The Hometown in Ruins
Since he had already climbed the tree, Tae-sung figured he might as well go higher. Perhaps from up there he could see the mountain landscape that had been hidden by the trees and undergrowth.
Besides, the surrounding trees somehow looked thicker and taller than he remembered from the past. They couldn’t possibly have grown this much in just a few years.
It couldn’t be outside the margin of error.
The Saintess wouldn’t have made a mistake like that.
He had witnessed and verified her abilities countless times, so he trusted her.
With that half-doubting look on his face, Tae-sung carefully climbed higher up the tall tree. He stepped onto a slender branch and straightened to his full height. From the top of the fairly tall tree, he could see the surrounding scenery just as he had expected.
So it is the right place.
The landscape had changed quite a bit from what he remembered, which had taken him a moment, but he confirmed beyond doubt that this was the mountain in his hometown.
Yet instead of relief, his expression grew even more grave. He fixed his gaze on one spot, his cheek twitching.
......
Just as the mountain scenery he knew had changed dramatically, the city below where he had once lived was also utterly transformed.
“What the hell happened….”
The words slipped out before he could stop them. He trailed off, the corners of his tightly pressed lips twitching again.
It had never been a particularly large city.
But at its peak, when its population had swelled close to a million, the bustling city now had outskirts that were in unspeakable ruin.
The industrial district looked as if it had been struck by an earthquake years ago, with collapsed sections everywhere. Even the areas that appeared somewhat intact showed no signs of operation.
The closer one got to the city center, the more intact buildings there seemed to be compared to the ruined ones. Yet even there, more than half were either collapsed or had shattered windows and damaged walls.
Had a war broken out?
Staring at the cityscape that looked as if it had taken bombs in multiple places, Tae-sung couldn’t help but wonder.
His eyes hurriedly searched for the neighborhood where he had lived, but other buildings blocked the view from this angle.
No. Maybe it’s still there.
Was he simply hoping that was the case?
Tae-sung tried once more to reconstruct the past layout using the surrounding terrain and piles of rubble. Only then did he confirm that the neighborhood itself had completely vanished.
It wasn’t just a matter of a few destroyed buildings.
The entire area was gone.
......
A surge of murderous intent rose so fiercely that if the Saintess had been standing there, he might have grabbed her by the collar without thinking.
But he forced it down, keeping his face calm.
She had done everything she could.
Simply sending him back here was an incredible feat on its own.
Resenting her would be foolish.
Shaking his head, Tae-sung leaped down from the top of the tall tree.
Surprisingly, he landed with a slight bend of his knees, making almost no sound when his feet touched the ground.
Even so, he couldn’t completely silence the noise of pushing through the underbrush. As he moved, judging direction with each step and gesture, the grasses and vines rising above waist height rustled and parted around him.
Descending the mountain didn’t take long, but he had arrived late in the day. The surroundings had already grown dim, and it felt as though full darkness would descend at any moment.
Nights in unfamiliar places were dangerous.
As that thought crossed his mind, a faint bitter smile touched Tae-sung’s lips.
Unfamiliar place?
Had the hometown he had longed for so desperately become a strange land?
At the foot of the mountain, Tae-sung paused and looked around, weighing his choices.
He could find a safe spot to spend the night and continue at dawn, or he could press on straight to the neighborhood where he had lived.
Before he had gone to the other world, the old Tae-sung would have chosen to keep moving without hesitation. Back then this neighborhood had been an ordinary place with no real dangers. It wasn’t a high-crime area, and there were no notable delinquents, so walking around after dark had never been a problem.
Of course, it would have differed by gender. The kinds of crimes a young man or a young woman might encounter on the same street were not the same. But unlike the risks he could have imagined back then, an unknown tension now warned him against traveling at night.
Something in the air was enough to make him suspect his hometown might no longer be safe.
It was the smell.
Faint odors carried by various predators mingled with the breeze.
They didn’t seem to be coming from anything nearby, but the scent was unmistakable.
