The Place Where Names Were Written
That evening, the Hero took a phone call in an empty apartment.
Lecture notes lay open on the dining table beside a lunchbox gone cold. Beyond the window, the Han River had sunk into darkness, and the only sound in the living room was the low whir of a laptop fan.
The name Settler Management Bureau lit up on his phone screen.
The Hero set down his chopsticks.
It was an institution he had faced more than once since his return.
The call was brief.
A dimensional transferee had arrived from the other world. The transferee was claiming to be the Saintess of the Order of the Goddess of Love. And she had requested a meeting with him.
Saintess.
The moment that word fell into the empty living room, the Hero's hand locked against the edge of the table.
The text on the laptop screen, the lunchbox on the table, the lights beyond the window — all of it receded.
The last time he had seen Ria, she had been standing before the transfer gate.
Biting her lip so she wouldn't cry, her eyes reddening all the same. Trying so hard to smile bravely until the farewell was over, then standing frozen in place, unable to say a single word after he pressed a brief kiss to her forehead and turned away.
A girl with a beautiful smile.
Someone who had felt like a beloved little sister.
That Ria had come to see him.
"I can't come right now, can I."
The Hero's hand pressed harder against the table's edge.
A short answer came through the receiver.
"No. We will contact you again once permission is granted."
It was the answer he had expected, and still his grip on the table tightened.
"…Understood."
The call ended.
The phone screen went dark soon after.
Beside the cold lunchbox, only a black screen remained.
The living room fell quiet again.
It was the same quiet he had grown used to only moments before.
But now that quiet felt almost unbearably vast.
For three days, the Saintess stayed in a temporary room at the bureau.
The room was clean.
Each morning when she returned, the blanket had been folded neatly again, and a fresh water bottle sat on the desk.
There were traces that someone was looking after her, but no trace that anyone had stayed.
Every morning, a knock came at the door.
The Saintess answered questions, kindled a faint light at her fingertips, and pressed her lips shut for a moment before words she did not know. Then she returned to her room.
When the door closed, only waiting remained inside.
That the Hero was alive in this country. That he had received her request for a meeting. And that permission had not yet been granted.
The Saintess repeated those three sentences over and over in her mind.
She could wait.
She had waited three years, after all.
But three days on Earth passed more slowly than three years in the other world.
At night, the lights and noise of Myeongdong lingered behind her eyelids. By day, the fluorescent lights in the bureau corridors felt too white. The sky outside the window resembled the sky she knew, but everything beneath it was strange.
The Saintess lightly pinched the hem of the beige cotton dress she had been given.
It was far simpler and lighter than her saintess robes from the other world. The woman reflected in the mirror was unfamiliar somehow. A woman in a beige dress instead of saintess robes stood before the glass. Her fingertips clutched the skirt hem, and her eyes kept drifting toward the door.
The beige dress in the mirror was still foreign.
The strength in the fingers gripping the hem lingered a long time.
Today, still, no answer had come.
The Saintess sat at the small desk and unfolded the informational pamphlet the bureau had given her once more.
She could read the words.
But at some point, she found herself reading the same line over and over.
Visitation eligibility will be notified at a later date.
Her fingertip rested on that sentence for a long while.
On the afternoon of the third day, the Hero took a call while jotting notes in the back row of a lecture hall.
The name Settler Management Bureau lit up on his phone screen.
The tip of his pen froze on the notebook page.
The professor's voice, the clatter of students typing on laptops, the writing on the blackboard — all of it fell away.
The call was brief.
The visit had been approved. He was to come to the bureau visitation room at the designated time that afternoon.
The Hero folded his lecture materials before he had even finished answering.
A jacket thrown carelessly over a hoodie, jeans, a backpack slung over one shoulder. No armor from the other world, no holy knight's cloak. He left the lecture hall looking like nothing more than a university student called out mid-class.
The moment he stepped into the hallway, his pace quickened.
Unable to wait for the elevator, he took the stairs.
That afternoon, the Saintess stood for a long time before the bureau visitation room with her hands clasped together.
She had been briefed several times since morning. That a staff member would be present. That they would meet through glass at first.
The Saintess gave a short nod.
The words about the staff member and the glass partition brushed past her ears. Only one sentence remained in her mind.
Soon I will see the Hero.
That single fact pushed every other sentence aside.
The Saintess lightly pinched the hem of the beige cotton dress she had been given. Even after wearing it for several days, the fabric still felt foreign against her skin. There was none of the weight that had held her shoulders and waist the way her saintess robes once had.
The beige dress rested lightly on her body. The Saintess pinched the hem once more. The tension that the robes had once held for her before the altar now lived only in her fingertips.
