The Returnee's Scars
The man struck squarely on the back of the head had his neck snapped and slammed face-first into the ground while still running.
When Kang Tae-sung turned to confirm it, he saw the only survivor among the enemies—a filthy woman—frantically tearing off what she was wearing.
“Sa-save…”
She probably wanted to say she would do anything if he spared her. But the woman never finished her plea.
Right in the center of her deliberately exposed chest, a sword that someone had swung before dying was buried so deeply that the hilt was barely visible.
“You think I’d want to do it with a beast?”
“……”
Blood surged up her throat and spilled from her mouth as the woman leaned against the vehicle behind her and slowly slid to the ground.
Only then did silence fall.
Kang Tae-sung stood quietly and looked around. Though mostly collapsed, he felt as if he were standing in the middle of a hellscape unfolding in a corner of a modern city.
Not much different, is it.
Kang Tae-sung walked back to where the first campfire had been.
The man whose head had been torn off first had fallen into the flames, so much of his skin was charred.
Kang Tae-sung gathered what he could of the dead boy’s remains scattered nearby. His combat jacket was soaked with so much blood that it clung to his body; he stripped it off.
He placed the remains inside and tied it, but one jacket wasn’t enough to wrap them properly. He glanced around, stripped clothes from the other corpses, and bound them in several layers.
Only then did he turn to the boy who was still breathing.
“……”
He was alive.
It seemed the one who had tried to slit his throat had postponed it to observe Kang Tae-sung instead.
He let out a quiet sigh and looked down at the boy’s slightly unfocused eyes.
It would have been better if he had died here with his friend.
The cleanest ending would have been the two boys dying and Kang Tae-sung simply avenging them. But reality always introduced unexpected variables.
“Snap out of it.”
At his words, the boy’s eyes regained some focus and he looked up.
“……”
Corpses, severed limbs, and blood lay everywhere. The man standing right in front of him, bare from the waist up, made the whole scene look like hell itself.
Only after realizing he had survived did the boy’s jaw begin to tremble so violently he couldn’t close it.
Kang Tae-sung looked down at him in silence, then untied his bonds and helped him to his feet with both hands.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“N-no… I’m… not…”
“Did they do anything else to you?”
The boy shook his head instead of answering with words that wouldn’t come out properly. His gaze drifted toward the campfire, and tears began streaming down his face.
His friend was dead.
And at that campfire…
Slap.
“……”
When the boy started zoning out again, Kang Tae-sung raised his hand and slapped him lightly.
Once the stinging shock brought the boy back to his senses, Kang Tae-sung told him to take off his outer clothes.
“……?”
The boy didn’t understand why, but he obeyed. He removed the thin jacket and t-shirt, revealing a body that looked too skinny for someone in his growth years.
Kang Tae-sung picked up the discarded clothes, twisted them into a tight bundle, and began swinging it lightly.
Thud. Whack!
“Ow! Aah!”
Though the strikes looked light, the boy—who had no idea what was happening—felt pain so intense he feared his bones might break, even though he was only being hit with a bundle of cloth.
His upper body quickly turned red all over. The bruises would definitely turn purple later.
After striking him a little longer with the bundled clothes, Kang Tae-sung picked up a knife from a nearby corpse and heated its blade in the campfire.
“Left or right.”
“Huh?”
“Which side do you prefer?”
His voice was completely emotionless as he heated the blade over the flames. The boy didn’t fully understand the situation, but after hesitating, he chose the left.
The blade swung lightly and drew a long line across the boy’s left forearm. It felt like it had barely grazed the skin, but blood soon began to flow from the red gash.
“Hold it out.”
Shocked and in pain from having his arm suddenly cut, the boy extended the injured limb with tears in his eyes, terrified that refusing would only get him slashed again.
Instead, Kang Tae-sung folded the boy’s t-shirt several times, pressed it firmly against the wound, then tied both sleeves tightly around the arm to stop the bleeding.
“With this much, when you get back they won’t ask what you were doing while it happened.”
“……”
Only then did the boy begin to understand.
Besides the grief of losing his friend, another emotion he had been secretly fearing suddenly became real.
The vague dread that if he returned with an uninjured body, people might ask what he had been doing while his friend died.
It could lead to peer ostracism, fueled by baseless rumors that being together might get you killed.
He hadn’t been able to imagine anything so specific, but the hazy fear he carried clarified instantly at Kang Tae-sung’s words.
The boy slipped his right arm into the thin jacket Kang Tae-sung handed him and draped the left side over his shoulder. The night wind was cold, but near the campfire it wasn’t too bad.
“Thank you for saving me.”
He had thought he was going to die.
The boy hadn’t believed anyone would come for him. He had no family left and few friends.
Those few friends were all kids his own age. They wouldn’t risk coming to a dangerous place like this, and even if they did, they couldn’t have helped.
This man was his savior.
Infinite gratitude filled the boy’s eyes as he looked at Kang Tae-sung. Yet every time he took in the gruesome scene around them, the fear grew to match the gratitude.
