His Past Story
I closed my eyes and opened them again, over and over.
But what filled my vision was still a world saturated in deep blue-green.
"…What the hell is this?"
Alright. Let's try to make sense of the situation.
I was pretty sure I'd finished my discharge report to the company commander early this morning and been on my way out of the base…
"This is ridiculous."
…I think I remember a ringing in my ears the moment I stepped past the guard post. A sudden, deafening beep— made me squeeze my eyes shut and clamp my hands over my ears.
And when I opened them again, I was here.
I checked my clothes just in case, but nothing about my body seemed to have changed.
"What kind of situation is this, seriously."
Even the clothes I was wearing were still my digital camo uniform, complete with the name tag embroidered with the three characters of my name: Seo Chan-hui.
One thing was certain.
Wherever this was, it wasn't Korea. Hell, it wasn't even Earth.
"There's no way something like that could exist on Earth…"
Never mind the massive trees of a shape I'd never seen before filling every direction—I'd never heard of giant pterosaurs flying around on Earth either.
As I stood there dazed, staring around at this incomprehensible reality, I heard a rustling sound behind me.
…A person?
Hopefully we could at least communicate.
With that hope, I turned around—and immediately realized I'd been wrong about something.
"KRAAAAAHHH!!"
Just because monsters were flying through the sky didn't mean there wouldn't be any on the ground.
"AAAAAAAHHH!!"
The moment our eyes met, it roared, red eyes blazing—a black-furred monster that looked like a wolf and a bear mashed together, standing at least three meters tall. I spun and ran for my life.
—Thud! Thud! Thud!
Heavy footsteps pounded after me right away. Terror seized my whole body so completely I couldn't even bring myself to look back.
Please, please, somewhere to hide…
—Thok.
"Ah."
My foot caught.
—Crash!
"Guh!"
Like an idiot, I'd been running without watching where I was going, tripped over a tree root, and gone sprawling. I couldn't even think of getting back up. I just looked behind me.
"Grrrr."
Ah. I'm dead. This is it.
—Hisssss—!
Whatever kind of creature this was, its fur had turned a vivid red compared to when I first saw it, steam pouring off its body as it stopped close by, drooling as it stared down at me.
"Haa, fuck. Even so, this is too much…"
At this point, my head actually felt like it was cooling down. Why the hell did I have to end up like this? More than that—on the day of my discharge, I couldn't even make it outside the base, and this is what I get?
Ah, shit. If you're gonna kill me, at least make it painless.
As I watched the monster slowly approach, a hollow laugh escaping me—
—RUMBLE! KRA-BOOOOM—!
A bolt from the blue. Literally.
"WAAAAH!!"
Lightning struck down from above the monster's head right in front of me.
"Whoops, sorry about that. But it was an emergency, so cut me some slack."
"Guh!"
Someone caught my body as the shockwave from the lightning blast right in front of me sent me flying.
"Wh-who…?"
"Oh, a friend who can talk. Good."
At the time, the fact that we could communicate, and the fact that the old man's clothes looked somehow familiar through my lightning-blurred vision—none of that mattered.
"Th-thank you… for saving me…"
"Heh heh, and polite too."
What mattered was that I was alive.
"First, let's head to the village. I'll explain afterward."
And so, my life in another world began.
"…Stop."
I spoke carefully, so as not to wake Lucy and Sion, who had at some point fallen asleep with my legs as their pillows, addressing the idiot going on about how his otherworld life began and so on.
"Why?"
Why? Don't give me that.
"Hey. Were you seriously planning to tell the whole thing from the beginning?"
"…Is that a problem?"
A problem? Plenty. A whole lot of them.
"Um… Brother Huey. Even just what you've covered so far, the time is already… yawn, I can't do this. I'm going to sleep first…"
Just like Chloe said before finally giving in and falling asleep—the way he dragged out the story for so long that the others finished cleaning up, listened for a while, and then dozed off.
"Didn't you feel anything when Lucy stole your spot?"
"…It happens."
This guy would stay shameless even on his deathbed.
