TDLHRH 5

“Th-this doesn’t make any sense…” Haerang muttered under his breath, staring oddly at the figure before him when someone quickly grabbed him as he attempted to lunge forward.

“Guild Master Haerang, are you crazy? Where do you think you’re going right now?”

“That’s her, that’s my sister, my sister Baek Horang… She’s my sister.”

“Guild Master, I know you’ve been looking for your sister for ten years, but why are you suddenly saying this now?”

“Damn it, open your eyes and look carefully! That’s my sister…”

The person restraining him squinted and carefully examined the figure that was steadily approaching. “She looks like she’s in her early twenties at most, no matter how much you stretch it. That damn skeleton bastard, I ought to turn it into hangover soup. I was wondering why it wasn’t attacking, and it seems to be using some kind of mental skill.”

The person next to Haerang, Woo Sanghoon, a Hunter from the Earthquaker Guild, clicked his tongue and pressed on the earring-shaped magic tool equipped with communication magic to share information. “This seems like brainwashing magic. Guild Master Haerang’s lost his mind. Are there any other victims?”

Regardless of what was being said, Haerang couldn’t believe the situation unfolding before his eyes. He kept rubbing his eyes in disbelief. No matter how many times he looked, it was her. His family, Baek Horang, who had scolded him harshly that day ten years ago before vanishing forever.

Her hair was much longer now, reaching near her shoulder blades compared to before, but her face was exactly the same. Those round, gentle eyes and her kind expression that he used to say made her look too soft and approachable. Her small nose and pink lips. The two tiny moles under her eyes were new, but aside from those, she was the spitting image of the photo he kept close.

Even though ten years had passed, she hadn’t aged at all, which was strange, but such phenomena weren’t uncommon among gate survivors. For them, it might have felt like a day or two, but for those left behind, it had been years. According to current research, this was attributed to the differing timelines between the world they were sucked into and Earth.

Whether that explanation was correct or not, Haerang didn’t care. What mattered was whether or not Horang could come back. As if entranced, he started moving toward her, but the people around him clung to his limbs to hold him back.

“Let go, let go of me!”

“Guild Master, snap out of it! That might be brainwashing magic!”

Their constant nagging frustrated him, and he felt a surge of anger rise, but he managed to calm himself and pulled out a photo from his coat. “Here, this is a photo of my sister. Look carefully.”

“Oh… it’s uncanny?”

“And brainwashing magic doesn’t work on me in the first place.”

Haerang, speaking through clenched teeth, shook off those restraining him and strode forward. The tanks behind him, startled by his sudden rush, looked flustered, but there was no one who could stop Haerang, the master of the Horang Guild and a major figure in the Korean Hunter community.

Through the narrow gap between the small figure—Horang—and the line of tanks, Haerang darted forward. Horang, meanwhile, was pondering, Who are these people? They look Korean no matter how I see it. As she wondered, her gaze shifted to the figure suddenly charging toward her, and she raised an eyebrow.

What’s with this guy? Judging by his appearance, he seemed older than her. His formal attire, like a coat, also made him look even older. What’s he doing standing in front of me without even holding a weapon? What kind of confidence is that? Curious, Horang decided to ask, but just as she opened her mouth, a massive fireball, almost half the size of a dragon, came flying toward her from behind.

The commotion among the people behind her made it clear it wasn’t a coordinated attack. To Horang, who had survived countless battles, it didn’t feel like it could even singe a nose hair. But to the man standing in front of her, it seemed different—he immediately dashed forward and embraced her.

“Noona!”

“Huh?”

The word she never thought she’d hear from an older man left her momentarily stunned. Meanwhile, the searing heat of the approaching fireball grew ever closer.

Haerang, to be honest, might barely survive even if he got hit by that attack, but he couldn’t be sure his sister would come out unscathed. So he held her even tighter and tried to roll them away, but it felt as if her feet were rooted to the ground. Horang didn’t budge an inch, effortlessly receiving the hug.

As the heat drew closer, Haerang shut his eyes tightly. Then, as if it were a lie, the heat suddenly vanished in an instant. He held onto her for a while, but when his body remained unharmed no matter how long he waited, Haerang opened his eyes with a bewildered expression and looked up.

Horang didn’t hide the puzzlement on her face, but then her expression brightened as if she had realized something. “Hey, you! You’re Baek… Baek Haerang, aren’t you!” Although she stumbled over her words midway, she knew his name. It was unmistakable.

It was her. The Baek Horang he had waited for ten years. In an instant, memories of the loneliness and pain he had endured, and the countless gates he had scoured to find her, flashed through his mind. In that emotional moment, just as tears were about to flow, Horang asked in a voice full of curiosity, “But why do you look so old?”

“Noona…”

***

“So, you’re telling me it’s only been ten years since I disappeared?”

“Yes, noona. Where have you been all this time? I looked for you so, so hard…”

“Well… that happened. It’s not like I wanted to go, you know?”

“That’s true, but… what on earth is that bone dragon? How did you even tame something like that?”

