By Zephyria 
Consider the possibilities.
If he hadn’t been granted a vacation. If the bus hadn’t been late that day. If the middle-aged man hadn’t been smoking. If it hadn’t been a sweltering summer day. If he hadn’t bought ice cream. If he hadn’t dropped the bag. If he had picked up the dropped bag immediately.
Layers of coincidence became inevitability, and the boy meets the child.
It was a trivial secret that he had almost screamed in surprise, feeling a sudden gaze in an unexpected place. There was a small child there. A small child in dirty, worn-out clothes that looked as if they hadn’t been changed in months, with shaggy hair.
Pressing down on his pounding chest, Kim Si-baek locked eyes with the child through the window and felt his heart race, though for a different reason than before.
〈…….〉
The sight of the child sitting alone in the middle of the small room, staring blankly up at him, was almost…
Feeling a wave of intense dizziness, Kim Si-baek squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. The scene remained the same. The afterimage of a younger brother who used to wait only for him to come home from school, the traces of a little brother remaining only in his memories, flickered alongside the image of the child staring blankly upward.
His throat stung. The heat of the summer day rushed over him, dizzying. Kim Si-baek clenched his faintly trembling hand and took a deep breath. This child is not his brother. He couldn’t possibly be his brother. No matter how many times he reminded himself with logic, the child’s deep, dark eyes swallowed him like a swamp.
At that, Kim Si-baek lowered his waist further and moved his trembling lips.
〈Little one. What’s your name?〉
〈…….〉
Naturally, the answer “Kim Si-woon” did not come. The child did not budge, as if he couldn’t even hear his words. Eyes that lacked focus drifted slowly through the air.
〈I’m… your older brother’s name is Kim Si-baek.〉
〈…….〉
〈I’m a high school student. Do you know Ilmun High School across the big road over there?〉
He tried to strike up a conversation piece by piece, but the child still didn’t react. He began to think that the child might be visually or hearing impaired.
However, preceding this rational judgment was the image of his brother, who used to be unable to respond to external stimuli. His brother, too, had never reacted properly regardless of what anyone said, just like this child. The suspicion that this might be a slow-developing child, like his brother, made his heart flutter even more.
Suddenly, a loud stomach growl echoed. Having forgotten that he was peeking into someone else’s house through a window, Kim Si-baek unconsciously touched his own stomach. He wasn’t even hungry—perhaps because the heat had killed his appetite—so what was that?
He soon discovered the source of the sound. A growl echoed from the hungry stomach once more. He realized it belatedly. This child was alone. A small child, looking no more than three or four years old, was alone in the house.
Kim Si-baek swallowed dryly a few times and asked cautiously again.
〈Where did your parents go? Do you have an older brother or sister?〉
〈…….〉
〈Are you alone?〉
〈…….〉
〈…Are you hungry?〉
Instead of an answer, the sound of a stomach growling was heard again.
〈Wait just a moment. I’ll be right back.〉
Feeling strangely anxious, Kim Si-baek told the child and hurriedly stood up. At the supermarket where he had bought the popsicle earlier, he picked out a red bean bread and habitually reached for white milk, but then switched it to strawberry milk, thinking it might suit the child’s taste better.
Running back to the semi-basement room in one breath, Kim Si-baek tapped on the bars and called out to the child.
〈I bought some bread. Do you want some?〉
〈…….〉
〈This is really tasty. Do you happen to hate red beans? If you do, should I buy something else?〉
The child’s gaze remained transparent, with no visible bottom. How could a young child’s eyes be so distant? After some thought, Kim Si-baek pushed his arm through a gap where one of the bars was bent. A black plastic bag containing bread and milk dangled from his fingertips.
〈Do you see this? You’re going to eat this.〉
He shook the bag back and forth in front of the child’s eyes and then let go. The bag dropped with a thud onto the knees of the child sitting on the floor.
Only then did a faint light gather in those blank eyes. Feeling the unfocused pupils gradually sharpen and finally begin to reflect his own image, Kim Si-baek waved his hand through the bars.
〈Hello.〉
A bright smile overflowed into those small, dark eyes.
