Chapter 200: An Otherworld Drifter (2) Bubble, bubble.
At the sound of ramen boiling vigorously inside the aluminum pot, Rainfolt perked up his ears.
"Maybe because I've only eaten cup ramen for the past few years, the sound of packet ramen boiling is truly welcome."
Sitting at the food truck's counter seat, Rainfolt gave a bitter smile as he looked at the pile of empty cup ramen containers stacked high beside the container.
Rainfolt had been happily talking with his granddaughter after their long-awaited reunion, but once he learned what had happened after he disappeared, he couldn't lift his head, weighed down by guilt.
To refresh the heavy mood, Lee Jinseo asked if there was anything he wanted to eat.
Rainfolt asked for the ramen Lee Jinseo used to boil at the old bunsik shop, and the moment Lee Jinseo heard that, he took out an aluminum pot.
"It's ready."
Steam rose in soft curls from the freshly boiled ramen, and Rainfolt closed his eyes and breathed in the smell.
"It has been a long time since I tasted ramen boiled in the old bunsik shop style."
Rainfolt lifted a chopstickful of noodles, cooled the heat a bit, then put it straight into his mouth.
Slurp.
"Yes. This is the taste."
Satisfied with the noodles, Rainfolt lifted the aluminum pot with both hands and drank the broth, blowing on it with soft puffs.
"Little Grandfather, Lee Jinseo-nim's ramen is delicious, isn't it?"
"So it is. The food truck's stat correction probably has an influence, but he has a good grasp of the key points that bring out flavor. Without real skill, you can't produce a taste like this."
"Lee Jinseo-nim's bunsik is extremely popular not only on the Francia Continent, but even on the continent of the other races."
"I see. Then it was worth making the food truck."
Lee Jinseo smiled warmly as he looked down at the grandfather and granddaughter chatting gently.
This is the first otherworlder I've seen eat ramen this deliciously since Oswald-nim. And even though they're twins, he's very different from Painfolt-nim. The older brother doesn't eat like that, but Rainfolt-nim has lived in Korea for a long time—he eats exactly like a Korean.
Aside from not having a Korean face, everything about the way he ate—cleansing his palate with kimchi now and then, finishing the ramen cleanly without leaving a drop of broth, then letting out an appreciative exclamation—was thoroughly Korean.
"Little Grandfather, just a moment."
When beads of sweat formed on Rainfolt's forehead after he finished a bowl of ramen in an instant, Fedora, sitting beside him, wiped the sweat away with a roll of toilet paper.
"Whew… that was a good meal."
"Would you like another bowl?"
"I'd like to, but as I get older, I can't eat two bowls at once. That's why I made sure not to leave any lingering regret and drank the broth too… but now that I've finished, I'm thinking it would've been even better if I'd left some broth like I did thirty years ago and mixed in cold rice. I remembered it too late. What a pity."
"Thirty years ago? Not ten years ago?"
"So that is what you believe."
"No, then… what happened?"
Fedora couldn't help being shocked when her little grandfather—who had vanished over ten years ago—mentioned "thirty years ago" instead.
"I knew it."
"Sounds like you knew."
"I did not know you came thirty years ago, but I suspected you might have come earlier than ten years ago."
"Well, you are the owner of the food truck, so you couldn't help knowing."
Lee Jinseo was surprised at first too, but he soon nodded as if it made sense.
But Fedora, who couldn't understand what the two were talking about, only felt frustrated.
"I truly do not understand what Little Grandfather is talking about. Did you come to Korea before that incident?"
At the word "incident," Rainfolt's expression hardened again.
"Well..."
He took a drink of cold water, then raised his head and looked up at the sky.
"Before I answer you, I must tell you how I came to Korea."
Unlike the day when torrential rain had poured down, the sky he looked at now was clear and blue without a single cloud.
"After the day that tragedy—one that should never have happened—took place..."
Rainfolt closed his eyes and sank into recollection.
"I could not accept that your parents, Randolph and Scarlet, had gone ahead of us. Since I never married, your uncle and aunt were like my own children. Unlike my older brother, who swallowed his grief and accepted the reality that they were dead, I wanted to bring them back to life no matter what."
He had lived with the pride of being one of the greatest magicians on the Francia Continent.
But he fell into despair after realizing that even with his own magic, reviving the dead was impossible.
Unlike his older brother, however, he did not give up.
"I wandered across the Francia Continent to find a way to revive the dead. But I could not find it anywhere. So I decided to leave for another continent. Believing that the other races—non-humans—might know a way, I traveled alone across many continents."
"I… I went too. I also heard you stopped there first. So you truly did..."
Fedora, who had traveled across the other races' continents searching for Rainfolt, nodded along.
"And so I met many other races, and the last place I visited was Keinua Continent, where the elves live. The elves there have lifespans ten times that of humans, and perhaps because of that, their sense of time is completely different."
Rainfolt let out a deep sigh as he recalled how he had once hoped, and then been disappointed, thinking he might fulfill his wish on Keinua Continent.
"There, I did find… a method to revive the dead. But it was never the way I wanted, so I had to abandon it. Instead, I was able to form a new idea. That I could return to the past before death—and prevent the tragedy of your parents dying from happening at all."
