The Day After the Return
The dawn air slipped through the cracks in the orphanage's old windows. Even as a faint gray light began to bleed into the still-dark room, he lay in bed with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. In the end he had only fallen asleep well after dawn broke, and even that rest hadn't lasted long.
A knock sounded, followed immediately by the door swinging open. Kang Ihyun opened his eyes. Jeong Seok-woo stood in the doorway, wearing a thick gray cardigan with a scarf wrapped around his neck.
"Didn't sleep?"
Kang Ihyun sat up slowly. "...I got a little sleep."
Jeong Seok-woo glanced toward the side of the bed and paused. His gaze had landed on the sword leaning against the wall, its surface worn from obvious heavy use. Even in the sunless room the black scabbard somehow asserted its presence.
He hadn't disbelieved Ihyun's story yesterday. Still, seeing the proof right in front of him filled a corner of his chest with a complicated ache. Jeong Seok-woo stared at the blade for several seconds, then simply looked away.
"Wash up and come downstairs. We should get to the community center early while it's still quiet."
With that, the door closed. Kang Ihyun watched the older man leave without another word about the sword, then quietly slipped the blade back into his subspace pocket.
After breakfast the two of them left the orphanage together. Jeong Seok-woo pulled out the keys to an old van. It was a boxy yellow vehicle with the orphanage's name painted on the side and a bit of rust creeping along the bottom of the doors.
"Isn't this the same van it was when I was still here? I thought you were getting donations. Why haven't you changed it?"
Jeong Seok-woo gave a small snort of laughter. "It runs just fine. Why would I change it? The money's better spent on clothes for the kids and decent food."
Seeing that Jeong Seok-woo hadn't changed at all, Kang Ihyun absently rubbed the subspace pocket in his coat. I should sell some of this and tell him to get a new van. Or maybe even rebuild the orphanage entirely.
"Get in. We're short on time."
A short while later the van pulled out of the alley onto the main road. Kang Ihyun sat in the passenger seat, gazing out the window. Seoul had changed quite a bit. There were more tall buildings than before, the roads had widened, and several familiar alleys had vanished completely. Yet at the same time, the sign of a neighborhood snack shop, a bus stop, and the stack of boxes in front of a convenience store remained exactly as he remembered.
Jeong Seok-woo kept his hands on the wheel and said, "Now that I think about it, we'll need to buy you a phone too."
"...Ah."
"First we confirm your identity, then get a number. We'll have to reopen a bank account as well."
Kang Ihyun let out a small sigh. "There's more to do than I expected."
Jeong Seok-woo chuckled. "Of course there is. A missing person just came back after twelve years."
The community center was busier than expected. Kang Ihyun sat on a chair in front of the reception desk, holding a numbered ticket with a dazed expression. Jeong Seok-woo stood beside him calmly filling out forms while the clerk kept glancing between Kang Ihyun's face and the computer screen.
"...So you're confirming this is you, and that you returned after being listed as missing?"
"Yes."
"The guardian who reported the disappearance at the time..." The clerk looked at Jeong Seok-woo. He nodded.
"I was the one who filed the report."
The clerk couldn't hide her bewildered expression. It was a face that said this was hard to believe, and of course it was. Twelve full years had passed since the missing-person report. For someone with no trace all that time to suddenly reappear was the kind of thing that only happened on sensational TV programs.
The process dragged on after that. Identity verification, fingerprint comparison, cross-checking old records, coordination with the police station. Kang Ihyun spent the entire morning sitting in that chair, writing statements and answering questions. By the time they finished a simple statement at the police station around lunch, he was genuinely exhausted.
Jeong Seok-woo bought a canned coffee from the convenience store and handed it over. "Why do you look so out of it?"
Kang Ihyun popped the can open. "...It feels like I was being interrogated."
Jeong Seok-woo burst out laughing. "Weren't you the one who fought in a war?"
"At least in war you know what the other side wants."
"...And here?"
Kang Ihyun took a sip of the canned coffee and muttered with complete sincerity, "I can handle everything else. Civil servants are the ones I just can't figure out."
Jeong Seok-woo laughed for a long time. Hearing that laughter, Kang Ihyun eventually laughed along with him.
It was only in the afternoon that all the procedures were finally wrapped up. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say they had only just begun. His identity itself was still valid, but because of the long-term missing-person record, additional verification was required. Restoring school records, health insurance, and bank accounts would take several more days, they were told. The most important item, his ID card, would be reapplied for and sent by registered mail.
