an unfortunate change in genre

Part 12

Choi Han could say a great many things about the God of Death, and he would if given the opportunity to voice his many complaints, but one thing he couldn't say was that the bastard was dishonest.

Or at least, the last few decades had matched pretty solidly with the outline of the bullshit deal that he'd been forced into. Choi Han didn't consider the transaction to be truly consensual because when a child's life is held in the balance of a person's decision, that definitely counted as duress.

The piece of shit god wouldn't care about that though.

Still, Choi Han had better prepared for the life of solitude that he would have been without that short and shitty conversation. He could only imagine what he would have felt if he'd been dropped in that wretched forest without any warning.

He probably would have thought that the seemingly endless forest really did span for the entire strange world he found himself in. It was seemingly endless and he'd almost despaired of finding a way out in the early years.

But Choi Han knew there had to be an 'outside'. After all, the God of Death had said that he'd have the opportunity to save the child which likely meant that the child was somewhere in this world. Likely plucked from his world the same way Choi Han had been. It had not taken very long at all for Choi Han to become convinced that no child could possibly survive in this forest for any length of time.

Therefore for him to properly have an 'opportunity' to save the kid, there needed to be a place outside of this.

And then of course there was the lack of a corpse to be found as well.

So Choi Han had focused his energies on finding a way out of the Forest of Darkness.

It helped that he didn't have to waste time panicking about his situation or about whether he'd get home or not. He could focus on his goal with single-minded determination.

It was weird, among the loneliness, despair, and anger the thought of saving that kid became a small source of hope.

That hope helped him escape the confines of the Forest of Darkness years before he would have. Finally finding society again and escaping the loneliness of the forest.

Of course as the years dragged on, even that hope dwindled.

While Choi Han's lifespan had certainly increased since arriving in this strange world, it wasn't likely the same for the child.

He couldn't stay in one place for a long time because after a while people noticed that he didn't age like most people. And no matter where he went, he never heard anything about an ageless child.

Sometimes he feared that he'd been wrong. That the God of Death really had placed the child in that forest as well and Choi Han just hadn't been in time to save him.

There were certainly enough monsters there that could have killed him without leaving a trace behind.

Despite Choi Han's pessimism about the situation, he found other meaning in his life. Mainly protecting people who he could. It was like an itch he had to scratch.

He'd come here to protect someone and he'd been unable to fulfill that duty. Choi Han was simply too single minded of a person to let that go.

But he returned to the Forest of Darkness, every so once in a while, somewhere in his thoughts feeling as though the God of Death placed him there because that's where he'd need to be to fulfill that duty.

Even though it felt impossible now. Would he even recognize the kid after all the years that had passed?

It was a thought that bothered him a lot even though he found other fulfillment in his life.