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# 02. Dad Is Trash (1)
I had returned.
I had really returned.
My hands, pressed against the floor as I knelt, were trembling violently. Hot tears fell one after another onto the worn linoleum floor.
I was alive. I was breathing.
And right in front of me—
“Haeun…”
I raised my head.
I saw the two of them huddled together in the corner.
My wife.
Twenty-seven years old. An age when she should have been in the bloom of her youth, yet her face had already been worn down by life. Her hair was dry and unkempt, and dark circles were deeply etched beneath her eyes.
She was pressed against the wall, desperately shielding our daughter with her thin arms.
And in her embrace—
“Seolhee…”
Our five-year-old daughter had buried her face against her frail mother’s chest.
An old pair of pajamas with a rabbit printed on them. Tiny shoulders trembling like an aspen. Her little fern-like hands clutched the hem of her mother’s clothes so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.
Alive.
They were both alive.
That single fact alone made me feel as though my heart would burst.
Years of hellish war.
Cities crushed beneath the Demon King’s claws, battlefields drenched in blood, comrades dying one after another.
The faces I had never been able to forget for even a single moment throughout all those nightmares were standing right before my eyes now.
“Haeun… Seolhee…”
My throat was so tight that I could barely speak.
I had missed them.
I had missed them so desperately that it drove me insane.
The names I had cried out with my dying breath now existed here, in the warmth of living bodies.
My reason stopped functioning.
My body reacted first.
I staggered to my feet and reached out.
As if they might shatter at any moment, I pulled my wife and daughter tightly into my arms.
“You’re alive… You’re really alive…”
The warmth of their bodies in my embrace.
My wife’s thin shoulders, the rapid beat of my daughter’s tiny heart.
The proof that they were alive traveled through my entire body.
This wasn't a dream.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
The tears wouldn't stop.
The emotions that had been festering in my chest for years finally burst open.
Just as I was about to hold them even tighter, swearing that I would never let them go again, even if I had to sacrifice my own life to protect them—
“Eek…!”
A sharp scream tore through my eardrums.
“U, uwaaaah!”
It was my daughter.
Seolhee was struggling violently in my arms as though having a fit.
Her eyes rolled back, and she screamed sounds that were impossible to tell apart from sobs.
“Seolhee…?”
“W, wait…!”
It was my wife’s voice.
Her voice trembled with terror.
“Did you drink…? Did you drink again…? Please… Just go to sleep today. Please don't yell…”
That was when I finally realized.
The body of the woman in my arms was trembling like a leaf.
She couldn't even resist.
Every time my hand touched her, she flinched, hunching herself up as though she were facing a bomb that could explode at any moment.
“……”
I froze.
My mind went completely blank.
When I slowly relaxed my arms, my wife snatched our daughter away and backed off.
She tried to get as far away from me as she could, even if she had to crawl across the floor.
“Hnggg… Mom… I’m scared…”
Seolhee wailed.
The five-year-old child avoided my eyes and burrowed into her mother’s arms.
“I’m scared of Daddy… Daddy’s going to yell again…”
My wife looked up at me while shielding our daughter.
Fear and resignation were mixed together in her eyes.
“…What do you need? Money? If it’s money, I’ll… I’ll somehow find some tomorrow. Just today… please…”
Her face was drenched in tears.
Deep dark circles under her eyes.
Lips devoid of color.
She wasn't looking at me as her husband.
To her, I was a man who came home drunk and caused a scene demanding money.
A time bomb that could explode at any moment.
An unpredictable monster.
That was me.
A nauseating smell suddenly filled my nose.
The smell of alcohol.
It was coming from my own body.
Only then did I realize that I was still holding a half-empty bottle of soju.
My tear-streaked face must have looked to them not like a repentant husband, but like a drunken monster throwing a fit.
“……”
I had nothing to say.
There was nothing I could do.
I took one step backward.
My wife shrank further into herself as she shielded our daughter, afraid of what I might do next.
Two steps.
Three steps.
I kept backing away until my back hit the front door.
As though fleeing, I twisted the doorknob and ran outside.
---
I ran through the alley.
I ran and ran until it felt like my lungs would burst.
Eventually, my legs gave out, and I collapsed beneath a utility pole.
“Haa… haa…”
My ragged breathing scattered through the darkness.
I raised my hands and covered my face.
My entire body was trembling.
“Crazy bastard…”
A hollow laugh escaped me.
“I’m a fucking crazy bastard…”
What had I done?
What had I done the moment I came back?
Because I wanted to see them?
Because I loved them?
So I rushed over smelling of alcohol and grabbed them?
Did I really think that would earn me forgiveness?
Even after seeing my wife begging me, “Please don't yell.”
Even after seeing my daughter crying, “I’m scared of Daddy.”
“Fuck…”
I slammed my fist against the ground.
Bang! Bang!
The skin on the back of my hand split open and blood seeped out, but I didn't stop.
It hurt.
Not my hand.
It felt as though my chest itself were being hacked apart.
A hero?
An S-rank Hunter who saved the world?
Don't make me laugh.
What kind of hero was a man who had already destroyed his own family before he even killed the Demon King?
“…Haeun.”
I slammed my head against the wall with a thud and looked up at the sky.
The pitch-black night sky, without a single star, looked just like the inside of me.
“Seolhee…”
Tears flowed down my face.
These weren't tears of joy this time.
They were tears filled with bone-deep regret and the helplessness of someone who had lost his way.
I had returned as though by a miracle.
But the place I had returned to wasn't a flower garden.
It was the middle of the ruins I had created myself.
Where should I start?
How could I bring back that exhausted look in my wife's eyes?
How could I tell my daughter, who was afraid whenever she saw me, “It's Daddy”?
“…I don't know.”
Honestly, I didn't know anything.
I had practiced cutting off the Demon King's head thousands of times, but I had never learned how to mend the hearts of a wounded family.
“Still…”
I clenched my fist tightly.
The back of my bloodied hand throbbed, but the pain brought me back to my senses.
“I have to.”
There was no other choice.
This was my last chance.
The one and only lifeline that God or the devil had thrown to me.
If I let go of this, then I would truly be trash deserving of death.
“Slowly…”
I steadied my ragged breathing.
“Let's take it slowly.”
I shouldn't try to get their forgiveness right away.
I shouldn't try to play the role of a father right away.
If I rushed at them while drunk on my emotions like I had today, I would only deepen their wounds.
The first thing I needed to do was—
“Assess the situation.”
Exactly when was it right now?
How much debt had accumulated?
Who were the loan sharks who would come to kill me tomorrow?
I slowly got to my feet.
I searched my pockets and pulled out an old smartphone.
The date appeared on the cracked screen.
[March 12, 2025]
“…Three years ago.”
Three years before the monster invasion began.
There was still time.
Before saving the world, I had to save my world first.
I looked toward the end of the alley.
A faint window of the tiny basement room was visible in the darkness.
My wife and daughter were in there.
The two of them were probably holding their breath, waiting for me to disappear.
“……”
I took a step.
But I wasn't heading home.
I was going in the opposite direction.
I couldn't go back looking like this.
The smell of alcohol.
The smell of blood.
And the smell of a loser.
I needed to erase those things first.
“I need to wash.”
I muttered as I walked into the darkness.
“I'll wash until I smell like a human being, and then I'll start over.”