Prologue
Prologue
Tududuk.
Raindrops fell onto my head.
I walked forward in the alleyway, where darkness obscured everything, my footsteps echoing with a teobeok teobeok sound.
I didn't know what was ahead; I just kept walking.
Passing under a streetlamp that flickered with a chijijijik sound, about to lose its light, I saw the city's night view.
Brightly lit illuminations and people walking the streets.
If they were reflecting the bright side, the place I was in was showing the city's darkness.
Hunters who fight against Monsters after the Gates appeared one day and they Awakened their Status Windows.
Even in such a world, I wanted an ordinary life.
I just wanted to live the ordinary life everyone talks about, without being special among people.
The day the Gate opened, signs of Awakening appeared for me too, and a Status Window popped up.
Of course, it was good at first, since I had Awakened.
But later, I found out I was in an awkward state, stuck between a Civilian and an Awakened.
My parents, who raised me while neglecting me as if I were abandoned, kicked me out of the house, saying I had useless expectations until the end.
"I just wanted to live an ordinary life..."
Between an Awakened and a Civilian.
It might sound like an ordinary phrase, but for me, who was neither a Civilian nor an Awakened, magic power was too great an energy.
I suffered from a semi-permanent physical disability, drifted from job to job as a Porter in Gates, and eventually ended up cursed.
But the night streets were shining.
I looked at the brightly spread night view of the city center and the bustling people beneath it.
Among such crowds, would I have ever been a person who remained in someone's memory?
Thinking that, my strength gave out, and I slowly began to lie down on the ground.
"Still, if there is a next life..."
Feeling the exhaustion wrapping around my body, perhaps because of the Curse I got from the Gate a few days ago.
Expressing one last complaint about a life where I couldn't even receive Love properly once.
It didn't matter whose Love it was.
Like the Hunter I saw on TV, I too...
"I want to live while being loved."
I closed my eyes.
Thinking that next time, I want to properly understand what Love is.
It was a trivial story that should have ended with me dying like that.
Why am I alive?
And in an S-Rank Hunter's house, at that, not as a sturdy man, but in the form of a girl with Cat ears...