Chapter Text
It's the heat that wakes Kim Rok Soo from his slumber.
A sudden rise in temperature that makes him flinch in surprise, his clothes and something that feels suspiciously like sand clinging to his body, sweat trailing down his forehead. It's getting hard to breathe too. His nose feels itchy. It reminds him of the time he'd been stuck under rubbles and ruins and the dust in the air had made his nose stuffy.
Kim Rok Soo frowns and struggles to open his eyes. He squints and tries to see through the dust that makes his eyes water.
He expects to see the familiar, dull sight of a room covered in stacks of papers and devoid of any real colour. A wishful thinking, he knows, since he can feel he is lying upon something that doesn't feel like tiled floor or even concrete ground, but he can hope. Maybe the air conditioner broke down or something. That's possible right?
Kim Rok Soo opens his eyes and winces at the bright light that blares in his vision. A clear blue sky that he rarely sees anymore in post-apocalyptic Korea stretches in front of his eyes.
Kim Rok Soo's mind blanks for a second, and he notices another hint of colour in the corner of his vision. A building? Or maybe a roof? Why is he even outside to begin with?
He doesn't remember ever seeing something painted that vividly. Not after monsters swarmed the country, anyway. Everything is usually grey and grey and even more grey. Maybe a few splash of colours inside, but not outside.
Kim Rok Soo averts his gaze from the painful sunlight, and his thought stumbles to a halt once again.
What he sees, instead of a garishly coloured wall or roof, is sand the colour of blood. Endless dunes rising and dipping as far as the eyes and see, the horizon a clashing of red and blue that makes the sand dunes stand out starkly.
...a red desert?
Kim Rok Soo's eye twitches.
For some reason, he's reminded of the book he read before falling asleep in his office, but that can't be. Transmigration and all that is only possible in books. Maybe he was abducted or something and his kidnappers... threw him away? In the middle of nowhere?
It sounds stupid even to Kim Rok Soo, but he doesn't really know what happened either. This may just be a fever dream for all he knows.
Hmm.
He should check that, actually.
Maybe he is dreaming. Lucid dream certainly sounds more plausible than whatever his mind came up with before.
Yes, that sounds like a good idea. If this really is a lucid dream then he can just dream of sleeping on a soft mattress instead of being scorched in the middle of a desert, right? It's his dream, so he should be able to do whatever he wants.
Nodding to himself, Kim Rok Soo raises a hand to pinch his arm and pauses.
A tiny palm, pale and slightly skinny with a little baby fat left, twitches.
Kim Rok Soo stares at it for a second.
The hand opens and closes, a child's palm moving along to Kim Rok Soo's will. No, it is his hand. His now small and short fingers that is very clearly not the hand of an adult. Kim Rok Soo pinches the skin of his other arm.
"Ow." He intones dully.
Not a dream then.
So what, did he really transmigrate or something, like those novels he read? Is this karma for scoffing at those main characters that decided to involve themselves in something troublesome when they can just slack around and do nothing?
His head hurts thinking about all of these things, so he doesn't.
He'll find out eventually anyway. Right now he should worry more about being stranded in the desert with seemingly no sign of civilization nearby.
Kim Rok Soo pushes himself up. He inspects himself as he does so, eyes trailing down two thin arms like they are something alien. In a way, they are. It feels weird moving something so small when he's used to his larger adult body.
Frowning, he pulls the long black sleeve covering his hand up to his elbow. The skinny wrist is an odd sight to him, but the scars criss-crossing all over his skin is not. Calloused fingers trail over them, and Kim Rok Soo remembers every instances where he gained these lines. He breathes out a sigh of relief.
This really is his body. Kim Rok Soo was worried he'd somehow taken over the body of someone else or something. Thank god for small mercies.
It's not reincarnation since he's not in the body of a baby, but why is his body like this? If he really transmigrated, why does his body regresses into that of a child?
Is this his old world or somewhere else entirely?
Clenching and unclenching his hands, Kim Rok Soo wonders what he should do now. He inspects himself some more. Kim Rok Soo doesn't have anything except for the clothes on his body and...
Hmm...?
Not far from where Kim Rok Soo is sitting cross-legged on the sand, something white juts out from among the red sand.
It looks somewhat like a book.
Kim Rok Soo squints his eyes and, yeah, that's a book. A book with white cover that is half buried in the sand. Somehow, it still glistens under the sun, like a brand new book from a store or a well kept one in a library. It certainly doesn't look like a book that would be thrown away in a desert. Not that he knows why someone would bother to litter in the desert either, but still.
What's a book doing here of all places?
It's not far from where Kim Rok Soo is sitting. He just need to stretch his body a little to reach the book, and that's exactly what he does. Kim Rok Soo picks it up with a frown, scrutinizing the unassuming thing. The cover is clean and pristine, and the book itself is in perfect condition despite everything. A strange title is written on it.
"...How to Die Peacefully?"
Kim Rok Soo's expression changes into something dubious. He searches for the author's name and becomes even more certain.
'...the author of this book must be some kind of weirdo.'