Kang Tae-sung, however, seemed completely uninterested in the way the boy behind him was looking at him. He moved about, collecting any useful equipment or tools he could find.
Among them, acquiring a priest’s pistol was a decent gain. There were still twelve rounds left.
The noise was a bit loud… I need to head back soon.
He didn’t sense any foreign presence nearby at the moment, but monsters had sharp hearing. They might already be approaching from a distance.
Kang Tae-sung was about to stuff the various tools and gear into the inner pockets of his pants when his eyes stopped on a truck in the distance.
Now that I think about it.
It was the vehicle that had approached the school gate earlier and then turned back. Up close, it looked like an ordinary truck converted into an electric model.
Its speed wasn’t particularly high, but gasoline vehicles were loud and fuel was hard to obtain, so they were rarely used anymore.
He loaded the collected items into the truck bed, then carefully placed the boy’s body—wrapped in multiple layers of clothing—inside as well.
“Get in. Quickly.”
“Yes? Ah, yes!”
The boy, who had been standing awkwardly behind him, snapped out of it at Kang Tae-sung’s words and hurried over.
The boy climbed into the passenger seat and watched from the corner of his eye as Kang Tae-sung opened the other door, hopped in, and settled into the driver’s seat, glancing around.
“Button start, huh.”
There was a start button.
When he pressed it, the indicator lit up to show the engine had turned on properly.
But Kang Tae-sung hesitated for a moment, then looked down at the pedals on the floor.
“This one’s the brake…”
“……”
The boy silently fastened his seatbelt.
The truck started slowly, rumbled onto the road after a brief jolt, and though its speed was inconsistent, the empty streets made the drive back to the school relatively easy.
The truck that stopped in the middle of the playground after passing through the school gate was immediately handed over to his younger brothers, who had clearly been waiting.
“Weren’t you unlicensed?”
“It was easy enough.”
Kang Tae-sung answered Kang Han-sung’s question without concern, but when Kang Yeon-sung saw the boy in the passenger seat slyly unfastening his seatbelt, he shook his head slightly.
Dawn was already breaking.
What had happened during the night couldn’t be hidden—there were both dead and injured. Still, they didn’t explain exactly how the child had died.
The boy’s body was cremated behind the school along with the separately collected head, without unwrapping the clothes it had been bundled in.
What surprised Kang Tae-sung was how everyone seemed to accept the situation without much reaction, as if it weren’t their first time dealing with such things.
On the contrary, when he noticed people staring at him in considerable shock, he finally realized he still wasn’t wearing a top.
But putting clean clothes over his blood-soaked body felt unpleasant, so he drew some water from the rainwater storage tank on the school roof and washed himself.
In the old days, using water that would barely have been enough for washing one’s face to clean his entire body would have been uncomfortable. But those old days were long gone, and washing like this had been routine on the battlefields of another world. He soaked a cloth and wiped himself down with practiced ease.
The other two brothers stood nearby watching. They exchanged glances, elbowed each other, and eventually Kang Han-sung stepped closer.
“Where the hell did you go and what did you do?”
“Hm?”
“These aren’t normal scars. This one here, and this… it went straight through. Plus…”
As he pointed at the scars covering Kang Tae-sung’s torso, Kang Han-sung’s face grew somber and his words trailed off. Simple cuts and stab wounds were common enough, but some of the marks suggested his body had been completely severed in half.
No one should have survived injuries like that, yet the scars clearly told that story. There were traces on his arms and legs that looked like they had been severed and reattached, with layer upon layer of scars overlapping them.
“Didn’t Yeon-sung tell you?”
“Well, I did hear something about you being in another world… but I thought that was just an excuse?”
“……”
“Guess it wasn’t.”
Seeing his older brother smile quietly, Kang Han-sung replied in a hollow voice.
“This… it feels ridiculous to even call it hardship. …Throw that away. Can’t even tell if it’s blood or water. I’ll get you more.”
“Did you kill them all?”
“Is that what you’re curious about?”
Kang Han-sung, who had been carrying a basin toward the rainwater tank, saw the quiet Kang Yeon-sung approaching their older brother with the question and quickly scolded him.
“I killed everything that was there.”
“The monsters must be thrilled. Food lying everywhere.”
Kang Han-sung set down the basin full of rainwater as he spoke.
Having been a soldier, he had seen more than enough monster corpses—and the human ones mixed among them—so he spoke as if it were nothing.
“Are you okay, older brother?”
“About what?”
Kang Tae-sung, who was also washing his hair while he had the fresh water, asked in return. The youngest looked at him with worried eyes and spoke again.
“You killed people.”
“I didn’t kill people.”
“Were those things even human?”
When Kang Han-sung chimed in from the side, the youngest nodded slightly. But he had no response to Kang Tae-sung’s next words, and even Kang Han-sung couldn’t find anything to add.
“I killed plenty in that other world.”
“……”
While their oldest brother washed and changed into clean clothes, the two younger brothers stayed by his side in silence.
Author's Note
Thank you again today.
See you next time...