It's a Return-Possession-Reincarnation, But...

I had indeed reincarnated, but— “Cough, cough! Ugh… Hack!” The moment I regained consciousness, my head throbbed as if it would split open. Only after a long bout of bloody coughing could I even begin to collect my thoughts. ‘Looks like I somehow survived.’

The memories right before I blacked out flashed through my mind. The dungeon. The raid. An unexpected accident. I’d thought I was done for, yet somehow I’d managed to cling to life. Had the rescue team arrived late?

“Ugh.” Still curled up on the floor, I struggled to push my upper body upright and looked around. But contrary to expectation, the place I’d woken up in was no hospital. It was a cramped room, maybe six or seven square meters at most. The only furniture was a tiny bedding chest and a low writing desk. Everything else consisted of a few coats hanging on walls plastered with yellowed, grimy newspapers.

‘Where the hell am I?’

I stood fully and shuffled to the door. The moment I slid open the paper-covered panel, fresh air rushed in along with the view outside. In one corner of a modest courtyard, a girl who looked fifteen or sixteen was hanging laundry. I managed to squeeze out a voice.

“Hey… um, miss student.”

At my call, the girl turned, then let out a soft laugh. “Me, a student? You’re the student here, sir! I only ever finished ordinary school.”

Student? I was the student, and she was calling me a guest? My head spun so badly I couldn’t make sense of anything. Looking around the courtyard, it was unmistakably an ordinary home—specifically, the kind of rural house you’d see in old dramas.

Why was I here instead of a hospital? If a rescue team had pulled me out, they would have taken me straight to a medical facility. Unless… it hadn’t been rescuers at all, but a civilian hunter?

“Did you save me? Where am I…?”

“Save you? Hardly. Anyway, you came back from Jingogae last night so late, and you still haven’t sobered up?”

“What…?”

Sobered up? Me? Drunk?

“Breakfast is long over. Shall I fix you some lunch?”

I had no idea what was going on. Still half-sticking my head out the door, I waved a hand awkwardly. “No, uh, no. I’m fine.”

“Honestly…” The girl shook her head as if I were pitiful, then turned away. I closed the door, crawled back to the center of the room, and clutched my head. I couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened.

‘Hoo…’ I sighed and rubbed my face. Then a strange, alien sensation made me flinch violently. ‘It’s so soft!’

I jerked my hand away and stared at it. The hand was pale and slender. Compared to my original one, it looked almost like a woman’s— ‘Wait, no.’ Thankfully it was still a man’s hand. But what shocked me was the complete absence of the calluses and scars that should have covered it after years of rolling around as a hunter.

I frantically scanned the room for a mirror. A palm-sized one hung beside the low desk. When I looked into it, the face staring back belonged to a boy who looked like a high-schooler.

‘Who… the hell is this?’

It definitely wasn’t me as a child. Where had my real body gone, and why was I suddenly wearing the face of a boy I’d never seen before?

I looked around the room again and spotted a calendar on the wall. It had the crude, woodblock-print style that could charitably be called retro. But the date printed on it was even more shocking.

‘…What the fuck.’

The year on the calendar was 1939. Was this some hobby of the homeowner or that girl? Maybe they liked “antique” or “retro” stuff and had deliberately hung an old calendar as interior decoration. The world really was full of weird tastes…!

But if that wasn’t it… ‘No. It can’t be. Surely not.’

I opened the door again, barefoot and staggering, and crossed the courtyard.

“Sir?” The girl called out in surprise, but I ignored her, flung open the main gate, and stepped through.

The house sat on a hillside, so the moment the gate opened, the entire scene beyond the narrow alley unfolded before me. Jagged mountain ridges rose sharply in the distance beneath a clear blue sky, and below them sprawled a cityscape. Low tiled roofs and wooden buildings crowded together, interrupted here and there by larger gray cement or reddish-brown brick structures. Closer in, most ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠people on the streets wore white traditional jackets and fedoras; occasionally a suited man pedaled by on a bicycle. Signs and banners written in Chinese characters or Japanese hung everywhere.

