episode_0002

If you were to be reincarnated, how would you begin?

Like other fantasy novels, will they remember their past from when they were babies?

Learning to read or learn skills from an early age.

In any case, I thought I could go one step further than others.

But it was different from what I thought.

‘I ended up being one step behind everyone else.’

Memories of the past that came to mind infrequently became complete only a week ago.

While my memories came back, I was speechless.

I tried to teach my mother Korean.

My father was confused with his Earth friend and started swearing.

Fortunately, my parents seemed to think it was child’s play.

─So a week ago.

Like waking up from a dream, I realized that I was me.

I am thirteen, almost fourteen, and the son of a hunter deep in the mountains.

My father hunts and prepares or butchers animals.

My mother trims the by-products and makes oil, leather, soap, candles, glue, etc., sells them to the village, and then returns.

I only occasionally helped my mother with her crafts.

I measured time based on the position of the rising sun.

‘I guess around 10 am?’

I am also a local.

My father stops by the cabin at this time of year, but due to the heavy rain a few days ago, he is currently repairing the trap he set on the mountain.

Since we live in the mountains, there are no visitors and there is no compulsory education, so there is nothing to learn. An unsettlingly complete freedom where no one will interfere as long as you do your chores.

Fluttering─

I lay down on the wooden bed covered with leather and took a deep breath.

The smell of a cabin with a faint resin scent that I have smelled for 13 years, and the sweet scent of the forest seeping in through the window.

It’s sweet.

A bird with a good voice that I have had for 13 years sweetly calls for sex, and crickets in the small garden behind the house also call for sex.

Anyway, it’s sweet.

What about the wooden bed covered only with animal skin that has been used to sleep for 13 years?

It was hard, but it had its own charm.

This was because the subject of consciousness was ‘Jeon Si-hyeon’, not ‘Rian’.

‘Ryan’ hated studying.

Because my mother steadfastly refused to teach me how to write.

Thanks to this, I don’t even know how to write my own name.

As a Korean, the disgrace of being illiterate was unbearable.

Still, I didn’t have the shame to ask my parents.

The moment when the subject of consciousness is reversed.

─From then on, I was Jeon Jeon-hyeon, a 28-year-old man who cut out his parents’ hearts.

My mother was one year older than me, and my father was two years older than me.

They are openly separated, and in Korean terms, they are newlyweds.

You got pregnant by a man and a woman who were almost the same age and sucked their blood like a leech?

Memories become tangled, and when I think of my parents, my parents on Earth overlap.

When that happened, I felt so guilty that my heart felt like it would break.

Moreover, there was a moral problem.

The devil told me that ‘attraction’ is a kind of safety chain, a spiritual connection that connects you to people from your past life.

I came in there and cut off the connection.

Thanks to this, the ‘real’ Rian, whom I had been in a relationship with since my past life, was thrown off somewhere.

‘It’s not a good idea to ask and pass by.’

Let’s think about it.

What will my parents think of me if I reveal my identity?

At first you might think it’s a joke. Then, when he feels it is credible, he will get serious and kick me out.

What if you accept me?

What are the disappointments you two will feel and the memories you two will never get back? Even if you accept it, you can never go back to the old days.

─There is nothing but catastrophe in the end.

So, I concluded it right away.

‘Sometimes it’s better not to know.’

There was another reason to keep quiet.

I have a younger brother, Damian, who is one year older than me, and a six-year-old younger sister, Stella. These two will also be looked at with suspicion.

‘What if things go wrong?’

You might think that I’m on to something.

In that case, the only place to look is, of course, religion.

─I am an outsider and a variable.

I should never have been seen by those angels that the devil spoke of.

Moreover, unlike Korea, this was a place where death was light and familiar.

The era in which many children are born is, paradoxically, the era in which the most children die.

There are five people under the age of 30.

That alone explained it.

I remember two children who returned to the earth without making it past their first year.

If something really goes wrong, my parents may give up not only on me but on their innocent children as well.

‘I can never see that.’

It was never an expanded interpretation.

Because humans ultimately cannot understand each other throughout their lives, even if they are a married couple.

Besides, the two of you are old enough to start over.

But covering it up and moving on only makes the wound pus.

To begin with, I wasn’t confident that I could endure it.

Even now, my heart is full of guilt.

There was only one answer.

‘Become independent as quickly as possible by any means necessary.’

I grabbed the strands, buried my face in the bed and closed my eyes.

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“Rian? Are you still sleeping?”

“Yes?! no. ······I woke up now.”

‘···driving me crazy.’

