The Returnee Wants to Live Comfortably

You Can Do It!!

I wondered when I saw the name "Eunseol" on the nametag.

If it was someone with that name, she existed in my memory as well.

The name wasn't the only thing that matched. The wings on her back and the basic shape of her hair were also identical.

It was an appearance expected if the girl from that time had grown over the years.

And the fact that she was the granddaughter of the Angel guildmaster confirmed her identity.

Currently, the Angel guildmaster had no blood descendants, only a granddaughter adopted several years ago.

'And most decisively...'

The red scarf that the girl was wearing around her neck.

I had thought it looked familiar, and the scarf she wore then overlapped with what I was seeing now.

I couldn't be sure if the scarf she was wearing now was the same as back then, but there was one thing I knew for sure.

Daesang Elementary School, class 1-1. Ha Eunseol.

It was her.

"Seongjin, do you really know her?"

Ah-rin looked back and forth between me and Eunseol and asked.

Since it involved another girl and me, she reacted sensitively.

I gave Ah-rin a brief reply.

"She's similar to you."

"Does that mean..."

"She's the girl I helped after I parted ways with you in 1st grade."

Ah-rin showed a face that looked like she'd realized something belatedly.

"Oh... That's why..."

The subtle sense of kinship she felt from this girl.

Now that Ah-rin knew what it was, she murmured admiringly in a soft voice.

"Her past probably isn't much different from yours. She lost her parents because they got involved with the wrong people, and she herself was discriminated against for being a Mutamit."

I still remembered what had happened at that winter camp.

The strange sight Eunseol showed when I rescued her outside the gate.

When Eunseol, who was in class 10 of 1st grade as well, saw her classmates, she suddenly shook with fear in terror.

Even without memory, the body is honest.

Her body was so filled with terror that it was clear she'd been horribly bullied by her classmates.

I didn't know the full extent, but it was at least as bad, if not worse, than what Ah-rin suffered.

"What she went through was so terrible, I erased her memories when we parted. Then I guided the Angel guild to find her, and left."

"So, this girl became guildmaster Baek Suhyuk's granddaughter...!"

That was because I'd made it happen. At that, Vern looked at me in astonishment.

Now, with Ah-rin and even Eunseol entangled in this mess, things were complicated enough.

At least, unlike with Ah-rin, Vern seemed to accept Eunseol easily.

It was because, unlike Ah-rin, who belonged to our hostile Sura guild, Eunseol belonged to the friendly Angel guild.

"But since she can't remember me, let's try waking her up first."

Either way, from Eunseol's perspective now, I was just a stranger.

If she had forgotten everything and led a peaceful life, even having seen me naked, she would just look away awkwardly and move on.

"Wait, Seongjin. Before that, there's something I want to tell you."

Ah-rin interrupted suddenly.

"It might not sound that important, but... this secret room, which you said was sealed by a barrier—she found it first."

"What?"

"Is that true?"

Both Vern and I voiced our doubts at the same time.

Ah-rin, being a Sura with heightened senses, could have found it with an extraordinary sense of smell.

But how did Eunseol, of all people, manage to find this room with a barrier?

"And she seemed to notice that someone was inside the bookshelf as well."

Ah-rin remembered the look on Eunseol's face as she gazed at the bookshelf.

"Like me, I think she also reacted to you."

"She recognizes me?"

That was strange. I had clearly erased her memory.

Memories erased like that are not easy to recover.

Even I hadn't anticipated she might get them back with enough time.

If she really did remember me, after seeing that embarrassing display earlier, I wondered what she thought.

"That's awkward."

"The Demon King is not at fault at all!"

"That's right. It's us who should be sorry, coming in unknowing into a place where such a party was happening."

What's more, I wasn't a minor.

Vern and I held an adult party in a place where no one else would see.

Ah-rin and Eunseol, not knowing such an adult party was happening, stumbled upon the secret room.

No one was at fault here.

"Then I'll wake her up instead."

Either way, we couldn't waste any more time, so I needed to wake Eunseol.

Ah-rin poked Eunseol's head with her finger.

Then, as if hitting an acupoint, Eunseol's body jerked violently.

Was this a technique she learned from the Sura guild?

"Huff!!"

Eunseol's eyes flew open and she shot up, as if waking from a nightmare, cold sweat beading on her brow.

"Where...?"

"Are you with us now?"

What Eunseol saw as she woke up was Ah-rin's face.

As she tried to recall what had just happened before she'd passed out, the image flashed through her mind.

The scene with the small elephant trunk dangling—once that memory surfaced clearly, Eunseol's face turned pale.

"Ah... Just now, what did I see?"

"First, calm down..."

"Yeah! It was a dream! I must have had a bad dream!"

"What?"

Looking afraid, Eunseol forced a bright expression.

It was clearly someone fleeing misfortune through denial.

"Haha! How could I have such a weird dream? I must've become hypersensitive lately. I should calm down with some tea or by drawing. Hahahahaha... hahahahaha!"

There was a manic energy in that unnatural, forced laughter, one only found in vulnerable girls.

It looked like a white canvas struggling not to be sullied.

"Hey, friend."

"Hm? What is it?"

"That wasn't a dream."

"What?"

"That was reality."

At Ah-rin's cold, matter-of-fact words, Eunseol looked around.

Where she was lying was the same place as in her 'dream.'

Soon her gaze fell on me and Vern standing behind her.

"Ah...."

"..."

Eunseol locked eyes with me and froze on the spot.

It was the first time we'd met face-to-face since that winter camp, several years ago.

"Hi?"

"..."

Since it had been so long, I greeted her.

But Eunseol just stared at me absently for a while, then went cold, as if struck by lightning out of a clear sky.

