For an instant, space split in a straight line behind him. Within the darkness, three pupils rolled clockwise.
The team leader reached out, startled.
“Gidan!”
He instinctively tried to seize Gidan’s arm, but Gidan moved faster.
“Gidan—!”
The moment Gidan crossed through space, the scent of the sea flowed in. The door closed, stopping the team leader from entering behind him.
—Welcome, human child.
Malikian’s field was a graveyard of ships.
Upon land that looked as though the sea had dried up, old and massive ships stood here and there, some upright, some lying on their sides.
Gidan lifted his gaze.
At the center of the ship graveyard, a hull large enough to cover a small village loomed oppressively.
Malikian stood on that ship’s deck.
Gidan took out “Viat’s Yearning” from his inventory and gripped it.
His reason had already flown away. A blinding rage devoured his mind.
In the meantime, Malikian’s four hands seized the greatsword and drove it into the ground.
Rumble—
Several doors formed around Gidan, and blades swiftly revealed themselves.
As Gidan pulled back to avoid the attacks, Malikian smiled at him.
—It is time I took the sword back from one unworthy of it.
*
A detached house with a swimming pool had been his mother’s wish.
“Dan, let’s move!”
That was why.
Why his father had poured in all of his severance pay and his mother’s life insurance money to buy a detached house with a swimming pool in a remote part of Gangneung.
Not only was it so out of the way that commuting to school was inconvenient, but cleaning the pool was exhausting beyond belief. His only son complained every single time, but his father only laughed and asked what good it was to let that fine body of his sit around idle.
“Now that you’ve kept up with the pool maintenance for a while, it’s not so bad, right? This was your mother’s dream. Isn’t it modest and pretty?”
But in Dan’s eyes, the swimming pool was neither modest nor pretty.
The bright blue tiles were slapped on without even lining up properly, and more than anything, it was closer to a huge eyesore that made him miss his mother every time he saw it.
Still, whenever he saw his father’s face saying it had been his mother’s dream, he would often reply, “I guess so.”
“Want to play catch after we finish cleaning?”
“I won’t have the strength…”
“Hey, sports are all about stamina. What kind of baseball player are you, being so weak?”
“Ah… I can’t, I can’t.”
“Dan. Bases loaded, and it’s a deep hit! Center fielder Gidan! If you don’t catch it, it’s over! Come-from-behind loss!”
The ball his father threw flew toward the swimming pool.
Because Gidan had been utterly serious about baseball, his body would react first to setups like this, so his father would deliberately use them.
“Ah, seriously! A come-from-behind loss is too much!”
When he rushed toward the pool, pointlessly losing his temper, his father would burst into loud laughter. He liked that.
That was what our swimming pool was like.
A place where his mother’s dream, his father’s regret, and their memories had melted together.
Until that day came.
It was when he had returned home early because there was no afternoon training.
The surroundings were dark and ominous. At the time, he simply thought it was about to rain. So he went toward the swimming pool to find his father and suggest they bring in the laundry…
Thud.
The baseball that slipped from his hand rolled away and fell into the swimming pool, dyed bright red.
At the end of the ripples raised by the baseball, “it” was there.
It had the form of a person wearing a black hood pulled low, but its body was larger than a bear. A monster from another world, the kind he had only ever seen on YouTube.
“It” was tightly clutching his father’s body with four pitch-black hands.
What fear that shackled one’s limbs felt like—Gidan understood it for the first time then.
“Dan, Dan… go, go… Run. Hurry.”
Even with terror on his face, his father could not stop worrying about his son.
“Run. Quickly.”
His father’s voice was trembling more than anything.
Gidan was confused and afraid. His mind was as blank as a sheet of paper, and breathing was so difficult it felt as though he were being strangled.
The ball floated atop the blood.
On our swimming pool.
His father.
The baseball.
And “it.”
“Bottom of the ninth, two outs!”
A ragged, deathly cry slammed into his head with a bang.
“Runner on third, Gidan!”
His father’s voice commanded him.
“Steal!”
As his stiffened body gradually loosened, Dan turned and began to run.
Behind Dan as he fled in disgrace, “it” seemed to cackle with laughter.
What clung to his back was a wretched shudder.
That day, he was so afraid the monster would chase after him that he could not turn his head even once.
That son, who had nothing but his fine body, whose stamina was good because he played baseball, had so easily run away, leaving his father behind.
A successful and wretched steal of home.
As he sat in the shelter, blankly watching while Hyeonak’s guild master took care of everything alone.
After that day, Gidan watched videos of Jurim returning after closing Great Dungeons every single day.
Day by day, his admiration grew, and his self-loathing deepened.
His awakening came only two months after that.
The birth of the fifth S-rank.
Korea offered both mourning and praise, and the media reported on Gidan’s awakening day after day.
It was around then that the situation was settled and the funeral could be held.
“If only the kid had awakened a little sooner…”
At the funeral hall, voices that spoke for his own heart could be heard here and there.
“If only I had gained power just a little faster.”
Then that day, he would not have run away like such a fool.
For a while, he dreamed of throwing a baseball.
The poor imagination of a middle schooler who knew nothing but baseball amounted to only that much.
Wishing he had possessed the courage to throw a baseball at the monster devouring his father.
In the dream, he drew the monster’s attention with the baseball and awakened as an S-rank.
And the moment he somehow saved his father, Dan opened his eyes.
Even when he forced the blanket over himself and closed his eyes again, the rest of the story did not continue. It was, as expected, a feeble imagination.
In truth, the result after throwing the ball might not have been good. It might even have been worse.
Still, at least in his dreams, he had the courage to stand against it.
After awakening, every time he drove himself into reckless situations, it was all nothing more than reliving that day.
Because he wanted to properly recreate the heart-crushing regret he recalled every day.
Like the dream.
The one he had dreamed for a while.
*
“Ghhh!”
Clang!
Gidan blocked the greatsword hurtling toward his face.
When he let the attack slide aside under that overwhelming force, Malikian sneered and shifted the sword’s trajectory again.
The pitch-black blade of the greatsword cut deep across his chest.
“Urgh!”
The pain of being sliced perilously close to the spot just above his heart snapped his eyes wide open. When he came to his senses, Gidan was falling from atop the enormous ship.
“Ah.”
His vision blurred.
So it really had been too much.
“…”
Still.
Hadn’t he done enough?
He knew he could not do it.
Even so, charging in was not recklessness to Gidan, but courage. It was atonement.
Thooom!
When Malikian’s greatsword plunged into the ground, a dusky energy stretched out like bare branches and rushed toward Gidan.
Before he knew it, the muzzles of all the regret and rage from that day were pointed at himself.
What he hated more than the fact that he had not had the strength to resist his opponent was himself, who had not been able to become like his father.
His weak self, who had not even possessed the courage to sacrifice himself.
As if accepting everything, Gidan closed his eyes without so much as moving a finger.
His reason, gone astray, now rationalized his desire to collapse.
At least this much means I didn’t run away like a fool, right?
That’s right.
So I did well…
That’s right.
Well enough to meet an end like this, so very well…
Just then, flower petals began to scatter around him, one by one.
The petals wrapped around him as though protecting him.
—Thousand Cherry Blossoms!
At that, the dusky energy veered away from the domain of cherry blossoms.
—Gidan!
When a voice that broke through his thoughts rang out, Gidan opened his eyes.
“…?”
A teddy bear was falling into his arms.
“A dream?”
The soft, fluffy fur of the teddy bear touched him.
This sensation…
“It’s not a dream.”
“Urgh!”
With all his strength, Gidan spread both arms and embraced the child.
Whump!