Kaeul suddenly became weird.
She tended to smile brightly whenever their eyes met, but now she looked away and avoided eye contact.
Throughout their remaining time on the deserted island, she had trouble looking straight into his eyes. Bom and Gyeoul acted strange sometimes but it was the first time Kaeul was being like this.
Since there was a need to be cautious about everything related to Kaeul, Yu Jitae decided to ask her.
“Yu Kaeul.”
“Hukk…!”
“What’s wrong. Did you do something bad?”
“N, n, n, no I didn’t?”
“Or did you do something that I told you not to?”
“No? I didn’t…?”
The authenticity hanging on the Eyes of Equilibrium was ‘true’. It seemed that she hadn’t done anything ‘wrong’, and that puzzled him even more.
“Then why are you covering your face. Did you get hurt?”
She had her hands flat above her eyes, as if she was blocking sunlight. The difference in height between the two was considerable, and thus he couldn’t see her small face. So Yu Jitae bent his back and tried to look into the child’s face.
“Mommy…!”
Kaeul became startled and immediately ran away. Her fast-beating heart was loud and clear, and her pupils dilated whenever their eyes met.
Those signs were usually revealed when someone was scared. So what made her so scared all of a sudden? He couldn’t figure it out no matter how much he pondered so he decided to observe her for the time being.
On the other hand, she was only like that towards himself, and her attitude towards Bom, Yeorum and Gyeoul were no different than usual.
“It’s a bit sad.”
During breakfast, Bom quietly opened her mouth.
“Nn? What do you mean, unni?”
“It feels like time always flies when you’re having fun…”
“Huh? Oh wow… You’re right. You’re right…”
“…”
They agreed to her words.
It was already their last day in Peace City.
***
In the middle of a dark mountain, the kids gathered around and focused. Their eyes were sparkling gently from the darkness.
Sitting next to them were Li Hwa and Myung Yongha’s family, and in front of them was a tower made of chunks of wood that formed the shape of the character 井.
The singing voices of bugs reached their ears, while the sky was densely filled with unusually bright stars that lit up the area in the stead of the moon that had hidden itself.
Myung Yongha climbed the wooden tower, and gave a deep bow like a gentleman.
“Thank you everyone for illuminating this place with your presence.”
His wife, Jung Hawon, quietly grumbled, “What is he saying with those caveman clothes…”
“Cutting straight to the chase, we will start the lighting ceremony. Honour to the Yu household and the Myung…”
Bam!
It was then. Firecrackers went off before his words even ended. When everyone turned towards her, Kaeul blushed in surprise.
“Uh, urh. Was that too fast…!?”
Myung Yongha laughed heartily.
“I thought you said we were starting…” said Kaeul with an awkward smile.
They seemed to have gotten the order wrong, but Gyeoul, who was sitting on Yu Jitae’s lap, suddenly clapped out loud and Bom had to hold her back.
“Ehew, that braindead monkey.”
Yeorum murmured and Kaeul pouted. Soon, Myung Yongha gave another big shout.
“Uahhh! Anyway! In hopes of the harmony between the Yu household and the Myung household…!”
“Honey. You sound like an old man.”
“Do I…? Aye whatever. Uhahaha! Fire up!”
Despite his wife dissuading him, Myung Yongha jumped off the wooden tower and used a spell.
Hwaaak…!
Fire soared into the air on the massive campfire.
Clap clap!
Having been freed from the restriction, Gyeoul clapped with a bright expression, followed by the other dragons, the Myung family and Li Hwa.
The process had been a mess but the large tower of flame chasing away the darkness was quite a decent sight. Slowly, the chilliness of the night that had covered the forest dissipated.
Gyeoul flapped her hands and slapped him on his thigh. When he looked down, the child lifted her head and gave a wide smile while her water-coloured eyes reflected the red flame.
Judging from the fact that Bom, Gyeoul, Kaeul and even Yeorum were etching the sight into their eyes, this must be a beautiful scene.
“Mister Jitae! Please lend me a hand!”
Yu Jitae went and helped Myung Yongha with the barbeque. Meanwhile, Bom approached Li Hwa and gave a suggestive smile, which also bloomed a smile on Li Hwa’s wrinkled lips.
“Right. Right… From that, foxxxyyy smile on your face, I see… You must have succeeded, right?”
She nodded.
Bom first came across Li Hwa at Melissia Masquerade, but they met several times while she was walking around the island, and they became quite close.
Due to several reasons, Bom had started sharing her personal story with Li Hwa and Li Hwa loved it. Even now, when Bom slowly and carefully shared what had happened with Yu Jitae, a full smile appeared on her wrinkled face.
“Haigo… you little girl…”
“Yes.”
“You’re truly a fox. A fox indeed. Hnn? You’re making my heart flip as well…”
“Hehe.”
