Return to the Ruins
Past midnight, Kang Tae-sung arrived at the edge of the neighborhood where he once lived. Stars still glittered across the night sky. Without any artificial lighting, the outskirts looked no different from the wilds beyond the city.
He wandered through the collapsed housing complexes and shattered storefronts, using whatever traces remained as landmarks while searching for his old home. At times he closed his eyes, trying to recall the paths he had once walked, or forcing himself to remember the faces of neighbors who had lived nearby.
Time had passed, yet strangely, the memories remained. In fact, details that had once been hazy now resurfaced with greater clarity than before.
Was it because he had returned to his hometown?
Or because he had returned to the past?
He lifted his hand and examined it under the starlight. The skin, which should have been wrinkled and weathered, showed little change from his youth aside from the scars that marked it.
More than a century had passed, yet he did not feel old. Just as his body remained whole, so did his mind.
After all, the place he had come from was a battlefield.
On the battlefield, time did not flow. It merely hovered between life and death, swaying endlessly.
This should be the place.
The man stopped. His gaze settled on the rubble of a collapsed building tangled among the surrounding ruins.
He stood there for a moment, studying the mound of dust-covered debris, and realized it had once been the house where he and his family lived.
I don’t recall any redevelopment plans.
The sight was so thorough it looked as though the entire neighborhood had been swept clean, prompting the grim thought.
He stepped into the remains of the two-story house and began clearing the rubble with his bare hands, shoving aside large chunks of concrete and brick.
Rumble.
Crack.
The sudden noise shattered the quiet night, but he paid it no mind. There was no way to do this silently.
His expression remained hard as he dug through the wreckage.
He prayed to whatever gods he had once met that nothing would be found inside—especially not a body.
Even though those gods did not belong to this world, they were the only ones who came to mind.
“Haa.”
Luckily, after overturning most of the debris, he found no corpses or anything resembling one. It seemed the family had left in a hurry; wardrobes, clothing, and larger belongings too cumbersome to carry remained scattered throughout the ruins.
Among them was a photograph the family had taken together, once displayed on the table beside the sofa. The frame was shattered, and the picture itself was stained and damp from rainwater, yet when he saw the six smiling faces, a faint smile touched his lips.
Father.
Mother.
His second brother, third sister, and youngest sibling.
They all looked toward him with similar smiles. And standing among them was himself…
Hold on.
He folded the photograph carefully and slipped it into his pocket.
Hold on, no matter what. I’ll find you.
Rustle.
“……”
At that moment, he caught a faint presence nearby.
The night fell silent again, as though nothing had happened, but his senses remained locked on the exact spot where the presence had been.
Step. Step.
He deliberately made noise as he approached. If they were human, they would recognize the footsteps; if not, their reaction would reveal the truth.
As long as no arrows or bullets came flying from the dark, there should be no real danger…
Arrows… guns.
Remembering that firearms existed in this world, he shifted sideways, moving off his previous path. No attack came. Instead, he sensed several human presences huddled beneath the ruins of a nearby building.
Their movements carried no threat. They felt less like predators lying in wait and more like prey curled up, hoping the danger would simply pass them by.
“I’d like to ask something.”
He stopped at a reasonable distance and spoke first.
Aside from the occasional muttered word to himself, he rarely spoke at all, so his voice came out hoarse and cracked. After clearing his throat a couple of times, he repeated the words and continued.
“Where did the people who lived here go? Or rather, can you tell me what happened to this place?”
Learning where his family had gone was important, but understanding what had occurred on Earth took priority.
Yet no answer came from beneath the rubble.
The clustered presences suggested they were huddled together, watching him warily.
“……”
He studied their silence for a moment, then reached into his inner pocket and pulled out the leather pouch the King had given him. He opened it and slipped his hand inside.
He had thought offering something might earn a bit of goodwill. What surprised him was realizing the pouch held far more space than its exterior suggested.
He had known mana existed, so magic was plausible, but confirming that an otherworldly magical tool retained its full power here made him question once more whether this truly was the Earth he remembered.
He fished out a plain gold coin and tossed it lightly. It landed precisely through a gap in the rubble.
Ting. Ting.
The coin bounced once before someone snatched it up, silencing it.
“It’s gold… probably.”
Even if the world had changed, gold’s value should not have vanished. As that thought crossed his mind, a faint voice finally answered from within.
“Everyone left. Not many houses remain.”
“If they left, where did they go? …More importantly, I need to know what happened.”
“This area’s too far from the protected zone, so no one pays it any mind. Since there aren’t any people, monsters don’t come either. That’s why we thought it might be safer…”
The explanation was long but made little sense.
“Still, you made quite a racket earlier. Monsters might come back because of it. We can’t leave at night, so we’ll have to wait until dawn.”
“Do you know the Kang Su-hwan family? They lived up that alley. Any idea where they went?”
“We’re not from here originally, so we don’t know the old residents.”
A woman’s voice—likely the man’s wife—answered in his stead.
“Then, could you tell me today’s date?”
“The date…? Let’s see. Maybe the eleventh or twelfth of May.”
“What year?”
“……”
The silence that followed his odd question was broken by the man’s voice, now sounding exasperated.
“2025! Five years have passed since that incident, so of course it’s 2025. How could you not know that?”
His tone was far more agitated than the cautious silence from moments before. Realizing he had raised his voice, the man quickly fell quiet again.
2025.
Kang Tae-sung’s expression mirrored the confusion he felt. He had crossed over in 2020, so arriving five years later made sense.
But “that incident”…
For a brief, disoriented moment he wondered if they meant his own disappearance, yet he knew that could not be the case and steadied himself.
“One last question. What exactly was that incident?”
No answer came.
A heavy silence hung in the air, as though the words were too unpleasant to speak aloud. He did not press further and simply turned away.
He returned to the ruins of his house and gathered a few items into the leather pouch—clothes his family had been unable to take, a few belongings, unopened soap and packaged tissues from the bathroom. While sorting through the wreckage, he found an old combat uniform hanging in the corner of a broken wardrobe.
Kang Tae-sung
(Kang)
His name was still embroidered on the chest. Even after so many years, the sight stirred no particular fondness—perhaps a common sentiment among all discharged soldiers toward anything military-related.
Still, the uniform looked wearable. After comparing it several times with the ragged clothes he currently wore, he sighed softly and changed into it.
The top fit reasonably well, but the pants were impossible to wear. His old, lean frame had filled out with muscle; the waist and thighs no longer fit.
He stored the pants in the spatial pouch and put his old sturdy leather pants back on. At least the combat boots that came with the uniform still fit, allowing him to discard the crude leather shoes.
His feet were covered in thick calluses, so any footwear felt similar, yet even mass-produced combat boots were vastly superior in quality to the leather shoes.
After collecting what he could from the ruins, the man named Kang Tae-sung let out a quiet sigh and turned away.
Before leaving, he glanced once more toward the building where the survivors hid, but he had no desire to force answers from people who clearly wished to remain silent.
Unless it was a matter of national security, someone else would surely talk. For now, the fragments he had gathered were enough to piece together the current situation.
The mention of monsters confirmed what he had already suspected. The “protected zone” likely referred to areas where defenses against monsters were maintained.
If so, the city center was probably the protected zone. That was where he would head next.