Return (3)
It was after I had lightly cleared a B-rank dungeon with capable party members.
“Mr. Han Dohyeon! Could I possibly get your contact information!?”
As we stepped outside, Kim Sangjin’s eyes lit up and he immediately started trying to get my number.
“…My number?”
Shouldn’t he be hitting on Park Ina right about now instead of me?
“Yes! Today felt too good—I’d like to stay in touch often from now on!”
Getting hit on for a number by a guy rather than a girl was a first for me.
Unexpectedly, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling.
“I’m sorry, but my contact info is a bit…”
“Ah! Then how about this!?”
Surprisingly, Kim Sangjin put his phone away without fuss, yet he clearly had no intention of giving up. This time he pulled out a business card and offered it with polite formality.
“My card.”
It bore a flashy company name written in English letters alongside Kim Sangjin’s contact details.
I’ve seen this somewhere before…
Something about the name felt familiar. After thinking it over, I realized it was an explorer specialty firm that often appeared on television.
So even as a B-rank, he wasn’t working for some no-name outfit.
Not that it suddenly created interest where none had existed.
“As a fellow swordsman, I’d really like to have a serious conversation with you!”
“Yeah, well… then just the card…”
“You’ll contact me, right!?”
“…I don’t know. Depending on my schedule…”
“I’ll make the time!”
What a pain.
I managed to peel Kim Sangjin off—he was grinding his teeth trying to lock down a promise—and finally climbed into the car with nothing but the business card.
And then.
He didn’t notice, did he?
I slipped a hand into my pocket and carefully drew out the item I had tucked away so tightly.
A small glass bottle no bigger than a finger.
Inside the bottle I had found in the dungeon was a liquid that glowed with a soft blue light.
None other than Mermaid’s Tears.
I never thought I’d actually get my hands on this.
Drinking Mermaid’s Tears permanently and drastically increased the user’s mana capacity.
A truly unprecedented cheat-level item that could shatter the limits of talent in a single gulp.
Back in our Hero days, we had stumbled across information about it and invested no small amount of time trying to obtain it…
In the end, we never got the Mermaid’s Tears.
Just as we somehow managed to secure it, the Demon King’s army descended, and the bottle shattered into pieces during the battle.
Well, thanks to that everyone completely lost it and wiped the Demon King’s forces out.
Afterward we never found another cheat-level elixir like Mermaid’s Tears anywhere.
Yet now, at last, it had come into my hands.
What do I do with this?
The first thought that rose was selling it.
Demand for a special elixir like this would be overflowing; I could definitely make a tidy sum.
The problem was where and how to sell it.
I knew exactly what Mermaid’s Tears were, but the odds that anyone else did were low.
Even I, while living as an ordinary person, had never once heard of anything called “Mermaid’s Tears.”
Actually turning it into cash would take quite a long time.
Maybe better just to use it.
Using it myself right now, though, didn’t make much sense.
In the same way, Choi Yeonjeong wouldn’t be all that different.
It would feel like pouring water into an already vast lake.
It wouldn’t be completely useless, but there was an undeniable sense of waste.
Should I give it to Nakyeong?
With Nakyeong, however, the story changed.
Having inherited her mother’s talent intact, Nakyeong possessed outstanding potential.
Even I had been stunned when she crushed the infamous Academy entrance exam with a perfect score.
It was only the second perfect score in the Academy’s entire history since its founding.
I really should have hung a banner on the apartment building.
For reference, the first perfect score belonged to Choi Yeonjeong.
Considering she had brought nearly all her power from her Hero days, our Nakyeong was far more impressive.
Even if right now she seemed to be maintaining only middling grades.
…Or…
Besides Nakyeong, one other person came to mind.
Cheon Seo-hui.
Honestly, the justification was far stronger on her side.
She was the Hero who would one day have to fight the Demon King.
Simply for being the Hero, there was no reason to hold back an elixir this good.
No—rather, it wouldn’t be enough even if I poured everything into her.
However.
“Haa…. This is hard.”
I also didn’t feel entirely comfortable just handing it over to Cheon Seo-hui.
A somewhat personal problem, you could say.
Daughter or wife.
No one in this world could casually choose between wife and daughter.
…At least I couldn’t.
After many twists and turns, I had officially become a B-rank explorer.
“Please work hard for our Academy going forward.”
To cut to the chase, I was successfully hired by the Academy.
Needless to say, it was entirely thanks to Choi Yeonjeong.
“Thank you! Choi Yeonjeong! You’re the only one!”
“Oh my. Only at times like this?”
On the way out after finishing talks with the principal, Choi Yeonjeong walked along and shot me a sidelong glance.
Without her, becoming a teacher would have remained pure fantasy.
“Want a kiss for it?”
“Trying to wipe your mouth clean with just that?”
“Caught me?”
Even for Choi Yeonjeong, inserting an unknown B-rank explorer as an Academy teacher had been no easy task.
Dropping someone with such a short career among all those prestigious names would have looked suspicious no matter what.
So, unfortunately, the appointment had nearly fallen through…
But in the end Choi Yeonjeong played her trump card.
“Then what if I join as well?”
She offered to join the faculty herself.
“R-Really!?”
The startled principal’s mouth dropped open and his entire attitude flipped in an instant.
The Academy’s greatest graduate. The Divine Archer who was never left out of any conversation about the strongest in the country was returning to the Academy.
At that point, the hiring impropriety of some unknown B-rank explorer was no longer even worth discussing.
