Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 1. Opening My Eyes

I was fired.

The cane I carried around was the cause.

“Cha Hoon. I’m sorry it came to this.”

There was a bitter note in the library director’s voice.

“Apparently, someone filed a complaint with city hall. They asked who would take responsibility if a child tripped over your cane. Said how could someone who can’t see possibly do the job properly...”

Realizing what he had just said, the director hurriedly added,

“O-of course, you’ve never once made a mistake at work. You’ve never bumped into anyone, either.”

“Don’t feel so bad about it, Director.”

He had only just been fired, yet Cha Hoon’s voice remained calm.

“I know there’s nothing you can do. No matter how careful I am, the patrons watching me can still feel uneasy.”

“...You little old man. You’d be better off shouting and getting angry. At least then I’d feel less guilty.”

A faint smile spread across Cha Hoon’s lips.

For a moment, he focused on his hearing and sense of smell.

The director’s breathing was steady.

Even the faint scent of sweat remained unchanged.

‘Which means...’

The director genuinely regretted Cha Hoon’s dismissal.

Cha Hoon bowed deeply.

“Thank you for looking out for me all this time, Director.”

“Right. I’ll make sure this month’s wages are settled as quickly as possible. Is there anything else you need help with? If it has anything to do with the library, just say the word.”

“Hmm. If you’re offering...”

Cha Hoon thought for a moment.

Then his expression suddenly brightened.

“There is. One thing.”

* * *

Maybe it was trying to console him for getting fired.

The night bird he heard on his way home sounded especially mournful today.

A hillside neighborhood reached only after climbing a long, narrow, steep alley.

At the very end stood Cha Hoon’s rooftop room.

“Phew.”

Cha Hoon wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

Then he folded his cane and tucked it into his backpack.

There was still a long way left through the alley, but that was no problem.

He planned to use his own method of getting around, one he could never use inside the library.

Click!

Cha Hoon snapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

The peculiar sound produced inside his mouth swept through the entire alley.

The sound waves returned like echoes, sketching the surrounding space for him.

Click!

That sound illuminated Cha Hoon’s dark path.

His practiced stride was enough to startle the night bird watching him.

There was a saying that the opposite of an excuse was preparation.

Cha Hoon had no intention of using his blindness as an excuse to live carelessly.

This skill, which he had learned before reaching adulthood, was part of that preparation.

Click.

His rooftop room sat atop the highest building in the hillside neighborhood.

Cha Hoon had lived there alone.

“First time reading it here.”

A cramped room without a single decent piece of furniture.

He set his backpack down on the cold floor and carefully took out what was inside.

A large, heavy book.

As though it were a treasure, Cha Hoon slowly ran his fingers over the cover.

Tiny raised bumps met his fingertips.

Two across.

Three pairs from top to bottom.

A language of their own, made from six dots in total.

Braille (raised-dot script).

This was a book made in Braille for the blind.

And the only Braille fantasy novel in all of Korea.

For Cha Hoon, who had never been able to see, falling in love with fantasy worlds had come naturally.

In that sense, this book was nothing short of a gift to him.

[Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star]

This was what he had asked the library director for.

The lending procedure was so strict that he had only ever been able to read it bit by bit inside the library.

Now he had been allowed to borrow it for a few days.

Cha Hoon kept reading the Braille book, forgetting even his hunger.

“...No matter how I think about it, this is definitely more my style.”

A smile tugged at Cha Hoon’s lips as his fingertips traced the Braille.

The protagonist of the story was a sword-wielding Swordmaster.

But the ones Cha Hoon admired were someone else entirely.

‘Mages.’

Cha Hoon preferred the mages of the rival empire.

He did not know red, but he knew heat.

He did not know blue, but he knew the coolness of an autumn breeze.

He did not know green, but he knew the fresh scent of grass.

That was why he loved magic.

Whenever he imagined the novel’s brilliant, colorful spells, the world seemed to paint itself around him.

‘What does it feel like to use magic?’

A world where he could see and use magic.

If only he could live somewhere like that.

Just imagining it made his heart swell.

Cha Hoon read through the night, never realizing dawn had come.

Then he reached the final passage of the novel.

“...Huh?”

Cha Hoon’s voice suddenly rose.

His fingers, which had been dancing across the page, stopped.

They had no choice.

Because on the page that should have been blank after the final line of Braille,

he felt raised dots he had never encountered before.

“No way...!”

Cha Hoon shook his head.

He could confidently say that, if nothing else, he knew this book better than anyone.

He had read it hundreds of times.

There was nothing after this.

Only the Braille words ‘To Be Continued in the Next Volume’ remained at the end of the page.

‘But there’s new Braille here?’

Cha Hoon’s fingers no longer danced or wandered.

They merely swept slowly across the paper with careful movements.

As if confirming it for himself, he murmured the Braille text aloud.

“He who recognizes the grimoire shall receive the light...?”

A grimoire?

This was just a novel written in Braille.

His confusion did not last long.

Flash!

Brilliant multicolored light suddenly burst from the Braille book.

A powerful radiance that instantly drove away the heavy darkness filling the room!

In an instant, the interior became bright as day.

Unfortunately, Cha Hoon was unable to witness that spectacular sight.

Instead,

Rumble!

As his consciousness faded, all he heard was the sound of thunder.

* * *

There were countless inconveniences that came with being unable to see.

If I had to name one of the smaller ones,

it would be how difficult it was to distinguish dreams from reality.

After all, everything was dark either way.

