“Hungry?”
“N-No. I’m not hungry.”
Yeah, right.
Haran was about to snort, but instead let out a dry cough. Come to think of it, he was hungry too.
Before crossing dimensions, he had gone four whole days without a proper meal. The starvation had left more than just his body empty—it had gnawed at his mind as well.
“Is there anything to eat at home?”
“Yeah. We have ramen.”
Ramen? What was that?
He had no idea, yet the instant he heard the name, his appetite practically vanished. Was that another physical reaction caused by Pyo Haram’s memories?
The thought wasn't particularly pleasant. As he frowned, a sweet, nutty aroma suddenly drifted past his nose.
Sniff.
Haran twitched his nose.
“Wait. Let's go over there.”
“Huh? O-Okay, Uncle!”
Adjusting his grip on the little girl's hand, he headed toward the source of the smell in the alley beside them.
'Over there?'
At the very end of the alley stood a tiny street stall beneath a painfully bright orange canopy.
The delicious smell was coming from it.
“Hey, kid.”
“…Uncle, I'm Sua.”
The girl's expression turned strange.
She was finally starting to think there was something wrong with him.
Haran felt a faint stab of guilt but pretended nothing was amiss.
“R-Right. Sua. What is that over there?”
No sooner had he finished speaking than he smacked his lips.
The aroma of food had already filled his mouth with saliva.
Watching him look ready to drool, the little girl tilted her head before answering.
“Bungeoppang. That's bungeoppang.”
“Bungeo...ppang?”
He had never heard the name before.
Judging by it, it seemed to be some kind of bread.
'So they stuff fish into bread? Like herring pie? But the smell is incredible.'
Gulp.
Haran swallowed hard.
Looking up at him, the little girl asked worriedly,
“Uncle... do you want one?”
“…Yeah. It smells delicious.”
“Then do you have money?”
“Money? You mean this?”
He pulled a flat leather item from his pocket.
It was a card wallet that looked as though the original owner had carried it around for years.
“Nooo, that's a card. You have to pay cash for bungeoppang.”
“Cash...?”
Crash.
Haran's face froze in shock.
He had paid hospital bills with this card.
He had paid taxi fares with it.
He had naturally assumed this object itself was the world's currency.
'There's another kind called cash?'
Then what was this?
As Haran stood there utterly bewildered, the little girl let out a deep sigh and held out her hand.
“Uncle, let me see your phone.”
“My phone? This?”
“Yep. Give it to me.”
The phone passed from Haran's hand into hers.
She paused for a moment upon seeing how badly cracked it was, then skillfully went to work.
Using her tiny hands, she removed the phone case.
Hidden between the case and the phone was a single folded bill.
“There. Your emergency cash.”
“How much is this worth?”
“Five thousand won.”
How valuable was five thousand won?
Haran tilted his head.
The girl pointed toward the stall.
“You can buy eight bungeoppang with this.”
“…!”
Eight of those wonderfully fragrant pastries.
Five thousand won had to be a fortune.
Smacking his lips, Haran roughly ruffled the girl's hair.
“Excellent. Let's go buy some bungeoppang.”
“Okay!”
One ragged-looking adult and one adorable little girl hurried side by side toward the stall.
The owner, who had been flipping the fish-shaped molds while greeting customers, nearly screamed at the bizarre combination.
“Give me some bungeoppang. I have money.”
“I'm sorry. My uncle's a Hunter. He just got back from work looking like this. He's a good uncle.”
“Oh, goodness, you scared me.... You're a Hunter? I thought you were some kind of kidnapper.”
“I would never stoop to something so disgraceful.”
Haran proudly lifted his chin.
Thanks to the little girl's quick explanation, he narrowly avoided getting dragged off to the police station.
Better yet, after hearing about his work, the stall owner praised him for doing such good deeds and even threw in five extra bungeoppang for free.
“My kindergarten teacher says grown-ups should eat first.”
“Indeed. Then let us see....”
The freshly made bungeoppang was piping hot.
Haran pulled one from the white paper bag and took a large bite.
The moment he did, a sweet, rich flavor flooded his mouth.
“…!”
This taste!
His eyes flew wide open.
Looking at the bitten cross-section, he found a dark reddish-purple cream-like filling unlike anything he had ever seen.
“Uncle, is it good?”
“Mm. What is this? Is this cream made from fish?”