By the time the sun began to set, the two of them had returned to the orphanage. A black SUV was parked in front of the yard. And beside it stood three people who were both familiar and strangely unfamiliar.
One was a large man wearing a firefighter's jacket. Another was a woman with long hair in a beige coat. The last was a man in a suit with his tie loosened.
Kang Ihyun, stepping out of the van, stopped in his tracks. So did they. Standing at the entrance to the yard, none of them could speak first. Twelve years was enough time to change a person completely: faces, voices, builds. And yet somehow, they still recognized one another.
Min-su spoke first. "...Hey." His voice trembled. It was much deeper than before. "Is it really... you, Kang Ihyun?"
Kang Ihyun parted his lips. He didn't know what to say. But at that moment the woman in the beige coat strode forward and grabbed both his shoulders. It was So-hee. The corners of her eyes were already red.
She looked up at his face and spoke in a trembling voice that said she truly couldn't believe it. "...You were alive?"
The moment the words left her, her hand struck his shoulder hard. Thwack.
"You rotten bastard!"
Then she burst into tears. Kang Ihyun dazedly touched the shoulder she'd hit. Seeing that, Min-su laughed, then quickly wiped at the corners of his own eyes. Jun-ho stood speechless for a long time before lowering his head and muttering very quietly, "...That son of a bitch."
That single phrase somehow carried more weight than anything else. Only then did Kang Ihyun truly feel that he had come back.
The orphanage yard remained noisy for some time. So-hee cried for a long while, Min-su comforted her while also wiping his own eyes, and Jun-ho pulled out a cigarette only to notice Jeong Seok-woo's gaze and slip it back into his pocket.
In the end the four of them settled down in one corner of the orphanage dining hall. The children had already finished dinner and gone up to their rooms or the study area, so the hall was quiet. Outside the windows, the winter night had fully settled in.
When Jeong Seok-woo brought out some simple snacks, Min-su couldn't hold back any longer. "So what the hell really happened?" He sat with his arms crossed, glaring at Kang Ihyun. "Were you kidnapped? Lost? Or did you get amnesia or something?"
So-hee wiped her tears and nodded. "That's right. At least explain it to us. We really thought you were dead."
Jun-ho spoke quietly as well. "...I was too shocked earlier to ask. Where were you all this time?"
Kang Ihyun stayed silent for a moment. It wasn't that he didn't want to tell the story again; he was trying to figure out how to explain it. The fastest way would be to show them the sword he kept in his subspace pocket, but he didn't want to convince his friends that way.
Let's talk first and show them afterward.
He opened his mouth slowly. "...It was another world."
The dining hall fell quiet for a second. Min-su blinked several times, then looked at So-hee. So-hee looked at Jun-ho. Jun-ho looked at Jeong Seok-woo. And when they saw Jeong Seok-woo calmly drinking his beverage, Min-su's expression hardened.
"...Director. You're telling me this is for real?"
Jeong Seok-woo shrugged. "Who knows. But it's Ihyun we're talking about."
At those short words all three fell silent. They understood because throughout all the years they'd lived together, Kang Ihyun had never once told a lie, no matter how small.
Kang Ihyun gave a small laugh and slowly told them a slightly condensed version of what he'd already told Jeong Seok-woo. The war. The Demon King. The Hero. Countless battles. And his return. At first the three of them looked like they couldn't believe it, but in the end they had no choice.
His voice was far too calm, the details far too specific to be something from a novel or a superior's tall tale. Above all, his eyes weren't the eyes of someone lying. And the decisive proof came when, with a soft shing, Kang Ihyun drew a massive sword that looked at least a meter and a half long from a tiny pocket in his pants.
A long while later, after the story that sounded like something out of a novel, Min-su let out a hollow laugh first. "Whoa. Fuck. I never thought one of us would turn out to be an otherworlder."
"It's not reincarnation, it's transference."
"Same difference."
"You even became the Hero over there?"
Kang Ihyun nodded. Min-su stared at him for a while, then chuckled. "Even when we were kids, you were always the best at soccer or basketball."
So-hee smacked Min-su's arm with an incredulous look. "How is that even related?"
"Of course it's related. Handling a sword or playing sports, it's all about using your body."
While So-hee and Min-su bickered about whether sports and war could possibly be compared, Jun-ho asked quietly, "...Ihyun. Were you alone there too?"
At the question Kang Ihyun slowly shook his head. "No."
That single word shifted the atmosphere in the dining hall. Everyone instinctively sensed that this was no longer a story about war, but about people. Kang Ihyun smiled very briefly. This smile was a little more relaxed than before.