Who named themself 'A Heartfelt Death'? Kim Rok Soo has seen many pseudonyms in the novels he read but this one is just weird.
The title itself doesn't sound like a promising read either. He doesn't want to know how to die, thank you very much. He just wants to know how to live like a rich nobody with nothing to do and too much time on his hand.
Kim Rok Soo feels iffy just looking at it.
Out of curiosity, he flips the book open. He expects a trashy novel or something that resembles the rambling of a madman, but what he finds instead makes the hair on the back of his neck stands up.
There is only one sentence written all over the pages. Nothing but a single sentence that sends shivers down his spine.
Are you curious about the method to kill death?
...Yeah no.
He doesn't need such a vicious thing near him. He doesn't want to know either.
Kim Rok Soo slams the book shut and promptly chucks it away as far as his short limb could manage. It lands quietly among the sand dunes and he nods to himself, satisfied. There is no need to bring something like that with him. It's rather useless anyway. Nothing that will help him get out of this desert.
He turns to decide on what to do next and freezes when he sees something white by his feet.
The book, still pristinely clean and without any hint of damage, lies on the sand just out of reach, half buried in the sand once more.
Kim Rok Soo feels cold despite the sun burning overhead.
...is this a horror novel or something? Why is that book here again?
He glares at the thing and chucks it away a second time, but it returns to its former place when he turns back. It happened a few more times before Kim Rok Soo gives up. His limbs feel rather numb from so much throwing.
What the hell is up with this book?
Huffing, he snatches the book into his hands, shaking it in the air with a scowl.
"Hey, can you at least show me a map or something? Anything?"
He doesn't need to know something so useless. If the book insists on sticking with him, at least be useful and show him how to get out of here!
Kim Rok Soo opens the book again but sentence on the pages doesn't change.
He throws it again out of spite.
In the end, Kim Rok Soo decides to try and walk around for a bit. He needs to find some sort of shelter for the night. Walking around aimlessly under the sun all the time isn't good either, and he doesn't want to risk getting a heatstroke in the middle of nowhere like this.
Kim Rok Soo doesn't do well with heat, and he's pretty sure being in a child's body won't help any. He already feels taxed and wrung out, a heavy feeling sitting inside of his chest that makes his breath comes shorter and faster.
Curiously, it doesn't happen whenever he holds the book.
The heat is replaced with a cold chill that brushes against his skin and his numb limbs slowly gain strength to continue traversing the seemingly endless sand dunes.
He was able to find out about it because he'd been letting the book do all the work before and hadn't carry it with him. Why should he, when the book is clearly able to somehow teleport? But when the heat got the better of him, it suddenly appeared by his bare feet, close enough to touch his skin.
He'd been so surprised he nearly jumped, but the refreshing chill flooding him out of nowhere stops Kim Rok Soo from kicking the vicious thing away.
So the book does have its uses after all.
Kim Rok Soo still feels iffy about it, and he still thinks that it feels scary for something that looks rather... divine... but he decides to brush it aside for now.
Night is slowly approaching and the blood red dunes slowly resembles a glittering sea of black. Ominous but also beautiful. Kim Rok Soo stares at the sand dunes in quiet contemplation.
This...
Isn't this like that one particular place in The Birth of a Hero? One of the Forbidden Regions?
Kim Rok Soo's eyes cloud over.
He's not really certain about it, but the changing colour of the sand matches what little description he read about the place. Kim Rok Soo certainly has never heard of colour changing sand before, aside from the one he read in that novel, and he isn't sure real desert changes colour so drastically like this either, so...
The Land of Death?
Is this really in The Birth of a Hero? But what is he doing here?
...Choi Han in the novel transmigrated into the Forest of Darkness, right? And isn't that one of the Forbidden Regions too?
Is there a rule that every transmigrated person in this world will be dropped into one of the Forbidden Regions?
Kim Rok Soo's chaotic mind is halted from its spiral of paranoid thoughts when a voice shouts nearby. The frantic noise startles him into flinching. He doesn't catch what it said but it's loud enough to snap him out of his musings.
Kim Rok Soo swivels his head around to search for the source of the sound and finds himself staring blankly at the person that is suddenly standing in front of him when he wasn't looking.
He can't see much of their face, their body covered in a black robe that blends in with the black sand and the night sky. Their eyes are bright under the shadow of the hood that covers their head, and it takes him a while to realise that what little skin he can see is coloured as dark as a black pearl, so very alike to the glowing sand that surrounds them.
Kim Rok Soo's eyes widen.
A Dark Elf?
Another confirmation that he really is not in his old world then. It's rather surprising to see a real life Dark Elf, though. He has only ever read about them before after all. Kim Rok soo eyes the pointed ears half hidden by dark tresses of hair curiously. It's really pointy.
But what's a Dark Elf doing in the Land of Death?
"Are you alright?" The unknown Dark elf crouches in front of Kim Rok Soo.
For some reason, Kim Rok Soo can understand what the other is saying, even though he's certain the Dark Elf doesn't speak Korean.