✽ ✽ ✽
Biyendwe’s dedicated cradle arrived shortly, but a new problem arose. Kim Si-baek groaned as he read the manual. No matter how hard he concentrated, white was paper and black was text. For an analog human like Kim Si-baek, mastering the operation of a fully automatic cradle was a difficult task. He only knew the power button.
“It shakes when you press the power button, so can’t you just get used to that?”
[Death and Beauty shouts, asking what kind of nonsense this is when one should be enjoying a sense of rhythm.]
“In a cradle of this size, a ‘sense of rhythm’ is barely… Ow.”
Kim Si-baek went back to struggling with the manual after being body-slammed by Biyendwe, who had flown up to his face, flapping short wings.
“Adjusting the angle is, uhm… is it this one?”
“This one.”
In an instant, along with a heavy presence pressing against his back, a finger reached over his shoulder and tapped the remote. Pressed by the weight on his back, Kim Si-baek’s upper body tilted forward.
“When did you get here?”
“Just now.”
Tae-un’s voice echoed softly in his ear, leaning comfortably against his back as if he had completely relaxed his strength. The languid voice brushed against his ear and the nape of his neck. Even this brief contact triggered a sensitive reaction, as if the fine hairs on his skin were standing on end.
A strange stimulation he had never felt from the child who always clung to him.
Was this because of the presence of someone with whom he had entered a physical relationship? Or was it because the name attached to that person was Tae-un?
“I’m right here, so what are you thinking about again?”
Tae-un whispered, brushing back the stray hairs by Kim Si-baek’s ear with his hand. It was a casual gesture and casual chatter. Yet, the sensitive nerves focused on him would not settle.
A tingling sensation surged through his earlobe where the firm fingertips pressed as if grazing it. The low whisper flowing from the pressed lips felt as if it were being absorbed directly into his skin, seeping in with the breath, making the inside of his chest tickle.
“…Un-ah.”
The moment he opened his mouth, a new quest appeared before his eyes.
[The world has changed, and the ability to train and tame magical beasts has manifested 0_0) But above all, wouldn’t the eternal friend of humans be the dog, of the order Carnivora, suborder Caniformia, family Canidae, genus Canis?]
[Quest 12]
[Walk for more than one hour or play outdoors with an animal belonging to the order Carnivora, suborder Caniformia, family Canidae, genus Canis.]
[Time remaining: 220 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds]
Tae-un, keenly capturing the twitch of Kim Si-baek’s eyebrow, asked.
“Did a quest pop up?”
“Uhm. It tells me to play with a dog?”
“A dog? A bark-bark dog?”
Thinking that Tae-un, who was pretending to bark ‘woof woof’ in the middle of this, was cute, Kim Si-baek nodded. This was another quest that uselessly tried to drive him outside, but it felt strange for some reason.
‘Didn’t it clearly say last time that I could meet someone I miss if I cleared the Id Portal?’
He stared into the air with a look demanding further explanation, but the system window remained silent. He couldn’t tell what its intention was. Moreover, there was another difficulty.
“Where is there a dog right now?”
“There are hunters in the guild who have tamed magical beasts similar to canines. Shall we try with a magical beast?”
“Since it specified the biological classification, I don’t think a magical beast will work. Do you know anyone who raises puppies?”
[Death and Beauty reports that they saw a dog-walking part-time job on YouTube.]
“No, when on earth did you…”
Just how much was he staring into the phone to have a far more detailed grasp of the situation than someone actually born on Earth? While Kim Si-baek agonized over whether this was okay for a child’s education, Tae-un’s three-hundred eyes sparkled as he pondered something, rubbing his chin.
“Hyung, hyung.”
“Yeah, yeah?”
“My nickname is ‘Mad Dog’.”
“Ah, right.”
Since that word appeared whenever he searched for Tae-un, Kim Si-baek had encountered it. Of course, in his mind, it was perceived similarly to how small, cute dogs like Beagles or Chihuahuas are collectively called ‘crazy dogs.’
“Then wouldn’t it be recognized as the quest if I go for a walk with you?”
“…!”
Indeed, it seemed plausible. It was genius logic.
[Death and Beauty points out that one should not be deceived by dog talk.]
“It doesn’t hurt to try, right?”
“True. If the quest isn’t cleared, I’ll try one more time by crawling on all fours like a dog on the walking trail.”