Chapter 99

Chapter 99

Chapter 99 A Belated Vacation (6)

-Growl.

“I’m hungry, but Dohyeok still isn’t here.”

“You ate a ton at the service area earlier.”

“That was a long time ago. Good grief, at this rate I’m going to starve to death. The spot Haedong Divine Maiden found while shaking her bells earlier must have been my grave site.”

“N-No, it wasn’t!”

Sani was being a little dramatic, but it was long past dinnertime, so everyone was hungry.

Still, since this was our first meal on vacation, we wanted to eat together, so we hadn’t put the prepared meat on the grill yet.

“Tsk, where did he say he was?”

“He said he passed Gangneung IC earlier, so he should be here soon. Let’s start grilling.”

“Are we finally eating?”

“Yeah.”

“Ooooooh!”

“Still, thank goodness. Dohyeok originally said he’d bring the meat himself.”

“Heh heh, if that had happened, we’d have spent the day performing a ritual in front of empty bowls.”

I had considered it briefly when Dohyeok said he would take responsibility for bringing the meat, but it was definitely a bad idea.

People who eat a lot have their own peculiar way of calculating quantities.

You’re supposed to count one serving per person, then expect two or three servings for people with big appetites, but these people seemed to have some illness where food running out meant death, so they multiplied the entire headcount by however much they themselves could eat.

Especially with Dohyeok’s generous hand, there was a good chance we’d end up grilling nothing but meat for all three days, so handing the task separately to National Champion Han Seun and Wooju had been a stroke of genius.

Though in terms of time rather than quantity, all it really meant was that we were starting to grill a little earlier.

-Sssssizzle. Crackle. Crack.

At last, the ribeye seasoned simply with salt and pepper went onto the grill.

“Can I eat it now?”

“I just put it on.”

“But the color changed, so it’s okay now.”

“No, it isn’t.”

And while I got my pre-dinner exercise by stopping Sani from charging in with a fork every time I flipped the meat,

-Vroooom. Screeech.

The gray van we had been waiting for finally glided into the parking lot.

“We’re here!”

“Hi!”

“You worked hard getting here. Hurry over and sit down. We only just started grilling too.”

Only then could I really start filling the grill with meat.

“This won’t do. Wooju, add some more charcoal over there. We need another grill because of Dohyeok.”

“Hey, I don’t eat that much!”

“Swallow what’s already in your mouth before you say that.”

How long did we keep grilling?

“Ugh, I can’t eat anymore.”

“Me neither.”

“I’ve had my fill as well. Stop grilling now.”

The meal we had waited four hours for ended in just thirty minutes.

That was thanks to the firepower from two whole bags of charcoal and the extra grill.

After quickly finishing the dishes, we loaded the fire pit with firewood instead of charcoal and gathered around it in a circle.

“This is what they call fire-gazing, right?”

“Yes. I thought it was just some meaningless trendy phrase, but it’s actually pretty atmospheric.”

“It depends on how you choose to think about it. Even a worthless pebble can become gold if you decide it is, and this campfire becomes something special once you give it a name.”

“Perhaps that’s why old generals used epithets too.”

“Heh heh, naturally. Lee Gyeongrok was like that. After Yi Sun-sin died, he gave himself the epithet ‘Valiant General’ and carried on his will. Even knowing that the name he gave himself would later become karma and blur even his real name.”

“Huh? It’s true. It says even the epithet ‘Valiant General’ doesn’t appear anymore, and the books he wrote were lost too!”

Was it because of the warmth of the campfire?

The Elder, who normally wasn’t very talkative, had somehow turned into a grandfather telling old stories to his grandchildren.

And the grandchildren listened with sparkling eyes to vivid stories their grandfather had personally lived through in those days.

And so the first night of our vacation, which had somehow rushed by in a blur, deepened.

_____________

“There’s still one more thing.”

“Pardon? We’re out of firewood now. There’s more?”

“No. Isn’t there something people always do at night when they come to the beach?”

“Ah! Fireworks!”

Correct.

“But fireworks are illegal now...”

That was true.

At some point, fireworks on the beach had been banned because of noise and fire hazards.

People said you could do them somewhere that wasn’t public property, but that was basically just splitting hairs.

Fireworks had become something rare that you could only see at festivals.

But not for me.

“Could everyone look up at the sky for a moment?”

After confirming that everyone was looking toward the night sky, I quietly closed my eyes.

Then I entered the world of the Mind’s Eye.

-Whoooosh.

Among the strands of memory flowing like waves, connecting past, present, and future, what I gathered one by one were the vivid memories of fireworks I had seen before.

Then I threw the bundle of memory strands in my hands high into the sky.

-Pheeeew. Boom-boom-boom.

“Wow!”

“My goodness... I’ve never seen fireworks like this before.”

“That’s incredible.”

The combined sight of every fireworks display I had ever seen filled the night sky.

No grand fireworks festival could possibly be more spectacular than this.

-Boom-boom-boom-boom.

Because I could show whatever scenes I wanted, layered across the sky as many times as I liked.

Just like now.