It’s not my imagination.
Tae-sung clenched his fist.
To smell this in his own hometown.
The scent of predators. The stench of monsters.
Still, I move.
He didn’t know exactly how much time had passed, but one thing was certain: the neighborhood where he had lived with his family was gone.
Someone might say that waiting one more night wouldn’t change anything significantly, but…
I’ve already seen far too many people die from nothing more than that single day’s difference.
Just one day.
Yet in the brief time when darkness and light crossed paths, so many things could happen. And if he used the dangers of the night as an excuse not to move, only to learn later that his family had fallen into crisis because of it…
Could I ever forgive myself?
This wasn’t a matter of one day.
He was more than a hundred years late.
He couldn’t tell where time had stopped, where it had resumed, or how far it had moved, but he could waste no more of it. Even after the sun had set, Tae-sung kept walking.
He avoided entering the collapsed industrial zone and instead circled the city’s outskirts. The faint presences he sensed inside the factory area had felt distinctly non-human.
He had not returned home to fight. Unnecessary battles were nothing but wasted time. Crossing over the debris of broken buildings, Tae-sung followed what remained of the outer roads and headed deeper into the city.
Burn marks scarred the ground in several places, yet the vehicles that must have been involved in those accidents were nowhere to be seen.
Occasionally he spotted shattered headlight fragments or bumper pieces that hinted at wrecks, but the cars themselves had apparently been towed away.
Now that I think about it.
Having identified one source of the strangeness he felt, Tae-sung slowly lifted his head and looked up and down the road.
What he finally noticed was not merely that the road looked worn, but that the guardrails that should have lined both sides or the median were completely gone.
That wasn’t all that was missing.
There were no speed limit signs, no distance markers, no streetlights whatsoever. Even the utility poles that once stood at regular intervals had vanished.
That was why the night seemed even darker and the stars in the sky looked so numerous. A few lights still glowed in the city center, but they were faint compared to the past. It almost looked as if they were deliberately keeping the lights off, like a wartime blackout.
Tae-sung nearly stepped on something with his foot. He stopped, then took a cautious step back. The moonlight and starlight were too weak to see by clearly, yet his eyes could still make out his surroundings with reasonable accuracy.
So it really is no different.
It was a human corpse.
Or rather, what remained of one.
Only the upper half, at that.
One arm was missing. The remains wore rags so torn and tattered they could barely be called clothing, similar to the top Tae-sung himself now wore.
Judging by the length of hair still clinging to the bits of flesh left on the skull, it had likely been a woman. The lower half was nowhere to be seen, but he could guess what had happened to it.
This woman had not died in an accident.
She had been eaten.
He gave a slight bow, paying what little respect he could to the dead, then stepped over the remains without further ceremony. He had no intention of gathering the bones for cremation or burial.
If a human corpse could lie untouched in the middle of the road for this long—even on the outskirts—then the situation had clearly reached a point where such things were commonplace. He would likely encounter many more like it from now on.
He didn’t have the luxury of time to tend to each and every one.
His steps quickened. He ignored the fresh corpses and scattered bones he found nearby and pressed forward.
Yet he did not let his guard down.
If there were corpses, then whatever had killed them had also passed through here.
A heavy stone he had picked up from the ground now filled his clenched fist. His eyes constantly scanned every direction, searching for anything suspicious.
But when he sensed a presence in the distance and turned toward it, he caught the rustle of something rapidly retreating. Only then did Tae-sung look down at the stone in his hand.
......
Having returned to his hometown, had he mistakenly believed he had also returned to the person he once was?
Only now did he realize he had been comparing this body—still carrying every trace of the last hundred-plus years—to the weak version of himself from the past.
His hometown had changed. And so had he.
It’s similar.
Regarding the state that could easily be called ruined, Tae-sung thought as he casually dropped the stone.
The tension that had crept into his steps eased. His stride grew light once more.
He no longer held the stone, yet the presences he sensed in the distance did not dare approach him recklessly.