"Giryeo, you look much better now that you've dyed your hair."
"Haha, my hair?"
"Maybe if you get a girlfriend someday, you could introduce her to Mom..."
"That's not what I meant."
Tuk.
At that moment, the man in the suit wiped the artificial smile from his face and asked again.
"Don't you notice anything different?"
Her son had always been blunt by nature, so she probably wouldn't have thought much of him wearing his usual expressionless face.
But this atmosphere...
What was going on?
"Uh... Mom can't really tell just by looking."
"-_-"
"Oh! Could it be that my son awakened and became even more handsome?"
Lee Hwayoung forced a cheerful tone, trying to dispel the heavy atmosphere.
But what she received in return was a string of words so unexpected that they left her stunned.
"Yeah. What else could I have expected from someone like you, you heartless wretch? In the end, everything is going exactly as I thought."
"What... what?"
"So, Lee Hwayoung-ssi. Have you been living well all this time after abandoning your son?"
The being wearing Kim Giryeo's shell clasped its hands behind its back and stared down intently at the woman before it.
"But why did you come looking for the child you abandoned now?"
Of course, there was no need to hear her explanation.
The reason was obvious.
From beginning to end, this whole matter was about...
***
Money.
Once again, it came down to that damned thing.
"I'm sick of it."
I looked at the Earthling standing before me with open disgust.
People kept talking about fate and destiny.
And while explaining my reasons for reincarnation, I had occasionally joked about conquering Earth and things like that.
But honestly...
This woman didn't even know her own son was dead.
She was just standing there, blinking in confusion.
"Gi, Giryeo-ya. What do you mean by that...?"
Lee Hwayoung's face stiffened in shock, and I pressed on.
There could only be one reason this woman had contacted me.
"Did you suddenly start regretting it now that the son you abandoned became S-rank?"
"-_-"
"S-rank Hunters can make billions from clearing a single Gate, you know. Hm? Did you come here hoping to pick up a few crumbs?"
Hwayoung flinched.
"Son, what are you saying? Mom just saw you on TV, and..."
"Then why did you disappear for three years?"
"Th, that... Of course there were circumstances. The thing is, Mom..."
"Are you going to shut your mouth or not? Don't give me that 'circumstances' nonsense. You cut me off the moment you got the twenty-seven million won."
Her mouth fell open at the harshness of my words.
"N, no! You! What kind of disrespectful language are you using toward your own mother...?"
But I had no intention of showing that person any respect.
Lee Hwayoung's betrayal had had an enormous influence on Kim Giryeo's fate.
In other words, she was the primary cause behind the death of this body.
"I'm telling you now. You won't get a single penny from me."
"What?"
"Lee Hwayoung-ssi, if that's not what you're after, why don't we sign a contract? Shall we make it official with a Knight's Oath?"
For reference, contract-type items were major magical tools commonly used in ordinary business transactions.
Perhaps because of that, even regular civilians knew exactly what they could do.
And the moment I brought one up, Hwayoung's reaction became even more intense.
Her face flushed red with anger.
"Kim Giryeo! You've become an S-rank or whatever, and somewhere along the way you've turned into a completely useless person. You've become so ill-tempered!"
"Hmm."
"You were never like this before. Why have you suddenly become so cruel? Huh? Do you really have to drive a nail into your mother's heart before you're satisfied?"
Lee Hwayoung shouted with tears gathering in her eyes, as though she were the one being wronged.
But to me, even that looked vile.
Just as she said, I had indeed changed drastically over those three years.
"That's right. Strange, isn't it? Kim Giryeo was such a good kid that he never even swore once in his life. So why would he suddenly act like this?"
Looking at Lee Hwayoung filled me with disgust.
And it wasn't simply because traces of Kim Giryeo's memories remained inside this body.
At this point, even my own soul genuinely despised her.
"Do you still not realize what's strange?"
I had deliberately referred to Kim Giryeo in the third person.
I had even given her a hint.
