Vol 2 Chapter 40

"Congratulations. I knew you could do it."

"What? Huh? ...Did you just praise me?"

Kran's overwhelming joy at the casual congratulatory words somehow seemed cute, and Kapros chuckled. He wondered what it would have been like if Yu-wan had been as easy to read as Kran.

"So you have two left now?"

As Kapros counted and spoke, Kran's face turned pale.

"Ugh, no. I really don't want to do it anymore!"

Kran cried out miserably, saying he wanted to go back to before the quest, but in the end, Kapros watched him quietly enter the temple after getting hit once for being too noisy. Then Kapros turned around and headed towards the Giant guild.

In fact, he had come outside hoping he might be able to meet Yu-wan, but it seemed he wouldn't be able to meet that guy today either.

Kapros sat alone in seiza position in the quiet kendo dojo.

Being in the dojo with its cool wooden scent always made him feel calm. Though fatigue from coming out at dawn weighed on his shoulders and his forcibly bent leg hurt, the unfamiliar sensation of holding a wooden sword outside his home for the first time in ages was more striking.

By now, Kapros had reached a level where he could handle carrying a sword around the house during daily life without any issues. In other words, he was fine when not consciously thinking about it, but since he had naturally stopped the training he used to do with Yu-wan, crossing swords directly in MIST, after leaving Tolang and running out of time, he wasn't sure how it would be in reality.

"Phew..."

When he felt his mind had become as calm as still water after exhaling gently, he slowly reached out and grasped the wooden sword in front of him. As he stood up, his body tilted to one side for a moment, but he managed to stand straight by rolling his foot.

In that instant, the sensation of standing firmly on the ground in MIST naturally compared with the present. It was as if that time had been reality, and now was a dream.

But this was his reality.

Even if he couldn't swing it, he could now hold it.

For now... that was enough.

Suppressing the pain piercing his heart, Kapros lifted the sword and took his stance. He strained his eyes, trying to concentrate while staring straight at the tip, but his hand trembled slightly, perhaps because the mental burden of being in the dojo wearing full protective gear was different from holding a sword at home.

The tip of the sword, which should have been pointing in the same direction as his gaze, kept leaving his field of vision, and his arm kept losing strength. His right leg, as if sensing an opportunity, intensified the throbbing pain that had been nagging him, but he gritted his teeth and endured. However, it didn't last long before the wooden sword slipped from his hand and rolled mercilessly onto the top of his foot.

"Ugh...!"

His knees buckled weakly, and he tumbled forward. It really hurt.

"Damn it."

Unable to contain the rising sense of despair, Kapros picked up the wooden sword and threw it away. This situation, sprawled out like a defeated loser, felt like his current unstable self.

In the past, he had lived without caring about winning or losing at all. But since that day of the accident, when Jung Seung-jo's tearful cries had pierced his heart, how many times had he been terrified to realize that he sometimes acted like another Jung Seung-jo?

This pitiful weakness, the cowardly desire to retreat from the essence of the problem, and the resentment and anger that had been accumulating without being fully overcome. Who had said he had a strong will, who had said he had a bright personality, who had said he was a genius? They were all wrong.

If he truly had a strong will, a bright personality, and was a genius, why was he like this now? Someone worthy of those adjectives would have been able to forgive, forget, and overcome all of that.

Suddenly, he remembered when he had started rehabilitation training. Back then, everyone had praised him as amazing and said he would surely overcome it well. So he too had tried to believe that. He thought he could overcome it, that he could forgive everything and move forward, accepting the current situation.

But it wasn't so. Just like his leg that ended up limping without fully healing, he simply couldn't forget that incident. The people who had expected much might have been disappointed, but the one most disappointed in himself was none other than Kapros himself.

So afterwards, he rejected reality, shutting himself in at home. He refused to go outside and didn't let anyone in. Enduring alone the pain and loneliness of his leg that he didn't want others to see, he vowed never again to get involved with others or give his heart to them. It was while living like that, floundering, that he encountered 'THE MIST'.

He gained the healthy legs he had endlessly desired and met good people who treated him as an equal. Because of that, he was able to overcome much of his pain and even gained the strength to take a step forward. No, he thought he had gained it.

But he was wrong. He was still this weak.

"Hah..."

He couldn't understand why he felt so awful at the mere speculation that Yu-wan, who was just one of the people he had newly formed relationships with, might have deceived him. In fact, this was the core of his recent worries.

Even if Yu-wan had really deceived him, Kapros wouldn't suffer any harm. Moreover, if he thought about it, he too was keeping secrets from them, so they might be no different in terms of hiding something. After all, he hadn't told anyone that he couldn't use one of his legs.

'Then why?'

It was selfishness. How selfish was it to constantly doubt and worry alone at the thought that the other might be hiding something, while he himself was hiding things from them? There was a dark greed inside him that wanted the other person, to whom he had newly given his heart, not to do the same, even if he himself kept secrets. Even if it turned out to be an insignificantly small and trivial matter...

'How absurd.'

He had never had such a petty heart towards others before. Then what was Yu-wan, the protagonist of this, to him?

A friend.

Friends were certainly important, but looking back on the past, he had never felt such a base emotion or worried this much because of a friend. In the past, Kapros had decided to accept Yu-wan and Kran as friends, but he had resolved from the beginning to put a minimal fence around his heart so that their existence wouldn't leave scars on him later. So he never talked about personal matters, and didn't even give or ask for a single contact number or name.

And yet...