Every time I hear my mother’s voice, I feel like I hear my mother’s voice on Earth. It was like waking up from a terrible nightmare, but it was also a voice that told me that this was reality in the end.

“I should eat dinner and sleep.”

The smell of burning firewood and the savory smell of oil from charcoal-grilled meat stimulates hunger. The smell of the herbal oil was extremely fragrant.

I woke up groggily.

It was already dark outside the window, but since the fire was lit in the stove, it wasn’t that dark inside the house.

The cool breeze coming in from outside the window and the warm fireplace remind me of spring temperatures and make me feel good. My mother was frying something with a spatula on the kitchen counter fixed above the stove.

My mother’s brown hair reflects the light and appears scarlet.

My father is sitting on a chair, sipping fruit wine and looking at my mother. Buttocks, to be exact. It was a look in his eyes that made his younger siblings jump out.

“Rian, what were you doing today?”

“I just slept and walked around.”

“Hyung, you just slept today too.”

Damian responded, scolding me in a sulky tone.

“Hey, I got caught.”

I was embarrassed and smiled sheepishly.

At least a little like a child. Partially pretending not to know, pretending to be having a hard time.

Now it seems like it has become attached to my body unconsciously.

My father, who was admiring my mother’s backside, turned his gaze towards me.

“Aren’t you bored? When my dad was your age, he climbed all the mountains around here─.”

” While wandering around like that, he went missing for two days and the village was turned upside down. How far had people gone to look for it, and they were crying under a tree only 10 minutes away from the village? Yes dad.”

My father became embarrassed, shook his head and pursed his lips.

“I was ten years old. If you suddenly fall into an unknown place, who will be able to find your way?”

“I found it.”

“How?”

Damian’s eyes lit up.

At this, the mother just turns her head and shrugs.

“As long as you look at the constellations and don’t lose your direction, right? Based on Diana’s small moon───.”

A sarcasm appeared on my father’s face.

“That’s not true~! You learned it from your father later, right? If I had known, of course I wouldn’t have forgotten.”

“Strange~? I remember it after I learned it, right?”

There are two moons in this place.

One moon is much smaller than the original moon.

My father closed his mouth and clenched his chin.

I can see clearly that you are glancing at me.

Considering that they are now in their late twenties to thirties, I think they probably got married when they were in high school. If you listen to their conversation from time to time, it seems like the two have been friends since they were children.

‘That really is a match made in heaven.’

I made up the blanket and put on indoor leather shoes similar to slippers. I sat down on the bed, shaking off my sweaty hair and scratching my itchy back that was pressed against the wooden bed while I was lying down.

widely!

The sound of firewood exploding resonated loudly and brought luck.

“······Rian, has anything happened these days?”

‘It happened 14 years ago.’

The father’s eyes, unaware of that fact, are serious.

He had black hair, dark blue eyes, and skin that had often been exposed to sunlight had burned a healthy brown color.

I may be short, but even taking that into account, my father is a tall man. He has a large body, muscles like those of a horse, and a face that looks like a general at best, or like a goblin at worst.

Incongruously, his eyes were full of worry. I can’t even hear my mother humming while preparing dinner.

─Everyone was waiting for my answer.

···I guess I don’t have any talent for acting.

Just a week ago, a child named Lian was the one who ran around and chased the two of you everywhere.

Before my memories came back, I had been talking informally to the two of them and talking nonsense, but that didn’t mean I was stuck like this and just slept.

“I feel like I’m not doing anything.”

“What does that mean?”

‘I need an excuse.’

You can’t cheat.

Getting sick here, where there are no hospitals, is a shortcut that leads directly to death and disability. How can I make it sound like a child’s speech? After a short period of thought, I opened my mouth.

“So… Mom is good at cooking, and Dad is good at hunting, right? But I don’t know how to do anything. I just wish I knew how to do something. ······Don’t crack the beans at home.”

After spitting it out, I had to admit that my true feelings were mixed.

It was a delusion.

He gave me hundreds of millions of dollars and said, ‘Thank you for raising me until now.’ It is a delusion that everyone can be happy and break up by compensating for it.

Of course, it was a delusion and the way to make money was a ‘fantasy’ like the lottery.

A moment of silence followed. Soon, my father’s eyes drew a gentle arc.

“Hehehehe…!”

I feel like laughter is nudging me.

After gulping down a glass of fruit wine, my father got up from his chair, sat down next to me, and put his ‘monkey arm’ around my shoulder.

Ouch!

“Hehehe—?!”

