The Long-Lost Returnee's Sad Life
When I first returned to Earth, everything had been great.
The best part of it all? Even though I'd spent a whopping twenty years in that other world, only five years had passed on Earth.
*Was there some kind of time axis misalignment between Earth and that world?*
I didn't know the exact reason, but the fact that only five years had passed here wasn't a bad story for Yujin at all.
I'd mentally prepared myself to be treated as a thirty-eight-year-old uncle, but the truth was I didn't really want that.
Besides, even in the worst case, my parents—who I thought might have passed away—had only aged five years, so they were all still alive.
“Mom… and Dad…”
“Aigoo, Yujin-ah!”
“Oppa!”
After twenty years, after only five years on Earth, the family that reunited was hugging each other and sobbing.
I thought human beings had been mercilessly slaughtered along with the demons, their feelings worn thin and dried up. Luckily, sensitivity still lingered deep in my heart.
“But anyway…”
After holding each other and crying for what felt like forever, my parents and younger sister Winter asked me a question.
“Where were you for the past five years?”
It was the question I'd expected. And it was also genuinely uncomfortable.
“Um… that’s…”
“When I reported you missing to the police, they just said no dust had been found. Even reviewing every CCTV, I couldn’t find a single strand of hair. How did you even end up somewhere?”
“Ha, haha…”
Answering that question wasn't that difficult.
But then, where should I start and where should I end?
Right now, twenty years ago… meaning five years ago on Earth. I was dragged into another world and summoned by those who called me a hero, right?
For the first three years, I was so busy adapting to that world that… I gripped my sword for the first time and it was incredibly heavy. When I killed a goblin, I was so nauseous all day that I couldn't sleep at night. That pathetic look…
I thought killing monsters was all there was, but after I started killing the bastards who betrayed humans and joined the demon side, I decided to skip the part about the guilt that made me tremble in nightmares from killing humans.
After about ten years passed, I went through death about thirty times and finally defeated the weakest among the Four Heavenly Kings, the Explosive Wolf King, Werewolf Kazan, which delayed the Demon King's invasion just a little…
Then I completely crushed the bones of the Immortal King, the Lich King, Dekels, who had a history of solo-killing ten thousand soldiers as a necromancer.
I crushed the entire body of the Giant King, Atrahm, who boasted he was born with the highest strength among the giant race since the creation of the world.
Finally, after a duel with the Death Knight, Cardenak, created from the corpse of the most magnificent king of all humans, I turned him to ashes.
Finally, after a fierce battle lasting a week where I combined the strength of all humans and all other races to charge the Demon King's fortress, I successfully cut off the neck of that damn Demon King.
After completely destroying even the foundation stone of the Demon King's fortress, I discovered a gate that had been created in ancient times to enable dimensional travel underground and returned to Earth by riding it.
‘They must really believe this.’
Remembering my spectacular twenty-year journey, Yujin covered his face with his hands.
No matter how I tried to be kind, the things I'd gone through over the past twenty years felt like cheap fantasy novels, and I couldn't feel any realism in it at all.
Even if I gathered my courage to confess all the truth, wouldn't my family just guess that I'd been dragged into that world and gotten my head bashed in too much over the past five years?
On a happy day like today, instead of my family getting back their only son, they would have to put up with a mental patient, so I needed to come up with a reasonable excuse first.
“Um… I was kidnapped, you know. Um… I was kind of pulled to the European side. Should I say I became a secret agent… like, you know, a place like the CIA.”
“Secret agent?”
At those words, my family's eyes widened in an instant.
“Um… I don't even know how it happened myself, but when I came to, I was just in a place called Europe. And some guys who seemed to belong to a secret organization gave me weapons and told me to become a killer and clean up the trash. If I didn't listen, they said I'd probably die, so they threatened me too.”
Factually, that was just me roughly recalling movies I'd seen in the past and making up the story. But luckily, my family seemed to believe my excuse without hesitation.
“So the secret agents in the movies? Like that, with combat skills injected, I worked as a contractor for twenty years… no, five years. You know, the kind of killer that specializes in killing only bad guys.”
To be honest, even I thought it was an absurd story. But compared to the fantastical tale of being dragged into a world with swords and magic and returning, it had about a hundred times more credibility.
“…You killed people? Oppa?”
It wasn't something I wanted to brag about, but I had no desire to make excuses. But as I said earlier, I only killed the really bad guys. That was the best thing I could do for them.
When I spoke with a gloomy face, my parents and sister, who had gone quiet for a moment, looked at me with something melancholy on their faces.
In truth, Yujin currently felt no guilt whatsoever about killing people.
‘It’s not like killing those trash who sold their souls to the demons is such a big deal.’
In the war with the Demon King, knowing full well that the world would end if we lost, those crazy bastards who were licking the Demon King's feet and serving them… they could all be killed anytime.
Of course, I couldn't say that, so I kept the gloomy expression on my face on the outside.
“…Yeah, you must have gone through a lot too. Sorry for making you recall painful memories for nothing.”
“It's fine. It's all over now.”
Killer or whatever, what was there to get hurt by it?
Yujin shrugged and said that, but Winter shook her head side to side as if she couldn't agree.
“No, that's not what I mean. It means you were raised as a secret agent for the past five years. While others were enjoying their youth in high school and university.”
“…Youth?”
When Winter's lips spat out the word ‘youth,’ Yujin unconsciously furrowed his brow.
*…Thinking about it, yeah?*
If Yujin hadn't won that ridiculously one-in-seventy-billion chance and been dragged into the other world, he would definitely have lived a normal life like a normal person.
Not a lot, but he'd been enjoying high school life with some decent friends, maybe even made a girlfriend, and perhaps taken the college entrance exam and entered university to enjoy campus life.
But that was only the story if Yujin hadn't been dragged into the other world.
Under Korean law, Yujin was an elementary school dropout.
Because he was eighteen… meaning second year of high school when he was suddenly kidnapped into the other world.
*Shit.*
Thirty-eight… thirty-three in this world's time, and now thinking I have to study national language and math made me dizzy.
He probably wouldn't remember the textbook content from school twenty years ago, so maybe I should apply for a GED now?
*Whatever, why not try it once. Everyone else has tried it at least once, so what's the reason I can't?*
If I wasn't going to live with the title of elementary school dropout forever, and wasn't just going to keep getting part-time jobs, I at least needed to pass the GED.
So on the day I returned to Earth, I immediately bought several books related to the GED.
After all, if I was going to take the GED anyway, there was no point dragging my feet. I might as well start studying right here.
And two months later.
“…Ha, this is really hard…”
Yujin stared at the stack of GED problem books piled like mountains on the desk and sighed.
No matter how I thought about it, studying was far from my aptitude.
In the end, for Yujin to get a proper job, it seemed wiser to find another way.
“Is there no job where I can just play games and make money at the same time?”
Yujin muttered that with a hollow laugh, but he knew deep down that his words were nonsense.
After all, was there really such a good job in this world?
So Yujin, after eating the meal his parents prepared today, drank the soda he bought with the pocket money his parents gave him and sighed.
Even today, he was still an unemployed man.