The Returnee (1)

"That's a nice story."

The glow of a small smartphone lit up the darkened room. The hero in the story was a person from another world — someone who fulfilled their destiny there, and lived happily ever after.

The protagonists of countless web novels either got what they wanted and found their happiness, or finished everything they were meant to do and returned home.

But that wasn't me.

I was summoned by a goddess to save another world. And I failed to protect my companions.

Then, per our contract, I was flung back to my original world like something spat out.

Perhaps it was the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠goddess's idea of consideration: an identity to match the body she'd remade me into, enough money to idle away a lifetime, and a spacious house.

"Ha…."

When the smartphone screen went dark, the black glass reflected something very different from the smiling face on the novel's cover — brittle silver hair, faded blue eyes, and a face utterly hollow of expression.

It was the new body the goddess had given me. She'd swapped it out without asking, claiming my original one couldn't withstand channeling her power.

And into a woman's body, no less.

By now, though, this body had grown more familiar than my old one ever was.

I slid slowly out of bed, cold marble meeting the soles of my feet. On unsteady legs I made my way to the kitchen, pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, and sank onto the living room sofa.

Through the window, Seoul lay spread out in peaceful stillness — so utterly unlike the Seoul I remembered. While I was off saving another world's Seoul, ten years had passed over the original.

Fortunately — or perhaps unfortunately — I had no family and no friends. So during the ten years I'd been gone, there had been no one left to grieve. And there was no one to rejoice that I'd come back.

Still holding the cold glass, I simply stared, hollow-eyed, at the night skyline of a hometown I hadn't seen in a decade. So this was how it ended for the hero who saved the world — in nothing but emptiness.

And that was when my companions came to mind — the ones I'd fought beside. The memory began, little by little, to gnaw away at me.

Then, into the silent living room, an unfamiliar voice echoed.

"Seolhwa… why are you the only one who survived?"

Crash!

The glass in my hand shattered against the marble floor.

"…!"

I stopped breathing. The voice hadn't come from outside the window. It was right in front of me.

Reflected in the darkened glass was not my own face. A face streaming with blood-red tears glared back at me through the window, twisted with resentment.

I had no attention to spare for the broken shards or the water pooling around my feet. My breath began, slowly, to catch. It grew ragged, and my vision blurred.

"Answer me, Seolhwa. Why you, alone…."

The figure beyond the glass — still weeping blood — slowly raised its hand to the windowpane.

Screech—!

Accompanied by a horrific sound of glass being dragged, her bloodied palm pressed hard against the pane.

"We're… we're still back there…!"

I couldn't breathe.

It's a hallucination.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the voice wouldn't stop.

"No… it's not true…."

Dragging my buckling legs, I forced myself toward the kitchen and pulled a packet of pills from the drawer. With shaking hands I nearly tore the foil apart. I tipped three or four pills into my palm and forced them down dry, their bitterness searing my tongue.

Slowly, the medication took hold, and the voices faded away. My blurred vision returned bit by bit, and my breathing steadied.

Ssshhhh—

The sound of cold water striking the sink filled the empty kitchen. Clinging to that sound, I drew in the breaths that still trembled faintly, forcing myself to endure the bitter taste of the pills welling back up.

"Hoo…."

I scooped up a handful of water and scrubbed my face roughly. The bite of the ice-cold water finally brought reality back.

It's fine. It's fine. It was just a hallucination. The glass….

I let out a small sigh and finished the thought.

She died right in front of me, after all.

I wiped my wet face with a towel, then switched on the light and began sweeping up the shattered glass with a broom and dustpan.

Scrape. Scrape.

Only the sound of glass being swept filled the silent room.

This was the reality of a returnee.

My first outing in a long while.

The reason: a psychiatric appointment.

Since my return, this was the place I'd visited most. In the world I'd come back to, my life began and ended at two points — my home, and the psychiatrist's office.

"Whoa, she's gorgeous as hell."

"A foreigner?"

People's murmurs drifted toward me.

Of all days, I forgot my mask….

With the hood of my sweatshirt pulled low, I walked to the convenience store.

"Welcome—"

I gave the clerk's greeting barely a nod, bought a disposable mask, and the beep of the barcode scanner rang out louder than it had any right to. The part-timer kept sneaking glances at my face as he rang me up.

Doing my best to ignore his stare, I tore open the mask I'd just bought and put it on immediately.

"Have a nice day…."

His voice trailed after me, but I pushed out of the store without responding.

The mask covered half my face, but people's eyes were still snagged on my silver hair and blue eyes. I pulled my hood down even deeper.

