Another World
However, the youngest still wore an expression that said he couldn’t quite accept it.
It was only natural.
After all, this was his eldest brother—the one whose whereabouts and very survival had been unknown for a full five years… No, they had almost given up hoping he was still alive.
Even if they couldn’t know the details of what he had done day after day, they were at least curious about what had happened to him.
Seeing every emotion laid bare on the boy’s face, Kang Tae-sung quietly reached out and stroked his youngest brother’s now-grown, unruly hair.
“Would you believe me no matter what I told you?”
“Of course.”
Kang Yeon-sung nodded without hesitation, but as he watched his eldest brother continue with a faint, bitter smile, he couldn’t hold on to his original expression.
“You were… in another world?”
“It wasn’t by choice.”
“Then was it beyond a rift?”
The youngest wasn’t reacting as if it were a lie or a joke. Instead, he asked a slightly offbeat question.
“Do you know something about the rifts?”
“Not in detail. I’ve only heard that there’s some kind of terrain inside them. Since monsters pour out of them, some people say there must be a whole world on the other side where monsters can live.”
That was possible.
Perhaps the rifts were connected to the land of another world that was now overlapping with their own.
But it was impossible to know for certain unless someone who had entered a rift actually returned.
“The place I was in… probably has no connection to the rifts.”
Kang Tae-sung spoke with a slightly ambiguous expression. He had no real certainty.
Gargos.
Thinking of the monsters that had burst from the morning rift, he wondered whether the world he had left behind—or the aftermath of the Saintess sending him back—might have manifested in the form of these rifts.
The timing didn’t match, but if he assumed it was something triggered by the high priest who had summoned him to another world in the first place…
Perhaps the forced summoning I endured broke something in this world.
It meant every catastrophe unfolding now might be connected to him.
Even if that were true, however, Kang Tae-sung felt neither guilt nor remorse.
It hadn’t been his doing, and he certainly hadn’t lived a life that deserved punishment.
I did nothing wrong.
Thinking that, he slowly closed and opened his eyes, then suddenly turned his head and twitched his cheek.
“It’s gotten noisy all of a sudden.”
“Huh?”
There was nothing but the gentle sound of the wind around them, so Kang Yeon-sung couldn’t understand what his brother meant.
But he soon learned exactly what Kang Tae-sung was talking about. A moment later, someone came sprinting toward them in a frantic rush.
The boy looked around as if searching for them, spotted the pair, and ran straight over. He was still very much a child.
“Yeon-sung hyung! It’s bad!”
“Where?”
Kang Yeon-sung didn’t ask what the problem was.
He would find out soon enough, and if it was truly serious, the location mattered more than the details.
“That way! Over there!”
“The playground?”
When he asked the boy, who was pointing past the distant gymnasium, the child nodded quickly.
He was panting hard, chest heaving from running all over the place, barely able to speak.
Kang Yeon-sung handed him the tablet he had been holding and told him to leave it on his bed, then rose and headed for the playground at once.
……
Kang Tae-sung quietly watched his youngest brother’s back as the boy ran ahead, then stood up from the bench in silence and followed.
“He’s a child. Can’t you see that?”
Kang In-hye’s face was flushed red as she demanded an answer.
But the rough-looking man still refused to release the wrist of the child she was trying to protect. His expression remained indifferent.
“I don’t see it.”
“He’s not even fifteen yet!”
“Well. I really don’t know. It’s none of my business anyway.”
This kind of confrontation had happened several times before.
But today the argument dragged on far longer than usual. Until now, the other side had usually backed off without too much trouble.
Perhaps the incident someone had once predicted would eventually happen was beginning today—the moment when the filthy hands of wicked adults reached past the fence they had tried so hard to maintain for the children.
……
But that fence was thin and powerless.
There were few young, healthy men capable of telling them to back off, and those who existed were either absent… or lying collapsed nearby, clutching their stomachs.
The opponents were from the military.
Or more precisely, not the regular army, but the ones who protected the city—so they might as well be called a private military force.
Until now they had managed, through constant pleading, to secure at least some rations for this district. But even that had reached its limit.
This area, packed with people who were either too young or too old, had already been pushed to the margins in terms of interest, just as it was physically distant from headquarters.
And now those who had been receiving food and daily necessities without providing any labor were apparently about to be asked to offer something in return.
“Even if law and morality have collapsed, conscience should still remain!”
Kang In-hye shouted.
Her fury grew from the knowledge that shouting was the only thing she could do.
“If they still had a conscience, they wouldn’t have survived this long.”
Suddenly, from among the line of vehicles opposite them, a man leaning against one spoke up.
