I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 93
093 Welcome Home, My Son
A drawing was etched onto the thick wooden door. The entire surface was covered in crude sketches.
It looked as though the outlines had been scratched in with something sharp, then colored over with something like charcoal.
And mixed among the drawings, as if hiding within them, were characters that looked like symbols.
To an outsider, it would have looked like meaningless ancient script drawn alongside the pictures. They might have even thought they were just complex signs rather than writing.
But to someone who could read them, they were unmistakably letters carrying meaning. It was Korean.
On the rustic wooden door of the small cabin, a phrase was engraved that one would never expect to see in such a place.
[Welcome home, our son Kim Joo-hwan.]
[Welcome home, son. We’ve been waiting.]
Two phrases with the same meaning were written in two different hands. They were the handwriting of his mother and father, which he had looked at over and over again after being left alone.
‘Why is this here…?’
Without him noticing, Lij seemed to have unfastened the harness.
The unicorn approached and nudged Juhwan’s back with its head. It seemed to be telling him to go inside.
Juhwan looked up at the white horse’s face.
“Ortho, did you know who I was?”
Was that why the creature had brought him here so stubbornly?
At Juhwan’s question, the unicorn shook its mane. It didn’t just nod; it looked as if it were trying to say something. For a brief moment, Juhwan felt the unicorn’s sense of pride. It was as if it were saying its mission was finally complete.
Juhwan placed both hands on the unicorn’s face.
As his palms cupped the long face of the horse, the unicorn lowered its head.
After leaning his forehead against its own, Juhwan spoke in a small voice.
“I’m sorry. I think I understand what you’re trying to tell me, but I don’t quite know what it means. But thank you. I don’t know why my parents’ writing is here—no, I’m sure I’ll find out something if I go inside. Anyway, thank you so much.”
His throat felt tight.
Juhwan fell silent and turned around.
He walked unsteadily toward the house and gripped the handle.
“…”
His father and mother might have been beyond this door. They might have lived here, though he didn’t know when. The handle of this door must have touched their fingers many times. Tears suddenly welled up.
As he opened the thick wooden door, one corner of the lopsided door dragged across the floor, making an unpleasant grating sound.
For some reason, a laugh escaped him. It was exactly the kind of door his father would have made.
His father had never been very good with his hands.
Stepping inside, the interior of the house came into view at a glance. The house consisted of a single room, like a studio. Compared to the size of other houses, it wasn’t even half as large. It was cozy.
The reason for the small size was immediately apparent. In this world, houses were places where people and animals lived together. Usually, a space was set aside inside for livestock to eat and sleep. There would be troughs, and droppings were often scattered on the floor.
But this cabin was a space solely for people, just like on Earth. They might have raised livestock, but at least not inside here.
‘Ah, my parents really did live here.’ They had lived in this place exactly the way they had on Earth. That was the thought that struck him.
As he looked around, he saw a few sets of men’s and women’s clothing hanging on the far wall. They looked quite worn, as if they had been used for a long time.
Next to those clothes, one garment hung that was much larger than the others. It was far bigger than the worn clothes of the man and woman.
‘Is this… could it be mine?’
He approached and held it up, roughly measuring it against his body.
The clothes were large, but they didn’t quite fit.
They had likely been made with the Juhwan of his middle school days in mind, crafted to be slightly larger than that.
Since he had grown much larger since then, it naturally didn’t fit.
Looking closely, the stitching was crooked and poorly done. Compared to Lij’s skill, the difference was as vast as that between an adult and a child. Come to think of it, his mother hadn’t been very good with her hands either. Another laugh bubbled up.
On the left wall stood a bed, and on the opposite wall sat a desk made of cut wood. On the desk was a plain wooden box. It looked as if it had been made simply by cutting wood and smoothing out the splinters.
There were no signs of current habitation. No scattered belongings, no food left out.
However, there wasn’t much dust. If it hadn’t been touched by human hands for a long time, it would have been covered in it, but it seemed someone had been cleaning it until recently.
Approaching the desk, he opened the lid of the wooden box to find it packed with rolled-up parchments.
He picked one up at random and unfurled it. The words at the very top caught his eye immediately.
[That son of a bitch Santa.
We’re old now, and both my husband and I are at an age where we’ll die soon, yet we still haven’t met our son.
Ah, should I really go out looking for Santa with a knife in my hand?
Juhwan, that boy… I wonder if he’s crying…]
It was his mother’s diary. The box was full of diaries recording how the two of them had met Santa, how they had come here, what they felt, and how long they had been waiting for him.
