Awakening in Hell
The pain in his stomach stabbed through him like a blade.
No, even that was too mild a way to put it.
It felt as if a red-hot poker were gouging through his organs.
Gah! It hurts! Help me!
He wanted to scream, but not even a voice would come out.
Blood had surged up his throat and clenched his airway tight.
With every ragged breath, the metallic stench of blood sank deeper into his lungs.
"Cough!"
A clot of blood spilled from between his lips with the cough.
Han Suhyuk clutched at his stomach with trembling fingers.
Hot, sticky liquid kept leaking out between his fingers without end.
The life in him was scattering through those gaps.
Where... am I?
Through his blurred vision, he could make out a dark back alley swallowed in shadow.
Only when the cold cement touched his cheek did Suhyuk finally remember the state he was in.
I... am I dying...?
He had definitely been stabbed.
Not once, either, but several times.
Along with the sensation of being hacked apart, filthy curses had poured down on him.
Why should a nobody like him, just a plain old job seeker, have to meet an ending like this—like hell itself?
Was this a random attack? A hired hit? Revenge?
What the hell would anyone want to hire someone to do to me, or take revenge for?
"Seriously, why'd you stick your nose into Cheolsu-pa's business, you bastard?"
So there was a reason...
The man's voice, whispered as he drove the knife deep into Suhyuk's stomach, replayed in his ears like an auditory hallucination.
Right. It was a revenge killing.
Suhyuk's memory pushed past the blood-soaked present and drifted back to the ordinary life he had been living just days earlier.
* * *
That day had been absurdly ordinary.
Like any other job seeker, he had overslept and was trudging toward the convenience store in front of his apartment to grab a late lunch.
As Suhyuk shuffled along, a black car with heavily tinted windows came to a stop in front of him.
Back then, he hadn't sensed anything strange at all.
It was just the sort of everyday city-alley scene anyone would have ignored without a second thought.
But in that moment, he witnessed a sight that would turn his entire life inside out.
A motorcycle rider dressed like a Chinese restaurant deliveryman pulled up close beside the car.
Then, through the crack in the window, he quickly tossed in an envelope filled with white powder and vanished like smoke.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
It was so fast that most people would have missed it, but Suhyuk happened to catch the whole thing dead on.
No way... is that the drop method I've only seen on the news?
He had heard more than enough about how serious drug distribution had become, but he had never dreamed he'd actually witness a crime in progress.
He could have just looked away and walked on.
One glance the other way, and he could have kept living peacefully, running raids as usual.
No one would have pointed fingers or cursed him for pretending not to see.
But before he knew it, his hand had already pulled out his smartphone and dialed 112.
He walked casually into the convenience store and reported the car's license plate and the motorcycle number to the police in detail.
To be honest, even he didn't know why he'd done it.
Was it a sense of justice?
Some inability to stand injustice?
No.
He was just like everyone else—a person who could be cowardly when it suited him.
It's annoying.
That was all there was to it.
The fact that criminals were running wild in the neighborhood where he lived—it simply irritated him.
It wasn't even some luxury villa district where he had to worry about property values falling.
It was just the instinctive disgust of seeing trash dumped on the street and wanting to clean it up.
I reported it. The police can handle the rest.
He had just happened to see the plate, and just happened to remember it well.
It really had been a strange day.
Normally, even if he'd looked at a license plate, it wouldn't have stuck in his head like that.
I should head home and run some raids.
Suhyuk soon forgot about the incident.
His mind was too full of thoughts about the interview he had on Monday and the raid he wanted to run over the weekend.
And then Monday came.
After his interview at the company he'd applied to, he was on his way home late in the evening when a man burst out of an alley and swung a knife at him without mercy.
"Urk."
He couldn't even scream before the blade sank into his stomach and he was dragged deeper into the alley.
It wasn't late at night yet, but the road wasn't crowded, so there had been no one to witness Han Suhyuk being murdered.
That was the final fragment of life he remembered.
* * *
I... I have to live.
At the deepest point in his brain, the will to survive erupted in a desperate surge.
He had to crawl out of the alley somehow and shout for help at the first person who passed by.
No, if they just see me like this...
Someone would call for help.
But that, too, only lasted for a moment, because sleep began to crash down on him.
His field of vision narrowed little by little, and instinct told him death was right in front of him now.
I only tried to clear out the annoying trash... I only reported them...
It was unfair.
And at the same time, he wondered.
How did they know I reported it and come after me? Cheolsu-pa, he said? Were those guys part of Cheolsu-pa?
He was full of questions, but the thread of consciousness could no longer hold.
Han Suhyuk's fading awareness swayed like a candle moments from going out, then finally sank into the deep abyss.
That was when it happened.
Flash!