The emotional reunion after finding the family he lost as a child was short-lived. As the hunters quickly withdrew, they glanced suspiciously at the bone dragon, which was lying calmly on the ground, purring. And they looked at Horang with even greater suspicion—and fear. From what they had heard, while Haerang was hugging her, Horang had casually waved her hand in the air to completely erase the attack. It wasn’t defending against it or reflecting it; it was complete “deletion.” For a magic user to pull that off, they’d need to be leagues above the caster—practically an unmatched powerhouse. As a result, their gazes toward Horang held more fear and unease than goodwill or trust.

Of course, Ho-rang didn’t care about such things. She was simply happy to have finally met a blood relative after spending over a day on Earth. “Why are you so worked up? It was nothing. Have you been doing well? Your height… it’s the same.”

“I’ve grown 5 centimeters, okay… But more than that, how have you been? How did you manage to… No, never mind. I’m just grateful you’re back, noona.”

“Hmm… Were we always this affectionate as siblings?”

“Noona!” Haerang, embarrassed by Horang’s genuinely curious tone, raised his voice. “Now this feels more familiar. You used to always yell at me like that, didn’t you?”

“That’s so long ago! I’ve grown up now—I’ve matured, you know.”

“No, I’ve learned that growing older doesn’t mean you mature…” Horang recalled a man she had left behind in the Demon Realm—a man who was old enough but behaved like a child—and quickly dismissed the thought.

It’s not like I’ll ever see him again. If she considered her subordinates, she thought it might be better to kill that guy to ensure no future troubles. But he was practically unkillable. Even in the Demon Realm, Horang had tried to kill him countless times over the past thousand years. Even when she split his body in half, he kept talking. When she went as far as to cut off his head, he came back an hour later, saying, “That one hurt a little, sweetheart.”

Ugh, just thinking about it gives me a headache. Shaking her head to dispel the thought, Horang looked at Haerang, who, despite his older appearance, was behaving like a child. As she watched his face gradually align with the faint memories she had, she thought, He really is my brother.

Though she found his trailing words strange, Haerang quickly changed the subject to keep the conversation going. He had too many questions for his sister. But today, there was something more important than catching up.

“Noona… should we… go visit Mom and Dad?”

“Mom and Dad? Didn’t they pass away? I remember seeing them get flung away.”

“…We held a funeral and placed their remains in a columbarium. They’d be happy if we visited together.”

“Alright, sure. Let’s go.”

Although some affection for her family lingered, Horang’s humanity, which had been worn down and broken over time, was barely hanging by a thread. There might have been a time when the death of her parents was heart-wrenchingly painful and sorrowful, but even those days now felt faint and distant. Her parents had died, hadn’t they? She remembered seeing them flung out of the car. So what? To Ho-rang, who lived every day under the constant threat of death, the concept of dying meant little more than that. Her reaction, so calm and almost chillingly indifferent, unsettled Haerang. But he brushed it off, thinking it was just needless worry.

Noona must have gone through some tough times somewhere, so it’s natural that she might have changed a little.

In his memories, Ho-rang was still the eldest daughter and the strict disciplinarian of the family. But since he, too, had gone through painful times and changed, he figured it was only fair to assume Horang had as well.

When Haerang suggested taking a helicopter to Seoul, Horang responded by proposing they just ride the bone dragon. Haerang broke into a cold sweat trying to dissuade her, and after much effort, he finally managed to bring Horang to the columbarium. Flying a helicopter through the sky would make people think, “Oh, someone’s passing by.” But if a bone dragon flew to the guild’s headquarters, people would undoubtedly think, “Oh crap, we’re doomed, aren’t we?”

What kind of world did she live in to think riding something like that would be fine? A faint sense of doubt about his sister began to sprout in Haerang’s mind. Perhaps his sister, Baek Horang, was very different from the person he once knew and remembered.

***

At the columbarium, Horang behaved quite awkwardly. Looking at the urns filling the walls, she innocently asked, “Are all these dead people?” Her reaction was so out of place that it felt unsettling.

Haerang brushed off her question and guided her to the memorial portraits of their parents. They say ten years is enough to change a landscape, but the smiling portraits of their parents still stirred overwhelming emotions every time Haerang saw them. He remained silent, trying to suppress his feelings, while Horang, on the other hand, had no particular thoughts at all.

“Wow, it’s Mom and Dad’s photos. Right, they looked like that. But they seem younger than I remember. Does that mean I’m much older than them now? Anyway, why did we come here? Are we supposed to try summoning their spirits or something? I’m not very good at spells like that. Maybe I should’ve brought the Grand Witch along…”

As she drifted into idle and utterly irrelevant musings, Haerang, who had managed to compose himself, cleared his throat and spoke up. “Sister, did you say your greetings?”

“Huh? It’s just a photo, not a person. What’s the point of greeting—”

“Anyway! Now that you’ve paid your respects, let’s go. Your room is still just as you left it.”

“Oh, okay. Sure.”

The reunion with their parents and his sister that Haerang had imagined wasn’t anything like this. He had only considered how to comfort his sister if she cried or got choked up looking at their parents’ photos. He had never expected her to seem completely indifferent to the news of their deaths.