“If you would just do that for us, we’ll somehow push Mr. Han Dohyeon’s appointment through!”
And so, thanks to Choi Yeonjeong’s efforts, I was able to put my name on the teaching staff…
A thought suddenly struck me.
“But, you know.”
“Hm?”
“Why did you say you’d do it?”
Even for my sake, did Choi Yeonjeong really need to go that far?
“…Well.”
Trailing off with a strange expression, Choi Yeonjeong glanced at me, then looked away again and answered primly.
“I just wanted to.”
“What. There’s no such thing as ‘just’ in the world.”
“I thought there wasn’t either. Turns out there is.”
“…?”
I couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of her words.
Anyway.
What mattered was that we would be working as colleagues again.
And that I had landed a respectable job others would envy.
It was something that simply had to be celebrated.
“What!? Han Dohyeon became an Academy teacher!?”
A small izakaya in a busy Seoul district.
“Our country’s public education has really gone down the drain.”
Jeong Cheol, owner of the izakaya Yongsajeong—large-framed with rough, bold features—clicked his tongue and shook his head.
One of the comrades who had been summoned to the other world with me.
“Exactly.”
The small woman sitting beside him cradled her swollen belly and chuckled.
“You’re not going to start fighting while teaching the kids, are you?”
Im Semi. She too was a former comrade summoned to the other world; these days she was the real power behind Yongsajeong.
The two of them, looking toward their thirteenth year of married life, were among my few remaining friends.
“Remember when Dohyeon and Cheol fought that time? Back in the Iron Mountain Range…”
“Oh! Right! Both of you were completely pissed…!”
“What are you talking about. I wasn’t angry then.”
“Yeah, no. You flipped your eyes, foamed at the mouth, and charged.”
All of us orphans or without family, even twelve years later we still lived like family.
If it hadn’t been for these three, I probably never would have made it this far.
Whenever that thought crossed my mind, the one who wasn’t here kept weighing on me.
…If only Yubin were here too.
The others who had watched her die with me would be thinking the same thing.
Even while we gathered after so long and let ourselves enjoy freely, memories of her would suddenly surge up and unsettle my heart.
As if the heavens were warning me not to be too happy alone.
“Heyyy! Yeonjeong! Let’s go for round two at my place!”
“Nakyeong will get mad.”
“Ugh! A dad wants to drink a little with his friends! Huh!? I’ll give her a sharp talking-to!”
“You better say it, then.”
As usual I got completely wasted again and was hauled home by Choi Yeonjeong.
“Hwaaam….”
“Sleepy? If you’re sleepy, sleep a bit. I’ll wake you when we get there.”
“What’re you saying…. I’m not sleepy…?”
“Yeah. Got it, so just lean on me already.”
“Mm….”
My last memory of the night was the overwhelming softness that completely enveloped my face.
And then.
“…….”
“Hi, Nakyeong?”
Nakyeong standing in the entryway with a murderous expression, and Choi Yeonjeong smiling brightly as she greeted her.
It was the day after the celebration party with my friends.
“Ugh…. I’m dying….”
Waking in the early hours, I frowned at the brutal hangover and forced myself upright.
Relying on the dim light to look around, it seemed I had at least made it home properly…
“……?”
Somehow I felt a presence from the other side of the bed.
Even in my hazy state I could tell with certainty that the other person was female.
“!?”
My heart plummeted.
Gulp. I swallowed, held my breath, and carefully craned my neck to check the face of the person beside me.
C-Could it be…
And then I let out a long, deep sigh of relief.
“…Phew…”
The woman sleeping next to me was none other than Nakyeong.
Why is she sleeping in my room again?
One way or another, the accident I had feared apparently hadn’t happened.
Having nearly had a heart attack thinking I’d messed up with Choi Yeonjeong, I sighed in relief once more and quietly slipped out of bed.
Ugh. My back.
My lower back was especially sore; I must have slept wrong.
Seeing how this always happened whenever Nakyeong snuck into the room, maybe the bed was simply too small.
I really need to cut down on drinking now.
Unlike me, Choi Yeonjeong wore a blessing that let her regulate her own drunkenness to some degree. I couldn’t.
I could strengthen my body with mana, but I couldn’t break down alcohol.
So whenever we drank together, somehow only I always ended up completely wasted.
Of course the drinking itself was fun, so I didn’t particularly dislike it.
But as the one left to handle the aftermath, it wasn’t all good.
Especially the part about soothing Nakyeong.
How am I supposed to calm her down today…
After that, time flew by, and it became the summer vacation just before the new semester.
“Hehe. I wish vacation would end already so the semester can start.”
For some reason Nakyeong was extremely happy that I had become an Academy teacher.
“Why?”
“I can ride to work with Dad every morning!”
“Who said I’d give you a ride?”
“If you don’t, I’ll cause accidents every day and summon you.”
“Wow. That’s a threat I never saw coming.”
Her motives were thoroughly impure, but seeing her so pleased made me feel good too.
“I’m off.”
“You’re eating dinner at home, right?”
“Probably.”
“Okay. Be careful!”
“Yeah.”
During the vacation I also attended training sessions for new teachers at the empty Academy.
“Dohyeon! We were planning to grab a drink tonight—want to join us?”
“I have plans today, so I’ll join next time.”
I also managed to build decent friendships with the other newly hired teachers.
Literally everything was proceeding step by step according to plan.
Hehe. Things are going smoothly.
As a result confidence surged, and I fully expected I would have no trouble getting closer to Cheon Seo-hui as well.
…Until the new semester began.