“You thought that groaning hurts anywhere, right?”

Even though it’s just wrapped around and held, it feels like the bones are squeaking. He was a person whose main occupation was hunting, and because he used a very heavy bow, his muscles were very strong.

In particular, the monkey arm, known as the archer’s symbol, was longer and thicker than the other arm by one hand.

When I’m in disbelief, I look at that arm and say, ‘You’re such a mess!’ I said the same crazy thing to his face. If it wasn’t Korean, you would get hit.

Just then, my mother took out the meat stir-fried with vegetables and fruits from the pot and poured the soup from a small pot.

“Oh, it hurts! really! The smell of alcohol───!!!”

After pushing my father away with all my might and running away, I watched my father and mother’s expressions out of the corner of my eye while helping them prepare a meal.

I don’t know what’s going on in your mind, but at least you seem to be at ease now.

At first, I just didn’t want to disappoint.

So I started acting like a child, and now I feel like I’m really becoming a child. It was a terrible feeling.

It’s like a person who has just been discharged asks, ‘Didn’t you hear me correctly?’ Because it felt like I was spitting out habitually.

“Baby. Have all the bear cords been sold?”

“One was sold and the other was not.”

“Crazy guys. How hard is it to catch a bear so you don’t buy it?”

My father smiled and rummaged through my mother’s shopping cart and took out a long bear string.

“Rian. Please bring the dagger from under Dad’s bed.”

“Yes.”

He put the bread he took out of the straw basket on the table and took out a dagger sharpened like a scalpel from the hunting tool box under the bed.

My father took the dagger and measured my arm one by one. After measuring the length of the tendon, he immediately cut the tendon.

“People can learn anything. Dad was like that too. It’s natural that you can’t do anything right now, so don’t be too upset.”

Instead of answering what my father said, I sat down at the table and ate the fried meat with my fork.

“We should all eat together.”

“That’s right. It’s selfish.”

It was an act to look like a child.

My mother sat next to me, stroking my head, and Damian teased me.

My father placed the dagger and tendon on the bed and sat across from me.

The grinning expression on his face as he looks at me makes me very uneasy.

“Maal, who gave us our daily bread today. And thanks to His thirteen faithful servants.

Please have mercy on my struggling child so that he can eat the food provided by Maal and live a long and healthy life.

And I especially ask that you give Rian, who loves snacks, the grace to eat all the boiled vegetables today and be free from constipation.”

I get goosebumps from a love that is heavier than I could imagine.

‘Did you even look through the poop?’

That’s what parental love seems to be.

My father smiled as he looked at me and finished his prayer.

At the same time, the mother’s palm hits the father’s back.

Ok─!!!

The sound that rang out was nothing short of refreshing.

“Eugh-?!”

“Do you want to talk about poop before eating?!”

“······Dad, it’s dirty.”

Stella mumbled and laughed.

“Anyway, there’s nothing I can’t say in front of kids.”

“But I learned it from a place I can trust.”

The meal started with the sound of my father crying.

I put the large slices of vegetables and meat on my fork and took them in one bite.

delicious.

Since no spices are added, it has a fishy smell, but the vegetables and herbs stir-fried together control the fishy and fishy smell to some extent.

I crushed the bread that was about to harden into the soup with melted cheese and ate it.

The sticky cheese sticks to your mouth.

The rich aroma fills your mouth and quickly melts into the soft bread.

There were many salads and root vegetable dishes made by boiling edible grass in hot water and adding sauce.

“Eat some vegetables, too! stellar! You eat it too!”

“Sear it──!”

Damien was watching us, as if he didn’t like the fact that the root vegetables he had dug up were being shunned. I had no choice but to eat it.

Unlike Korean vegetables, it does not contain any salt, so it is not salty. When I tasted it, each type had its own unique aroma and mild sweetness.

This is not a vegetable that originally tasted like this.

‘Did you mix it with honey?’

This is a place where the beekeeping industry is not developed.

It’s expensive because no nobles in the city can eat it.

Thanks to this, it must be a luxury item that merchants are keen to buy, right?

“Mother. Where did you get the honey?”

Seeing the corners of my father’s mouth turn up, it looks like he collected it himself.

” While climbing the mountain, I came across a beehive, so I tore it down.”

My father shrugs proudly. Southern bees are poisonous, so unless you’re an expert, you’ll most likely just pass by.

“If you eat too much, your teeth will rot, so eat little by little. Understand? And I’m going to sell half of it.”

I never thought there would come a day when I would hate hearing my mother’s gentle words like this. Ah, we made eye contact.

