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1 # Reincarnation
Decades had passed, yet the memories of that day were still as vivid as if they had happened yesterday.
A spirited human who had pushed her way through the dense forest and knocked on my door.
A short-lived species with small ears, a ten-year-old girl.
It was my first meeting with Lucy, the hero who would one day be praised throughout the continent.
---
There is a flower called the Three-Day Flower. It commonly blooms deep within the forest.
It is an ordinary, unremarkable flower that blooms for only three days before withering away without a trace of regret, but I love this flower more than anything.
Because it resembles humans.
Burning brilliantly through their short lives before flickering out. More beautiful because of how fleeting they are.
That must have been why I decided to leave my comfortable forest behind.
‘There’s a water dragon living in the lake that flooded our village. We need your help, Sir Rian, to defeat it.’
I wanted to see just how beautifully the girl who introduced herself as a hero would bloom.
She looked as though she could barely even handle the sword strapped to her back.
Her voice, clearer and more beautiful than that of even my fellow elves, also played a part. I was curious how beautiful it would sound when she sang.
I still remembered how Lucy had reacted when I told her that I would accept payment not in gold coins, but in songs she sang for me.
She had narrowed her eyes and stared at me as though I were some strange person.
I also remembered the day we sat around a campfire together, drinking cheap beer. I had been so surprised when the girl, who could barely hold her liquor, downed three cups in a row.
She eventually got drunk, of course, and the sight of her staggering around while speaking with a slurred tongue was still vivid in my mind.
‘I’m fifteeeen! I’m an adult nowww!’
After rambling incoherently, she suddenly sprang to her feet and put on a solemn expression as though she were an actor in a play.
Then she began to sing.
In a strange language that I could not recognize, not through any language spoken across the continent nor even through the elves’ vast knowledge accumulated over countless ages.
Lucy simply brushed it off by saying it was a song from her distant homeland, and I did not press her for an explanation.
The song was simply too sweet to interrupt.
‘Rian, you’re a hunter, so why do you carry an instrument around more often than a bow? Were you a bard before?’
The day she had naturally begun speaking to me informally after always using honorifics.
‘How old are you, Rian? Two hundred and thirty...?! That’s about twenty-three in human years. We’re around the same age, aren’t we?’
The day she had spouted such ridiculous nonsense.
‘Rian, Günter...!’
The day the dwarf vanguard who had been with us for ten years lost his life, and the day she did nothing but shed tears for the entire day because of it.
‘Rian, can you sing me a song?’
The day we were left alone once again, sitting in front of a quiet campfire.
And.
“Rian.”
Now.
“...Don’t leave me behind.”
What meaning was there in distinguishing between short-lived and long-lived races?
No one knew who would be the first to leave this world, anyway.
“Please.”
Fifteen years.
The amount of time it would take a lazy elf to fall into a long nap and wake up.
And enough time for a human girl to grow into a woman.
I forcibly lifted my increasingly heavy eyelids.
Before me sat a woman who had yet to lose the innocence of the girl she once was.
No, saying she was sitting would be inaccurate.
It would be more fitting to say she had collapsed there helplessly.
“The Demon King, the Demon King has...!”
“The hero, the hero has truly...!”
Cheers of victory shook the earth. The shouts of knights and soldiers spread across the battlefield reeking of blood.
Yet amid the noisy celebration, only Lucy remained silent.
Instead of gripping the Sacred Sword that had severed the Demon King’s head, she was clutching a handful of cold earth with all her strength.
Her face looked as though it might crumble at any moment.
Her short hair had grown into long locks that now covered her shoulders, and her once-small frame had grown until she was as tall as any ordinary knight.
I wanted to pat her head just once.
But I didn't have the strength to move even a fingertip.
No, perhaps it was because my arm had been blown somewhere far away.
In truth, I couldn't even tell where it had started and where it ended anymore.
The Demon King's final attack had been that destructive.
Even if I died like this, I had no regrets.
Rather than some eccentric elf who spent his days plucking at instruments and mingling with humans, wasn't it far more worthwhile for the hero who carried the lives of tens of thousands on her shoulders to survive?
The continent would be at peace now.
