Today, I Kidnapped the Hero. Or Maybe It Was Yesterday (2)
Um. What am I supposed to do? I’ve been kidnapped…
“Hey! Is anyone nearby~?”
The hero—Runasia Runa—raised her voice, calling for help. The kidnapper had said he was stepping out for a moment.
“Hey—! Is anyone out there—! No one at allll—!”
…Maybe the whole place is rigged with magic?
The windows wouldn’t open. The door wouldn’t budge. This room was definitely sealed with some kind of magical device. The fact that there was at least a bathroom felt like a small mercy.
Runasia Runa finally accepted that escape was impossible.
“Why is this happening to meee…”
She was quick to assess her situation. She sat down on the chair and slumped forward onto the desk. The tension that had kept her rigid finally drained away.
“Kidnapped… I actually got kidnapped…”
I’m just a village girl who came from the countryside. Sure, my hair and eyes are a little unusual, but I’m nobody special. Just an insignificant person A.
“Why would anyone think I’m the hero…”
It had to be a case of mistaken identity. But the man didn’t seem like he’d made a mistake at all. He spoke and acted with absolute certainty, as if there was no possibility I could be anyone but the hero.
“I’m not some prophet, how could I possibly— No, more importantly, I’m definitely not the hero…”
Sigh… Thinking about it more wouldn’t change anything. That man had no intention of letting me go.
Once Luna had assessed her situation and decided to conserve her strength, she stopped thinking altogether. That was when the emotions came flooding out like a broken dam. Tears began streaming down her face.
“Hic… What… what’s going to happen to meee… hic…”
Would she suffer the brutal things she’d read about in books? Or would she be served as dinner and end up in that man’s stomach?
He had said he wouldn’t touch her. But Luna couldn’t trust a single word from her kidnapper.
“Is this… to make me feel despair…? Hic… Giving me hope just to snatch it away… What a terrible persooon… hic…”
Still… he hadn’t looked like the type who would lie. But the claim that he wouldn’t touch her was simply too unbelievable.
Kidnapping someone and then promising to do nothing? Who in their right mind would believe that?
“I’d sooner trust the cat at the fish shop…”
Every action had a purpose. Yet the kidnapper’s behavior showed no clear motive at all.
If you’re going to kidnap someone, you should want something! Money, their body—anything. There had to be a reason for the abduction.
“But… that man… doesn’t seem to want anythinggg…”
No purpose behind his actions. Could he actually be insane? Had he kidnapped her simply because he was bored?
It was behavior the hero’s mind couldn’t comprehend at all. She wiped away her tears and pushed herself up from the desk.
“S-still… it’s too early to give up hope…”
If she waited long enough, someone would surely come to rescue her. She would escape this place someday.
With that thought, the hero pulled herself together. The blue eyes that had been blurred with tears regained their clarity.
“…Someone will definitely come to save me! Until then… I’ll keep my mind straight and endure…!”
I will never submit to that crazy man’s hands!
With iron resolve, Runasia Runa clenched her fist tight.
…Even so, being alone was unbearably lonely.
What the hell.
“My ears are itching…”
Someone must be badmouthing me. Well, there are more than enough people who would.
Ten years in this other world. When I thought about everything I’d done in that time, it was no surprise that a whole truckload of people hated my guts.
“Being an adventurer isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”
If the request board only ever had good jobs, every Tom, Dick, and Harry would become an adventurer. The requests that came to me—an otherworlder who faced constant discrimination—were always trash. The kind with terrible processes and even worse outcomes.
In the early days, I had no choice but to take them. Even now, I still got stuck with them from time to time.
“Filthy racists.”
It was all because of that goddess. The one who had dragged me into this world in the first place.
I stopped in front of a small door in a dark alleyway.
Minerva’s Library.
The sign was written in Korean, not the language of this world. As always, I opened the door and stepped inside.
A vast library unfolded before me. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it contained every book that existed in this world.
However—
“It was beautiful the first time I saw it. Now it just looks inefficient.”
I had visited this place far too many times. Thinking of it as a bookworm’s den no longer stirred any particular emotion in me.
I walked deeper into the library.
“Buu- Buu-”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here, Myeong-i.”
“Buu-! Buu-!”
Minerva the librarian’s owl. Shortened to Myeong-i. The bird brain that got angry whenever I used the nickname flapped past me as I approached the real bookworm deeper inside.
A small girl with a cute face, round glasses, and a bread-shaped hat perched on her head. She sat in her usual wooden rocking chair, completely absorbed in a book.
“…What are you reading?”
“The story of the human Lee Junwoo. No matter how many times I read it, I never get tired of it.”
The goddess. Minerva. The very person who had summoned me to this world.
Even though I had arrived, she showed no intention of looking up from the pages.
I slid my hand between the books.
“Stop reading. Is someone else’s dark history really that entertaining?”
“Hey, move. This is an important part.”
“You’ve read it more than ten times already. Can’t you give it a rest?”
“Why should I? Every reread has a different flavor. Hey, Junwoo. How did you feel back then?”
“…We still can’t communicate after all these years.”
I glanced at the book Minerva was holding. It was…
“Elementary school stories hit like early-twenties level entertainment. Agree?”
“…I told you to stop reading.”
“But why did you confess to the girl who sat next to you? And on Pocky Day, of all days, with a giant Pocky stick?”
“Stop! Stop talking!”
This perverted goddess who spent every day poring over my dark history burst into giggles at my angry reaction.
“Okay, okayyy. Don’t get mad~”
“…Sigh.”
If she weren’t an actual goddess, I would have beaten her senseless. I was only holding back because I had to.
Ten years ago, from the moment I arrived in this world until now, our relationship had remained exactly like this. She would read my story through her books, laugh, tease, and nag.
