I'm Dying
I woke up and I'd become a hunter. Once I finished registering as an Awakened at the Association, they told me I was F-Rank.
It'd be a lie to say I wasn't disappointed. Still, there were people who never awakened as hunters at all, so I figured this was better than nothing.
I'd thought a bright, wide-open future was about to unfold in front of me. Reality had other plans. I got stuck with the grunt work — a porter, they called it.
Porters weren't treated like people. You didn't just haul the luggage. You had to pull the monsters' aggro, and if anything even looked like a trap, you went in first and checked it with your own body.
I nearly died more times than I could count. A blunt weapon crushed my arm once. A poisoned arrow sent me knocking on heaven's door.
Of course the party came rushing over with antidotes and first aid. Past the expiration date, though. Bastards. I almost actually died thanks to that.
After that, I shut myself in at home.
That was already a year ago.
From then on it was eat, crap, game, nap a little, repeat. Thank god I'd saved up some money.
My late parents used to say the more money you have, the better — you never know when you'll need it. Turns out they were right. That's how I got to enjoy this unemployed lifestyle in the first place.
I'd always been into games. When I was in decent condition, twenty hours a day was nothing. Empty energy-drink cans piled up in the corner of the room like a mountain, but that wasn't really a problem.
Lights off, eyes locked on the monitor the way they always were. On the screen, a silver-haired, blue-eyed beautiful girl was bounding around the hunting grounds.
Just watching her made me happy. I'd poured an insane amount of time into her customization alone. When I first started, I spent ten hours a day for a full week just sculpting her looks before I even began playing.
Thanks to that, she always landed near the top whenever they ran a popularity poll. Ironically, I seemed to have a talent for it.
Her race was a rare one called the Terminal Race. The performance was outstanding, but the upkeep was so brutal that most people didn't pick it.
If their mana runs out, they die. That was the setting.
It was a game, so the character didn't get deleted. Instead they said it took time for the soul to resettle, and you'd be locked out for a week. So you had to periodically buy and consume Magic Stones. And in-game, Magic Stones cost as much as gold. The race had a dedicated fanbase, after all. The higher the grade, the more the value of those stones skyrocketed exponentially.
But so what? When a person's life is on the line, money doesn't matter.
...That's easy to say, of course. It did matter. A lot. But the character I'd poured blood and sweat into mattered more. So I wept tears of blood and force-fed her Magic Stones like crazy.
The result: I hit rank one in the racial rankings. I must have doted on her a little too hard.
But since I'd already made it to racial rank one, now I wanted overall rank one. So I was living the shut-in gamer life around the clock, night and day.
— Cough, cough.
The character on screen let out a little cough. Another racial trait: they were sickly. It didn't actually restrict her activity, though. They hadn't gone for full authenticity, which was honestly a blessing. When it came time to fight, she ran around just fine.
"Did I even sleep two hours yesterday?"
A little more hunting and I could climb one more rank. I chugged an energy drink and sank even deeper into the game.
"Aight, let's go~"
And then—
— Fwip.
The moment those words left my mouth, my consciousness cut out.
"...Ugh, my head."
I frowned, pressing a hand to my forehead. How long had I been out? I was still at my computer desk, at least.
"Did a mob pile on and kill me while I was gone? Reviving's gonna cost a fortune, damn it..."
I was in the middle of saying that when—
"...Huh?"
Something was wrong. The voice I heard wasn't my usual low register. It was a young, delicate, beautiful voice.
"H-huh...?"
I kept making sounds, panicking. The more I did, the more the confusion piled up.
"Something's off."
I patted myself down. Smooth skin met my fingertips — a sensation completely alien to what I was used to. Startled, I shot up from the chair and stood in front of the mirror.
In the glass stood someone both unfamiliar and intimately known.
A tiny frame that looked, at a glance, like a middle or high schooler. Height, maybe a hundred and fifty centimeters — barely five feet. Over skin so pale it was almost white, fine silver hair spilled down to her waist. And then those jewel-clear blue eyes I'd seen thousands of times through the monitor were looking back at me from the other side of the glass.