“But I don’t understand. Is that man a eunuch?”
“…?”
Bom tilted her head with a smile.
“No, so, so, how was it? Your first alcohol.”
“Hmm. You see…”
While Bom was talking about her first impression with alcohol, Myung Jun-il threw furtive glances at Gyeoul. The boy remembered the advice his dad gave him.
‘Son. Love is all about timing!’
Last day of an enjoyable stay on the deserted island, plus a beautiful campfire and them being the only ones nearby.
Was there better timing than this?
Hiding a flower behind his back, Myung Jun-il walked up to Gyeoul. But, he suddenly stopped.
‘How is it timing? Love is all about destiny.’
It was because his mum’s rebuttal suddenly flashed past his head.
However, the word ‘destiny’ was too difficult and was hard to understand for the young boy. So it must be timing. Plus, since it was the words of his dad, the strongest hero of the universe, it had to be true.
And right now was the best timing ever.
“Umm, noona.”
Gyeoul turned towards him.
“…Why?”
“I have something to say.”
“…Nn.”
“This. Here…”
Myung Jun-il revealed the flower from behind.
“…What’s, this?”
“A, a gift.”
Gyeoul stared at the boy’s gift, the red tulip, before looking back at the boy’s face. She could see Myung Jun-il looking at the ground with a face that turned bright red after holding the flower forward.
She grinned.
“…Cute.”
“Huh, huh? Were you saying that to me?”
Gyeoul shook her head.
“…You know. One second.”
“Huh? Uhhh.”
“…Your ear.”
Ear? She wants to talk into my ear? Is it okay to be that close? When Myung Jun-il placed his ear towards her while struggling to calm down his racing heart, she whispered something into his ears.
Her words gave a great shock to Myung Jun-il.
“…Do you get it?”
“Ah, ah… Nn.”
“…Thanks for the flower but.”
Gyeoul waved her hand. Myung Jun-il waved back with a smile but after turning around, the boy had a teary look on his face.
His mum was right.
Love wasn’t about timing and was all about destiny.
*
“We got some fruits last night, you know?”
Myung Yongha’s wife, Jung Hawon, showed interest in Kaeul’s words. It was a story about the fruits that had bloomed on the spirit tree.
“You sisters all have unique personalities right. Your fruits would have been quite diverse as well then.”
“Yes yes. Mine was very sweet, squishy and juicy inside, and Gyeoul’s was sweet, sour and slightly bitter.”
“What about Yeorum’s?”
“Yeorum-unni’s was a spicy fruit…! It looked like a green chilli pepper, you know? But after touching it with her bare hands, unni accidentally wiped her eyes and…”
“What?”
Jung Hawon and Kaeul giggled.
“Huh? Where did Yeorum go though?”
“Nn? You’re right. Where is she?”
They couldn’t find Yeorum all of a sudden.
Walking around, she looked for Yeorum. She peeked at the forest; peeked next to Yu Jitae and the beach but couldn’t find Yeorum till the end and instead found Bom, who was sitting down alone on the beach.
“Uh? What are you doing, unni?”
“I was looking at the stars.”
That suited Bom quite a lot.
It seemed that the opportunity had come. Kaeul hopped forward in short strides and sat next to her, before glancing at her face. It was a really pretty face even in the eyes of a dragon. Her calm, quiet, innocent yet somewhat cold gaze…
But the expression she saw yesterday was nowhere to be seen on her face.
What was that expression?
How was Bom-unni feeling, and what was she thinking about? Did Yeorum-unni and Gyeoul know already?
…What about ahjussi?
Doubt created another doubt without an end. So Kaeul carefully opened her mouth.
“Unni…”
“Nn.”
“Mhmm. Uhh… umm…”
“Why?”
“…”
She wanted to ask something, but after opening her mouth, she didn’t know what to say. Thus, Kaeul wasn’t able to ask anything.
“My little sister. Is there something you want to say?”
Bom looked at her with an implicit gaze.
“Nn? No? It’s just that, it’s really fun here.”
“Ahh.”
After showing a smile, Bom’s eyes returned to the sky.
“I see.”
“…Did you have fun too?”
“Nn. It was fun for me as well.”
Silence covered the two for a bit before Bom opened her mouth again.
“What did you enjoy the most, Kaeul?”
“Nn? Me? I… I liked how we got to experience things that we couldn’t at Lair and the dormitory. The spirit tree was cute, and the island itself is just full of fun…”
Kaeul hesitated slightly, before adding more words.
“W, what about you, unni?”
“Me? I’m… hmm…”
Bom gazed at the sky without saying anything in response. Her grass-coloured gaze and her eyelashes appeared ever so sorrowful for some reason, that Kaeul couldn’t ask anything else.
