Life didn't get easier, even in another world

332 There will be a way for it!

The living room was being illuminated by a mysterious sphere of light that was floating around inside the room as it pleased. As it moved around, differed shades and shadows took form and vanished in each second as different areas were brightened depending on the light’s path. However, the two people inside the living room didn’t even care about the light. The two of them were so focused on their conversation that they didn’t even notice that the light was stuck between the window and the curtain for about 2 minutes before it popped up into smaller particles and took the shape of a sphere once again after all of the particles left the place where the light was stuck at and then joined each other.

“So... That’s what happened.”

After about five minutes of silence, the young man with green eyes and curly dark-brown hair nodded his head and mumbled, his voice weak and his eyes drooped.

“Yeah. So basically, I’m not dead according to Reynold.”

The other person in the room was leaning back on the sofa while putting his head on the edge of it and looking up at the ceiling with a blank face. He raised his hand and massaged his cheek. As soon as he touched his cheekbone, he knitted his brows and moved his hand back reflexively due to the sudden pain.

“Does it... Does it hurt too much?”

Kairen shook his head and lowered his hand.

“Not that much. Only a little bit.”

“I’m sorry.”

.....

Kain was quick to apologize, and Kairen was quick to respond to him, actually, to yell at him.

“I said it’s fine! Stop apoligizing so many times!”

“But...”

“No!”

Kairen didn’t let Kain say anything. Finding out that talking was not giving the effect he wanted, Kain slowly moved closer to Kairen. Already alarmed and on guard, Kairen jumped a meter to the right, making some distance between himself and Kain.

“I said don’t hug me left and right!”

“But...”

“No!”

“But I missed you so much...”

“...No!”

Kairen looked away from the sulking man.

‘Was Kain always like this? I’ve never seen him act so out of character before.’

The list of the people Kain had to take to a psychologist was increasing in number faster than he expected!

Kain heaved a sigh and gradually moved back to his sitting position. He lowered his head and started to wiggle with his fingers in silence. After a few moments of silence, he opened his mouth to talk again.

“I thought you were dead... And got really mad at you.”

He lowered his head more as he said that. Kairen chuckled after hearing his words and said in a half-jocking tone.

“Yeah, like, bitch how dare you to die I’ll kill you once again to teach you a lesson!”

“....”

Kain covered his face with both hands and muttered another apology, which resulted in Kairen punching his arm out of frustration. Of course, it was Kairen who felt pain in his hand instead of Kain.

After another few moments of silence, Kairen finally asked the question that was on his mind.

“Have you been here since the moment you... Uh... The moment you used that artifact?”

“Yeah.”, Kain nodded his head. “The first thing I saw after my death was this dark and gloomy place. I was standing inside a circular platform in the middle of the city. People soon came to me, explained about this place, and took me to the castle, where I was assigned a job and given a place to stay. They said as I was a general, they’d give me a cool job... So I became the emperor’s assistant. The previous assistant said that he was tired of working so he’d play the retired for a while then switch places with me again... It’s quite a weird place. Yeah.”

Kain explained all of those at once as if he had been waiting for Kairen to ask any question so that he could bring up those memories. He seemed confused, yet relaxed at the same time.

“Huh? What?”

But Kairen wasn’t satisfied with the answer he received.

“What do you mean by ‘Death’, you are not dead!”

Kairen was tired of telling this to anyone and everyone, that Kain was not dead and simply in a state similar to a come, and now he was saying the same thing to Kain himself. ‘How really strange!’, he thought.

“Nope! You are the one who is not dead, but I already am!”

“No, you are not! You really are alive!”

“I’m nothing but a soul!”

“It’s because your body is in our world!”

Hearing that, Kain, who was just joking around about his death till now, tilted his head from side to side.

“You mean my corpse?”

“No! Your body! Your living body which still breathes and has a beating heart!”

“....”

Kain just blinked, making Kairen want to punch him, but he resisted that urge as he knew that he would be the one who would experience the pain in the end.

“Just after you... Uh, just after you died... I broke the artifact with my power. After that piece of shit got destroyed you started breathing again... And your... Uh, your body is in a hospital... Still alive...”Kairen found it really difficult to talk about one’s body in front of himself, so he had some trouble forming sentences and finding the proper words to use. He took a deep breath before continuing.

“Alan said that, despite your body still being alive, your soul was taken by the artifact, and thus you... would never wake up.”

Kairen looked away from Kain’s wide eyes and ignored his frozen expression and threw a joke in an attempt to lighten the mood despite knowing that he was never good at joking.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t hear me at all when I was talking to you! They told me that people in a coma could still hear the others talking to them.”

“....”

Kain didn’t give an answer, Kairen didn’t laugh at his own joke, the room went silent, and the two of them sat like that, one staring at the floor as he cursed himself and regretted throwing that joke while the other stared at the former’s face without uttering any words.

“That was you?”

Kain finally spat out a sentence and shot those three words in Kairen’s face. Before Kairen could understand what he meant, Kain raised his finger to point at Kairen as he narrowed his eyes a little bit.

“The occasional voice nagging and cursing at me, calling me an idiot and screaming ‘I hate you’ was you?”

“....”

Kairen closed his mouth and lowered his head.

“...Let’s... talk about how to move your soul back to your body.”

“You hate me?”

“...That... Uh, I think we have to seek Reynold’s help about this matter. I’m sure he knows how to deal with this situation.”

“You cursed at me all the time.”

“...Look, don’t you think it’s better if you first told me about the things you’ve learned here? I’m sure you know a lot of things since you work as that man’s assistant.”

“...Wait, you left my son alone and died?”

“....”

“Not die but... You are literally no different than the dead.”

“....”

Kairen pressed his lips to each other as the subject made his deep and unsolved feeling of guilt raise up in his heart again, making him want to cry.

“There are people to take care of him until I go back...”

“...You left him in an orphanage?”

“What? No!”

“...You got married...”

Kain mumbled in a low, shocked, despaired, and hollow voice, making Kairen instantly remember someone who had made that comment with a similar face not long ago.

“Kain, tell me more about this irregularity and chaos. The story that Reynold told me doesn’t make sense!”

“...And you left my son with your wife...”

“...D-do you know anything about how to control these powers?”

“Maybe you even have children... Who knows how much time has passed in our world while I was here... That book said that time here doesn’t pass at the same speed as the worlds of the living... No, wait, you don’t look to have aged so that must mean it wasn’t a long time since I died...”

“....”

Kairen stopped attempting to change the subject and instead asked a question.

“Time here doesn’t pass at the same speed as the world of the living?”

“...No...”

Even Kain’s ‘No’ was hollow and depressed. His blank face was actually so funny that Kairen was having a hard time not laughing at him. Realizing that the older one was probably in a state of shock due to all of the news he had heard today, Kairen heaved a sigh and slowly patted Kain’s back.

“I’m not married and don’t have children. Who would even marry me!”

.....

“....”

“Furthermore, it’s more important for the two of us to leave this place and go back to our world!”

Kain paused a little before looking at Kairen’s face.

“Is that even possible for me to go back?”

“I’m sure there will be a way for it!”