"Aigoo, you're gonna raise kids just fine someday."
I'd meant it as a dig at his talent for boring people to sleep, but—
"Haha. Thanks for the compliment."
This idiot didn't seem to understand what was wrong, scratching the back of his head bashfully.
"Whatever. Just summarize it."
"You need to hear it from the start for it to be interesting…"
"I don't need interesting or anything else."
"That's harsh."
Apparently he really had been planning to tell it from beginning to end. Huey grumbled once with a disappointed look, then—
"Can't be helped, I guess."
Along with some extremely unwelcome talk about listening properly next time, he opened his mouth.
"…I had a friend. A friend who loved humans more than anyone."
A friend he could no longer see, he murmured, his face full of guilt.
"One day an accident happened, and I happened to be nearby. I tried to stop it somehow, and nearly died in the process. No—I probably did die once."
At the time, he'd been full of arrogant thoughts like, maybe I can stop this if it's me?
The result:
"The friend who loved humans threw away everything he'd built up to save me."
Huey placed a hand on his chest and laughed hollowly.
"If he'd just left me to die, he could have stopped it on his own."
Having said that, Huey quietly looked up at the sky.
"I told you before that I can only use Taoist magic that controls lightning, right?"
His words brought back a conversation we'd once had while drying off by a lake.
"You did."
"That was a lie."
"What?"
More precisely, he said, the fact that he used Taoist magic itself was a lie.
"Saving me was fine, but that power was never meant for humans."
"That means…"
"Even after I came back to life, I nearly lost my mind and went berserk several times."
He'd caused quite a bit of trouble for the people he knew because of it, Huey said with an awkward smile. Anyway, through that process, he'd found a way to suppress the power somehow.
"So right now, there's a seal on my heart."
And controlling the power that leaks from the seal by borrowing the form of Taoist magic—that was the true nature of the techniques he used.
"So that blue talisman Lucy mentioned…"
"Yeah. A talisman that temporarily releases the seal."
Even temporary, if left alone for too long the seal would come completely undone, he said.
"Anyway, what you saw earlier is the full power I can put out right now."
One blue talisman and one red talisman remaining, one of each. Huey said he could use that technique from earlier at least one more time.
"…Just don't use it. That kind of thing."
"I don't want to use it either if I can help it. It hurts."
I warned him, feeling like it would be a real pain if he went berserk.
"No—I mean relying on power you can't even properly control to get out of crises is a bad idea."
I'd already seen people who kept using their power only to escape crises until they couldn't escape anymore.
"Don't say it's better than dying. Dying might actually be better."
I'd seen cases a few times of people destroying with their own hands the very things they'd wanted to protect, then going mad. And every one of those people had met their end at my hands.
"It's a hassle for the people who have to clean up after. And it feels awful."
"…I'll keep that in mind."
Only after I glared at him, telling him not to do that kind of thing, did Huey nod.
"Get some good sleep tonight. I'll take the watch alone."
"You sure you'll be okay?"
"I was lying down until just a bit ago, so. And…"
Trailing off, I lowered my gaze toward the two little ones sleeping with my legs as pillows, using my flame-flickering wings as a blanket.
"Ah."
"Right?"
"Yeah."
I wouldn't be able to sleep like this anyway.
"Honestly, you look the youngest of all of us."
"You looking for a fight?"
If you're going to sleep, just lie down quietly. I glared at Huey, who kept snarking until the end.
After watching him turn his back to dodge my gaze and settle into bed—
"…That aside. These two sure make themselves comfortable on someone else's legs."
I shifted my gaze to the two kids snoring away, having thrown the word "wariness" out the window. Well, Lucy I could understand at this point…
"But what's with this one, seriously."
I couldn't understand what about me—someone she'd only met today—she'd trusted enough to sleep this soundly.
"Haa."
I quietly sighed. Looking closely, she almost seemed familiar… Even if I'm bad at remembering faces, there's no way I'd forget white hair this distinctive.
"Tch. No idea."
For now, rather than a problem I couldn't figure out at the moment, I decided to worry about how numb my legs would be when these two woke up.