Chapter 623 Much Like a Fading Mirage  

Much Like a Fading Mirage

Joon-ho was floating in a warm darkness, his knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. ‘Is this what it feels like to be dead?’ he thought. ‘Just floating in... nothingness? Man, a whole lot of people are gonna be really disappointed when they die. No angels with trumpets, no pearly gates, no mythical beings or buddhas... and apparently no hot goddesses offering perks to be born on planets they’re responsible for.’ He sighed, or at least attempted to.

Suddenly he heard a muffled thud-THUD and two other noises that reminded him of conversation. One was a low-pitched murmur—a man, he thought—and there was another, higher-

pitched sound. If the first was a man, then the second should be a woman.

‘Why does this seem so... familiar?’ he mused.

He drifted in the endless dark, listening to the murmuring and rhythmic thud-THUD. ‘Well, if this is what the afterlife is like, then I guess it could be worse,’ he thought as he floated in the warm, welcoming nothing that surrounded him in its embrace.

Time passed, as time always does, and a change came over his environment. The rhythmic pulsing thuds began speeding up.

Thud-THUD... thud-THUD... thud-THUD, thud-THUD, thud-

THUD thudTHUD thudTHUD thudTHUDthudTHUDthudTHUD....

Soon, the “female” sound rose in pitch and volume and the warm darkness around him began pitching and tossing him to and fro, setting him spinning along three axes. ‘What the actual fuck!?’ he thought as he spun. With a concerted effort, he stopped spinning and reoriented himself, then the darkness squeezed him from all directions and he realized where he was.

‘Am I in a... womb?’ he mused. ‘Maybe I really am being reborn on a new world!’

The pressure increased and he was squeezed into what felt like an endless tunnel mixed with a toothpaste tube. Finally, he was ejected into a blinding brightness and blinked until his eyes adjusted to the light. He looked up, expecting to see his new mother and father, but then....

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?” he shouted at the top of his lungs—or tried to, anyway, as the only sound that escaped his lips was a high, warbling cry. What he had seen when he looked at who his “parents” were was two trees, a slender cypress tree with black bark and needles so deep purple they might as well have been black, and a tall, powerful oak tree, also with black bark and violet leaves so dark they, too, might as well have been black.

The “trees” had no faces, but somehow he felt the weight of their regard. A string of not-sound entered his ears and he recognized the “voices”, associating the deeper baritone with the oak and the softer mezzosoprano with the cypress. They were still unintelligible, but if what he suspected had happened was true, that would soon change.

......

Years passed as Joon-ho grew out of infancy and into toddlerhood, learning to roll over, crawl, and form sounds with his mouth. The speech of his new treefolk “parents” lost some of its secrets as well, and he found himself picking out occasional words from the stream of gibberish. One weird thing was that he had none of the various issues that normal infants had; he needed neither food, nor sleep, nor diaper changes.

At first, he had been shy of his nudity and waved his chubby arms in an attempt to cover it, but he’d soon learned to simply accept it. He had no clothes, but he needed none. The temperature was always comfortable to him and it wasn’t like trees would give a shit about his genitalia, after all.

Day after day passed and his new “parents” never left his side, constantly babbling gibberish back and forth with him; them in obvious patterns and cadences of speech, and him in the constant babble of baby talk. He learned the words for the things around him, and for concepts like yes and no.

Time seemed endless, as he experienced nothing but the single room where he had been “born”, nor did he meet any other beings but the cypress and oak trees as he went from crawling, to standing on unsteady legs, to walking, then running. And the communication between him and his “parents” improved at a rapid pace, both trees and human communicating in the method that any parents with small children would know in a language all of their own.

Then, one day, something entirely different happened. The room surrounding him disappeared and he was left in what seemed to be a forest meadow, in his normal eighteen-year-

old body but still as naked as he had been through the past “years” he had spent growing and learning to communicate with the treefolk.

Around the edge of the meadow were the cypress and oak, but they had been joined by others. A graceful birch tree, still with black bark and violet leaves but somehow giving the impression that it was white; a gnarled, squat mangrove with knobby roots growing out of it like a skirt; and a short, wide crabapple tree had joined the cypress and the oak, each one taking up a distinct section of the meadow’s edge.

“Who-what-when-where-why are you-yours-not-us?”

Joon-ho somehow knew which tree the question was coming from and turned to the birch tree. “Me?” he asked, pointing his index finger at his face.

“Yes, not-us. Me who-what-when-where-why?” the birch asked again. “I’m Lee Joon-ho, a blessed awakener of the Terran Empire and member of the imperial exploration fleet.”

As he spoke, memories flashed through his mind. Growing up in North Korea, the American and South Korean invasion, the formation of the empire, awakening to mana, and going through hero academy and signing up for the fleet whizzed through his consciousness seemingly at light speed.

“We understand,” the birch said. “Who-what-when-where-

why is this?”

The image Joon-ho had seen after pushing “Ayaka” away flashed through his mind. “That’s Hatsune Miku and Deedlit.”

“Who-what-when-where-why is Hatsune Miku and Deedlit?”

“They’re, umm... Hatsune Miku is an avatar, and Deedlit is a character from an anime.”

“Who-what-when-where-why is anime?” another “voice” interjected.

Joon-ho turned to the crabapple tree and said, “It’s a form of entertainment on my planet.”

“Who-what-when-where-why is entertainment?”

“Entertainment is....”

The question and answer session, or perhaps interrogation went on for a long time before the tree people seemed satisfied with what they had learned.

“Who-what-when-where-why is elves?” The birch had once again started asking questions.

“Well, elves are friends of nature and they live in trees, I guess,” Joon-ho answered, memories of all the media he had watched containing elves flashing through his head.

“We understand,” the birch said, then slowly vanished from the clearing much like a fading mirage.