‘They were here.’
They had been alive. The cold body he had seen in the morgue on Earth had been nothing but an empty shell; his real parents had been living and breathing here, laughing and crying, waiting for him to arrive.
They had lived a long time. Though the exact number of years wasn’t known, it was written that they had lived here for roughly 150 to 200 years.
Apparently, the unicorn would occasionally draw zentangles on his mother and father’s bodies. His parents believed that thanks to that, they aged slowly.
But if that were the case, it was even more distressing. They worried that their son, without a Rudolph, would end up growing old and dying alone back on that distant Earth. Despite that worry, they continued to wait, believing in the promise Santa had made.
How painful it must have been for them every time despair and hope took turns visiting.
“…”
His mother had written on the parchment many times that the Rudolph she had named after him would surely bring her son one day. She probably wrote it not because she fully believed it, but because she wanted to believe it so badly.
But she had fallen ill. She wrote that she knew she was going to die. The two of them had talked for a long time and decided to end their lives together on the same day and at the same hour, smiling and without pain.
Both his father and mother realized they wouldn’t be able to meet Juhwan in this world, so they carved the welcome message on the door. They were afraid that if their son arrived late and there wasn’t a single word of welcome, he would feel lonely.
[We lived harmoniously and happily, always thinking of you. If you’re seeing this now, Mom and Dad are okay. We have become the happiest we could be at this very moment. We love you, son. -From Mom and Dad-]
This was likely the last letter. The handwriting was slightly more unsteady compared to the others.
If Juhwan had met Santa just a little earlier, if he had come here sooner, he might have been able to meet them. His parents would have been very old, but perhaps…
“That son of a bitch Santa.”
After muttering that unconsciously, Juhwan closed his eyes.
There was a time when he had cried out of a hunger for love. There was a time when, every night, his parents with their pale, blue-tinged faces appeared in his dreams until he could no longer remember their smiling faces.
But it was okay now.
They were no longer in pain.
He now knew that the distorted faces of agony and the pain of their crushed bodies no longer tormented them.
Only now could he finally recall the faces of his father and mother smiling properly. Ah, those were their faces. Their faces from those happy times looked—yes, like this.
He had never had the chance to change the way he addressed them as “Mom” and “Dad” from his middle school days as he became an adult. So even now, as a grown man, Juhwan still called his parents Mom and Dad in his heart.
Caressing the parchment with his fingers, Juhwan whispered.
‘I got married. I have a wife and a child now, Mom. They’re lovely and cute. I’ll treat her even more tenderly and preciously than Dad treated you.’
The hollow beneath his heart, once filled with pain, was now packed tight and made firm with happiness. There was no longer any room for sorrow to creep in.
‘So… it’s okay now, Mom, Dad. I’ve become happy. So please, rest in peace. Don’t worry anymore.’
He truly hoped these words would reach the two of them.
When Juhwan stepped outside, Lij and Dorothy were by the carriage.
“Lij, this is where my parents lived.”
When he smiled as he said that, Lij and Dorothy ran over and hugged him.
Without knowing why, Dorothy began to cry.
Lij told Dorothy not to cry while stroking Juhwan’s back instead.
Only then did he realize he was crying himself. It seemed tears could fall even when one was too happy.
When Juhwan reached out his hand, the unicorn approached and gently rested its long face against his palm.
“Your name was Yeonhwa.”
That was why she had disliked the name Ortho so much.
She had already received a precious name. Now he knew.
Just as she had suddenly turned into a human when he first arrived in this world, it seemed she was now turned into a unicorn and couldn’t return to her form as a girl.
If she could change at will, she surely would have taken the form of that girl he had first met.
Thinking of the girl’s face as her eyes sparkled at the sight of him, Juhwan gave a bittersweet smile.
He wished he could meet that child just one more time. If they did, they would have so much to talk about. The memories of his mother and father would double if they shared them with each other.
‘But that might be impossible now.’
Santa was, in many ways, a bit incompetent when it came to handling the finer details.
Juhwan looked down at Dorothy and placed a hand on her head.
“This one had an original name, Dorothy. I think we should stop calling her Ortho.”
Dorothy tilted her head and muttered.
“But I like Ortho.”
“Yes, it’s a good name. But wouldn’t you hate it if someone changed your name and called you something else, Dorothy?”
“Ah!”
Dorothy’s eyes widened, and she shouted.