In other words, this was exactly like… ‘…the Japanese colonial period?’

What lay beyond the gate was the very image of 1930s Seoul—no, Gyeongseong—straight out of a historical drama.

‘This is really 1939?’

As I clutched my head in utter confusion, a memory suddenly surfaced: the wish I’d made right before losing consciousness.

‘Please send me back to the past.’

That’s right. I had wished exactly that. Had some god actually granted it?

But what I’d meant was— ‘I wanted to go back to my childhood!’

Apparently the god in question had interpreted my request a little differently. I’d asked to be sent to the past, so it had literally hurled me into a page of history.

‘I’m losing my mind.’

Whatever my original intention, the undeniable fact was that my soul had entered the body of a boy living in Japanese-occupied Gyeongseong in 1939. ‘But of all the eras in the past, why the colonial period?’

It felt off. Even if the god had taken “send me to the past” to mean a historical era, why choose this particular time out of all possibilities? Was there some intent behind it?

If this really was some divine scheme, why had I been sent here? I tried to guess the reason my hunter soul had been dropped into this era.

But there was nothing a (former) hunter like me could do in this time. I no longer had my awakened body, and humanity’s awakening ability had only begun manifesting in 2019 after the first Gate incident. That meant I still had to wait another eighty years for Gates to appear. In this era, there were no monsters threatening mankind, no awakening powers, no mana at all.

So that was it.

This period of Japanese colonial rule was historically dark, but from another perspective it was an age without Gates or monsters. Therefore, the god’s intention must have been to let me forget all the suffering I’d endured and live an ordinary life—free of Gates, monsters, and hunters. I could just enjoy the sweet benefits of future knowledge!

‘Future knowledge, huh. I never thought awakening so late would turn out to be useful like this.’

In the 21st century I had awakened in my late twenties, so before that I’d lived as an ordinary person, grinding away at specs for employment. I’d graduated from a four-year university, spoke decent English, and had even studied Korean history seriously while preparing for the civil service exam. So yes, I could live comfortably by taking advantage of future knowledge.

This was the perfect reincarnation—regression because I’d gone back in time, possession because I’d entered another person’s body, and rebirth because I was living a second life. Now that reincarnation-possession-rebirth was confirmed, there was no need to worry anymore.

‘This is the second life, the second chance a god has given me!’

“Um… sir?”

I’d been standing at the gate lost in thought for so long that the girl had come up beside me. She looked at me with worried eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Ah. Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve sobered up now. The fresh air helped, yeah…”

I made a clumsy excuse and practically fled back into the room. Once inside, I looked into the mirror again. The unfamiliar boy’s face stared back at me with steady eyes.

Who was this kid? Since I’d have to live as him from now on, I needed to at least figure out what kind of person he was. I set the mirror down and slowly examined the room.

The six-square-meter space contained little besides the small desk and bedding chest—no other daily necessities or clutter. It felt like the room of someone who had just started living alone in a boarding house.

‘That girl called me “student” and “guest.”’

Sure enough, a brand-new black school uniform hung on the wall. It seemed the boy had come up to Seoul from the countryside to attend school and had only recently started boarding here.

When I looked closer, the name tag on the old-style black uniform read 白林哲然.

‘Four characters for a name?’

I was briefly puzzled why the name had four characters, but I soon understood. ‘This is the Japanese colonial period, after all!’

The latter part, “Cheol-yeon,” might be his original name, but the first part, “Baek-rim,” was clearly a two-character Japanese-style surname. In other words, this was a name taken during the name-change policy!

Wow. So this was what it felt like to lose your country. Inside the uniform’s inner pocket I found a wallet containing old yellowed Japanese bills. There was no resident registration card or student ID like in the 21st century, but several neatly folded papers instead.

When I opened them, they were written in Japanese. ‘Damn, I’m not good with Japanese… huh?’