“Young Master Kawin! Wake up at once!”

Someone was clearly shaking my body, yet they were calling me Kawin.

Cases like this were easy to tell apart.

‘It’s a dream.’

I must have fallen asleep while reading.

As I gathered my thoughts, a harsh, elderly voice battered my eardrums.

“The family head has been waiting since dawn, Young Master Kawin!”

Eventually, I sat up.

Even in a dream, I had no desire to listen to someone squawking beside me.

“I’m not Kawin.”

“Good heavens! Now you’ve resorted to spouting such nonsense! Then I suppose I’m not a servant of the Anper family either, but the butler of that damned lunatic Dispelion!”

“Anper... Dispelion?”

I murmured the family names in a breathless voice.

They were far too familiar to be mere coincidence.

Dispelion was the family name of the protagonist of [Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star],

and Anper, the name mentioned by that elderly voice, was...

“The fallen Lightning family?”

“Good heavens! Fallen?! How can the heir of the Anper family say such a thing?”

“I’m not the heir.”

“Do not disappoint this Vilcus any further. You have done quite enough already. Now hurry and prepare yourself to meet the family head.”

I decided to examine the man named Vilcus.

His voice was fierce, but his breathing remained steady.

The smell of sweat mixed with dirt was unchanged from before.

Vilcus truly seemed to believe that I was Kawin.

‘Well, does it really matter?’

It did not feel particularly bad.

For a little while, I had entered the world I loved most.

Since I was already here, I decided to enjoy it a bit longer.

I clicked my tongue in the familiar way.

Click!

Thankfully, all my senses were working normally.

Using the sound waves, I mapped out the structure of the room.

I placed both feet on the floor and rose with my back straight.

“What exactly are you doing?”

But Vilcus seemed displeased with every single movement I made.

As if I had forgotten the most basic thing an ordinary person should do.

“If you’re awake, you should open your eyes first! Shall I pry them open with my own fingers?”

“...Ah.”

Opening my eyes.

I had tried it countless times in my dreams.

If I raised my eyelids like this, wouldn’t I finally be able to see all the dazzling things I had never seen before?

It was a dream.

So shouldn’t it be possible?

But the same darkness always awaited me.

Then I would wake from the dream and sigh.

“I shall report clearly to the family head that you are awake, so do not even think of getting distracted!”

I heard the door close.

Naturally, I was left alone in the room.

“Guess it’s about time... I woke up.”

There was no one left to talk to, and more than anything, I wanted to get back to reading the novel.

Just as I always did when trying to wake from a dream, I tensed my eyelids and forced them upward.

To return to reality.

“As hard as I can...!”

I opened my eyes wide into the deep darkness.

But then,

Flash!

My breath suddenly caught in my throat.

A ‘sensation’ I had never experienced in my life swallowed every breath I had.

Something soft, almost like the touch of fine down.

It seeped in from outside and filled the room.

Could this possibly be what everyone encountered every single day...

“Light...?”

Crash!

I stumbled forward, nearly falling as I reached toward the things before me.

With trembling hands, I touched everything around me indiscriminately.

Something square and hard that smelled of wood.

Something soft and fluffy that smelled of soap.

Everything my fingertips touched confirmed an unbelievable truth.

I really was ‘seeing’ properly now.

“...Ha. Haha!”

Something hot streamed down from my eyes.

“I can see! I can see!”

If this was a dream, I did not want to go back.

I stopped trying to understand what was happening.

With my eyes drenched in tears, I simply stared endlessly at the round thing rising outside.

* * *

The intoxicating sensation of being able to see the world.

It took quite some time to grow accustomed to it.

Long enough for Vilcus, who had once called me Young Master, to start treating me like a complete lunatic.

The final straw was when I said, ‘Vilcus. So this is what you look like.’

Thanks to that, I got to witness firsthand the kind of ‘rotten expression’ I had previously understood only through Braille.

“Haha. Seeing really is wonderful.”

Eyes that had never seen before could now see.

Compared to that, accepting that I had possessed someone inside a novel was easy.

“And I don’t have to worry myself sick every day anymore.”

The Korean libraries with extensive Braille collections were located in the heart of Seoul.

For Cha Hoon, who had grown up in an orphanage, living in a neighborhood like that meant spending most of his salary on rent.

That made things much easier.

After all, I could now live in this blessed world without a single lingering regret.

And I had even inherited the bloodline of the mages I liked, so perhaps becoming an Archmage might also be...

“...That’s probably impossible, isn’t it? Not in the Anper family.”

Kawin Anper.

That was the identity of the person I had possessed.

Even if becoming an Archmage was asking too much, they could have at least given me one decent talent.

But I had ended up with the Lightning attribute, the weakest branch of magic in this world.

The Anper family had inherited a form of magic that everyone treated like utter garbage.

-Static electricity in winter could put up a decent fight against an Anper.

The mages’ mockery had been memorable enough that I still remembered the line.

That was how little the family was mentioned in the novel.

I only remembered them because I had read it hundreds of times. An ordinary reader probably would not even remember that the Anper family existed.

“Vilcus. There’s something I want to ask.”

Kawin approached Vilcus and asked what year it was by the Imperial Calendar.

Vilcus frowned once again, but soon answered without resistance.

“Year 777.”

After confirming the Imperial year, Kawin clenched his fist tightly.

The light I had only just gained was effectively on borrowed time.

The homeland of the novel’s protagonist.

Until the ‘Iron Empire’ slaughtered every mage here.

Less than five years remained.