“You can’t change names! Dorothy is Dorothy. If the name becomes something else, it’s not Dorothy.”
Dorothy looked at the unicorn with a serious face.
“Ortho, if you had an original name, you should have told your big sister Dorothy. Otherwise, your name would have become something else. That was a close one.”
As if her crying from a moment ago was a lie, Dorothy’s face cleared up instantly. Children really were quick to move on.
Unlike Juhwan’s name, which she had found difficult to pronounce, ‘Yeonhwa’ stuck to the child’s tongue easily. It seemed to be because she already knew similar pronunciations.
After saying ‘Yeonhwa’ out loud several times, Dorothy gave a bright smile.
“It’s the same as Daddy’s name. Yeonhwa.”
For some reason, those words made his heart ache. To the child, it probably just felt that way because it was Korean, but to Juhwan, it sounded like she was saying the grandmother and the father were alike.
“Yes, it’s similar.”
Hiding his stinging eyes, he stroked the child’s hair, and Lij quietly rested her head against his chest.
“…”
Even without saying anything, it was just good. Staying still with their skin touching like this made him feel like he was telling his parents, I am happy.
Neigh, neigh. Yeonhwa suddenly cried out and tugged at Juhwan’s clothes with her teeth.
Following the unicorn’s lead, they found a burial mound behind the cabin.
There was no headstone or marker, but it stood out. It was because it was incredibly large, as if it were a royal tomb.
“Did you make this?”
When Juhwan asked, Yeonhwa blew a puff of air into his face as if proud.
The thought of the little girl working hard to dig the earth and pile up the mound so large made him smile.
“Thank you. I’m so glad you were by their side.”
Dried grass was scattered over the grave. It wasn’t that turf had grown; someone had pulled up a lot of grass and scattered it over the mound.
“You must have done this too. When spring comes, let’s scatter flowers here together.”
Lij, Dorothy, the unicorn, and even the horned rabbit—the whole family stood side by side and looked at the grave for a moment.
Dorothy didn’t seem to understand the concept of people dying and being buried in a grave.
When told that her grandfather and grandmother were inside that round mound, she wondered why they were in the ground. She asked if they wouldn’t be unable to breathe.
It seemed no one had explained to her what happened after her biological father and stepmother died.
When he told her that once a person dies, they can no longer breathe, she was shocked.
For a while after that, Dorothy was testing what happens if you don’t breathe along with Oz. Then she came running to Juhwan in a panic.
“Daddy, Daddy! You can’t not breathe.”
Being with a child made him laugh even while crying.
Oz, who was tucked in Dorothy’s front pocket, looked strange, as if his white fur were about to turn blue. The rabbit’s cheeks were puffed out as if he were holding his breath.
Juhwan told Oz to breathe immediately, then scooped the child up.
“Of course you have to breathe. All living things are breathing. Don’t play games like that, Dorothy. It’s a dangerous game.”
“Okay! Dorothy doesn’t like not breathing either because it’s hard.”
As he walked toward the cabin with Lij, she suddenly asked.
“Juhwan, how would you feel about living here? If you’re going to hunt magical beasts, this place seems fine too.”
“Well, I’d like it, but… it won’t be easy to live here. As you saw, Lij, this house wasn’t made very well. There are many places that need fixing to live here. It’s cramped, so we’ll have to build an extension too.”
Lij smiled brightly.
“It’s good, isn’t it? You and I fixing up and living in the place your parents built.”
“…”
Rehanging the crooked door, adding wood to the leaking roof.
They would need a stable for the livestock too.
They would raise chickens, goats, and sheep, and they’d have to make a small field next to it for fodder.
They would also have to build rooms in advance for Dorothy and the baby that would be born one day.
Future events began to paint themselves in his mind one by one.
And then, one day when Dorothy was older, maybe around ten, she would tell her younger sibling:
Do you know? This door is what Daddy fixed when I was five. This room is what Daddy and Mommy made for me when I was six, and your room was newly made when I was seven…
Juhwan put his arm around Lij’s shoulders and nodded.
Just as his parents had done when Juhwan was young, let’s mark the child’s height on a pillar every year.
On Christmas, they would leave Santa’s gifts by the bedside, and on New Year’s, they would eat specially prepared food and exchange small gifts. Let’s live that kind of everyday life.
Those things would pile up and gather to become a small and humble, but warm home.
“Yes, Lij. Let’s live here.”
“We’ll be happy, I’m sure of it.”
As they boarded the carriage and left the mountain cabin, warm smiles were etched on both their faces.
