The Twenty-First Century
"Hah… hah…"
He was spent.
Even breathing had become a labor for the Sage. His entire body was a map of blood. A great chunk of flesh had been torn clean from his side, leaving the ribs bare and gleaming. His left eye had burst, blood streaming down his cheek, and a long gash scored his back. The skin of his right leg had melted away, the limb twisted beyond recognition. Everywhere else, the marks of a ferocious battle had been carved into him. Had he been human — or even an ordinary god — those wounds would have killed him several times over.
"Cough!"
He spat blood, then planted Paramita like a staff and forced his reeling body upright.
"Huu… huu… huuuuu…"
The Sage drew a long, measured breath. Around him, the Lokapala lay strewn across the ground, all of them beyond fighting. The landscape itself had been rewritten past recognition. Forests gone, mountains collapsed, lakes boiled dry — anyone arriving now might have sworn they had come to the wrong place entirely. Not that many people ever set foot here to begin with.
"Huu."
He cast one last look over the fallen Lokapala and prepared to do what he had come to do.
"…Stop."
Indra seized him.
"You are about to… defy the order of the world itself. Do you truly believe you can simply… undo what has already been done?"
"…"
"Even setting aside lofty talk of cosmic law… if you turn back time, countless people will… pay the price. Is that not the very guilt that stayed your hand from killing us?"
"…"
The Sage gave Indra no answer. He did not want to answer. The conversation itself was agony. He clenched his teeth hard.
Change the past. For that alone, he would think of nothing else.
And so, for the first time, the Sage began his journey through time.
"Yeah, Mom. I got it. Don't worry."
Hyeon-ju was on the phone as she drove, though her eyes never left the road. Night was falling, and a reservoir ran alongside the highway, so she kept carefully to a safe speed.
— THUD!
"Kyaa!!"
Even so, nothing could have prepared her for someone plummeting out of the sky.
"What the—?"
She slammed on the brakes, scrambled out of the car, and found a crumpled hood — and, a short distance away, a man tumbling across the asphalt.
"Ugh…"
Fortunately, Hyeon-ju did not panic. Once she had a rough grasp of the situation, she dialed 119.
"Hello? A person just fell onto my car…"
An ambulance arrived before long and carried the Sage away. The man was loaded onto a stretcher and lifted inside.
"What happened? How did this even—?"
Gyeong-seok, a rescue worker and her friend, asked for the details.
"I-I don't know. That man just dropped out of the sky all of a sudden…"
"…Is the dashcam on?"
"Yeah."
"Then just wait. I'll call you later."
Gyeong-seok soothed the trembling Hyeon-ju, climbed into the ambulance, and asked his colleagues about the man's condition.
"How is he?"
"He's breathing, at least… But for someone covered in this much blood, his vitals are surprisingly normal. No major abnormalities."
"No abnormalities?"
Covered in blood, side torn open, limbs twisted — and nothing wrong? Gyeong-seok found it hard to believe, but he reached for bandages to stop the bleeding anyway. Then he froze.
"…What the hell is this?"
"Holy shit…"
"Wolverine?"
The man's wounds were closing before their eyes. Fresh flesh bloomed over raw gashes; twisted bones slid back into place, as if some superhuman from a movie had stepped into the real world. The rescue crew and EMTs stared, mouths hanging open.
— Flick.
"Jesus!!"
"Shit!"
Moments later the man opened his eyes, and they recoiled as though they had seen a ghost. He slowly pushed himself upright, closed his eyes again, and calmly surveyed his surroundings. Then he tilted his head, as if nothing quite made sense, and spoke.
"यह कहाँ है? तुम कौन?"
Unfortunately, it was a language none of them had ever heard. It sounded vaguely like Hindi, but no one present could speak it. The man seemed to realize as much, and switched methods.
Where is this place? Who are you?
So this was what telepathy felt like — the kind you only ever saw in movies. A voice arriving not through the ears but directly inside the skull was unsettling in every possible way.
"Uh… this is Route 28 in Gana City, Gyeonggi Province, Korea."