For decades at the very least, perhaps as long as the lifespan of an ordinary elf at most.
I hoped it would be the latter.
That way, Lucy would be happy for a long, long time.
“...!”
The cheers around me gradually became muffled, as though they were sinking beneath the surface of water.
Ah.
Is this what dying feels like?
With death approaching, all sorts of strange thoughts come to mind.
Would I return to the embrace of Mother World Tree, or would I go to the heaven of the goddess humans believed in?
Either one didn't sound so bad.
At least I probably wouldn't be going to hell. I'd accumulated quite a bit of good karma over the years, after all.
“Lucy.”
I squeezed out the final fragment of my life and forced her name from my lips.
Was I smiling properly right now?
Even the muscles in my face refused to obey me, so I couldn't be sure.
“I hope you live happily.”
“...!”
I hadn't meant to make her bawl her eyes out.
Everyone around us was staring.
What would the others think if they saw the hero sobbing like that?
Suddenly, I remembered a story that had been passed down among the elves almost like a legend.
It was said that once a hero had fulfilled their duty, they could stand before the goddess and make one wish.
I hoped it was true.
After spending more than half of her life swinging a sword for the sake of others, wouldn't it be terribly sad if she received no reward at all?
I painfully turned my gaze.
A saintess clad in pure white armor was rushing toward us.
Only then did I feel relieved.
At least there was someone left who could support Lucy.
If it were that reliable woman, she would surely become a strong pillar of support whenever Lucy lost her way.
The saintess approached in a flustered state, grabbed Lucy, and shouted something.
But I couldn't hear a thing.
My vision had already blurred to the point where I couldn't even read her lips.
There were perhaps thirty seconds left before I closed my eyes.
Or perhaps even less than that.
Beneath the earth where my back rested, I could feel plant roots tickling me.
Mother World Tree was calling me.
Come into my embrace.
Rest now.
Had she come all this way herself to take me home?
I'd heard that being personally welcomed by the World Tree was an honor granted only to noble High Elves.
I didn't know what to do with myself from sheer embarrassment.
‘I’ve already made up my mind.’
The roots that had been reaching out to embrace me suddenly stopped.
Had my answer surprised her?
I closed my eyes without paying it any mind.
If I still had my arms, I would surely have folded both hands neatly together.
Just as humans did when praying to their god.
I’m all right.
‘Whatever the hero Lucy wishes for, I don’t know what it will be, but please make sure it comes true.’
They said the human goddess was merciful.
Surely she would grant the final wish of an eccentric elf.
Whoosh!
A brilliant light shone through my closed eyelids.
Was the saintess using divine power to heal me?
Or had the goddess herself come?
It no longer mattered.
Still, if it was the latter...
If the goddess had descended to take me to heaven, then I hoped that someday, when Lucy came there too, I could sing a song with her.
That was my final thought.
The archer and bard of the hero's party, the eccentric elf who had mingled with humans, breathed his last.
---
“Eubububu!”
“Brrr, peekaboo?”
“Honey, keep going! Rian is smiling!”
...?
At least, that was what I thought.
---
Lee Rian (李俐顔), five years old.
Apparently, the name contained his parents' hopes that he would grow up clever and handsome.
Though, honestly, he wasn't sure about that.
The kid in the neighboring building was Kim Rion, while the girl he often encountered at the playground was Lee Ria.
‘Maybe humans just name their children according to whatever happens to be trendy.’
Whenever he muttered such skeptical thoughts to himself, his mother would wave her hands and insist that wasn't true at all.
His father's words after coming home from a company dinner with alcohol in his system were somewhat different, though.
Anyway, Rian, once an elf and a member of the hero's party, had been reborn as a human in a country called the Republic of Korea.
He had spent five years doing everything ordinary people did, which meant he had grown accustomed to his life as ‘Lee Rian.’
‘Did I reincarnate as a human because I prayed to the goddess instead of the World Tree at the end?’
Perhaps because of their short lifespans, humans were different from elves, who spent their childhoods cradled in the leaves of the World Tree.
The moment they learned to walk, they hurried off to explore the world.
‘Just look at the fact that they enter academies at the age of five.’