"What?"
"Regression magic. That was it. Magic that turns back time and returns you to the past."
"Uh..."
Fedora was left stunned by Rainfolt's confession, having never even known regression magic existed.
"However, it required an enormous amount of mana, and completing the spell formula to realize regression magic on my own was close to impossible. If I did it alone, even clinging only to regression magic for decades, I could not guarantee success. So I secretly pushed forward a plan to gather archmages from across the continent and return to the past."
"D-did you succeed?"
"I did… succeed. I, along with twenty archmages, returned to a past from roughly thirty years ago."
Rainfolt pulled an old photograph from his clothes.
It was a photo taken when it had become his tenth year in Korea—him and twenty archmages gathered together.
"But something we did not want happened along with it. That is… at the same time we returned to the past, we crossed into another world. This place—Korea."
As he slowly examined the faces of his companions—now all deceased—his eyes reddened.
"At first, everyone was happy that regression magic had succeeded, but soon we realized this was not the Francia Continent at all, but an entirely different world, and we panicked. Still, since we were all capable magicians, we were excited, thinking we could return home if we recreated the spatial transfer spell formula that moves between worlds. But..."
"It did not work."
"Haa..."
With a sigh, Rainfolt put the photograph back away.
"Since we returned to a past from thirty years ago, our bodies also became thirty years younger. Everyone rejoiced at regaining youth, but our accumulated magic power also returned to the past, so we fell into despair after realizing we could not immediately return to the Francia Continent."
He was consumed by guilt for turning not only himself but the others into drifters lost in space and time, and even now—alone—he still couldn't shake it.
"To make matters worse, Korea is a continent where mana is almost nonexistent, so it was impossible to manifest magic at all. Still, in this place in Gangwon Province with many mountains, a faint amount of mana existed, and after many twists and turns, we built our own foothold here and lived."
Rainfolt closed his eyes as he recalled the small village that had existed behind the junk shop.
Now that everyone else had died first, the village was gone, and only the junk shop remained—where he lived alone.
"Here, I completed the food truck with my companions, but it was far too late. It was not until ten years after we attempted regression magic that we finally created a means to return home. And by then, I was the only one still alive. In the end, even though we returned to the past, I could not achieve a future where your parents were saved. I am truly sorry..."
Rainfolt apologized to the granddaughter he had finally met again after over ten years, and Fedora gently held her grandfather's hand.
"Rainfolt-nim, may I ask one thing?"
"Ask."
"If you are truly the one who made the food truck, could you not have returned to the Francia Continent?"
"Alone?"
The twenty archmages who gathered for joint research after accepting Rainfolt's proposal were, like most magicians who immerse themselves in solitary study, all consistently eccentric in temperament.
Living together, they often fought.
But under the shared bond of having come from the Francia Continent, they relied on one another even while fighting, and after living together for over thirty years, they had become as close as family.
"Because of me, twenty companions had to come to another world they never wanted. And they died before me and became soil in this world. I could not leave them behind and return alone. This is the price for my sin."
"Grandfather..."
"Of course, I do not intend to leave you here for forty years like me. It will take some time, but if it is only sending you back alone to the Francia Continent..."
Rainfolt stopped mid-sentence and sprang to his feet.
He reached for the ornament attached to the driver's door—the cause of the strange feeling he had sensed for a while.
"At first I thought I was mistaken, but I was not. There is an enormous amount of mana condensed here… where did you obtain it?"
"The dean gave it to me."
"My older brother?"
It was a rune pattern made from the kraken they had defeated when they first stopped at Orthe Harbor. Rainfolt trembled as he held the rune pattern in his hand.
After confirming that a considerable amount of mana was also condensed in the Order's sacred emblem and in items received from other races, life returned to Rainfolt's eyes.
"If there are items with mana condensed like this… it is possible! I can repair the food truck quickly!"
"Really?"
"The other parts may have to rely on the self-repair function, but as for the spatial transfer spell formula, these alone are enough."
"Thank goodness. Truly..."
Lee Jinseo let out a relieved sigh, rubbing his chest.
He was happy that the food truck could be repaired again, but even more than that, he was far more relieved that he could send Fedora back—Fedora who might otherwise have had to live in Korea forever, unwillingly.
"But will those alone really be enough? If there is anything else you need, please tell us."
"There is nothing else. In any case, you are from here, so you cannot help—go back and take care of your business. As for the repair… roughly, at most, two weeks? When the time comes, I will contact you myself, so put your number in. Wait a moment."
Rainfolt went into the container, returned with a smartphone, and thrust it at Lee Jinseo.
"You know how to use a smartphone?"
"Of course. I have lived in Korea for forty years. I have lived in Korea longer than you."
"Now that you mention it, that's true. But to restore the spatial transfer spell formula, we have to leave the food truck here, right?"
"Why ask something so obvious?"
"I can't return alone very well. You said the bus that comes here only arrives once a day, right? I think we'll have to stay the night—would that be alright?"
"Do as you like. I need to begin repairs right now."
Rainfolt rolled up his sleeves and opened the food truck's hood.
His eyes had long since returned to what they were before regression magic brought him to Korea—back to the time when he burned with nothing but the determination to go back to the past.
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