Han Suhyuk's eyes suddenly snapped open, spilling out a grotesque black radiance.
The black energy seeping from his eyes carried the scent of death as it clung to his entire body, sticky and foul, beginning to seep into him.
"Hrk, ahhhk! Hk!"
The dead body jolted and convulsed.
The wildly twitching body and the thin, zombie-like groans filling the alley were enough to turn the place into a nightmare.
Before long, the sounds twisted into a scream so awful it was hard to believe it came from a human being.
"Aaaagh!!!"
His body, thrashing like freshly hauled-up tuna, gradually settled down and then fell quiet, as if it had regained control.
Something unbelievable had just happened.
Han Suhyuk, whose breathing had clearly stopped, was drawing breaths again, steady and even.
An eerie vitality returned to his once-pale face.
That wasn't all.
The torn-open wound in his stomach began to seal itself with a grotesque sound.
Torn muscle knitted together. Skin grew back over it.
Han Suhyuk's eyes flew open once more.
"Hahh!"
He jerked his upper body upright and sucked in a huge breath.
The hellish pain that had been there just moments ago, and even the fear of death, had vanished like a mirage.
Realizing instinctively that he was alive, Suhyuk groped at his stomach.
Not a single scar. The skin was smooth and clean.
There wasn't even a scab left behind.
His skin was so flawless it was as if being stabbed had never happened at all.
"What the hell is this...?"
Even seeing it with his own eyes, he couldn't believe what was happening.
There was a pool of blood he'd spilled on the floor, and his clothes were soaked through with it, keeping the evidence intact, yet his skin itself was completely fine.
His organs must have returned to working properly too, because the blood that had been surging back up his throat had stopped.
"Doesn't seem like a dream. Then what, could it be...?"
Only one possibility remained in Suhyuk's mind.
Did I awaken?!
He had given up after not awakening even by his late twenties, but only after crossing the threshold of death had the door finally opened.
"No, come to think of it, it's a relief even if it happened now."
If he hadn't awakened, he'd have been a corpse, rotting in that cold, dark alley without even a chance to move.
The fact that he was alive was what mattered.
And the next priority was finding out what kind of power he'd awakened with.
"For now... should I go home?"
Suhyuk pushed himself up from the blood-soaked alley floor.
It was just before dawn, so he didn't run into anyone on the way home.
After arriving safely, he stuffed the blood-soaked clothes into the trash and stepped under the shower.
He checked the mirror again, looking at his stomach.
Not even a trace remained, let alone a wound.
Only one thing stood out: his skin was unnaturally pale.
An ashen complexion, white as a dead man's.
"Makes sense, after losing that much blood."
Suhyuk stepped out of the bathroom without making a fuss and fixed himself some food.
For some reason, hunger was hitting him like a tidal wave.
It seemed all the energy in his body had been used to rebuild him.
Even as he shoved food into his mouth, his thoughts were focused on one thing only—awakening.
He deliberately didn't call on the System right away.
Before he saw the system window said to be reserved for Awakeners, he wanted to wait until he was calm.
Like savoring the anticipation before opening a long-awaited delivery box.
"Huuuu."
Suhyuk set down his spoon and let out a deep breath.
"All right. Let's open the present."
This was a chance given to him by God.
Not only had it saved him from death, it was a gift that could completely change the rest of his life.
His heart pounded with excitement, but Suhyuk forced it down and called the System inwardly.
System.
In an instant, a status window flashing blood-red unfolded before his eyes.
Han Suhyuk took a deep breath and stared into the air.
Name Han Suhyuk
Job Hell Reaper
Level 1
Status Mark of Hell
Skills
- Reaper's Eye
- Judgment Punishment
- Hell Shop
- Reaper Body
Suhyuk stared hard at the status window.
Every one of the skill names was sinister enough to make the back of his neck go cold.
But what drew his attention most fiercely was the grotesque phrase etched into the Status field.
Mark of Hell?
Driven by instinct, he checked the detailed information for that phrase.
Mark of Hell
If you do not send one sinner to hell within one month, the one bearing the mark will be dragged into hell instead.
It was nothing less than a death warrant.
If he failed to kill someone within the allotted time, his own soul would be dragged to the bottom of hell.
For an ordinary human being, fear should have set in right here, leaving them pale and frozen in place.
But Han Suhyuk was different.
"...Haha."
A low chuckle slipped out, then swelled into laughter that filled the whole living room.
"Hahahahahaha!!"
Clutching his stomach and laughing until he nearly choked, there was no vitality in his eyes—only a joy beyond words.
This was not the scream of a man driven mad by fear.
It was a burst of dopamine, a shiver of exultation at the fact that he'd become an envoy of hell, that he'd finally be able to clean up the trash.