"Ah...."

"...?"

"Ahhhh...!"

Then, opening her mouth slowly, she screamed.

"Kyaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!"

She screamed like an extra in a horror movie and sprinted towards the door.

"Kiaaaaaa... ow!"

In her haste, she tripped and fell, tried to get up again but ran into a table or stumbled on a bottle and fell over again.

"Hiiiik! Uaaagh!!!"

Getting up, Eunseol darted out of the chairman's office as if chased by a ghost.

It was like watching an ordinary person go insane after facing a Great Old One in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Seeing her like that, I couldn't help but worry.

"Is she going to be okay?"

"We're in the same Middle School 2 so we'll meet her again and clear it up."

"But Ah-rin, you saw the same thing—how come you're fine?"

Ah-rin had seen the same thing as Eunseol.

But unlike Eunseol, Ah-rin looked completely unaffected, as if she had some kind of mental resistance.

"I can handle seeing it as much as I want! If I'm going to be by Seongjin's side, I need at least that much confidence!"

"That's not confidence, you're just a pervert!"

*Whack!*

"Ah, ow!"

I flicked Ah-rin on the forehead for her nonsense.

She clutched her forehead and rolled on the floor.

She was certainly as unhinged as everyone else—no, with how she'd made her own guild member commit suicide, she was never ordinary to begin with.

"Oh, I almost forgot!"

"What?"

"It's about the teacher who was supposed to be the Demon King's homeroom teacher."

"Ah..."

If she meant that teacher, Vern had killed him with his subordinate earlier.

We'd purged him as a spy, but as a result, now we lacked a homeroom teacher.

We had to find a suitable teacher to fill the spot.

But it wasn't a position anyone would volunteer for.

"What do we do? Are we just going to have no teacher for our class?"

"Ha ha ha ha! Don't worry about that, Demon King."

But Vern laughed calmly, as if having a plan.

For the chairman Vern, reassigning personnel was nothing.

.

.

Panicked, Eunseol had left the chairman's office and gotten into a car outside the Tower.

Yoo Cheon-hwa, who was driving, recalled how the young lady had come running earlier and asked,

"Um... Miss? Did something happen during your meeting?"

"Huh...? Well..."

"Was the chairman not present?"

"No, that's not it... He was a very honest man. Now I see why Grandpa gives him gifts."

It was a lie.

Eunseol made something up so as not to worry Yoo Cheon-hwa.

Was he really honest?

The sight of him having a wild drinking party with a teenage boy was far from honest.

"And he liked the present, too."

"That's good then."

If that were true, it would be a good thing, but Yoo Cheon-hwa felt doubts from seeing how tense Eunseol was.

She looked petrified, not like she'd just finished a friendly meeting.

The strangeness could not help but make him suspicious.

"Are you sure... there wasn't any problem?"

"Yes! Nothing at all happened! I didn't see anything! Yes, I didn't see anything!"

"Miss...?"

Eunseol kept insisting she hadn't seen anything.

Seeing her like that, Yoo Cheon-hwa felt uneasy as he drove.

If he'd known, he should have watched with the third eye.

"Did you perhaps witness one of the chairman's secret hobbies?"

"Huh? Oh! Yes, that's it! When I accidentally opened the bookshelf...! The chairman's secret hideout got exposed! Hahaha! It was my mistake!"

"I see...?"

"Yes! Don't pay attention to it at all!"

No, you saying that makes me worry even more.

Just what kind of secret had broken her like that?

Anyway, the car driving through the rainy streets arrived safely at its destination.

It was the Middle School 2, where Eunseol would live for the next few years.

Eunseol took her luggage and got out of the car to begin dormitory life.

"Have a healthy school life."

"Thank you for bringing me."

With a weak goodbye, Yoo Cheon-hwa drove off.

Standing alone with her suitcase and an umbrella, Eunseol walked into the school.

In front of the girls' dormitory, Eunseol stopped for a moment, hearing the noise of the kids inside.

"Haa..."

She took a deep breath.

For Eunseol, who had suddenly developed a fear of people, communal life was unfamiliar.

If she was with anyone other than family or close acquaintances, she started to tremble.

Her chest would tighten, her stomach would ache, and it became hard even to stand.

It was agoraphobia, which had developed from old feelings of guilt.

If she didn't overcome it, she could never face the grandfather who'd taken her in.

'And...'

What would that boy, the one who rescued her, think if he knew how afraid she'd become?

'Ah...'

She'd just seen that boy a little while ago.

His name, written on his school uniform, was Ma Seongjin—the student her grandfather had once suspected.

The moment of their reunion... which should have only happened once.

'Ah...!'

As she remembered the boy, something else surged into her mind simultaneously.

Yes. That something.

That thing, impossible to describe in words.

That thing that existed only for boys.

Remembering what had burned itself into her retinas before, Eunseol dropped her umbrella.

Even as her wings got soaked, she just stood there, entranced.

And then...

"Haha... ahahaha...!"

A dangerous laugh escaped as her mind was overtaken by that thing.

The vast abyss that thing represented was something an innocent girl could not bear.

The soul that had been a pure white canvas began to be stained.

"No, don't! Get a hold of yourself!!"

Eunseol punched herself in the head to break free of the fantasy.

The pain shocked her back to reality.

"Huh?"

Maybe she'd hit herself too hard; her nose suddenly started to bleed.

Get a grip.

If she kept this up, she'd never build relationships or adapt to society.

Wasn't entering this school her way to overcome this?

"You can do it, Baek Eunseol! You can do it!!"

─Aja! Aja!

With her resolve firm, the girl strode confidently into the dormitory.