“It just, feels like a dream.”
“Nn?”
“You remember how the dimensions got disjointed when we first left, yeah?”
“Ah. Un un. Of course. It was really scary. Like how everything suddenly got crushed around us, and those weird sounds as well…”
“Right.”
“Nn. But we fortunately came to a world with people, so that was lucky for us…”
“Yeah. And we were worrying about how to fill up the Amusement time, right.”
“Un un. We knew nothing about this place and it was really scary. I wanted to see my mum, and…”
“Me too. But, now we’re living happily like this. And it just felt strange.”
“Ah…”
In fact, it was the same for Kaeul.
She was happy, to a level that she had never expected back when she was trembling from anxiety and fear.
“Right. I was always curious.”
“About what?”
“How could I be this happy in such a foreign world? You know… after coming here, I also had this small question. How could there be such a fun island? So…”
Kaeul followed Bom’s gaze and looked at the same place she was staring at. There was a slightly bigger star than the surrounding stars, that showed off its brightness.
While tucking her hair behind her ear, Bom opened her mouth.
“I was thinking about that while looking at the stars, but I realised that we can’t just smile and do nothing.”
“Nn…?”
“Since happiness isn’t just created from nothing.”
Kaeul widened her eyes into circles.
It was something she had never thought about before.
How was happiness created?
“Right… do you know, unni? How we became this happy? And how there could be an island this happy and entertaining…?”
***
“…”
Yeorum, who sneaked a shot of Myung Yongha’s alcohol during the campfire, suddenly wanted to smoke.
She went to the forest and was smoking a cigarette when she came up with something interesting. It was about the underground cave that she had found with Yu Jitae.
Thus, Yeorum sneakily went into the ocean and headed to the underground cave by herself.
“This…”
After climbing the stairs and walking through a long corridor, there was another set of countless stairs. When she finished climbing that as well, she finally came across air that had been locked inside the underground cave, above the water level.
What she found on top of that, was an extremely horrendous odour. The ominous atmosphere, the creepy odour and the black stains that had flowed to the ground irritated her sight.
At the end of the stairs, she stood in front of a rusted metal door.
Her sixth sense as a dragon told her that there was something inside this place.
“Wah, fu*k… this doesn’t feel good…”
She gave a deep frown, but stopping here after coming this far wasn’t an option.
So, Yeorum carefully pushed the door open. The door was stiff and created a creaking noise when she pushed it, but regardless, she pushed it till the end.
And there–
“…”
There was an unbelievable scene in front of her. Having crumpled her face into a frown, Yeorum covered her mouth and nose.
Inside was a mountain of corpses.
They had all been disfigured, and weren’t even allowed to rot.
“Yu Yeorum.”
That was when a familiar voice reached her ears. When she turned around with a flinch, she found Yu Jitae standing behind her.
“Ah, fuc*’s sake… you surprised the shi* out of me…”
“I told you to not care about this place.”
“Well, that’s up to me. Am I your little dog or something…? Just doing what you tell me to…?”
Despite saying that, Yeorum stopped her breath and forcibly controlled herself from vomiting. And she slowly walked and hid behind him.
“Whatever. Let’s go back if you’ve seen enough.”
“…”
“Let’s go. What are you doing.”
“…That thing, what is it?”
“What do you think. It’s a corpse. Mummies.”
“I mean, why are there so many. And why are they all damaged…?”
Unable to look at the horrendous mountain of corpses, she pointed with her finger. Yu Jitae blankly looked at the corpse mountain before opening his mouth.
He knew what this was.
“This is one of the customs of another dimension, [Charia].”
“Charia?”
“People in that dimension make soldiers that died during the war into mummies and bury them under the land they live in. They then create an underground path for them to honour the corpses later on.”
“Why?”
“It’s to remember that they’re living thanks to the remains of their dead heroes. That’s how they honour their victims of war.”
After hearing that much, Yeorum came up with a hypothesis.
“Then this island…?”
“Yeah. Those corpses over there with broken necks, cut-off legs with spears in their bodies had probably been protecting this island against their enemies when they were alive.”
And the entire island must have been carried by a dimensional disjoint, that was later discovered somewhere on Earth in the name of a ‘dungeon’.
Yeorum swore after comprehending all that.
“Fu*k. How is that ‘Peace City’…”
But that’s how things were.
These things called happiness and peace were all built on top of another’s blood and even in this moment, someone was shedding blood and sweat for the happiness of others.
And those broken and rusted swords must have found their rest here after their death.
“Let’s go back now.”
Yu Jitae pulled her by the shoulder and headed back to the door. Leaving the gruesome scene behind her back, Yeorum murmured.
“It feels dogshit. I shouldn’t have come here…”
“Please, just listen.”
“Nn…”
And the door was closed shut.