Yet Lee Hwayoung still couldn't tell the difference between her family and a complete stranger.
"What's strange is your attitude. Oh, Giryeo. How can you treat your mother like this after all these years... Mom had her reasons too, you know? Once everything settled down, I was planning to come find you again."
It was obvious nonsense.
Even back when Lee Hwayoung had lived with Giryeo, she had avoided bringing up money for a while.
But the instant she sensed that her son's guard had lowered, she began asking.
Frankly, the sequence of events that had unfolded in the past had already been mixed with calculation and intent from the very day of Giryeo's graduation.
"Are those 'circumstances' you're talking about the fact that you never prepared for retirement and just spent your time having fun?"
"Kim Giryeo!"
"Why are you getting angry? If I'm wrong, all you have to do is prove it. With a dungeon item."
When I mentioned the contract again, Hwayoung seemed to finally understand what I was implying.
Her eyes turned venomous.
"No, Giryeo. Why are you acting like this? Actually... Mom is sick. I can't even get surgery on my back because I don't have the money. Are you really going to pretend you don't know that?"
"Mhm."
"Ha, seriously!"
The woman's lips, painted with bright red lipstick, twisted into a grimace.
"You! Do you think everything you've achieved happened entirely through your own effort? I've heard that once people become Hunters, they carry their parents on their backs and thank them for raising them healthy!"
It was true that awakening had a certain degree of genetic influence.
But if she wanted to argue along those lines, I had plenty to say too.
"Don't most parents also avoid abandoning their children?"
Lee Hwayoung refused to yield even an inch.
She fanned herself with one hand, trying to cool down, and after a moment, finally spoke again.
"You... you... If you're going to act like this, then I have no choice. If someone in my own family is going to commit such a monstrous act, I'll have to cry out to the whole world about how unfairly I've been treated."
"Cry out?"
"Do the people around you know that you live like this? If you keep treating me this way, I'll go around telling everyone that you're an S-rank Hunter and a disgrace to humanity. Understand?"
Oh my.
I was so dumbfounded that I fell silent.
Apparently misunderstanding my silence, Lee Hwayoung lifted her chin and continued with newfound arrogance.
"Giryeo, you've awakened. You're famous now, and all your hardships are finally over. Why are you trying to humiliate yourself at a time like this?"
"-_-"
"Everything's going well now, isn't it? You became a Hunter. From now on, all you have to do is make a lot of money, right?"
Then Hwayoung took my hand and spoke in a gentler voice than ever before.
"I'm really sorry. Mhm? You don't have any family in this world except me. Mom will do better from now on."
At that moment, a memory overlapped with the sight before my eyes.
A young woman with heavily applied red lipstick.
She was speaking while slapping the tiny hand of a newborn child.
"βIt's all because of you! If you hadn't been born, I never would've married that bastard!"
A memory from the distant past.
One that even the original owner of this body had forgotten.
The instant it surfaced, my thoughts turned cold as ice.
Lee Hwayoung had never loved Giryeo from the very beginning.
But seriously...
How could humans be this cruel?
How could they rationalize themselves so perfectly?
How could they be so cunning?
"-_-"
I looked down at the hand gripping mine.
Then I stepped closer to the woman.
I leaned toward her ear and whispered carefully.
"Your son..."
"Mhm?"
"He froze to death beneath the scorching midsummer sun."
What I was about to tell her was the end of this body's life.
"When a person goes without food for too long, the thyroid stops functioning properly, and the body loses its ability to regulate temperature."
"What are you..."
"Everyone outside was drenched in sweat, so why was that tiny room so unbearably cold to me?"
"-_-"
"I was cold all the time. Strangely cold."
For a moment, I couldn't continue.
Something tightened in my throat.
The memories flooding through my mind were so vivid that it felt as though I had lived that life myself.
"I spent fourteen hours trembling before I died."
My eyes reddened.
But these tears were not Kim Giryeo's.
This anger belonged entirely to a different soul.
"And you dare show your face in front of the son you killed?"