Step, step.

My pace quickened of its own accord. Deliberately turning my face away from every passing gaze, I walked straight toward my apartment entrance.

Beep—

Only after the front door thudded shut did I finally let out the breath I'd been holding.

"Haa… haa…."

Leaning my back against the door, I slid down to the floor. The mask was soaked with sweat. I tossed the damp mask into the trash, changed my clothes, and lay down on the living room sofa.

Then, almost without thinking, I opened YouTube.

The familiar red play button was still there, just as it had been ten years ago. It was the only thing connecting the me of the past to the me of this reality. That's why I cling to it — why I go on living this half-life.

The moment I tapped the icon, the screen flooded with a wall of video thumbnails. The algorithm's recommendations were dizzying: noisy variety show clips, news with baited headlines, mukbang.

And virtual reality games.

Humanity no longer played games with a keyboard and mouse. Games had emerged where you climbed into a capsule and moved, acted, and lived with your own body inside a virtual world.

"Virtual reality, huh…."

I typed "VR games" into the search bar. I needed to understand how the world had changed during those ten years.

An avalanche of games poured out: fantasy with dragons and magic, reality FPS, visual novels, and more. Alongside them came floods of videos from the YouTubers and streamers who played them.

I scrolled down slowly. My doctor had recommended trying a VR game, saying I ought to pick up a hobby.

So I went through the games one by one. As expected, the most popular were people playing fantasy-based VR titles, followed by reality FPS.

Frankly, neither caught my interest.

Then, as I was scrolling through nothing in particular, a title caught my eye.

Modern fantasy?

I tapped the thumbnail and entered the video.

New York. Tokyo. Rome. Seoul.

Ordinary people living ordinary days. Then — gates appearing without warning. Monsters pouring out. And people cutting them down.

It was familiar. All too familiar.

Just as I was about to close the video, a voice rang out.

"Are you alright?"

A voice I could never forget.

"Oh — hello! I'm Yuri!"

A girl with long pink hair was smiling brightly, extending her hand. And my mind overlaid her with the last image of Yuri in my memory.

That brilliantly shining pink hair, slowly drinking up the blood spilled across the ground until it hung soaked and red. The left arm that had shielded us so steadfastly, gone along with her shield. The right arm that had wielded her sword, no longer able to serve any purpose. And carved across her abdomen, a vast sword wound.

And even then, the woman before me had looked at me.

"It's finally over, right?"

"Yuri!"

"Thank goodness…. So we can go home now, right? *cough*!"

With the cough, a mouthful of blood burst from Yuri's lips.

"Thank you… for saving us…."

The light in her eyes was fading, little by little. The warmth was draining from her hands. Her heart, which had pounded so fiercely, was losing its momentum — slowing, slowing, and stopping.

"You have to be happy when you make it back…!"

There on the screen was Yuri's final image — the girl who had, even at the very end, been thinking of me. Not a voice of resentment, but the voice that had laughed and chattered alongside mine.

The video ended on that final title card.

The video was over, but for a long while I just stared at the black screen.

What…? Why are you in there?

I couldn't believe it. Yuri had died right in front of me. With my own hands, I had closed her eyes and buried her.

Even now, it was burned vividly into my memory — her body temperature cooling in my arms, the lifeless look of her eyes.

And yet….

I rewound the video and checked the closing line again.

"Play your fate again"?

That final phrase kept swirling around my head. I rose from the sofa, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠walked to the study, and turned on the computer. The boot-up that should have been instant felt impossibly long this time. The moment it finished, I opened a browser and searched for Last Promise.

The top results were WoodWiki, and below it, the Last Promise Minor Gallery.

It's a real game?

If a search from Korea turned up those two sites first, the game had to have at least some name recognition. I moved my cursor slowly and clicked the WoodWiki link.

I read through the page slowly. And with every scroll, what I'd been denying began turning into certainty.

Leaving the WoodWiki tab, I checked the gallery.

I skipped over the joke posts and clicked through the ones that actually seemed related to the game.

(Cue the "author smiling" meme pic.)

With that post, I closed the gallery — and immediately opened the capsule company's website. The specs and options didn't matter to me.

Of everything the goddess had given me, money was the most plentiful.

Play your fate again.

I kept turning those words over and over in my mind.

If you're in there. If you're really in that place. If I could see you again. If I'd only made a different choice.

Even if the smell of blood — the scent I never wanted on my hands again — stung at the tip of my nose.

If I could save you.

Then I would dive in — whether that place was virtual or real.