Chapter 126

I checked the author’s name again.

Yet no matter how many times I looked, the letters remained unchanged.

Gu Seohyeong.

The fact that the enchanter’s name appeared here could mean only one thing.

***

Tang, tang, tang.

Sharp bursts rang out over the cold marble worktable, like droplets striking a hard surface.

It was the explosive sound produced whenever an enchanter infused a piece of equipment with magic.

—Hunter, what brings you here...?

—Do you perhaps have permission...?

A commotion suddenly erupted outside the workshop, growing so loud that it drowned out the sounds of enchantment.

The enchanter, however, appeared to have expected this. Without interrupting her work, she addressed the guards nearby.

“Is there an S-rank Hunter outside?”

“Yes?”

“If there is, please let him in. Ah, and I’m sorry, but could the rest of you give us a moment alone?”

Before long, Gu Seohyeong was meeting privately with the visitor who had arrived at her workshop.

Standing before her was a man with pale blond hair and narrow, monolid eyes.

It was none other than Kim Kiryeo—the man who had once introduced himself to her as an F-rank Hunter, and who had now come to visit the Enchanter’s workshop as an S-rank.

“Wow, you got here quickly. Were you already standing outside the Association when you called?”

The Enchanter adjusted her glasses and attempted to ease the tension with a casual joke.

The answer she received, however, was stiff enough to make the strained atmosphere between them unmistakable.

“Gu Seohyeong.”

Kiryeo began with a question.

In a way, it would not have been an exaggeration to say that he had come all this way solely to confirm the answer.

“Were we classmates?”

“Mhm.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me before?”

The brown-haired woman answered calmly.

“...You were the one who pretended not to know me first.”

Was the sadness in her voice merely something the alien had imagined?

The mage inhabiting a human body faltered for a moment at her response, but Seohyeong continued in a mildly petulant tone.

“Anyway, you haven’t changed at all. What, did I become so beautiful that you couldn’t recognise me? Is that it?”

“Ah.”

“If I had changed dramatically, I wouldn’t feel so wronged. Honestly, I thought you’d forgotten me completely, so bringing it up after all this time felt awkward. You know?”

There was no answer.

The blond S-rank Hunter merely stood there, staring at Seohyeong’s face.

‘Hmm...’

‘In any case, there’s no doubt we really were classmates.’

‘Right. That must be why this Earthling suddenly suggested that we stop speaking formally to one another.’

After hesitating for a moment, the alien archmage finally opened his mouth.

“Seohyeong-ah.”

“What?”

“Could you tell me how close we were when we were at school?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t remember any of it.”

The most urgent task before him was to fill the gaps in his memory.

He needed information about the body he now occupied, even if gathering it meant relying entirely on someone else.

Fortunately, Gu Seohyeong readily agreed to help her former classmate.

“Have you always forgotten things this easily?”

In any event, she willingly began to tell him what she knew.

***

The story returned to Gu Seohyeong’s third year of middle school—to the day when a group of delinquents cornered her, and a certain boy stepped forward to help.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

First, some background was necessary.

Gu Seohyeong and Kim Kiryeo had been assigned to the same class during their third year of middle school.

Even so, Seohyeong had not memorised his name until the end of the first semester.

That was hardly surprising. Before the incident, she had never once held a proper conversation with her classmate Kim Kiryeo.

“Are you all right?”

“...”

“Let’s get away from them first.”

The student with attendance number one was what people commonly called the quiet type.

He never caused trouble, nor did he distinguish himself in any particular way.

He was always somewhere in the corner of the classroom, blending into the background and passing through school life in near silence.

“The police will be here soon.”

As Gu Seohyeong listened to the voice attempting to reassure her, she lowered her gaze to the name tag on the front of his uniform.

[Kim Kiryeo]

She resolved to remember the name of the student who had saved her.

She thought she would remain grateful to him for the rest of her life.

That was the first impression of Kim Kiryeo to take root in Gu Seohyeong’s memory.

