041 – Oinoi and the Little Stationery Store #5
If there were a film set that remembered the past, it would feel exactly like this.
We had gone through trial after error, all to recreate something that had happened ten years ago.
The sun was sinking low in the sky. A spring day at the start of a new semester.
"Was I standing on the left? Or was it you?"
"I was on the left. I remember. I stood right up front back then. And back then, you still had a full head of hair."
"You little punk!"
The townspeople combed through memories from long, long ago. Fumbling through all that trial and error really did make it feel like we were traveling back into the past, and even I felt like I'd returned to my seventeen-year-old self instead of the twenty-seven-year-old I was now.
"Holding hands like this feels awkward."
Seona and Jina—the older and younger Lee sisters. The two look-alikes were holding hands, but Jina's left hand hung empty. It should have been Madam holding Jina's left hand back then—
I couldn't decide whether it was better to fill her spot with a stand-in or leave it empty.
"Alright, let's begin. Aaand—cue!"
I shouted like a film director. At that, the townspeople began shuffling into position like reenactment extras, and of course it was all so awkward that some of them burst out laughing one by one, while others creaked along like machinery in desperate need of oil.
The result, to put it plainly, was a failure.
No rift appeared.
Honestly, there were too many variables. Recreating the exact situation from back then was all but impossible. But with no money to our names, this was the best we could manage, and after several rounds of trial and error, we'd gotten good enough to perform with something close to the vibrancy of that day.
And yet, no matter how many times we tried, the rift refused to open.
"……"
At first, the faces brimming with hope had begun, little by little, to spread with fatigue and disappointment.
It was the same for Jina and Seona. Seona lit a cigarette with an exhausted expression, while Jina plopped her rear down on the edge of the sidewalk blocks, scowling.
An exhausting situation in every possible way.
That was when Oinoi spoke up.
"Everyone must pull themselves together and keep at it…! This Oinoi, too, is eager to meet her nymph sisters soon…! This Oinoi wishes to join in on this reenactment thing…!"
Oinoi, joining the reenactment? There had been no Oinoi ten years ago.
But after so many failures, we were all a little worn out, and if anything, we were starting to feel like it might not be a bad idea to try something new—
Swish—.
At last, Oinoi took the place of the missing Madam.
Oinoi, Jina, and Seona. With the three of them holding hands like that, the tableau looked utterly bizarre.
Still, Oinoi seemed to be in high spirits.
"This Oinoi finds that walking along holding someone else's hand like this reminds her of walking through the forest long ago with her sisters…! We were all walking hand in hand when we found wild raspberries, and we all scrambled over in a frenzy to pick them by the armful…but when I came to my senses and looked behind me, my sisters were nowhere to be seen…!"
Oinoi, the raspberry picker.
Somehow, I could picture it all too well.
Oinoi kept going.
"So I was wandering all alone and lonely when I discovered something strange…! The Oinoi of today knows it was a rift, but back then I had no idea…and so I fell right into the rift…!"
I see.
I felt like I finally understood how Oinoi had ended up falling into a rift in the first place. So the Oinoi who tumbled out of that anomaly rift had been shivering in the freezing winter, rummaging through trash cans, when she met me.
"And so, this Oinoi knows better than anyone the feeling of wanting to meet someone again…! That is why she truly hopes today's endeavor goes well…!"
Had Oinoi's heart gotten through to them?
Even the exhausted townspeople seemed to have a small flame rekindled in their attitudes.
Soon, the stationery store owner spoke up too.
"That's right—we're all here anyway. Let's keep going until sundown! If today doesn't work, we just gather up again another day and try once more. And if our story spreads far enough, who knows? Maybe some corporation will throw us some funding."
That was a rather constructive and practical pep talk.
With that, we began our final reenactment before the sun went down.
The street in front of the stationery store, filled with people coming and going, each of them just wanting to head home—back then, the world was at peace.
A lazy street bathed in lazy sunset light. A world so peaceful it was almost boring—no monsters, no rifts, no nymphs.
But somehow, back then, I had instinctively sensed that something extraordinary was about to happen.
Just like now.
Krrrrzaaaak—!
"Look out!"
Yes. That was exactly what I'd blurted out back then, purely on instinct.
Crackle—.
That was the moment. Onto the street that had shown no change no matter how many times we tried, a strange spark burst out.
The others might not have known, but I recognized that omen.
"It's an anomaly rift…! Everyone, be careful…! Just like we agreed, we need to get as much distance as possible…! Spread out…!"