Yet I could read the documents without any difficulty. Was it thanks to possessing the body of a student who had learned the language? In any case, the papers were an admission notice for a place called Gyeongseong Hunter Academy.

I wasn’t sure what “hunter” meant here, but “specialized school” in the colonial period referred to an institution of higher education that taught professional skills. ‘Lucky me.’

In an era when even elementary education was hard to come by, a student receiving secondary and then higher education was clearly part of the elite class. The other document was a family register. It had probably been prepared for school submission.

I found my current name, “Cheol-yeon,” in one corner.

‘So his original surname before the name change was Baek. And if he was born in 1921, that makes him seventeen years old in 1939.’

Seventeen. Practically a child. It was tragic for the real student whose body I’d stolen, but for me it was nothing but good fortune. I clasped my hands together toward the boy in the mirror and gave a small bow.

‘I’ll live well in your place too.’

I cracked the door open and looked outside again. A vivid blue sky stretched overhead, unmarred by fine dust, air pollution, or skyscrapers. The weather really was spectacular.

‘Let’s take a walk first.’

Before I started making concrete life plans, it would be good to get a feel for the era I’d have to live in. The clothes I was wearing were stained with what looked like vomit, so I changed into the clean uniform hanging on the wall and stepped outside.

While slipping on the shoes placed on the stepping stone, I asked the girl in the courtyard—probably the boarding house owner’s daughter—“Hey, miss. Is there a bookstore around here?”

“I keep telling you I’m not a student…” She sounded a little annoyed. Right. In this era, not everyone who looked young was a student. Secondary education enrollment rates were still low.

I’d been so disoriented earlier that I’d spoken casually to her. Now that I thought about it, we weren’t that far apart in age, so using banmal right away had been rude. But the girl didn’t seem particularly bothered and continued in a languid tone.

“There’s no bookstore nearby. Go down to the main road, head toward Myeongnyun-jeong, and you’ll find a secondhand bookstore next to the record bar. You must have seen it on your way.”

I had no idea what a “record bar” was, but thanks to the linguistic knowledge I’d inherited with this body, I instantly understood that “furu-hon-ya” meant a used bookstore.

“Thanks.”

I left the alley where the boarding house stood and headed for the main street. After walking for a while, I left the residential area and entered what could be called downtown. The roads were still narrow, but two- and three-story buildings appeared more frequently, and shops with Japanese signs began to show up.

It was fascinating. My first impression upon seeing an authentic historical scene from eighty years before the 21st century was— ‘It looks like a set from Age of the Wild.’

Men in fedoras and suits, women in Japanese clothing carrying parasols, and between them the hurried rickshaw pullers. Occasionally a pitch-black vintage car passed by, along with streetcars whose design felt strangely familiar. Wow, I should ride one of those sometime.

Just as the girl had said, beside a shop with a sign reading “Myeongnyun Record Bar” stood a shabby used bookstore.

“Welcome,” the owner said as I entered. I spotted a pile of old newspapers and magazines in one corner and headed straight for them.

The reason I’d come to a bookstore first was simple. As someone from the 21st century, my general knowledge of this era was lacking. I had rough historical knowledge and could understand Japanese thanks to the student whose body I possessed, but I hadn’t inherited his memories or specific knowledge, so everything around me still felt completely alien.

Since I would be attending school soon and living in this era for the rest of my life, I needed to acquire basic common sense about it. In a time without the internet or television, books were the obvious source of information. Among them, newspapers and magazines seemed most useful, so I grabbed a random stack of recent old papers and various periodicals.

Among them I found a magazine titled Hunter Chosun. ‘Hunter…’ Come to think of it, the admission notice in my uniform had been for Gyeongseong Hunter Academy. It seemed related, so I picked that up too.

As I was flipping through the magazines, a voice came from behind me.

“Hey, isn’t that Baek Cheol-yeon?”

At first I didn’t realize it was directed at me and ignored it, but the next words were clearly meant for me.