Still — today she would meet him in this dress.
The Saintess lowered her head, then raised it again.
Nothing had been decided yet.
There was only the fact that soon, she would be able to see him.
The Hero's hand locked around the visitation room doorknob.
Beyond the door was a quiet room.
Through the transparent glass partition that bisected the space, a person was sitting.
At first he thought he must be mistaken.
Silver hair. Hands folded neatly together. A profile he would have recognized even before she lifted her head.
Ria.
On the day the war ended, the Ria he had last seen was still small. A girl whose eyes curved first when she smiled. A child who would say she was fine first, even as her fingertips grew cold after prayer. A child who pressed her lips tight so she wouldn't cry in front of the wounded.
She had been the Saintess then, but to the Hero she had been, first and foremost, someone he wanted to protect. Someone dear and good, always trying to endure alone — like a little sister.
Just before he left, he had pressed the lightest kiss to Ria's forehead. He had believed that brief kiss held everything — his gratitude, his wish for her to be well, his hope that she would never hurt again.
But on the Ria beyond the glass, time he had no memory of had settled.
She lifted her head.
The moment their eyes met, the Hero forgot how to breathe.
The same silver hair. The same eyes. The line of her shoulders beneath the beige dress was composed, and on the face that rose to meet him, three years of waiting had quietly taken root.
The girl he remembered had become a beautiful woman, sitting before him.
The Hero only managed to move by putting force into the hand still gripping the doorknob.
"…Ria."
Her name came first.
The Saintess rose from her seat.
The chair scraped back with the smallest sound. She stepped forward to the glass partition and raised her hand. Her palm came to rest quietly against the transparent wall.
That palm on the glass stopped before him.
The hand that had once held his pulse on the battlefield. The hand that had stayed cold long after the healing was done. That hand was now reaching for him through a single sheet of glass.
The Hero stepped closer.
He raised his hand as well.
A pane of glass lay between their palms.
Even so, the two hands overlapped in the same place.
The Saintess's lips trembled slightly.
"I missed you."
The Hero's lips parted, then closed without a sound.
There had been nights he imagined those words. Even after returning, on a few absurd nights, he had dreamed of Ria coming to find him. But the Ria in his dreams had always stood at the edge of the battlefield — exactly as she had been when he kissed her forehead and left her behind.
The Ria beyond the glass had passed through the memory of the transfer gate and was sitting in this room now.
She had truly crossed worlds.
The Hero spoke low, his palm still against the glass.
"Me too."
The words were far too short.
Even so, the Saintess heard them and let out a long, slow breath.
Beyond the glass, the corners of her eyes grew wet.
The Hero pressed his lips together once, then opened them again.
"You made it."
Only then did the Saintess's breath catch short.
The tears came without sound.
She tried not to lower her head, but the tears fell first. The hand she had placed on the glass stayed where it was. The Hero did not pull his hand away either.
Between palms that could not touch, the time they had never spoken of lay quietly at rest.
The visitation time was not long.
The Female Agent checked her recording terminal, then guided the Hero to a separate consultation room. The Saintess remained in the visitation room for a while with another agent.
The moment the Hero entered the consultation room, he asked,
"Can I take Ria with me?"
The agent's fingers scrolled down the terminal screen. A document page turned.
"Settlement procedures are currently in progress. External residence approval is difficult under simple guardianship alone."
A set of documents lay on the desk.
"Even if I take full responsibility?"
"Intent to take responsibility is not sufficient on its own."
The agent's voice did not rise. Only another page of documents on the desk turned over.
The Hero's fingers curled inward.
"Would it be possible if we were family?"
The agent's fingertips froze on the terminal. She checked the screen, then answered.
"That would be subject to review."
The Hero lifted his head.
"Does that include marriage?"
"It does."
A short answer.
Even after hearing it, the Hero did not move right away.
Marriage.
The moment he saw that word on the document, the Hero remembered the brief kiss he had once pressed to Ria's forehead long ago.
His hand hovered before the pen for a long while.
The agent spoke.
"However, the principal party's own will comes first."
The Hero nodded.
"Please let me confirm it with her directly."
The Saintess entered the consultation room again.
This time, there was no glass partition.
That fact alone made the Saintess's steps slow a little.
The Hero rose from his seat, then sat back down almost at once. Under the fluorescent lights, Ria's shoulders looked especially small. The glass that had divided them moments before was gone, but the documents on the desk had taken its place.
The Saintess sat in the chair across from him.
A thin set of papers lay on the desk. The moment she read the title written across the top, her fingertips stopped on her knees.
