—no, more than double—that of the office employees. When I looked into it, I discovered the system was designed so that every task the overtime-ridden office workers couldn’t finish was simply tossed to the remote staff.
No matter how sweet remote work was supposed to be, the structure was bound to draw complaints. Still, I had no choice. There was nowhere else I could go.
—Rumble!
“What a fucking life.”
It was the day of a storm.
“How has this damn company survived for years?”
Grinding my teeth at the black company’s tyranny of demanding a meeting on the very day a typhoon was approaching, I somehow made it to the office, finished the meeting, and headed home.
—Whoooosh!
“I’m completely soaked. How am I supposed to do laundry now?”
The wind and rain had grown even fiercer than in the morning. My umbrella had flown away long ago, and my clothes were so drenched I looked like a drowned rat. Still, I somehow reached the front of my studio apartment.
At the crosswalk, I lifted my head and gazed at the apartment building across the street. The fifteen-story structure stood firm against the violent storm, looking like a castle compared to my shabby little room.
“Soon, that will be my house.”
Renewing my dream of homeownership, I was about to cross the street when—
—Honk!
“Shit, I almost died.”
A truck blew through the red light and nearly killed me. The face of the boy who had died after being hit by a car in middle school suddenly flashed through my mind. Shuddering, I reached the entrance of the building when—
—Crack!
“Huh…?”
A dull impact struck my head along with the sound of something shattering. My legs gave out.
“Kyaaah! Kyaaaaah!”
“Is he okay? Someone call 119!”
People were screaming right in front of me, but their voices sounded as if they were coming from far away. Right before my eyes closed, I vaguely saw the shattered fragments of a flowerpot and clear rainwater turning a vivid red.
Death. The instant I instinctively realized it was coming for me, time seemed to slow down.
I dodged the truck only to get killed by a flowerpot?
I didn’t want to die without ever buying my own house.
Memories of my life flashed through my mind like a panorama. So this was the deathbed flashback people always talked about.
Once again, the shaman’s words rose clearly in my mind.
Just looking at you, it’s obvious you’re fated to spend your whole life cooped up in a room.
That shaman must have been incredibly accurate. I should have found any excuse to skip that meeting. At least then I could have avoided this pathetic death.
As expected, the outside world is dangerous.
My consciousness slowly faded.
If there was a next life, I would definitely live it cooped up in a room.
In the Solaris Empire, the social circles of the capital were usually abuzz with talk of politics, scandals, or luxury. It was extremely rare for any other topic to take center stage.
“My lord, have you heard the rumor?”
“Ah, you mean the one about the magician who built a workshop in the Lethe River basin?”
It was surprising enough to cause such a stir.
The rumor that an eccentric magician had appeared and declared a land forbidden to humans as his personal workshop was more than enough to inject fresh energy into the capital’s social scene after so long.
“Indeed. Isn’t it astonishing? There are plenty of oddballs among magicians, but who would have thought one would actually choose to build a workshop in that land of death?”
“Well, it’s not as if there have been no previous attempts at pioneering the area. This will simply add another line about failure to the history books.”
“But what if the pioneering actually succeeds?”
“I doubt it will happen, but if it did… the entire continent would likely be turned upside down.”
Of course, a rumor was still just a rumor.
“More importantly, they say the hero subjugated a Draconid this time. And not just any—one that had undergone a terrifying mutation.”
“My word, so the mutation phenomenon has begun affecting even the larger species? What is the world coming to?”
“Exactly. There must be some exaggeration, but according to what I’ve heard, the creature was nearly on par with a dragon.”
“Come now, a dragon? That’s going too far. He may be the hero beloved by the entire nation, but the media is making far too much noise. Typical vulgar behavior from that lot.”
The rumor about the eccentric magician seemed to fade quickly, buried beneath the far larger issue of the hero.
“It’s not an exaggeration.”
“Hehe, such informal speech from such a young greenhorn. Just whose family’s—”
“H-Hero!”
That is, until the hero himself appeared.
“Haha. Hero? My, that’s quite the joke.”
“…You must be very drunk indeed if you can’t even recognize the Holy Sword.”
The splendid banquet hall, filled with the chaotic exchange of wine glasses and conversation, fell silent in an instant.
The hero with short blond hair and an androgynous appearance looked somewhat frail despite his outstanding martial prowess, yet—
“Is that really the hero? Why would he come here?”
“What a rare honor. Isn’t this the first time the hero has shown himself in high society?”
Not a single person in the banquet hall doubted his identity. Unlike armor covered in the scars of battle, the sword that emitted unwavering light was a weapon permitted to only one person in this world.
“Th-the Holy Sword…!”
“Indeed. I can feel its holiness even from here.”
Cronen, leader of the hero’s party whose fame had spread across the entire empire, had appeared in person.
The noble who had been flushed red from heavy drinking now looked deathly pale.
“H-h-h-hero! I have committed a grave offense!”
The noble who had failed to recognize him forgot all dignity and prostrated himself on the floor, begging forgiveness. But the hero’s interest lay somewhere else entirely.
“Enough. You were talking about something interesting. A magician, was it?”
“Y-yes!”
“Our party nearly got wiped out this time. Old man Thulen actually died. But then some spell came flying in, and the monster just exploded. The same monster that had withstood the Holy Sword.”
Despite the casual, almost playful tone, the story was quite heavy.
“Alicia said it was amazing too. That guy hates acknowledging others more than he hates dying, yet even he admitted it. According to him, the magician is at least better than he is. Better than the youngest archmage in history, in fact.”
The hero party’s battle records were strictly controlled, equivalent to first-class military secrets. Yet matters that could cost someone their head simply for knowing were being discussed so casually.
While everyone in the banquet hall held their breath, doubting their own ears, the hero’s golden eyes sparkled as he asked,
“So, who is that magician?”