I forced down the emotions boiling inside me and gave the person before me a sincere warning.
"Lee Hwayoung. Listen carefully. If you ever show your face in front of me again, I really will kill you."
"-_-"
"And if you go around running your mouth and tarnish this precious name, I promise you I'll make you wish you were dead rather than face what I'll do to you."
"What?"
Do you know what the saddest part of all this was?
There wasn't even a trace of resentment toward Lee Hwayoung in Kim Giryeo's mind.
He had never hated the mother who betrayed him.
Whenever he thought of her, all he felt was endless longing and sorrow.
"Why..."
Why hadn't Kim Giryeo wanted Lee Hwayoung dead?
Why?
Why in the world?
If he had left behind even a single sentence in his final wishes asking for revenge against this woman...
If that was what you had wanted...
I would have gladly fulfilled it as repayment for taking over your body.
"Be grateful that your son grew up to be a good person."
"S... son."
Lee Hwayoung still wore a bewildered expression, unable to understand what was happening.
But it didn't matter anymore.
"For now, I'll respect the wishes of this body's owner, but..."
If I ever stripped away the last trace of mercy I had left, I would make sure that woman paid the price.
No matter what.
I studied Lee Hwayoung's face as though engraving it into my memory.
Then I turned and left.
"Gi, Giryeo-ya... Kim Giryeo..."
Only the desperate calls of someone refusing to accept reality lingered behind me in the street.
***
I returned home with heavy steps.
The moment I entered, I pulled off my jacket and dropped it lifelessly onto the floor.
"How could this happen?"
After looking back through the life of the body's original owner, I realized something.
Kim Giryeo had been an exceptionally rare kind of soul.
A person who had lived without committing even a single real sin.
He was diligent.
He was kind.
He helped others even when he knew he might be treated unfairly in return.
Even on the brink of death, his greatest regret was that he hadn't arranged to donate his organs.
Why did someone like that have to live such a lonely life?
He wasn't someone who deserved to die like this.
But there was nothing I could do now.
I already knew what happened to the dead.
"When you die, that's the end."
Where does a dead person's soul go?
Its fate isn't very different from that of the body.
Just as flesh is buried beneath the earth and eventually decays, the substance composing the soul also disperses into the air over time, breaking down into smaller and smaller units.
Once a particle of soul has returned to nature, it is impossible for it to regain its original form.
The probability that the fragments of Kim Giryeo's soul could somehow remain intact and be reincarnated was less than one in three hundred billion.
No.
Even that comparison was generous.
It would be closer to scattering the individual pieces of a clock into a swimming pool and hoping that the movement of the water would randomly assemble them back into a perfectly functioning watch.
"Poor thing."
Kim Giryeo had lived selflessly.
And now there was nothing left in existence that could ever repay him for it.
The more I thought about that, the more questions began to fill my mind.
Should I really just stand by and accept that someone like Kim Giryeo could die in such misery?
Aren't these people heading toward the same kind of future my homeland once did?
As the memories stored in this body gradually became 'my' memories, the first emotion I felt was pity.
The second was a strange uneasiness.
"-_-"
There were far too many selfish individuals on Earth as well.
And as generations passed, that tendency would only grow stronger.
As global warming reduced the amount of habitable land, competition would intensify.
And under those conditions, selfish individuals would have an even greater chance of prevailing.
But having already witnessed where such a future leads...
Is there really any reason for me to live peacefully alongside everyone on Earth?
Especially on a planet this beautiful?
Of course, during the early days after my reincarnation...
I did think that I should protect the people of Earth for the sake of preserving the ecosystem.
I occasionally joked about conquering Earth and similar things.
But deep down, I had always acknowledged that as an outsider, I had no right to wield the pruning shears over this species.
However...
After experiencing something like this, I could feel that conviction beginning to waver.
"Just how many people like Lee Hwayoung are there on Earth..."
If things continue like this, then as time passes...
I may eventually arrive at a very different conclusion.
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