"I had friends."
He recalled their faces one by one from memory and spoke.
"Drake. He used to be a bandit. He ran away because he hated the bandit group his father led. Later he became a knight of the empire."
Min-su raised an eyebrow. "A knight who started as a bandit?"
"Yeah. He had a really foul mouth. The first time we met he pointed a sword at me and said if I didn't want to die, I should stay hidden."
So-hee burst out laughing. Kang Ihyun laughed too. "But he was also the first one to stand in front of me and raise his shield."
He lowered his gaze for a moment. "When the castle wall collapsed, he took the debris for me and broke all his ribs."
Min-su's laughter faded. Kang Ihyun continued. "There was Elio too." This time his expression grew a little strange. "He was a mage... honestly, he was insane."
"Why?"
"In the middle of battle he'd take out his notebook to study the demons' magic, calculating formulas and drawing magic circles."
Jun-ho laughed for the first time. Kang Ihyun gave a small snort and kept going. "He was an orphan from the slums, but his talent was so outstanding that the tower master took him in and raised him. On the surface he was cold and didn't talk much, but..." He added very quietly, "Once he started drinking, he turned into a chatterbox who said every single thing he usually kept bottled up."
So-hee smiled quietly at that. She could tell from the look on Ihyun's face how precious those friends had been to him. After all, he'd known them far longer than he'd known his childhood friends here.
And then the third name. Kang Ihyun's voice changed ever so slightly. "Lucian." He let out a sigh-tinged laugh. "He was a priest. The next pope in line."
Min-su muttered immediately, "Must've been the super solemn type."
Kang Ihyun shook his head firmly. "No. He was a drunkard." "...What?"
"His catchphrase was 'It is God's will.' If he tripped while drinking, it was God's will. If he lost at cards, it was God's will. If I skipped training, that was God's will too."
So-hee covered her mouth and laughed; even Jun-ho's shoulders shook. Kang Ihyun laughed along with them. "By the way, Elio learned to drink because of that guy."
He looked down at his mug and said very softly, "Still, the reason I made it back here safely is thanks to all of them." No one interrupted. "Whenever I was about to die, they were the first to come running. And in the final battle... he even shaved away his own soul to save me."
The dining hall grew quiet again. Min-su fiddled awkwardly with his coffee cup. Then Jun-ho asked carefully, "...And it feels like there's one more."
Kang Ihyun lifted his head. Jun-ho had always been quick to notice things. Ihyun's expression when he spoke of the three of them had been different, subtly so. After hesitating a moment, Kang Ihyun smiled faintly.
"Adrian." "A friend?" "...More like a close younger brother."
At those words Jeong Seok-woo looked up with interest. Kang Ihyun continued slowly. "He was the crown prince. I suppose he's the emperor now."
The entire dining hall fell silent. Min-su asked again, looking like he couldn't believe his ears. "...What?" "The emperor?" So-hee was genuinely flustered. "You were close with royalty? No, with the imperial family over there?"
Kang Ihyun scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "Well... sort of. I used the Hero's authority a few times to help him with troublesome matters."
Min-su finally exploded with laughter. "You're insane. Dude, you really made it big. You became sworn brothers with the crown prince in another world?"
Kang Ihyun couldn't laugh. Instead he spoke very quietly, his eyes gazing somewhere far away. He remembered those days. Before the full-scale war began, the crown prince who would come every night before heading to the battlefield with a bottle of liquor, calling him "hyung." The boy who always pretended to be calm but carried more guilt than anyone because he felt there was so little he could do in that war. And on the last day, the face that had stayed behind alone, crying until the moment of farewell.
Kang Ihyun smiled very faintly. "Still, he's smart and capable. He hated political affairs but handled them well."
Min-su asked playfully, "Then since you saved all of them, I guess everyone's living well now, right?"
At that moment Kang Ihyun couldn't answer right away. He had killed the Demon King, but the world was still in chaos. Remnants would remain. Adrian and the others would probably handle it without trouble, yet he couldn't help worrying. And above all, there was no guarantee that time flowed the same way in both worlds. That fact suddenly tightened something in his chest.
Kang Ihyun spoke very slowly. "...I don't know." For the first time, clear longing colored his voice. "Whether they're all doing well."
The dining hall grew quiet. Only then did his friends realize it. After countless life-and-death struggles, Kang Ihyun had returned to this place, but at the same time he was someone who had left precious people behind in another world. The winter night deepened. And Kang Ihyun felt with vivid clarity that he was caught somewhere between two worlds.