And as the fireworks began to fade,

“Actually... this is why I wanted to bring you all here.”

I carefully revealed the reason I had come here to everyone who was still standing in a daze.

“I don’t think I can keep hiding it from you two forever. You’ve probably already noticed, but aside from you two, me, and the shamans, everyone else here isn’t human.”

“...”

“...”

National Champion Han Seun and Wooju didn’t answer for a while.

They had probably sensed it vaguely already.

Everyone had tried to hide it, but there was no way they could greet each other, laugh, and talk every day at the coffeehouse without noticing something strange.

They had probably pretended not to notice more than once when the Elder casually brought up stories from hundreds of years ago, or when Sani wandered around without his hat and then hurriedly hid.

Maybe they had simply assumed everyone had circumstances of their own.

As proof, once the afterglow of the fireworks faded, neither of them looked particularly shocked.

Instead, they only smiled faintly and gave small nods.

But one voice broke the emotional silence.

“That’s right! Dohyeok said that too!”

“Pardon?”

“The airport? Anyway, we went there and Dohyeok...”

“Aaaaaagh! Why would you tell them that!”

The swelling emotion from the fireworks and the warmth of sharing one another’s secrets lasted only a moment, because whatever had happened between those two smelled far deeper and much more interesting.

___________

And the next morning came.

“This is still bothering me. Can’t you just tell me?”

“Ah, seriously, first thing in the morning!”

“You won’t tell me, that’s why.”

Last night, the sincere-conversation-while-lying-in-the-tent-under-the-emotional-spell-of-dawn strategy had ended in failure.

I had even willingly volunteered to sleep beside Dohyeok, who snored loudly...

And this morning, the ask-him-while-he’s-still-half-asleep strategy had suffered a bitter defeat as well.

From the circumstances, it was obvious that Dohyeok liked King Yama.

But the person himself absolutely refused to open his mouth.

Well, nothing I could do.

-Zzzzip.

When I opened the tent flap and stepped outside, everyone looked at me with desperate expressions like examinees waiting for acceptance results.

I quietly crossed my arms into an X.

“Haa.”

“As expected.”

With sighs erupting from all around, I felt like a criminal for failing to bring back the answer everyone wanted.

“Let’s eat breakfast first.”

The losers’ breakfast had already been decided the day before.

Ramen.

All you had to do was turn on the portable burner, roughly measure water into a pot, and dump in a pile of ramen.

Putting any more effort into breakfast than that would have been cruel labor for people who had come here to relax.

And so plain ramen without even a single egg was placed on the table, and everyone began eating with their rumpled morning faces.

“Thank you for the meal.”

“Yaaawn... munch, munch, I’m sleepy.”

Eating and sleeping at the same time was no longer a special skill unique to Sani.

That was because we had stayed in front of the campfire talking until well past two in the morning.

The people awake now had slept five hours at most.

But I couldn’t tell them to sleep in just because we had come here to rest.

Today was the last day, and it would make no sense to come all the way to the sea and leave without even entering the water once.

“If you’re finished, let’s start heading over.”

“Ughhh! I can finally go in the water!”

“Mister, hurry up! Sani’s already in!”

“Wait a second. Mister can’t go in right away.”

The people who stayed behind on the beach to warm up were mere mortals.

Ordinary humans who weren’t monsters, Divine Trees, grim reapers, or King Yama.

When we finally joined them, the sea happened to be calm without even a breath of wind.

“Jinseong, come in too! The water is really salty!”

-Splash. Splash.

“Pfft! Stop splashing me!”

The salty, fishy seawater touched my lips for the first time in ages.

It was probably the first time since my university retreat.

No, now that I thought about it, back then I’d spent the whole time drinking on the sand and hadn’t gone into the sea either.

The others floating awkwardly on the water seemed to be in roughly the same situation as me.

Judging by how none of them went any farther than waist-deep water.

Someone watching us might laugh and say we had come all the way to the sea and still didn’t know how to have fun, but I actually liked this awkwardness quite a lot.

Because it meant there had always been that much distance between us.

No relationship lets another person all the way in at once.

Just as I had helped them and they had helped me, I hoped they would do the same with each other, little by little, like seawater slowly seeping in.

Perhaps all of us were still cautious around one another.

Not quite brave enough to enter deeper water, but too reluctant to remain standing only at the shore.

An ambiguous relationship like that.

And perhaps that was why it felt more precious.

After the sea breeze passed between us and gradually washed away the awkwardness, moments began to accumulate naturally.

If someone staggered in a small wave, another hand reached out.

If someone laughed, the rest joined in.

And so our brief vacation was drawing to an end.

___________

Inside Dohyeok’s car on the way back to Jinseong’s coffeehouse.

Dohyeok drove with a stiff expression, staring straight ahead in silence.

“It was really fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I asked Lia to take lots of videos too, so next time I come, I’ll have plenty to talk about before we play Blue Marble.”

“...”

After watching all the videos, King Yama chirped like a lark about everything that had happened at the sea.

But Dohyeok’s rigid expression refused to soften.

Because he knew that when this trip ended, all of those memories would be forgotten.

Even his existence.