Then, one day, she noticed that the boy she remembered had arrived at school looking different from usual.

The edges of several pain-relief patches were faintly visible above the collar of his uniform.

With so many patches covering his body, had he suddenly taken up some kind of intense exercise?

A few days later, Seohyeong discovered the truth.

And when she did, she was furious.

Kim Kiryeo had not been exercising at all.

He had been attacked by the school bullies because of what had happened that day.

“What? They did all this to you?”

Gu Seohyeong had completely misunderstood why the bullying against her had stopped.

After warning the group that she would report them if they harassed her again, the delinquents had, to her surprise, left her alone.

“These lunatics...”

But the situation around her had become quiet for only one reason.

Behind the scenes, the bullies had chosen a new target.

The group that had once tormented Gu Seohyeong had shifted its attention to Kim Kiryeo.

In fact, the violence they directed at him was even more severe than what they had inflicted on her.

“I can’t stand this anymore! I don’t care whether it ends up in the newspapers or not. I’m going to expose everything. Kiryeo, report them right now! We’ll demand a school violence committee hearing too!”

Gu Seohyeong wept at the thought that the boy who had helped her was now suffering in her place.

She was determined to see the bullies punished, even if it meant enduring the public attention she had feared so much.

“That’s enough.”

However, the one who stopped her was Kim Kiryeo himself.

“Just leave it alone.”

Eight years earlier, Kiryeo had said:

“You’re already going through a difficult time. Wouldn’t dealing with all this be too much for you?”

“It isn’t as though they broke any bones. Honestly, I’m not even sure the teachers would take it seriously.”

“And, for personal reasons, I would rather not allow the matter to escalate either.”

“We’ll be graduating soon anyway.”

The boy’s voice had sounded strangely detached, almost transcendent—as though the S-rank Hunter he would become eight years later were already speaking through him.

“Still...”

Gu Seohyeong tried several more times to persuade him to report the violence.

But Kiryeo remained stubborn.

Then, several days later, he told her that she should stop speaking to him altogether.

He said it would be better for her to keep her distance. If a celebrity became too close to a boy, the group would only spread unpleasant rumours about them.

“You can stop acting as though you know me now.”

By that point, their relationship had become even more distant than it had been before the incident.

‘Does he hate me?’

As a child, Gu Seohyeong had briefly wondered about that.

If Kiryeo had been so determined not to become close to a celebrity, why had he found the courage to save her in the first place?

As everyone knew, school violence was sustained by the presence of bystanders.

Anyone who helped a victim risked becoming the bullies’ next target—exactly as Kim Kiryeo had.

That was why most people chose to remain silent.

“Why did you step in?”

Yet Kiryeo’s answer to the question had been remarkably simple.

“Oh, actually, I was bullied for a while when I was in elementary school too.”

“Ah.”

“And whenever I saw all the students gathered together in the schoolyard for something like a sports festival, I couldn’t help thinking the same thing.”

“What did you think?”

“If even one person among all those students had been on my side, I wouldn’t have wished for anything else.”

Just one person.

That was all.

Kiryeo continued as though he were discussing something perfectly ordinary.

“So ever since then, I’ve thought about it.”

“I decided that if I ever saw someone else struggling, I wouldn’t ignore them.”

Kiryeo claimed that he had intervened solely for his own satisfaction.

He had been content with what he had done, so he told Seohyeong that she no longer needed to worry about it.

From words like those, it was easy to understand what sort of person he had been.

“I see.”

Kim Kiryeo had been a good student.

More than that, he had been a precious connection—someone whose existence helped Gu Seohyeong endure her hellish years in middle school.

And now, as an adult, that childhood friend had saved her once again.

“I was honestly shocked when I put on my glasses and saw your face.”

Having finished recounting the past, Seohyeong gathered her dishevelled hair and tied it back again.

“But Kiryeo, you really haven’t changed at all, have you? You were always this blunt, even back then.”

She began reminiscing in a cheerful tone.