“Or should I call you by your Japanese name, Shirabayashi? Haha…”

Shirabayashi was the Japanese reading of the surname 白林 written on my uniform’s name tag. I turned around. A scrawny, bespectacled boy with messy hair stood there.

Judging by his face he was around my age, but I had no idea who he was, so I just stared. He pushed up his glasses and spoke.

“What’s going on? The other day at the preliminary orientation you were flaunting your rich bourgeoisie vibes so hard, yet here you are in a secondhand bookstore instead of a proper one.”

His crooked stance and tone carried a clear note of sarcasm. Looking closer, he wore the exact same uniform. The mention of “preliminary orientation” suggested he was a classmate entering the same school. Maybe we’d met that day and become acquainted. But of course I didn’t know him, so I glanced at his name tag. It read 宋炳午.

‘Song Byeong-o…’

‘Huh?’ Something felt off. ‘He doesn’t have a Japanese name.’

Song Byeong-o. No matter how you read it, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was a plain Korean—Chosun—name. That raised a question. I had a Japanese-style surname, yet he still used his original Chosun name. I’d thought the name-change policy was mandatory and that you couldn’t attend school without adopting one…

I quickly recalled my Korean history knowledge from back when I was preparing for the civil service exam before awakening late in life. The Japanization policy… ethnic erasure… I vaguely remembered that the name-change order had been implemented in 1940. And right now it was 1939. So the policy hadn’t started yet. That explained why he could still wear a name tag with “Song Byeong-o.”

But that realization only confused me more. ‘Wait, then what about me?’

I looked down at the name tag on my own chest again. Why did I have this Japanese surname Shirabayashi when the policy hadn’t even begun?

‘…He’s a collaborator.’

A Chosun person who voluntarily took a Japanese surname before the policy was enforced could only be a pro-Japanese collaborator. That’s right. I had possessed the body of a pro-Japanese student!

A collaborator! Me, of all people!

That also explained why this Song Byeong-o guy, who seemed to be my classmate, had immediately started picking a fight. No one would look kindly on a Chosun person who had switched to a Japanese surname of his own free will.

So apparently the real Baek Cheol-yeon had gotten into some kind of argument with this glasses-wearing kid during the preliminary orientation.

‘What a headache.’

But the current me had no desire to start trouble before even entering school because of conflicts the original pro-Japanese student had created. On the contrary, I needed to clear up any misunderstandings if I wanted to have smooth school days ahead.

I extended my hand. “Sorry. You’re Song Byeong-o, right? If I said anything that offended you last time, I apologize.”

“Uh…?”

When I offered a sincere apology and my hand, he looked bewildered but took it anyway. I continued, “And I’d appreciate it if you called me Baek Cheol-yeon instead of Shirabayashi. I’m also a Chosun person like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you, and I didn’t choose to change my surname.”

At that, he still looked wary but spoke in a stammering, puzzled voice. “Uh… yeah? Um, sorry about that…?”

“No need to apologize. Let’s get along as fellow countrymen from now on.”

I patted his shoulder. Yes. This was how it should be—building camaraderie step by step. For harmonious friendships, smooth school life, and a peaceful future.

“I think there was a misunderstanding last time. I’m not—”

I was about to add a collaborator when I stopped mid-sentence. A strange sensation washed over me.

‘…What is that?’

It was an eerily familiar feeling. It was coming from outside the bookstore, from the street.

“You were in the middle of talking and suddenly—what’s going on? Hey, Shira—Baek Cheol-yeon!”

I ignored Song Byeong-o’s shout, burst out of the store, and ran into the street. In the distance, pedestrians were running and screaming.

“The gate has opened!”

“Hunters! Call the hunters!”

“Kyaaaah!”

My gaze snapped toward the source of that ominous sensation—the direction the people were fleeing from. There, a streetcar lay sliced clean in half as if bitten in two. Above it, something floated in the air, radiating an overwhelming presence as though it were devouring the wreckage.

It was a sphere swirling with colors that could not exist on Earth.

‘Fuck, why is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that thing appearing in this era?’

It was a Gate.