Seoul, 2026
Regional Hospital
"Arthur, it's time to take your medicine."
The words came from a middle-aged woman, her voice carrying the kind of tenderness only mothers seem able to wrap around their words, even when they know tenderness alone is no longer enough.
On the white hospital bed lay a young man who did not look twenty-one, but rather like an old man worn down by time and stripped of whatever life had left him.
His face was pale in a way that hurt to look at, and beneath his eyes hung a heavy darkness that spoke of long nights in which sleep had brought no rest and forgetfulness no escape. Not a single hair remained on his body, as though the illness had stripped him of even the last signs that he was still alive. As for his eyes, there was a depth of black within them, like a bottomless abyss.
That young man was named Arthur.
This month, he was supposed to turn twenty-one.
For many young men, reaching that age would have been something worth celebrating. For Arthur, it was only one more reminder that death had arrived before him and was already waiting.
He was exceptionally intelligent, gifted with a remarkably sharp strategic mind. Since childhood, he had been drawn to games built on planning and thought, especially chess and shogi. Alongside that, he possessed a wide imagination and loved reading, watching anime, manga, and novels.
But those worlds had never been mere hobbies to him. They had been his only window into a life he had never been allowed to live.
From an early age, Arthur had been a prisoner of hospitals.
The reason was an illness diagnosed long ago: cancer.
It was a disease that had not merely consumed his body day after day, but had planted deep inside him an unbearable longing for one thing alone: freedom.
Freedom of the body.
Freedom of movement.
Freedom to live like an ordinary person instead of waiting for death upon a cold bed.
As the years passed, that longing was no longer directed only at the illness itself. It spread to everything around him.
To the doctors. To the medicine. To the pitying looks. To the gentle instructions that were, in truth, only another form of control.
Even without fully realizing it, he would feel irritated whenever someone tried to impose something on him, and a hidden anger would rise within him whenever he felt that his life had never truly belonged to him.
The woman who had brought him his medicine was his mother.
From the day she learned of his illness, she had fought without stopping, searching for treatment, clinging to any hope no matter how fragile. But with time, she had begun to understand the truth her heart had refused to accept for so long:
No matter how hard she fought, her son's path was leading toward death.
The doctors had told her so more than once. Some had even said that the mere fact that he had survived this long was a miracle in itself, and that she needed to prepare for the moment that could not be avoided.
Arthur spoke in a cold, exhausted voice, one that barely emerged between breaths he struggled to pull through the tubes running into his nose.
"I don't need it anymore, Mom."
She answered in a voice where sadness was plain to hear, though it also carried a familiar resignation.
"Please, my son… don't make us return to the same conversation again."
She had known that answer before he gave it.
Arthur always refused his medicine, claiming that he had already accepted his death, and that he no longer saw any point in continuing a battle that had already been lost.
Deep down, she knew that a part of him was telling the truth.
For the last two years, he had been almost completely incapable of doing anything.
He had given up chess, though it had once meant more to him than anything else.
He had abandoned manga, anime, and television shows.
Even passing the time had become a burden greater than he could bear.
She brought the cup gently to his lips and said,
"Open your mouth a little."
The liquid she held was his medicine, the same medicine that had not produced any meaningful effect for four months now.
Arthur drank… or rather, it would be more accurate to say that the liquid passed through his throat with difficulty, not by his will, but because his body no longer had the luxury of refusal. Even swallowing medicine had become another small battle, one in which he was defeated silently.
When he finished, his mother helped him lie back down again.
She adjusted his pillow carefully, then straightened his thin legs, where nothing remained but bone covered by fragile skin.
Then she said to him, as if trying to shield him from the end with words that even she knew no longer possessed the power of miracles:
"Don't be afraid, my son… you'll recover. You'll be all right."
Those were the last words Arthur heard before he closed his eyes.
Or… so he thought. And so did his mother.
.
.
.
"Where am I?"
Arthur opened his eyes.
But instead of the familiar ceiling of his hospital room, he found himself staring at the face of a man unlike any doctor he had ever known.
The man's face was somewhat long, his features calm and marked by a gentle weariness rather than harshness. In his eyes rested compassion and long patience, and in his expression there was a kind of goodness that gave a person comfort before they even understood why. His brows were ordinary, lacking sharp severity, which only made the softness in his face more apparent. His nose was straight and simple. His mouth usually rested in a quiet expression, almost like a faint, silent smile, as though he were a man accustomed to carrying responsibility without complaint.
Arthur froze.
"Am I… dreaming? No… this feels far too real to be a dream. This cold is real… and this feeling in my body is completely different… that face… I know it. Where have I seen it before?"
Then his eyes widened suddenly.
"Father Orsi Orfai…"
"Black Clover."
He recognized him at once. Arthur had spent a long time watching Black Clover, so it took him no more than a moment to realize exactly who the man standing before him was.
Father Orsi looked at him and at the child nearby with eyes full of pity and said,
"You are very quiet compared to children your age."
He looked at them with the tenderness of a true father, but behind that tenderness lingered a faint sadness, the sadness of a man accustomed to seeing children cast into the world before they had even learned what family meant.
"Who exactly am I? And what point in time is this? Is this before the story begins… or after?"
The questions rushed through Arthur's mind one after another.
To most people, it might have seemed strange that someone could find himself in another world and accept it so quickly. But Arthur had never been ordinary in that regard.
He had spent years waiting for death.
He had accepted his end long ago, and lived through it slowly, day after day, until there was no room left inside him for fear of the unknown.
After all, who would fear another world… after spending so long in the presence of death itself?
Perhaps he had not felt pain when he died.
Or perhaps, because his death had not been a sudden shock but a slow ending to which he had grown accustomed, he was now able to look upon this new reality with a calmness so cold it was almost frightening.
And yet…
There was one thing he could not ignore.
This body…
was no longer his.