Always Be Careful of Water
Always Be Careful of Water
Facilities for people with disabilities were everywhere in daily life.
The most common example for those with visual impairments would be the tactile paving blocks embedded in the sidewalk.
For people with mobility impairments, there were ramps instead of stairs, and so on.
Society tends to view people with disabilities as needing assistance—unable to do things others take for granted because some function is impaired.
By definition—no, for all practical purposes—I was disabled.
Three of my five senses were shot to hell, and I couldn't speak. A superhuman who awakened mana, yet still physically frail—maybe thanks to the Curse of Short Life.
For someone like me, even getting to the Gate Terminal connected to Siyoram was a serious ordeal—because I can't see. How would I know where the place is?
I knew Siyoram was built on an artificial island in the North Pacific, but swimming there was obviously out of the question.
Normally you'd think of a plane first when traveling abroad, but in this world with Gate Terminals, you think of the Gate before a plane.
Gate. Not a literal door, but the kind of teleportation gate that pops up as a cliché in web novels. Instantly linking and crossing space—an absurd concept if you think about it in real life, but it's real here, so what can I do?
My destination was a Gate Terminal: a nationally critical facility linking Gates from all over the world. The very place that gets attacked by terrorists every other day in the main storyline. Which makes sense—just block this place, and you can stop reinforcements arriving instantly. It's practically the number-one terror target.
I knew what a Gate Terminal did, but I had no idea where it was, so I was utterly stuck.
How was I supposed to get there with my eyes closed? And my voice didn't work to ask someone for help.
I had no one to ask in the first place. Couldn't exactly grab a random passerby and request directions.
Fortunately, a method existed.
[ Please move 71 meters to the left. ]
[ Stop. Please wait for the signal on your right. ]
A reliable signal that rang without pause, guiding me toward my destination. Its identity was the smartwatch on my wrist.
A product of this world crammed with magical engineering and other technologies, sent to me along with the notification in a package from Siyoram.
A downgraded version was widely available to civilians, but superhuman-grade smartwatches were on another level entirely. Since they can't afford to break while clashing against all sorts of monsters, they come with incredible durability and hundreds of features designed for operating in isolated places like dungeons.
[ Destination 250 meters ahead: Seoul Gate Terminal. ]
It even had a hologram function, though unfortunately with my current Spatial Perception, I could only make out the hologram's outline.
If it hadn't had the bone conduction audio function, I probably wouldn't have been able to operate it at all.
I'd left home about three or four hours ago, guided by the smartwatch—which only started working properly after I'd wrestled with the settings while following voice guidance for almost an hour.
They say it's a game-like world, but the name 'Earth' is still the same. Besides that, there's also America, South Korea, Japan, China... China was wrecked. North Korea too.
Of the countries you'd commonly know, some still endured, while many had collapsed and vanished into history.
What was the setting again? Unique Abilities and mana, Dungeons and Towers—all that appeared almost two hundred years ago. Back then, the world was supposedly almost identical to the ordinary Earth I knew.
But starting on a certain day about two hundred years ago, people manifested supernatural abilities like mana and Unique Abilities, and Dungeons and Towers that spawned monsters appeared. Roughly two centuries later—the present. A world blending fantasy and modernity, supposedly.
South Korea was one of the countries that still maintained its existence. Though, essentially, it's just a shell of South Korea, with the superhuman factions pulling the strings on the inside.
In the past, monster hordes had swept away the old political establishment, and the emerging superhuman factions finished restructuring what remained. Most countries went through a similar process.
'Almost there.'
After one subway transfer and three buses, then walking for about twenty minutes, I finally reached the vicinity of the Gate Terminal.
My house was in a rural area, so it took a while just to reach a city with a Gate Terminal.
As for money, luckily there was some cash on hand. Though it felt absurd: no cell phone but several hundred thousand won in cash.
The Gate Terminal I arrived at was beyond description.
'Because I can't see anything...'
I'd managed to recover the range of my Spatial Perception to a little over 20 meters in diameter, but I couldn't change the type of vision. Because of that, the world was nothing but black and green. What stressed me out even more were the gazes and murmurs directed at me from all around.