Crack, crack-crack, spliiiit—.
It sounded like a watermelon being cleaved in two. Or perhaps like some thick, ancient tree splitting down the grain with a long, groaning tear.
When I turned my head, the space directly above Oinoi's head was warping and bending.
A rift had appeared right above Oinoi's head.
Come to think of it now, I remembered that back then, too, the rift had opened near a woman's body.
"Hyaaaaah…! This Oinoi is being sucked in, as though something is pulling her…!"
A person-sized rift had materialized before anyone knew it, and Oinoi was being dragged violently into it. And Jina, who was holding Oinoi's hand, along with Seona, who was holding Jina's, were being pulled in as well, unable to withstand that ferocious force.
"It's different from back then…! Ngggghhhhh—! I'm not letting go…! Not like last time…!"
Jina unleashed the superhuman strength unique to awakeners and hauled back on Oinoi. Then, clutching Oinoi to her chest, she pushed forward against the crowd of people clinging to her like a rugby player driving down the field, pulling them away from the rift.
And I was different too.
Following the standard response protocol for newly spawned anomaly rifts, I swept up everyone nearby and evacuated the area in a flash.
BOOOOOOOM—!
At last, with a sound like a frozen iceberg splitting apart, the rift stabilized.
A rift only sucked people in during the unstable moments of its birth. Once stabilized, a rift stopped swallowing people and simply existed where it was.
"It actually appeared."
"What the hell just happened?"
"It's—it's exactly like back then!"
The townspeople were thrown into confusion. It truly had been just like that day.
Of course, there were differences too.
"Keong-keong-i, Ang-ang-i. You ready?"
━Keong-keong…!
━Zzji…!
I was different.
Back then, I'd charged into a rift without knowing a damn thing. The me of now, even if I was a perpetually D-Rank nobody, was a ten-year veteran awakener.
Twenty-seven-year-old me would have to be better at this sort of thing than seventeen-year-old me, at least.
"It might vanish at any moment. We go in fast, no ceremony."
I advanced toward the rift with Keong-keong-i perched on my left shoulder and Ang-ang-i on my right. Watching me, Jina, who had been directing people to safety, called out.
"Isn't that way too dangerous? We have no idea what's in there."
"Whether this rift is really the same as that one back then, or what might be lurking inside—I can't be certain of a single thing. But honestly, that's how rifts have always been for me."
Compared to my 1st-generation days, when I'd had to charge into rifts with nothing but my sidearm and a prayer—no proper mana equipment whatsoever—the me of today was basically a fully armored tank.
Soon, Jina stepped forward.
"I'm coming too."
"You sure?"
"She's my mom. It was supposed to be my job in the first place."
Jina looked like she'd made up her mind.
But the moving company owner, who had been watching all this from a distance, seemed badly rattled.
"Jina!"
Jina stopped dead in her tracks.
Then the owner added, voice shaking.
"Isn't that too dangerous? It's too dangerous! If you go into that rift and never come back out, I can't handle that! You—you barely have any rift experience!"
"Dad. It's fine. The truth is, I've been lying to you. I've been going into rifts all along, and I'm good at things way more dangerous than you think."
"……"
The owner's face was frozen in shock.
Swish—.
Before I could even try to stop her, Jina slipped into the rift.
Did M-Generation hunters know no fear, I wondered?
For the record, "M-Generation" stood for the Mana-awakened generation.
Anyway.
"Sir, I promise—this time, I'll bring everyone back out."
I made the vow to the crowd.
At that moment, Oinoi came stomping straight toward me, do-do-do—.
"This Oinoi is going in too…! For it is possible that her nymph sisters are within…! It is possible she may even learn the way back to her homeland…!"
I see—.
Oinoi had finished making her resolve.
Which meant I was the only one left who needed to.
Whew—.
I'd already been in and out of this rift countless times, but I steadied my heart while savoring the feeling of returning to that day, that era.
Complacency was forbidden.
This time, I wasn't the perpetually D-Rank Ha Ildo—I had to become Ha Ildo, the rift explorer once hailed as the hope of humanity.
Smack—.
I slapped both my cheeks hard with my palms, then recited my little ritual to steel myself.
"Codename Second. 17:32. Entering the anomaly rift that appeared in front of Alpha Stationery Store."
Vmmmnnn—.
I felt my whole body twist in an instant.
"Cold."
That was the first sensation I felt.
A bone-deep, flesh-flaying cold crashed over my body. When I came to my senses, I found I'd been hurled into a space battered by a vicious blizzard.
