Reunion in the Past

The dots stretched on.

He looked ordinary.

The suspicion that he might have returned to the past grew a little stronger.

But.

If that were true, this place actually felt closer to home than the last one.

Because nothing had changed yet.

I need to see my family.

If this truly was the past, there was no telling when he might be summoned again. It was possible someone else would be pulled in his place, but he refused to hope for that. He simply wanted to meet them. Confirming that everyone was healthy and safe would be enough.

Yet the calm mask he had forced onto his face soon began to crack.

The thought that he might have to endure another hundred years in that place came rushing in.

He shook his head again.

Don’t jump to conclusions. It hasn’t been proven that this is the past.

But now a different kind of helplessness washed over him.

The memory of the universe vanishing without warning rose to the surface.

The original Earth’s passage disappeared, so I couldn’t return, but…

The world the Saintess had sent him to had been swallowed by something no one could have predicted.

After the cracks overlapped…

Yes. The cracks. Were the cracks the problem?

Even so, he couldn’t claim the future would be safe. No matter what he did here, couldn’t another “serious error” occur in the same way?

Still, Kang Tae-sung didn’t dismiss the possibility that it had simply been a matter of timing. The world might have collapsed for reasons that had nothing to do with him.

Even then, I heard it that time.

I found him. He had heard that voice. It might have been a hallucination, but if some unknown entity connected to the crack had spoken those words to him, then something was definitely there.

Yet right now there was nothing he could do.

If he encountered it again, the only option would be to run without hesitation.

“What the hell did I even do?”

Irritation flared for no reason.

He had simply suffered and barely managed to return home. Of course it wasn’t his original home, but the difference was negligible. Strictly speaking, since his original world had abandoned him, he had simply returned to a different one.

Kang Tae-sung casually opened the system window and only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠now found it strange that the window remained even after the universe had vanished. He had obtained it inside that lost universe; logically, it should have disappeared along with it.

Perhaps it belonged to a larger concept that existed outside that universe. As he scanned the system window again, he wondered why there was no customer service or one-on-one inquiry option, then laughed at his own absurdity and closed it.

Kang Tae-sung, who had been standing there blankly, finally began to walk slowly down the mountain.

He had wondered if a giant rabbit might appear, but it seemed unlikely that elderly people in such defenseless clothing would stroll around laughing and carrying plastic water bottles in a place like that.

Instead, those same elders glanced at Kang Tae-sung’s completely inappropriate hiking attire. Tough leather pants, a pitch-black leather jacket, military-style combat boots below. He looked like a suspicious character.

“Hello.”

Yet the mixture of curiosity and bewilderment in their eyes felt welcoming. When he offered a small greeting, they nodded back, and the exchange warmed him.

At a fairly wide rest area midway down the trail, the absence of trees finally allowed him to look out over the city below.

“Ah.”

It was a relief.

This wasn’t the past.

It was neither the destroyed city nor the original one, but Kang Tae-sung let out a long breath and simply stood there, gazing down at the view.

The city looked exactly as it had in the past.

However, a massive barrier was under construction in the distant outskirts, curving around the mountain and passing through the nearby area. It hadn’t existed before, and it hadn’t been built yet in the vanished world either.

Maybe I’ve come even further into the future.

He couldn’t tell how or where the changes had occurred, but the thought made him miss his family even more. He especially longed for the family he had lost in the vanished world. It was an unavoidable emotion, even if it had been beyond his control.

But his family would be here as well.

Depending on the exact timing, they might even be healthier.

Perhaps the youngest hasn’t injured his eye yet.

No. That was probably the case. If the world had prepared to this degree and people could casually hike in the mountains, there was no reason for the youngest to risk his life volunteering for monster hunts.

Yet as Kang Tae-sung moved to continue down the trail, he froze.

What his eyes saw told him his earlier assumption had been wrong.

“Big brother?”

The youngest, wearing an eyepatch over one eye, stopped climbing and stared up at him with a similar face.

The moment the expression on Kang Tae-sung’s normally stoic face crumbled, he quickened his steps. At the same time, the youngest’s single eye reddened, and he sprinted upward with surprising speed. The two brothers collided in a fierce embrace.

“I had a feeling, so I’ve been coming here every day while exercising.”

Kang Yeon-sung pulled two cans from the vending machine beside the bench where Kang Tae-sung sat and handed one over.

“It’s been a while.”