My unnaturally sharpened senses picked up on subtle stares. I'd occasionally had the sensation of being watched; now it wasn't something I could dismiss as a feeling anymore—the stares felt so varied and precise.
On top of that, my ears had gotten damnably sharp, so I could hear the murmuring too. Stares that looked at something peculiar. Whispered voices asking if I was blind. Gazes that looked at something pitiful—
'Urgh...'
My personality is already hopelessly shut-in, so having attention drawn to me like this is beyond uncomfortable. No, in the past I probably would've just ignored it or felt awkward, but now irritation surges up. Put plainly, it feels shitty.
'What do I do...'
I entered the large building. But I had no idea what to do now. The method used in the game? It was sort of simplified, so I didn't even know the procedure.
Right when I was looking around, wondering what to do next—
"Hello? Do you maybe need some help?"
"?"
Someone approached me with quick steps and spoke. My mind analyzed her automatically. Judging by the mana inside her body, she wasn't an ordinary person but a superhuman.
Judging from her figure, the person who had spoken was a woman. After thinking for a moment, I tapped my smartwatch and displayed a subtitle via hologram.
The second essential function of the smartwatch for me. I couldn't see the hologram, but others certainly could. By displaying a hologram, partial communication was possible.
[ Are you a staff member? ]
Thanks to the bone conduction audio, I could also know what I had typed.
"Oh, no, no. I saw you in a cadet uniform, so I thought I'd ask. I'm a cadet too, waiting for the Gate."
That surprised me, so I checked again with Spatial Perception. I'd wondered why I hadn't noticed: she was in casual clothes, not a cadet uniform.
Superhumans generally possess a disproportionately large amount of mana within their bodies. Ordinary people don't completely lack it either, but it's negligible. Because of that, I could easily distinguish superhumans from ordinary people.
'Hmm.'
Sure, help would definitely be nice. I was just about to grab a nearby staff member and ask about the procedure anyway.
[ Wouldn't I be imposing? ]
"Oh, come on. It's not like I'm doing some huge favor."
When I thought it over for a moment and accepted, the woman beamed and clapped her hands lightly. Then she carefully took hold of my sleeve, led me to the desk, and helped me through the basic procedure.
"...Please verify your identity."
[ Yes. ]
"...Identity verified. Please move to the Gate queue."
Showing the staff my Siyoram admission notice on the smartwatch quickly finished the procedure. This was the period when Siyoram new students were entering, after all. I heard a few others besides me using the Gate.
"Ah, I'm Ellia Srade, entering Siyoram this year. Please call me Ellia."
[ I'm Lee Ha-yul. I'm also entering this year. ]
Once the procedure was finished, we sat nearby and chatted while waiting for the Gate to activate, since standing around felt awkward.
'...Even smaller than I thought.'
Whether we'd been standing side by side earlier or were now seated across a table, the impression was the same. In my original world, I'd been out so little that I didn't really register it. I realized all over again that my height was on the small side. Enough that our eye levels were roughly similar when we stood next to each other.
It wasn't that my pride demanded I be taller just because I was a man. Still, being the shorter one made me shrink back a little without meaning to.
"I grew up hearing my parents say, 'Every cloud has a silver lining.' When I was little, I didn't think much of it, but now it's totally stuck on my own lips too—"
Her name was Ellia, and she was someone with a notably bouncy, lively way of speaking. Her Unique Ability was a healing type, she had a younger sister who was so blunt she worried because the girl had no friends, she'd grown up hearing proverbs constantly and now they'd stuck on her own tongue, too... I gathered those kinds of minor details.
In other words, she was a good talker.
I was a shut-in who was already a person of few words, and now I couldn't even speak properly. Because of that, all I could do was nod from time to time or work my fingers hard to display holograms.
As I listened and responded to the ceaseless storm of conversation for a while, I realized that stories about vision or scenery—things related to eyes—were conspicuously absent. The way she'd helped me when I was just stuck wondering what to do, and how she struck up conversation so I wouldn't be bored while deliberately avoiding eye-related topics, I felt meticulous consideration from her.