Is this an auto-setting or something?
His silence seems to bother the Dark Elf, since the other reaches a hand out to grasp Kim Rok Soo's shoulder, but the now small child flinches away in surprise before the hand can touch him.
'Don't move so suddenly when I'm thinking!'
Kim Rok Soo curses inside of his head.
That nearly gave him a heart attack. Being in this world for only one day is already not good for his frail heart. He needs to search for a way to protect himself and live comfortably.
The Dark Elf's hand twitches at the wide eyed look the child is giving him. Kim Rok Soo thinks it's because the other feels offended and stutters out an apology, still too caught up in his train of thoughts.
"...no, don't apologise."
The Dark Elf sounds pained when he says that, and Kim Rok Soo clutches the book closer to his chest, shuffling back a bit as he stares fearfully at the other.
A Dark Elf is stronger than ordinary humans. Will the other kill him because he was rude? Kim Rok Soo is also a human and the two races don't exactly have a reputation for getting along with each other, so isn't that a minus too?
Kim Rok Soo tries to come up for a way to live through this encounter, but the Dark Elf cuts him off before he can utter another sentence.
"You don't have to be afraid, the soldiers won't chase you here." The voice is soothing, like the Dark Elf is talking to a frightened, cornered animal. "You're safe now. The lord of the Dubori territory won't find you here."
...huh?
What is this Dark Elf talking about?
"It must've been hard, running away here all by yourself."
The Dark Elf's eyes trails up and down Kim Rok Soo's figure. His gaze lingers on Kim Rok Soo's bare feet, reddened from his trek across the desert. When he speaks next, there is something sad in the Dark Elf's voice.
"Such a strong child. It's okay now, I'm here to help."
Kim Rok Soo stares blankly at the other.
He doesn't know what the Dark Elf is talking about but he knows that the other doesn't mean any harm. The Dark Elf doesn't seem to be malicious either. There isn't much Kim Rok Soo can do right now and if the other wants to help, why not?
And if something happens Kim Rok Soo can just whack the Dark Elf on the head with that iffy book before booking it. Maybe he'll even get lucky and the book will take a liking to the Dark Elf instead.
A double win as far as he's concerned.
Kim Rok Soo nods stiffly and the Dark Elf's eyes curl into an arch, as if he's smiling gently under his cloak. Kim Rok Soo can't really see the lower half of his face but the Dark Elf seems to be somewhat of a softie, smiling all the time like that.
"My name is Shawn."
The Dark Elf reaches out a hand towards the wary and suspicious child, this time with his palm facing upward.
He doesn't try touching Kim Rok Soo again, and he doesn't approach or goes closer than where he's crouching on the sand, instead waiting for Kim Rok Soo to reach back on his own will.
"What's yours, child?"
Kim Rok Soo stares at the appendage for a while like it's offending him. Why is he extending his hand like that instead of offering a handshake?
Kim Rok Soo wonders why the Dark Elf is being so... weird. Maybe it's because he looks like a child. That kind of sympathy is useful though, so he doesn't mind it all that much.
"...Kim Rok Soo." The now young boy says quietly, uncertain whether his Korean name will sound weird to the people living in this world or not.
Should he even use a Korean name? Will that bring him more trouble with the main character?
If the Dark Elf noticed Kim Rok Soo's wandering thoughts, he doesn't mention it. His eyes curl gently instead. He must've been smiling again.
The book in Kim Rok Soo's hand, once emanating a cool breeze, now pulses warmly.
Somehow, Kim Rok Soo thinks he can feel another heart beating alongside his own. A soft, rhythmic thumping inside of his chest that calms his breathing slightly.
A glimpse of long white hair is just barely visible on the periphery of his vision before it, along with that faint heartbeat, fades away in the next second.
"Nice to meet you, Kim Rok Soo."
The Dark Elf replies with a jubilant note in his gentle voice, hand still outstretched.
"Will you come with me? It'll be dangerous if we stay out here any longer."
With a sigh that sounds more like a soft exhale, Kim Rok Soo reaches out his hand, marveling at he way the Dark Elf's palm dwarves his own.
Wow, he's really tiny. Kim Rok Soo has never noticed how small he was before.
"Let's go, then. It's nearing the time when humans shouldn't be wandering around."
Is Shawn talking about the night or is he talking about something else?
Kim Rok Soo frowns at him.
The Dark Elf tugs him forward. His movements are anxious and restless, but his hold on Kim Rok Soo's hand remains firm. A large door appears in front of them from what used to be a sand dune. Shawn pulls it open with all of his might.
Kim Rok Soo stares at him in quiet disbelief.
All along there's a door nearby? In the middle of the Land of Death?
Really???
Kim Rok Soo doesn't have the strength to question what's happening anymore.
He'll think about it tomorrow morning. For now he just wants to sleep. Preferably for a whole day.
With that thought, Kim Rok Soo jumps into the hole without hesitation, ignoring Shawn's surprised stutter when he does so.
A faint laughter echoes in Kim Rok Soo's ears.