She was endlessly fascinated by the world called Earth and satisfied her excessive curiosity by examining the past of the person named Lee Junwoo.
The biggest problem was that she fulfilled that curiosity by essentially voyeurizing my life. My dark history had long since stopped being mine alone.
More importantly—
“Minerva.”
“Hm? What?”
“Stop pretending. You know exactly why I came here, don’t you?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure what you mean…”
“That question. And the answer sheet. What the hell were you thinking? Kidnapping the hero? That crossed the line.”
Minerva usually enjoyed small pranks with her questions, but she never joked about serious matters. Especially not when lives were on the line.
“I think the prank about kidnapping the future hero went too far. Be honest. There were other choices besides kidnapping, weren’t there? It doesn’t make sense that the only option was abduction.”
“W-wait! Don’t get angry… You’re scaring me…”
“Then explain it to me properly. Why did I have to kidnap the hero?”
Bang! I slammed my fist on her desk to emphasize my point. From somewhere far away came the sound of an angry owl flapping its wings, but I ignored it.
“You need to clearly explain the connection between not kidnapping the hero and my survival.”
“O-okay… W-wait a second… I’m not good at explaining… Let me see… Ah! L-look at this! You’ll understand if you read it!”
Minerva pulled a book from the shelf.
Lee Junwoo’s Death
Volume 83
Fresh edition released today.
It was Lee Junwoo’s Death Volume 83. A brand-new copy, hot off the press.
I took the book from her and began reading it right there.
“…”
Tick. Tick.
The sound of the clock echoed through the library as I focused on the pages. The Lee Junwoo’s Death series contained the answers related to my demise, neatly organized from cause to conclusion.
I scanned every reason I would die if I didn’t kidnap the hero. After finishing the entire volume, I closed the book with a soft thud.
‘…So it’s true.’
Conclusion: Every choice that didn’t involve kidnapping the hero led me to ‘death.’
I calmed my anger and gently stroked Minerva’s head.
“…Sorry for getting angry. You were right. If I don’t kidnap the hero… I die.”
“See?! I told you! You didn’t even understand the question setter’s intention! Junwoo, you’re a zero! A big fat zero student!”
I hadn’t grasped the intent behind the question. In that sense, I really was a zero-point student.
According to Minerva’s question, if I didn’t kidnap the hero, I would die in the distant future. The reason was…
“The Grimoire. Those bastards already know the hero’s identity.”
“Exactly! They also know how weak she currently is.”
Grimoire. A human organization that worshipped the Demon King the hero was destined to defeat.
For some unknown reason, they were aware of the hero’s existence despite it never having been publicly announced. Using that information, they would kidnap her, brainwash her with dark magic, and steal her mind.
Their true target is the goddess.
To kill Minerva. To bring destruction upon the world. They would use the brainwashed hero to kill me—Minerva’s Apostle.
Every recorded death in those books had been carried out by the hero’s hand.
“If I hadn’t kidnapped her… she would have been taken by the Grimoire.”
“And if the hero gets kidnapped, there isn’t a single path where Junwoo survives. You die no matter what~”
“So that’s why the kidnapping… Then how long am I supposed to keep her with me?”
“Until she can stand on her own. Until she’s strong enough to defeat the Grimoire by herself. She’ll need to gather a proper hero party too.”
I nodded at Minerva’s words. It was the first time in a while I had agreed with her so readily. She was right.
The current hero was far too fragile. If I let her out as she was, she would undoubtedly be captured by the Grimoire. She needed a safe place to grow stronger, and that place was my house.
Minerva shrugged and poked my shoulder.
“See! I didn’t do anything wrong! I set the question properly! Apologize right now!”
“Fine, I’m sorry. But if you didn’t usually pull pranks, I wouldn’t have doubted you in the first place.”
“W-what?!”
“If you had built up proper trust over the years, I wouldn’t have suspected anything or gotten angry…”
“When you say it like that… I have nothing to say…”
Minerva shrank back again. She carried the enormous responsibility of being a goddess, but honestly, she wasn’t goddess-like at all.
If I had been one of her believers, I probably would have fled to another religion. It was better that her followers never learned what she was really like.
Anyway.
“Kidnapping the hero really is the correct answer. I came here to confirm that. I was also wondering exactly how long I’d have to keep her confined.”
“Hmm, is that so? I wonder if that’s actually fortunate…”
“…Is there something else?”
“No, nothing~”
There was clearly something. But she had no intention of telling me.
The Lee Junwoo Future series that only Minerva could read. Having seen those pages, she giggled as if teasing me. Since she couldn’t reveal the future directly, she answered with laughter instead.
“…I’m leaving. Don’t read too much and go to bed early.”
“Okay~ Got it! But before you go, Junwoo!”
“What.”
“Anyway! Thank you for taking responsibility and opening the path for the hero party’s departure!”
“…What are you even talking about? I never took responsibility for anything.”
I only planned to keep the hero until she was strong enough to face the Grimoire. What was she going on about? The hero’s true departure wouldn’t begin now, but after she had grown and the period of confinement had ended.
Until then, I would take responsibility for her safety.
If the hero falls and this world is destroyed, there would be no reason for me to stay here anymore…
Until I returned to Korea, this world had to continue running properly.
Thanks to the existence known as the hero.
Leaving Minerva’s laughter-filled voice behind, I exited the library.
“Buu-! Buu-!”
“What do you want, you little shit.”
Ignoring the angry owl, I stepped outside. It was already evening. The sun had set and darkness had settled over the world.
“It’s already this late…”
I needed to get back quickly.
Without the slightest suspicion, I walked toward the house. At the moment when the number of residents would increase and I would need to find a new home.
Never suspecting the goddess’s final words about taking responsibility for the hero party’s departure…