In this dimension, there was even an institution called a ‘kindergarten,’ a place dedicated to educating little children.
And today was the day he would visit that kindergarten for the first time.
Humans really were a race that lived incredibly busy lives.
Come to think of it, Lucy had also begun working as a hero at the mere age of ten.
Back then, Rian had simply thought she was admirable.
But after being born human himself, he realized just how absurd that had been.
He had even come to think that Lucy's ridiculous method of converting ten years of an elf's life into one human year might actually have been fairly reasonable when considering the density of one's life.
“Son, are you all ready?”
“Yes.”
“You're not even nervous about going to kindergarten, and you dressed yourself all by yourself without Mommy's help. Who raised such a clever little boy?”
“Mom?”
That was also why Rian politely spoke to his mother, Madam Kim Jin-ah, using honorifics.
She was twenty-nine years old, which, according to Lucy's method of calculation, would make her roughly two hundred and ninety years old.
There would be some margin of error if he calculated it properly, but regardless, she was his senior.
Since he'd been reborn as a human anyway, he figured he might as well follow human customs.
“How can you even talk so sweetly?”
Rian obediently let his mother knead his cheeks like little pieces of rice cake.
It was something he'd experienced for five years, so he'd grown quite accustomed to it.
‘Here we go again.’
After playing with his cheeks for a long while, Kim Jin-ah suddenly grabbed her son's face and spoke with a serious expression.
“Even if the girls at kindergarten ask you to marry them, you can't just say yes, okay?”
“Yeees.”
His cheeks were being squashed like dumplings, making his pronunciation slurred.
At the sight of her son puckering his lips like a fish, she wore an expression as though she'd gained the entire world.
Was this what maternal love was?
As he prepared to leave, Rian caught sight of a black-haired, black-eyed boy in the mirror near the entrance.
He had facial features that anyone would describe as handsome, but Rian himself felt nothing in particular when he looked at them.
‘If you've got eyes, a nose, and a mouth, isn't everyone pretty much the same?’
That was because he'd been an elf in his previous life.
*
Even after five years had passed, the civilization of this world remained astonishing.
They built buildings that reached absurd heights without magic and rolled chunks of metal across the continent.
Apparently, they could even fly through the sky.
‘And they're a race that doesn't even live for a hundred years.’
Perhaps this was the power of early education, starting from the age of five.
Maybe it was.
The place he was visiting today was apparently a kindergarten specializing in music.
His parents had apparently decided on this path from long ago after watching their son sit in front of the television all day listening to music on public broadcasting channels.
‘Honey, I think our kid is a genius.’
‘His sense of rhythm is extraordinary.’
On top of that, experts had apparently claimed that developing musical aptitude from a young age could improve mathematical and language abilities, along with various other things.
As a result, Rian would be attending one of only three private music kindergartens in the Republic of Korea, located an hour away by car.
Somehow, things had turned out this way before he even realized it, but Rian was satisfied with the result.
He had loved music more than anything else in both his previous and current lives.
The fact that, even after joining the hero's party, his reputation as a bard had surpassed his fame as an archer was proof enough.
‘What will I learn there?’
Singing?
Playing instruments?
Maybe he would learn how to write sheet music.
Perhaps he might even learn how to conduct an orchestra.
Lost in these fantasies, Rian arrived at the kindergarten.
And then—
“Waaaaah!”
“Mommy, Mommy...!”
“I wanna go hoooome!”
He encountered a horrifying sight on his very first day.
Screams erupted from every direction.
Tiny bodies rolled around wildly on the dirt.
“This school district has really gone too far. My child has already completed Beyer.”
“Beyer? That's impressive. Just for reference, my child has already completed Czerny...”
Bragging.
Showing off.
“You don't have a single luxury-brand item? You must be incredibly frugal.”
Comparisons.
“I live in the Gangnam Pebbleville apartment complex. Where do you live?”
“M-my mom told me not to talk to kids who live there...”
Even the shallow attempts at intimidation made by five- and six-year-old children.
‘Hmm.’
Rian gave a peculiar smile.
‘This is humanity.’
He felt that, no matter where people lived, human life was pretty much the same everywhere.