“That's red bean paste. You've been acting really weird since earlier.”
“That's because I just came back from a dungeon. Here. You eat one too.”
To steer her suspicions elsewhere, he stuffed a bungeoppang into her mouth before quickly devouring the rest of his own.
“Mmm! Mmm...!”
Delicious.
It was unbelievably delicious.
Haran devoured one after another with the appetite of a starving man, making them disappear in the blink of an eye.
Watching the spectacle, the stall owner looked at the little girl with a rather bewildered expression.
“It's okay. My uncle's nice.”
“...R-Right.”
So... maybe he was just a nice fool?
The owner tilted his head in confusion.
* * *
“Good night, Uncle.”
“Mm. Sleep well.”
Some time later, after taking the edge off his hunger with bungeoppang, Haran tucked the little girl into bed before finally finding a moment to himself.
“Hoo...”
Even with her help, simply washing up and changing clothes had been unexpectedly exhausting.
Doing such ordinary things in someone else's body wasn't easy.
'I want nothing more than to collapse and sleep... but...'
Groaning under his breath, Haran slowly surveyed the house with obvious displeasure.
An entryway barely larger than the palm of his hand.
A cramped kitchen.
A single tiny room that would feel packed solid with just himself and the little girl lying down.
'It's about the same as the shack I lived in as a child back in the slums.'
Along the hillside, houses so flimsy they scarcely deserved to be called houses clung to one another in uneven layers.
The home where Pyo Haram lived with his niece was no different.
It looked like a shack reinforced with a few bricks.
Narrow alleys, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through, twisted around the neighborhood like tangled threads.
The closer Haran had gotten to the house, the more speechless he'd become.
Yet the inside proved even worse than the outside.
'They're in terrible circumstances. I'd like to do something about this house first.'
Expanding an existing space by layering a subspace over it wasn't exactly simple.
Still, it wasn't impossible.
The real problem was the limitations of the body Haran now occupied.
“Haah...”
Letting out a long sigh, he closed his eyes and sat cross-legged.
With every slow breath, the natural mana dispersed through the air flowed into his body through his lungs, gradually collecting around his heart.
“Hoooo...”
After gathering as much mana as this body could possibly contain, Haran slowly finished his breathing exercise and opened his eyes.
The amount of mana currently available to him...
...was pitiful.
With this much, he couldn't even cast a basic Fire Ball.
'I'd be lucky if I could light a match....'
Given what the suicide note had said, along with the fragments of Pyo Haram's memories, it wasn't surprising.
Pyo Haram was only an E-class Healer.
Naturally, the mana he possessed could only amount to this much.
'If I steadily trained by accumulating mana through breathing.... No... that won't work either.'
Pyo Haram's body possessed a mana vessel no larger than a tiny soy sauce dish.
To enlarge that vessel, he would first have to shatter the existing mana core and forge an entirely new one.
But even that was impossible unless the body had reached the level of a Sword Master.
If he forced the process, he might lose his life while destroying the mana core—or trigger a catastrophic mana rampage.
“Ghh...! If only I'd realized this sooner...!”
Haran flopped backward onto the floor.
Covering his face with both hands, he groaned in anguish.
The Dragon Heart he'd implanted into that stranger's body earlier that day suddenly came back to mind.
'My mana crystal! My power as the Great Archmage...!'
The mana crystal of a Dragon—a creature literally made of mana.
Had he absorbed it himself, it would have expanded his tiny mana vessel dozens of times over.
If he could freely wield magic as he once had, he would have been able to seal away Pyo Haram's memories, buy himself time, and then either recover his original body or create a new one through magic.
'I have to find some way.'
He had to do something before Pyo Haram's memories completely swallowed him.
But at the moment...
...nothing came to mind.
The best idea he could think of was recording the story of his own life in writing, in preparation for the day he might lose his sense of self.
Of course, even if he left behind such a record, there was no guarantee that his lost identity would ever return after reading it.
“Ughhh...”
I really should have eaten the Dragon Heart myself.
He pounded the floor in bitter regret.
But spilled water could never be gathered again.
For a long while, Haran rolled back and forth across the sticky yellow vinyl flooring, unable to escape his remorse.
'If I ever meet that bastard again, I'll take my Dragon Heart back.'
Clenching his fist, he made the vow.
Whether he would ever actually be able to fulfill it...
...was another matter entirely.