The house was small—two rooms and a kitchen, with pale walls that carried the scent of steamed rice and aging wood. Outside, the rustling of leaves hinted at spring. The world, to a child's eyes, was still impossibly large.
Yoo Minjae sat quietly in the corner of the room, legs crossed, a toy block balanced in his small hands. He's staring without budge at all. He was two years old, and yet, there was a strange stillness to him as if he's observing things around him.
"Dear, have you noticed Minjae's actions? The way he's being quiet sometimes make me wonder if he's a toddler" his mother whispered from the kitchen, voice muffled by the clink of a spoon against a ceramic bowl.
"Maybe he's just observant" came his father's reply, calm and sure, the faint rustle of the newspaper he's reading accompanied his words. "He doesn't cry unless he needs something. He just, watches."
Minjae listened without reaction. He had heard the words before. Always spoken softly, with a trace of wonder and mild concern. He didn't cry because there was no need. Pain no longer surprised him. Hunger was familiar. Fear was irrelevant.
In his previous life, he had known fire, flight, war.
He had circled mountains that scraped the sky. He had sung in the tongue of the flame. He had burned legions to ash in the name of survival and pride.
And now, he watched his parents prepare breakfast.
His mother wore her hair tied back, apron dusted with flour from the fresh tteok she made. Her hands moved with gentle rhythm as she stirred the pot, occasionally tasting, adjusting. Her eyes held kindness, though he noticed the fatigue that lined them—too much for someone still so young.
His father, a factory worker with rough fingers and a stiff back, sat with his papers, humming off-key to the radio. A weekday morning. He would leave by 7:30.
They were ordinary people, burdened by the quiet gravity of survival.
To them, he was a quiet child.
To himself, he was a displaced god of fire trapped in a body that needed help to stand.
His fingers tightened slightly around the block.
How strange, he thought. To be powerless yet aware. To see the limits of flesh with the clarity of a mind that once commanded storms.
He turned the block slowly. Red, blue, yellow. Hollow, meaningless. But he stared at it anyway.
He was not mourning.
He was observing.
By the time Minjae was four, he had already taught himself to read. The books were limited—children's stories, labels on food containers, the occasional newspaper left on the table.
Each word was a key, unlocking a little more of the world. And he needed to understand this world if he was to live in it.
"How did he figure out hangul on his own?" his mother asked one evening, looking over her son's scribbled notes on a page he had torn from a flyer.
"Maybe he picked it up from TV," his father replied, rubbing his temple. "He always stares at the subtitles."
"He memorized the name of that ramen brand. Even asked me why it's spelled with a double consonant."
They exchanged glances, a mixture of pride and unease. Children weren't supposed to be like this. Not exactly.
Minjae sat on the floor nearby, pretending to assemble a toy robot. In truth, he was memorizing the news anchor's phrasing, mapping vocabulary to inflection.
Language is structure, he thought. Not unlike magic—rules, patterns, symbols.
But here, no flame answers your call. No glyphs ignite at your feet. Only letters on a screen and voices from the box in the corner of the room.
Still, he pressed forward.
The knowledge of this world would be his hoard now.
At five, he began to ask questions. Small ones, always harmless.
"Why does water boil faster with salt?" he asked one morning, watching the pot bubble as his mother stirred ramen.
"Eh? Does it?" she blinked. "I think so… maybe it gets hotter quicker?"
His father looked up from the table, amused. "You're really asking that before you can reach the stove?"
Minjae gave a small nod, not quite smiling. "Just curious."
Another day, he asked, "How does the airplane stay in the sky?"
His father chuckled. "Magic."
His mother rolled her eyes. "Lift and engines, Minjae-yah. We'll look it up later, okay?"
He nodded again, filing the words away. Lift. Engine. Airfoil.
His parents encouraged him. They praised his curiosity, smiled at his focus.
To them, he was a gifted child.
They didn't know he was trying to piece together how this world worked. Without mana, without ley lines, without the living pulse of the world beneath his claws.
Just air, gravity, combustion, and plastic.
On his sixth birthday, a picture book about the solar system was given as a gift.
"Happy birthday, Minjae!" his mother said brightly, handing over personally wrapped gift. "We thought you might like space."
He tore off the paper with mechanical politeness and flipped the cover open. Stars, planets, diagrams.
He stared at the glossy illustration of Saturn for nearly an hour. Not for the colors, but for the implications.
The stars are far. Farther than any flight I could have taken before. And yet... humans reached them with fire born of oil and numbers.
It was humbling. And oddly exhilarating.
He flipped the page. A rocket launch. Diagrams. Equations.
He didn't understand all of it—not yet. But he could feel something stir inside, not unlike the early sparks of a hatchling's flame.
He traced the ring of Saturn with a finger. "How far is this one?" he asked.
His father leaned over. "Really far. Takes years to get there. But people sent a machine, you know? To fly all the way and take pictures."
Minjae blinked slowly.
A machine.
So they made dragons of metal.
One evening, his father returned home later than usual. His shirt smelled faintly of machine oil. He patted Minjae's head on the way in, his hand heavy with fatigue.
"You know," he said to his wife over dinner, "his teachers say he's too quiet in class. Not bad, just… like he's thinking too much."
"Is it bad for a child to be curious?"
"No. It just makes me wonder what kinds of things he's thinking in that little head of his."
Minjae chewed his rice silently, gaze downcast. He knew their feelings of familial affection is genuine. From the way they happily eat together during meals, or when his father lifts him to his room every time he fells asleep while watching on the television
Their concern was gentle. He appreciated that.
But he couldn't explain what it felt like to be weighed down by a memory older than language. Or what it meant to dream of flight in a world that only knew gravity.
So he said nothing.
The sky that night was clear. From the window above his bed, he could see the moon hanging full.
He didn't pray.
He didn't believe in gods.
He wondered why he's living in a fragile body and for what purpose.
He touched his chest, feeling his own heartbeat.
"I am now Yoo Minjae," he whispered to himself. A name that did not echo in the mountains or tremble in the halls of fire.
Just a name for a boy in a house with steamed rice, aging wood, and gentle parents.
But even faint embers can burn again.
And he would wait.