Marriage Registration Form.
He did not place his hand on the papers.
"Ria."
The Saintess raised her head.
The blank fields on the form sat white and empty under the fluorescent light.
"If I want to take you out of here, this is the only way right now."
The Saintess did not answer.
"But…"
The Hero lowered his breath as if choosing his words carefully. Blank spaces still waited on the form, empty of any name.
"Once you write it, it becomes a lifelong promise."
The Saintess's fingertips shifted slightly on her knees.
"You don't have to if you don't want to."
The Hero added quietly,
"Even if you don't, I'll still protect you."
There his words locked shut.
The pen still lay in the middle of the desk, and the blank fields on the form remained empty.
The Saintess reached her hand toward the papers.
Blank lines stood in rows across the thin sheet. Name. Address. Date of birth. Spouse. Earth's writing was cold and precise.
The Saintess steadied her breath before those empty fields, then quietly lifted her head.
"I didn't come here to wait."
The Hero's fingertips went rigid beneath the desk.
The Saintess folded her hands on her knees. Her fingertips trembled, but she did not lower her head.
"I waited three years."
Her fingertips moved toward the pen resting in the center of the desk. Then she raised her gaze to the Hero again.
"I want to be by your side."
The Saintess brought her hand over the form. The blank fields remained white under the fluorescent light.
The Hero asked nothing more.
The Saintess picked up the pen from the center of the desk. Her fingertips shook, but the pen did not fall. She wrote her name, stroke by stroke.
The letters were slow — partly because Earth's writing was still not fully familiar, and partly because her hand was trembling. But she wrote every last stroke herself.
The Saintess's name was the first to settle on the form.
The Hero steadied his breath for a long while before that name.
Only after she set the pen down did he take it up.
The form required the name he used on Earth. The name Ria called him by had no place on it.
Hero.
And yet the strength in the hand she had held still carried that name intact.
The Hero wrote his own name, stroke by stroke.
Two names remained on the same sheet of paper.
The Saintess drew a long breath before that small line of writing.
The agent reviewed the documents. The stamp made a cold, brief sound. The Saintess's shoulders trembled faintly. The Hero's hand had gone rigid beneath the desk as well.
Toward that hand, the Saintess's fingertips carefully approached.
She moved first. She brushed the back of the Hero's hand with her fingertips. The Hero swallowed a breath at that small contact. A moment later, his palm closed carefully around hers.
The Saintess's fingertips were still cold.
The Hero held that hand for a long while, breathing low. Then he put strength into his fingers.
This time, there was no glass.
After the procedures were complete, the agent guided them both into the corridor.
The Saintess paused briefly at the doorway. The hallway leading to the temporary lodging she had passed through the night before lay in the opposite direction. That door was closed, and only a quiet light remained at the far end of the corridor.
The agent opened the exit on the other side. Outside air came in a little colder.
The Hero did not go out first. He was waiting for the Saintess at the door.
Her hand moved closer to his. The two names that had been laid on the same paper moments before were now steadying their breath before the same doorway.
"Let's go."
The Hero said.
It was a short phrase.
The Saintess took a step closer to take his hand.
"Yes."
The Hero held out his hand. This time the Saintess took it without hesitation.
His hand was warm.
During the war, he had held Ria's hand any number of times. Crossing collapsing roads. Passing through crowds of refugees. When she had used her divine power for too long and her fingertips had gone cold. Every time, the Hero's hand had always been there ahead of her.
This time, the Saintess held that hand a little deeper.
The Hero felt that strength and slowed his pace.
The two of them walked toward the bureau exit. The automatic doors at the end of the corridor opened, and the night air of the city rushed in.
The Saintess blinked once. There was so much light. So much sound. Everything was still unfamiliar.
She put strength into the hand she held. The Hero slowed his steps.
Together, they stepped out through the doors.
Evening light stretched long across the bureau's glass entrance. The Saintess walked through that light. Beside her were the Hero's footsteps.
They moved in silence. In the car, in the elevator, the Saintess occasionally looked down at her left hand. It was the hand that had held a pen only moments before. Now it was holding the Hero's.
The elevator stopped.
The Hero walked the hallway and stood before a door.
"This is my place."
The front door stood before them both. A small light glowed on the number pad beside it. The hallway was quiet, and only the soft sound of the Hero taking a key from his pocket broke the silence.
The Saintess carefully took his hand. The Hero's hand closed more deeply over hers.
The cold of the glass that had lingered on her palm until moments ago slowly melted inside that grip.
Just before the door opened, the Saintess held his hand tight.
Beyond that door was a place where two people who had been alone could rest together for the first time.