Korea? I've never heard of such a country. And where exactly are you taking me?
"Well… you were hurt, so we're taking you to the hospital?"
In a situation that defied all understanding, Gyeong-seok found himself explaining things with a calm that surprised even him. Along the way the man asked about words he did not know.
What is a hospital?
What is this carriage that runs without horses?
You wear such peculiar clothes.
He seemed like a man who had stepped out of another age entirely.
A Hindi-speaking Wolverine… what the hell even is that…
Gyeong-seok was thoroughly confused — and the headaches did not stop there. At the hospital, when they tried to insert a needle to check his condition, the needle snapped. Every attempt ended the same way. Even the doctor looked baffled.
Shit. Not Wolverine — Clark Kent.
A Superman who used telepathy, no less. Gyeong-seok briefly wondered whether kryptonite might be a weakness, then remembered that no such mineral existed.
"Gyeong-seok. This is getting complicated."
The doctor examining the man came over.
"Why?"
"Why? Because you didn't bring me a patient — you brought me an alien."
The doctor sighed. They were close enough personally that the conversation stayed casual.
"Never mind that the needle won't go in. From what you described, those wounds should have left him permanently crippled — and they've vanished without a trace. How the hell am I supposed to call that thing human? And he's been talking through some kind of telepathy this whole time. How am I supposed to process any of this?"
"Uh… maybe some kind of brainwave tech?"
"For fuck's sake!! I'm a regular resident! How would I know about that? What am I supposed to do when a superhuman just drops into my ER?!"
"…We're not about to get men in black suits or the military showing up, are we?"
"Shut up! Don't jinx it."
The doctor pressed a hand to his forehead. The stream of curses was a measure of how thoroughly rattled he was.
"…My career as a doctor hasn't been that long, but I've never seen a case like this."
"Ah…"
"Honestly, it'd be better if he just vanished somewhere the moment we turned our backs, like in the movies or dramas…"
It was only a muttered complaint — but for better or worse, the doctor's words came true. When they returned to the room, the man was already gone.
"He's actually gone?"
"…I don't care. Not my problem anymore."
The police came by afterward with questions, and a few formalities had to be handled, but somehow it all got wrapped up.
"Gyeong-seok! What happened? Did that guy make it?"
On the way home, Hyeon-ju found him and asked.
"…I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know? D-did he die?"
"No, not that. Actually…"
"Huk!!"
Hyeon-ju suddenly stared past him, eyes wide with shock. Gyeong-seok turned — and there was the Superman who had vanished from the hospital, descending casually from the sky as if nothing were amiss.
"What? Why is he here?"
Was he here to eliminate the witnesses? Gyeong-seok instinctively stepped in front of Hyeon-ju, bracing himself. A brave gesture, all things considered.
There's no need to be afraid. I only came to ask a few questions.
The man offered Gyeong-seok a mild, good-natured smile — or tried to. The half-lidded eyes only made Gyeong-seok more tense.
…I really did come to ask questions. I have no intention of harming anyone.
"W-who are you? An alien? Some superhuman cooked up by a secret organization?"
Ah — I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean. Those must be concepts I'm unfamiliar with. How about this, then? We each ask one question at a time. You go first.
With the man so clearly willing to talk, Gyeong-seok could hardly stay silent.
"Well… my name is Gyeong-seok. Kim Gyeong-seok. What's yours? We should at least introduce ourselves if we're going to have a conversation, right?"
Exchanging names over a simple Q-and-A might have seemed odd, but Gyeong-seok had thought it through. More precisely, he was gambling a little on the other man's humanity — the hope that someone who had shared names would not immediately turn around and kill you. If the man was a merciless monster with neither blood nor tears, nothing would have made a difference anyway.
I see. A pleasure to meet you, Gyeong-seok. I am…
The man's voice trailed off. It might have been Gyeong-seok's imagination, but it did not seem deliberate. In truth, it was not. The man who had once been called the Sage stood blankly, unable to remember his own name.
…For now, please call me Sunya.