“What is good for the body is bitter, and what is bad for the body is sweet.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed slightly as she read my expression.

I felt strange.

Because it was something I heard a lot from my real mother.

‘It’s rotting.’

It was a nostalgic yet welcome word.

“Yes.”

But I was disappointed that I couldn’t bear it.

Here, vivid sweetness can only be found in honey.

In this world, even the fruits are not that sweet.

This is a place that makes you realize once again how great breeding is.

The meal continued, but there was no sign of the food running out.

This is because there is no refrigerator, so the ingredients that must be consumed are limited.

However, selling food ingredients at low prices ultimately puts a strain on our livelihood.

Even though I ate enough food to fill my stomach today, there was still food left.

“I ate well.” “It was a good meal…!”

Damien and Stella were already sprawled out on the bed, suffering from overeating. Everyone will probably fall asleep within 10 minutes.

I looked at the leftover food.

Cooked food has a very unique and sweet smell to mountain animals. As a result, it is easy for bugs, rats, and curious bears to be attracted, so the leftover food goes far away.

However, my father always carried the bowl and placed it on the wooden board outside the house.

It was the same today.

When the meal was over, my father collected the soup bowls, poured all the soup into one bowl, put the meat in another bowl, and went out of the house.

“Dad, why are you putting the leftovers outside?”

“That is an offering to the mountain owner.”

Mother said with a smile.

‘Mountain owner?’

Do you believe in mountain spirits or something similar to folklore?

“Does the mountain have an owner? Isn’t the owner a lord?”

My mother raises the corners of her mouth slightly and looks down at me.

“The true owner of the mountain is different. They can easily subdue wolves, and they are large and strong. And he likes torturing young children like Lian.”

It seemed like a humorous way of scaring me.

So it was precious and pierced my heart.

“They are bad people.”

“But if you donate something to eat like that, he may bring you something good.”

“Yes? Is it a good one?”

“I heard you bring me tree roots that grow underground, monkfish mushrooms, and medicinal herbs, and sometimes rawhide, right? Well, the condition was bad.”

My mother shrugged as she said that.

You brought it to me? Are they real people and not legends?

“Why does he live in the mountains instead of in the village? Or, shouldn’t we just eat it together during dinner?”

“The owner of the mountain is not human.”

“Then, are you a monster?”

The corners of my mother’s mouth went up a little more as she looked down at me.

“Not a monster either.”

“It’s Ain.”

My father had already returned, holding a piece of wood in his hand. My mother glared at my father, but my father pretended not to notice and avoided her gaze.

Then, he sat down on the bed, spread a cloth on the floor, and started carving a piece of wood on it. He has his head down, but I can see it.

The laughter of a father who succeeded in getting his timid revenge.

“A person who controls a mountain as his territory. He is literally the owner of the mountain. Ryan has never seen another race before, right?”

Different races?

“A different race? What is that?”

“It is so common that you can see Rectalians, Goblins, and Dvergs even if you just wander around the city for a day or two.”

“What does it look like?”

“Well, it looks like a mixture of an animal and a human…”

My father’s next words were a refreshing shock.

I’ve heard of goblins.

It even looked like something I knew.

A human with green skin, a long nose and ears, and a small body that acts like a group.

What’s important is that the pronunciation is ‘goblin’.

‘Why is the race’s name Goblin?’

In addition, there were various types of demihumans, such as elves, kobolds, lamias, naga, and centaurs. This is a name everyone has heard at least once.

It may have been just one thing, but it was difficult to see it as a coincidence.

The fact that all the mythical creatures lived here meant that this world had people related to the Earth.

‘Is there anyone else besides me who has made a contract with the devil?’

Maybe we can find a clue to return to Earth?

My heart was beating wildly.

Before I knew it, my father had figured out the shape of the bow and started wrapping cloth around the handle.

“You don’t have to be too scared. They are people too.”

“What are you afraid of? It’s not scary at all.”

It’s actually interesting.

My father didn’t say anything and just smiled.

No matter how I look at it, it seems like a misunderstanding.

The world history of the new world that followed was a fun fairy tale.

The story of the Great Wall, the conflict and war between the demi-humans, the Cold War, the land where the snow does not melt all year round, the burning desert, the empire, the neutral country of magic Horus, the dragon and the sea god, etc.

Of course, it’s all thanks to my father who explains it well and explains it in an interesting way.

‘If it weren’t for a world like this, wouldn’t my father have become a teacher?’

The night deepened as I exchanged shallow questions and jokes with my father about world history.