I remembered the particular scene. It had been the year 2048 and I had been glued to the TV Screen. It had been a time back when the world had a little more hope and I was 10 years old back then.
Right at front and center of the camera had been the S-Rank Hunter Lee Jihan. A man renowned for his powerful frost magic with the moniker of Frost Monarch with his power being considered in the top 100s of Korean Hunters dead and alive. He had also been under considerations to become an SS-Rank Hunter following the 2048 Busan Raid.
"Yul! It's unhealthy for you to be so close to the TV! You are going to be blind if you continue watching like that!"
My mother complained in the background but I was more concentrated on the screen. A young reporter walked up to Lee Jihan who had a complex look on his face. His face once relatively young and youthful for a man in his mid 40s had aged significantly his deep dark blonde hair turning to a silverish gray like that of my own.
There was a common quote from hunters of the age which described this case properly, "A young man could enter a raid but if it's a Red Gate, he comes out as an old frail man." It was by all means an exaggeration but it was true that the stress of certain raids would just accelerate your aging.
A reporter came up to Lee Jihan with a microphone in his hand.
"I'm an independent news reporter from Busan and I'm curious about what happened within in the Gate?"
"It was hell. Utter hell. Those insects swarmed you from everywhere and they had no end. If you thought you were safe for one moment, you were optimistic and the very next moment they would burrow out from the ground and ambush you. We couldn't rest at all."
The reporter had an obviously concerned look on his face.
"But out of the Hunters that came back, it was only you who came back so what resulted in your success where others failed?"
"It wasn't a success. Just surviving to another day isn't success. It's just living not thriving. But it was a pure game of luck. You are lucky or you were not, and the others were not..."
His eyes cold and piercing stared right at the camera and it felt as if he had been looking straight at me.
"But luck can only save you for so long and in those moments, you have to fight because you can't flee or hide anymore. It's just through the pure intensity of that moment that your vision flashes from black and white and back to color..."
--
I woke up confused as I began to grab at my head with my right hand which had been tightly bandaged. To my right on another bed had been my young father who had also been bandaged up. Thankfully he had not been awake otherwise we would have had another fight.
Confused, I began to ask, "Where am I?" I wondered before getting curious about where my phone had been. Noticing that it had been on the other bed, I reached out it. Slowly, gently. Not trying to wake up the beast that would inevitably attempt to beat the ever-living shit out of me.
Somehow, I reached out to the phone successfully. After all, there was a good chance of me fumbling with it. But reaching for the phone made me realize something. The year displayed on the phone October 2, 2025...
It began to make sense.
"The Clear blue skies, the visible sun, the streets full of cars, the young voice of mom," It was all clicking together like pieces of a larger picture. "And that useless fuck right next to me..." I stared at him while cursing him out quietly.
"I came back to the past!"
I sighed happily before opening my phone or rather my father's phone to check what he had on here. Like the last time that I held it in my time, 2052, it appeared that the phone was as damaged as ever. But unlike last time, where I couldn't see much as there was no battery, I got to see it.
His phone screen had been a picture of a bright-eyed young girl. Dark black hair and the same light blue eyes as me, it was clear to me who it had been. It was a younger version of my mom eating a comically tall ice cream cone that went up to three scoops.
'It's cute but at the same time it's kind of embarrassing looking at something like this...'
I thought to myself before opening up his phone to see what he had on it. My father had a good amount of various apps and games on his phone... In particular, I began to play one of them for quite a bit.
It was a boon of fun playing that racing game but it was only a matter of time until things would have to come to an end. The room door opened and I saw her walking in. Dark hair, light blue eyes, a timid somewhat worried look across her face as she looked around the room somewhat absent mindedly.
Mother was always innocent looking.
"It's nice to meet you ma'am."
I said respectfully before bowing to her while my mother was still looking around confused. A blush of embarrassment across her face as she turned away for a moment.
"Please don't call me ma'am, since I'm not that old..."
She glanced towards the phone right in my hand.
"But that phone. Did you take it from him?"
I paused for a moment. Parsing what to say in order to trick my mom from the past. Something that I wouldn't really want to do. But honestly, it would be more confusing for me to explain to her the fact that I was her daughter from the future.
I nodded in response.
"Yeah. I did and I did not have a phone, so I needed to use his phone for a bit."
She stared at me blankly before nodding.
"Alright, did you happen to do what you needed to do with his phone?"
I stared at her blankly for a moment.
"Do you have a printer?"
"I do. But why are you asking me about that?"
I took a picture of her looking at me with a face that was half way cute and confused. She immediately flushed up as she covered her face.
"Please don't take pictures of me out of nowhere!"
"Relax. You are a beautiful girl, so shouldn't you have a little more resistance to being emabrassed this way..."
Even to the modern day, my mom was always weak to getting taken pictures of. But it wasn't this bad.
"Well. I think that's nice that you think I am beautiful but that's not what I am here for..."
She said while trying to not get confused and placed offtrack by my words.
"So what are you here about?"
She pointed to my hair and then my father's. I look at my father's hair, a beautiful light blue silverish color. Then I looked back at her, not understanding her point.
"Yeah, we are not bald. So what?"
"No! You are missing my point!" She said flushed. "Why are you even fighting with your cousin, all of the sudden!"
I stared at my dad's hair then pulled a strand of mine to then look at it. Understanding what she was getting at, I began to realize that I was a little stupid.
"Because that's what cousins do."
I said with a thumb pointing back towards me with a confident look across my face before she sighed. It was a light sigh. Not something that you would let out of hate, frustration and dark emotions, but more so out of forgiveness. It was proof that she was my mother.
"Well, now that you are in Seoul, what do you plan on doing?"
She said as she laid right on the other bed. Placing her hand against my thankfully and still unconscious father.
"I'll probably just go around making some money and I'll go around to fighting him again."
She stared at me blankly with a deadpan look in her eyes.
"Right..."
She said as if almost doubting my intent to beat up my father once again, something that I would undoubtably do.
"But don't you have better things to do than beat him up?"
I stared blankly as I faced my mom. The idea hadn't even crossed my mind.
"Yeah. Why are you actually right..."
I stood and began to walk around the hospital room. Placing the phone right into my pocket where I felt the presence of something else. It was rough and metallic and out of curiosity, I brought it out of my pockets, 10,000 Credits.
All the money that my alcoholic bum of a father would leave to me after dying in the future... It was something that really meant nothing in the year 2052, as 10,000 credits was basically as much as a few month's of food, utilities and etc.
But in the year 2025, it had no value... It wasn't even something that existed or held any legal tender. Well at least for the first portion of the year as only with the 9th of October things would begin to change...
I had a beautiful greedy smile across my face before leaving...
--
'Um... Is that girl alright?'
I questioned for a moment as I saw her terrifying face of greed before she left the room. A brief sigh parting my lips as I looked over to face him. His face had been at peace. A peace that I never saw on him for so long.
It was the Summer of last year, that I would remember it the time that he fell asleep on my coach as we watched movies all night for Summer break.
His lips were soft like a gushing river and the same could be said for that girl. His hair had been like the beautiful winter and it had been the same for that girl. And his eyes were a passionate purple void but her eyes were light and bright like mine.
"It's kind of like we had a daughter..."
I chuckled for a moment before blushing.
End of the chapter.