Chapter 3 : Hyuna, my house, commitment

“Haa… Haa…”

* * *

Seo-hyun stood before apartment 203, his home, clutching his pounding chest.

‘Will my family recognize me?’

‘What if the people inside aren’t my family?’

‘I’ve molded myself into the most human-like form I could, surely they won’t turn me away without even listening, right?’

The moment he had longed for, hoped for, had finally arrived. Yet, the accumulated anticipation and worry came crashing down like a flood.

* * *

Seo-hyun knew his humanity was severely damaged. It was a conclusion drawn from comparing his past actions, before and after becoming a god.

Thus, standing at his doorstep, his thoughts drifted towards his ‘inhumanity’. Despite checking himself before coming here, he worried if his current appearance or behavior would make him seem like a grotesque monster to his family.

“…Ahem, ah, hmm.”

He conjured a small hand mirror, checking various expressions and practicing speech.

A smile, a frown, a tearful face, an angry face. He’d observed human expressions to retain his humanity as an Outer God. Although awkward, the expressions seemed passable.

“Hello, Hyun-a. It’s Seo-hyun. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I finally returned.”

…

“…What do I say next…?”

Speaking was the real problem. Greetings seemed fine, but he was clueless about what followed.

Irritation crept in. Human hearts were strangely complex and fickle. Predicting their reactions was too difficult.

‘It would be faster to just open their minds and instill understanding through brainwashing…’

Malice. Wickedness. As the inner darkness surfaced, Seo-hyun covered his mouth.

It wasn’t his human self, but a transcendental being’s disdainful gaze toward insignificant mortals. And it was entirely against what he wanted.

‘Thought control. Mental restrictions.’

Seo-hyun felt the need to reinforce these. To meet his family as a human, he practiced conversing like one, hoping his efforts would bear fruit.

“Hyun-a, Mom. It’s me, Seo-hyun, Han Seo-hyun. I’m sorry I look like this, but I’m back. It might be hard to believe, but I was in another world…”

And…

After much practice and thought, he finally organized what to say.

He’d prepared proof of his journey. Showing the crystal, stripped of its mind-altering effect, would suffice. Its beautiful, sparkling appearance wouldn’t evoke the same unease as tentacles or other grotesque things.

Now, he was perfectly prepared.

…

As Seo-hyun, after one last practice, reached out to knock, a sound erupted from behind.

*Crash!!*

He slowly turned around.

A plastic bag lay open on the cold marble stairs, its contents—snacks, drinks, vegetables—scattered around. And there she was, someone special.

Deep within the weathered ruins of his memory, a voice whispered. A distant star in his mind’s night sky, the oldest and faintest, pulsed, reminding him of its presence. The being on the stairs was his younger sister, Hyun-a.

He was certain. Han Hyun-a, in a tracksuit, his sister, stood there, covering her mouth, tears welling up.

Hyun-a, without a word, ran and embraced him tightly.

Seo-hyun felt it. Hyun-a’s warmth. It wasn’t an illusion.

He realized his final practice had inadvertently reached her.

‘As expected, human interactions are complex and strange, beyond comprehension.’

Seo-hyun smiled, casting away all his worries to the sky hidden behind the apartment ceiling. He hugged Hyun-a back.

A person’s fate wasn’t something to be forced by an inner, omniscient god, but something to overcome by oneself. Seo-hyun realized this once again.

His smile as he hugged Hyun-a was his first genuine human smile in three years, since arriving in that other world.

* * *

“Let’s talk inside,” Seo-hyun said.

“Okay…”

After a long embrace, they picked up the fallen items and entered the apartment to continue their conversation.

‘You’ve grown so much,’ Seo-hyun thought, watching Hyun-a enter the door code. If the flow of time in both worlds were the same, three years must have passed. His hazy memories of Hyun-a depicted a child, barely out of elementary school. In his absence, she had blossomed into a high school student.

‘No, I must have become smaller.’

She would have grown, and he would have shrunk. This body was modeled after the most human-like form in that world, and from the beginning, the age and gender…

‘…Gender?’

Seo-hyun suddenly remembered a crucial point he had overlooked. He distinctly remembered being… male. If true, gender had a significant impact on a person’s image, potentially causing problems in their conversation.

‘Is it normal for Hyun-a to be so certain it’s me?’

Hyun-a’s voice interrupted his growing doubt.

“What are you doing? Come in. The door’s going to close.”

“Ah, right. I was just thinking.”

Seo-hyun followed Hyun-a into the living room. Though barefoot, his feet were miraculously clean.

Neither of them would have cared about dust anyway.

Stepping into the living room after three years, Seo-hyun inhaled deeply, taking in the surroundings. A large TV dominated the central wall, facing a warm, earthen-toned sofa and glass table. Potted plants thrived on the balcony, likely cared for by his mother.

It was a familiar, nostalgic scene.

And the scent. Didn’t people say every house had its unique smell? The scent of the living room was the familiar, longed-for fragrance of home, something he’d thought lost to time.

Forgotten memories resurfaced as Hyun-a led him to the sofa. His eyes seemed glazed with sentiment.

Hyun-a, noticing his expression, spoke.

“…I don’t know where to start. First of all, thank you for coming back. I have so much to tell you, and so much I want to hear… You just got back, right?”

Seo-hyun nodded silently, worried she wouldn’t grasp the concept of another world. He was grateful she accepted it so readily.

“Where… where were you taken? What kind of world was it? Why did it take you so long to come back…?”

Her question caught him off guard. It sounded as if others had also been taken to different worlds, and he was merely late in returning.

Confused, Seo-hyun searched for the right words.

“Hyun-a… you mean… other people were also taken to different worlds and came back?”

Hyun-a nodded.

“Yes. After you disappeared, the world changed. So many people went missing, including you… People started using strange powers, gates opened, monsters poured out…”

Seo-hyun nodded slowly, listening. He understood now. Just like him, this ordinary world had undergone a transformation. He’d never discovered why he’d been taken. This was a vital clue.

“…And about a year ago, the missing people started returning.”

“Did they all come back together? At once?”

“Um… wait.”

Hyun-a paused, thinking.

“No, they came back separately, but around the same time. Most of the people who disappeared around the same time, a year ago, returned. Except for those confirmed dead, of course. That’s why we thought you were dead too…”

“I see.”

“Yeah. Many people were taken to the same world. Didn’t you meet anyone else from Earth in the world you were in?”

“No… never. But maybe that was for the best.”

‘They probably would have gone mad.’ Seo-hyun swallowed the words. He didn’t want to discuss it now.

As Hyun-a tilted her head, Seo-hyun mentally mapped out the information, connecting what he had dismissed earlier.

The contaminated areas he’d seen from space. The icy aura he’d sensed from the girl at the vending machine. The reason Hyun-a accepted him without question.

It all pointed to one terrifying fact.

There was a being who had scattered people across various worlds, subjecting them to hardship and trials. A being who had opened dimensional gates on Earth, unleashing monsters, and sparked supernatural abilities in a world where such things never existed.

A being unknown even to him, who had stood shoulder to shoulder with the infinitely revered and vain Outer Gods. A far more vast and empty entity was watching him and the world.

Seo-hyun shivered at the thrill of fear, a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a long time. But he wouldn’t delve into it anymore. He had vowed to live as an ordinary human.

He blinked, clearing his mind. Before him was his family, reunited. That was all that mattered now.