“In a world where you have to kill or be killed, where you must risk your life just to survive another day… expecting special treatment simply because you’re old—isn’t that the real lack of conscience?”
The man’s gaze was fixed on the distant gymnasium. Specifically, on the elderly people living inside it.
“Would you say the same thing if they were your own parents?”
“Good parents would choose suicide over burdening their children. I’ve seen plenty of such good parents.”
“How can you say something like that? How could you…”
Kang In-hye’s words trailed off, a mixture of disbelief and panic on her face, but when the girl she was shielding by the waist burst into tears and cried out in pain, her anger flared even hotter.
“Let her go!”
“Is the problem that she’s too young?”
At that moment, someone sitting in the open-top jeep spoke.
“Then you can go instead.”
“……”
“You seem to think we enjoy this… If we really did, we wouldn’t be wasting time arguing like this.”
Of course she knew.
The reason these rough men were behaving with relative restraint wasn’t because they wanted to be here. It was simply an errand.
And she could clearly guess who had sent them.
The people standing before her belonged to a single team with one leader. That leader was the man who controlled the distribution rights for Warehouse 4—the very rations for this district.
He had always said the same thing: that excluding the 4th District from headquarters and redirecting those supplies to the city defense forces, or increasing new support teams, would be better for the city.
In practice, he had steadily reduced the rations sent this way while expanding his own team and newly recruited support units, shifting more supplies in their direction.
Naturally the situation here grew worse by the day. Every time they begged for help, he had openly suggested that if they couldn’t provide labor, they should sell their bodies.
They were still children. Fifteen or sixteen at most.
Even Kang In-hye, who represented them, was only eighteen. It was becoming harder and harder to shield them from the lewd demands of fully grown adults.
After Kang Yeon-sung joined them, the pressure had eased for a while—but only temporarily.
Thanks to connections from his time in the combat support team, they had received slightly less pressure. But since they produced almost nothing, they remained entirely dependent on rations and had no choice but to keep their heads down.
“Let the child go first and then we can talk. She’s clearly in a lot of pain.”
Without Kang Yeon-sung, there was no way to resolve a situation like this.
Biting her lower lip as she fidgeted anxiously, Kang In-hye’s expression softened slightly when she heard a familiar voice approaching from the side.
“Starting today, we have to take at least one. Otherwise you’ll have to survive without any more rations.”
“One becomes two, two becomes three, then four. Is Team Leader Oh Sang-man planning to set up a comfort station?”
They’re only children.
Kang Yeon-sung added the words in a polite tone.
But the answer that came back was anything but polite.
Thud.
“……!”
Kicked without warning, Kang Yeon-sung tumbled back several steps before clutching his side and staggering to his feet.
“Your tone is quite aggressive today, Yeon-sung.”
“If I offended you, I apologize. So please, at least let go of the child’s arm first…”
As Kang Yeon-sung stepped toward the man who still gripped the girl’s forearm, he clearly saw another kick flying straight at him.
An attack in plain sight.
Debating whether to take the hit or dodge, he twisted his body with a slightly hardened expression, avoiding the blow and catching the leg that tried to sweep past him.
“You’re attacking while wearing that?”
“Let go.”
The opponent’s shoes were not ordinary combat boots. Crampons had been strapped underneath, as if for walking on ice. Being struck by them could cause serious injury.
He had attacked with that foot. It had been a deliberate strike; if Yeon-sung hadn’t dodged, it would have landed.
But this was not the time to stand tall and fight.
Two of the men gathered here were awakened. He himself had not even approached awakening and had only one eye. There was nothing he could do.
He had to end this amicably somehow, just as he had always done.
When he released the leg and tried to lower his head again, the now-freed man immediately prepared another kick.
There was no time to hesitate.
Unlike the previous deliberately slow kick, this one drove toward his side before he could even think of dodging.
“……”
It would probably hurt a great deal. If the crampons were rusted, there was even the risk of tetanus.
But if he bled, if he endured the pain, it might help the current situation at least a little.
Kang Yeon-sung tensed his side to minimize the injury as much as possible. Time seemed to slow to a crawl.
“Size 275 with triple E width.”
But the expected pain never came. Instead, an indifferent voice spoke.
“……”
Kang Yeon-sung unconsciously opened his closed eyes and looked over.
“You’ve kept them quite clean. No athlete’s foot, I suppose?”
There stood his eldest brother, Kang Tae-sung, who had appeared without anyone noticing. He was calmly removing the combat boot from the foot he had seized.
Author's Note
Next time...
Addendum - There was a part I wrote incorrectly. I corrected it late. Thank you.