Yet as the story continued, her expression gradually darkened.

“You haven’t changed in the way you help people in trouble either.”

And there was a reason her face had grown so sombre.

“I still remember exactly what kind of person you were...”

When they reunited, Kim Kiryeo had failed to recognise her at all.

Their shared experiences, her name, even her face—none of it appeared to mean anything to the S-rank Hunter.

The thought left her feeling unexpectedly dejected.

“Wait.”

At that moment, the man sitting across from Seohyeong noticed her expression and spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Gu Seohyeong, there’s something you should know.”

“It’s somewhat confidential, but...”

“Huh?”

“The reason I didn’t remember you was because of a medical problem.”

He was about to reveal the truth.

“I lost my memory.”

“What?”

“Brain damage caused me to lose portions of my memory at random. For a time, I couldn’t even remember my own name.”

The creature wearing another man’s skin offered Seohyeong those words as consolation.

“That’s why I didn’t recognise you.”

“Had I been in my right mind, I probably would have known who you were immediately.”

“So please don’t take it personally.”

Seohyeong’s eyes widened in shock.

He had lost his memory?

“Wait. Memory loss? Did it happen while you were working as a Hunter?”

The man in the suit gave a slight nod.

Strictly speaking, it was not entirely false.

Kim Kiryeo had reincarnated only after the body had already completed its registration as a Hunter.

“Oh my God! I knew being a Hunter was dangerous, but I never imagined you had suffered something so serious...!”

Seohyeong muttered with a grave expression.

The alien archmage, however, smoothly redirected the conversation.

“Don’t worry. I’m much better now.”

“As you can see, I can manage my everyday life without difficulty.”

“Y-you can?”

“In any case, now that you know, would you mind telling me more about my past?”

“Ah.”

“I thought hearing about it might help me remember something.”

Seohyeong’s expression became troubled.

“I’m sorry, but I only know about your life up to our third year of middle school...”

Naturally, Gu Seohyeong knew little about Kim Kiryeo’s past beyond that point.

“You were the one who kept your distance from me.”

“And then, the year we entered high school...”

“Dungeon Shock?”

Seohyeong nodded as she recalled the past.

“Of course, once the immediate chaos after the Shock had settled, I remembered the email account we used to exchange video files.”

“I tried contacting you through it, but you never replied.”

From that point onward, Kim Kiryeo’s whereabouts after entering high school were completely unknown.

“That’s why I thought you were dead.”

Why had Kiryeo never checked the account?

Seohyeong wanted to ask why, if he had survived, he had not sent even a single reply.

But she quickly stopped herself.

‘No. There may have been circumstances I know nothing about.’

‘Kiryeo must already be frustrated because he can’t remember anything. I shouldn’t pressure him.’

It was all right.

No matter how strangely fate had twisted, she had ultimately been reunited with her benefactor.

Gu Seohyeong looked at the blond Awakened sitting before her in a suit and offered him an easy smile.

“Anyway, do you have any idea how shocked I’ve been lately?”

“First you told me you were F-rank, and then all of a sudden you appeared in the news as an S-rank Hunter...”

Her old friend did not seem very different from the boy in her memories.

There were those sharp sambaegan eyes.

She could hardly call them pleasant, but they certainly left a powerful impression.

Seohyeong gazed at Kiryeo and continued.

“Still, I was truly happy when I heard you were S-rank.”

A faint shimmer of tears gathered at the corners of her eyes as she smiled.

“I always believed that good people like you would eventually be rewarded.”

“...”

“But I never imagined something this extraordinary would actually happen.”

There was no response.

For some reason, the blond man had been staring silently through the window for some time.

“Oh, look at the time!”

“Could you wait here for a little while?”

“I have an enchantment I need to finish this morning. I’ll be right back!”

Gu Seohyeong returned to her work, leaving the man seated alone in the corner of the room.

He appeared lost in thought.

Tap. Tap.

He drummed his index finger against the table, producing a steady, rhythmic sound.