There had been no vending machines like this in the previous world. He hadn’t even remembered they existed.

The crisp pop was followed by a sharp hiss of escaping carbonation. Kang Tae-sung listened quietly, then slowly raised the can to his lips and savored the taste. The flavor of a carbonated drink he hadn’t touched in over a century—and which wasn’t particularly healthy—still tasted wonderful.

“I thought you’d come back. Both Han-sung hyung and I.”

Kang Tae-sung realized his younger brother’s appearance was almost exactly as he remembered, and a fresh wave of confusion hit him. For a moment he wondered if he had returned intact to the vanished world.

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“You just got back today, right?”

“Yeah. Just now.”

“We were curious too, but nothing’s been properly explained yet.”

“……”

“I don’t know the details, but something changed that day.”

Kang Yeon-sung suggested they talk while walking down.

It was the first time he had seen his youngest brother ask for anything so directly. Finding the sight oddly endearing, Kang Tae-sung smiled and nodded. Then he laughed again at how strange it felt to walk while holding a soda can instead of a weapon.

“That day, you entered the crack, big brother.”

“Wait. You knew about that?”

Kang Tae-sung glanced around, trying to confirm something. The surroundings were nothing but ordinary scenery. His gaze returned to Kang Yeon-sung, who had stopped beside him.

“Yes. After you went in, the two of us—Han-sung hyung and I—figured we’d just be in the way, so we went back to the empty lot by the villa to train. Yuri noona stayed behind to watch, so we let her.”

But soon both their phones started ringing. Kang Yu-ri was flooding the group chat with urgent messages that only said to come quickly.

Thinking something had happened, they ran back. The scene looked unchanged, but according to Yu-ri…

“You remember that video, right? Your memory might be fuzzy, but you saw it too back then—the moving crack.”

“I do.”

“It suddenly dropped from the sky and went into the crack you had entered. Right after that, the crack started shrinking.”

By the time they arrived, more than half the gap had already closed.

Convinced they would lose their brother again if it sealed shut, Kang Han-sung had tried to throw himself into the crack. The other two had barely managed to hold him back.

“After that… I’m not sure. Both Han-sung hyung and I only remember up to that point. We think we heard something like an explosion, but now even that memory is hazy…”

Whether it had been an explosion or a collapse, he couldn’t recall clearly.

The memory simply cut off there.

“But when we regained consciousness…”

They were back in the past.

Five years earlier, when nothing had changed yet.

“We quickly realized it wasn’t a dream.”

Following the system guidance, after agreeing to overwrite the duplicate data, a sudden, blinding pain had struck one eye. Only then did he realize that eye had been perfectly fine until that moment, and the shock had been almost greater than the pain itself.

Yet that brief joy was followed by the return of the agony and the permanent loss of vision in that eye. The disappointment that came afterward was crushing. When he looked around at the familiar scenery, now missing half his field of vision and the guidance windows that had once floated there, he understood it was all real.

“It happened at school. I collapsed in the middle of class and they laid me down in the infirmary.”

When he left the infirmary bed, he was wearing a school uniform. He recognized the middle-school infirmary from his memories. But the uniform was far too small. The sleeves were short, the pants tight, and the buttons looked ready to burst.

“The uniform hadn’t shrunk. I had grown.”

The data overwrite had adjusted his body to match the physical state from five years later that he remembered.

The school had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in chaos.

“Several students in other grades had also lost consciousness. At first people talked about an acute infectious disease, but soon it became known that the same thing was happening in other schools—across the entire country.”

And everyone who woke up had suddenly aged. Or rather, their bodies had grown to match their future selves.

“And then?”

“It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was pure chaos. I left school early without permission. I was afraid the government might try to kidnap us. It was possible, right?”

“Very possible.”

“When I ran home, Han-sung hyung was already there.”

We… have we returned?

Kang Han-sung had collapsed while working part-time ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at a restaurant and had been taken to the emergency room. He had run straight home from there.

The moment he saw his youngest brother arrive, he realized something was wrong.

They had returned to the past, but their bodies remained the same. It was as if the character data from the future had been overwritten onto the present world, preserving both their memories and physical conditions.

Touching his eyepatch, Kang Yeon-sung continued.

“The chaos wasn’t limited to our country. The whole world was in uproar. There were near-wars, and actual wars did break out… but it was far better than the original timeline. Many people already knew what the future held. Because we were the evidence.”