"...Holy shit."
A gasp slipped through those slender lips. The T-shirt I was wearing hung on me like I'd stolen my dad's clothes.
"What the hell is this..."
I whipped my head to the side, then looked back at the mirror. The beautiful girl in the glass looked back at me the same way.
I pinched my cheek. It hurt. And even the way I scrunched up my face was cute.
"..."
I started staring into the mirror like someone whose soul had left their body. I turned in a circle. I lifted an arm. I hopped in place.
And the conclusion I reached:
She's ridiculously cute.
The base model was so good that everything I did looked like a painting. Something in my chest was fluttering. The worry that my body had changed had vanished a long time ago.
...Living like this might not be so bad?
I was even thinking that.
And then—
Your body's mana is about to run dry!
If you exhaust all remaining mana, you will die!
Current Mana: 1%
"Huh...?"
I froze, mouth hanging open, staring at the message that had appeared in front of my eyes.
This was the character I'd played for over five thousand hours across a year. I could say with confidence that I knew the racial traits of the Terminal Race better than anyone.
And the racial trait of the Terminal Race was this: if their mana ran out, they died.
"Why now, of all times..."
Had I passed out without feeding her a Magic Stone? No — that wasn't what mattered right now.
"Ah, ahh...?"
A slow drain. I could feel the strength leaving my legs. I tried to take a step to catch my balance, and my body sank like waterlogged cotton. I'd been hopping around just fine a moment ago.
I needed to stay still. With a trembling hand I braced against the wall and made my way slowly back to the bed.
My body, deteriorating by the second, had already reached the point where even drawing a breath was hard.
"M-Magic... Stones. I need to eat a Magic Stone..."
I groped weakly across the bed. Fortunately, I found the smartphone that had been sitting by the pillow.
I woke the screen and the familiar display appeared. I worked the phone with practiced fingers and tapped the Hunter Eats app.
This was a world where hunter infrastructure had been in place for ten years. It was also an era where most supplies could be delivered to your door after a few searches.
Magic Stones... they sell them mail-order too, right?
I hammered at the keyboard, hands shaking.
🔍 Search: F-Rank Magic Stone
The instant I hit search, dozens of listings flooded the screen. Unlike the game, there were more sellers than I'd expected. I was genuinely grateful.
Then I checked the prices, and I swallowed hard without meaning to.
...Five hundred thousand won apiece.
There were organic Magic Stones and all sorts of other options, but the going rate had settled around five hundred thousand won.
Expensive. Extremely expensive. I knew there would be a difference between the game and reality, but a hundred times more expensive?
...I need to eat at least five a day.
Even in the game, Magic Stones alone had run me nearly a hundred a month. Now it wasn't even comparable.
I shook my head and steeled myself.
"I have to live... I have to stay alive first if I'm going to do anything."
I thought of my bank balance. I still had about twenty million won in there. I wouldn't last more than a few days like this, but it beat dying right now.
I tapped the screen. Tap. Tap. I ran the order quantity up.
Ten. I didn't know how effective they'd be once I took them, so I hesitated to buy any more than that.
"F-five million won..."
The finger resting on the screen trembled faintly. But I didn't even have time to hesitate.
I pressed down. Buy. An order-complete window popped up, and then a notification followed — a message that five million won had just left my account.
"Sniff.Sniffle..."
It hurt so much. I wasn't even watching a sad drama, and fat tears were rolling down my face. I didn't used to cry this easily.
Estimated arrival: one hour...
On any other day I would have thought, well, that's pretty fast.
Please, just get here a little faster. Please. I'm dying.
Hanging on the edge between life and death, I didn't have that kind of luxury. Even now I was straining with everything I had just to keep my heavy eyelids open.
And so that hellish hour passed.
— Ding-dong~
The sudden chime at my ear snapped my fading mind wide awake. I dragged my limp body forward and barely managed to reach toward the door.
"...Cough, cough. Y-yes, coming..."
My savior had arrived.