━Grrrrowl…!
Keong-keong-i apparently hated this cold too, because he wound his whole body around my neck. With him wrapped around me like a scarf, my own chill eased a little.
"Hyaaaah…! It is terribly cold…! This Oinoi has entered the wrong place…! She wishes to go back outside at once…! There is no way nymph sisters could live in a place this cold…!"
I'd once climbed a snowy mountain in the dead of winter to blast apart a rift that had opened near the civilian control line in Gangwon Province, and it had been every bit as cold as that.
The wind chill had to be somewhere between minus thirty and minus forty degrees Celsius.
For Oinoi, this cold was pure agony.
"This Oinoi is a nymph born in summer, when a sun as hot as her honey-colored hair blazes overhead…! She is terribly weak to a cold this hostile to nymphs…!"
The drive that had been surging in her just moments before had vanished without a trace. Watching Oinoi yearn for the way out, I was forced to deliver some unwelcome news.
"If this place is the same rift from my memories, then it's the type where the entrance and exit are in different locations. The exit is farther in."
And we couldn't head straight for the exit, either.
This was the place from the past—the one we'd finally returned to after all this time.
"We have to find Madam."
We had to search for Madam, who might be somewhere in this vast expanse.
Fortunately, the world had changed a great deal in the intervening years.
Fwoosh—.
I pulled a flare-like piece of equipment from my belt and twisted it.
Fwoooooooosh—.
The flare spat out a dazzling blaze, radiating waves of warmth.
"Ahh, it is warm as a campfire…!"
"Right? It's a flare made from birch wood obtained from a rift. It doesn't just give off light—it pumps out enough heat to keep your body temperature up, too. Ten whole years have passed, you know. The world has prepared for rifts."
Now—where was Jina?
As I turned my head, I spotted a human figure off in the distance. It was Jina.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing, wandering off on your own?"
"I was trying to look for Mom. But there was no one. Nothing but snow and ice as far as the eye can see. It's just like back then. I'm pretty sure this is the same place, but Mom's nowhere in sight."
So she'd been unable to contain her burning heart and gone scouting on her own, apparently.
"Honestly, what did you expect, running around without a plan? This is exactly why even women should go through basic training at Nonsan. A person makes a plan, then moves efficiently. Like so—"
Swish—.
I drew a radar unit from my belt.
A bio-signature detector. An object that would have been pure fantasy ten years ago.
It was an older military model I'd shelled out ten million won for five years back, but that was exactly why it was built like a tank—it would keep working just fine in this brutal environment. The newer models had added precision, but they'd conk out the second you took them into conditions like this.
"Would've been nice to have one of these back then, too."
Tap—.
The moment I powered it on, the radar screen lit up.
Beep, beep—.
The radar began picking up bio-signatures—including ours. It detected the mana wavelengths emitted by living creatures and rendered them as dots, apparently.
"The five dots clustered near the center are us. Keong-keong-i, Ang-ang-i, Oinoi, me, and you, Jina."
The five dots near the center of the screen were us. Which meant—
"Then what are all these dots scattered around us?"
The radar covered a fifty-meter radius around our position.
Beep, beep—.
Looking at the dots—more than thirty of them, by a rough count—prickles ran up my spine. Jina said, "Is the radar broken or something? There's nobody here but us."
If I were still the inexperienced kid from ten years ago, I probably would have thought the same.
But the me of now knew exactly what this meant.
"The radar marks a fifty-meter radius on the X and Y axes. And it does the same on the Z axis. Fifty meters underground, fifty meters above. There's nothing up top, so—"
Swish, swish—.
I dropped to one knee and swept away the snow blanketing the ground with my palm.
And beneath the bluish frozen surface, I could see something eerie entombed in the ice.
"What is that?"
Sssszzt, fwaaar, sssszzt, fwaaar—.
I worked the flares harder, melting the surrounding snow and surveying the ground. And once the snow had melted across a radius of about twenty meters, exposing the frozen floor beneath, I had no choice but to revise everything I'd believed until now.
"This rift isn't just some extreme-cold environment. It's a rift with artificial structures inside it—same as the Fixed Rift in Sejong."
There was a thick wall of ice directly beneath my feet, and far below it, a massive frozen structure sat rooted in place, locked solid in the ice.
I couldn't even fathom its scale—it sent a chill crawling up the back of my neck.
"There's something alive beneath our feet."
"Ahh…! This Oinoi knows this place…!"