'How intriguing.'
At the same time, I was genuinely amazed.
Ellia Srade. As the name suggests, she's not Korean. She could conceivably still be Korean despite the foreign name, but at the very least, the language she's currently speaking isn't Korean.
Yet we understood each other. It wasn't merely translation; even nuances like intonation and proverbs registered directly in my mind.
'The Tower of Harmonization, huh...'
One of the Towers that underpinned the world. The setting was that after the collapse of the old electricity-based network due to mana wavelengths, the Tower of Harmonization built a new internet network via mana and unified the world's languages.
"...Ms. Srade, Mr. Lee Ha-yul. Please stand before the Gate."
As I hurried to respond while thinking about the Tower, time flew by. Together with Ellia, I moved toward the Gate, following the staff's guidance.
'I wonder if it looks the same?'
In the game, it was depicted as a blue whirlpool flickering between large architectural structures resembling the Arc de Triomphe.
As I walked, the edge of my Spatial Perception touched the Gate.
Touched?
'What the—'
Space was severed. No, that wasn't it.
Beyond the Gate, a different landscape from here was perceptible.
'Am I detecting the other side of a Gate?'
It was still nothing but green outlines, but it was definitely a different space from the Terminal. Was that place Siyoram?
"Ha-yul?"
But the place that caught my attention was not beyond the Gate. The moment I saw the void between Siyoram on the far side and the Terminal on this side—a sense of crisis surged over me. I must not look at that. It felt as though I would meet something's gaze.
I must not go there. It felt as though the moment I approached, I would be crushed into nothing without leaving a single trace. It was like a mere ant being overwhelmed by the scale of the universe. A warning at an instinctive level sent a cold sweat down the nape of my neck.
Countless functions had been stripped from my current Spatial Perception during its cost-cutting process.
If I had seen that void with Spatial Perception at full strength, I had a feeling I wouldn't have come away unscathed.
[ Y-yes. ]
After answering the worried Ellia, I minimized my Spatial Perception to the absolute minimum and threw myself into the Gate.
I struggled to move my legs, which had gone as stiff as a statue.
'Why the hell are there so many death flags, goddammit.'
On the first day of the transfer, my brain almost burned to ash; I passed out, woke up, and nearly starved to death; and this time I nearly witnessed something and had my brain explode. In just ten days, I'd faced the danger of dying three times. If there was a god in this world, they clearly hated me. If not a god, who else would dump me into this world?
The moment I threw myself into the Gate, a rippling sensation blanketed my whole body. Before I could even finish a breath, I had arrived at the Siyoram Gate Terminal.
As soon as I hurried outside, a cool breeze chilled my body. It felt as though the tightness in my chest had eased, if only a little.
"Are you okay? Your condition suddenly..."
[ I'm fine. ]
"You're drenched in cold sweat right now."
'Cold sweat?'
At those words, I wiped my face, and my hand came away damp with cold sweat. I finally realized my face was soaked.
[ I was just nervous for a moment. ]
"Maybe you should go to the infirmary..."
[ I'm really fine. ]
I shook my head, dodging Ellia's hand as she pulled out a handkerchief to wipe my forehead. Even though I barely managed to answer, Ellia showed no sign that her worry had dissipated. Only after I repeated several times that I was truly fine and thanked her for her guidance did she finally nod.
[ Thank you very much for the guidance. ]
As a final gesture, Ellia went so far as to escort me all the way to the front of my dormitory building. I was moved, thinking that there really were such kind people in the world.
The dormitories, astonishingly, were skyscrapers. I walked around briefly to confirm. Eight buildings, each easily dozens of stories tall were arranged in a 2x4 formation across one section of the grounds. At best, I could only perceive the bases of the buildings, but that's how it was in the original work.
Facilities like parks, trails, and a lake were laid out throughout. Just seeing that much, it looked vastly better than the house I'd lived in before.
When I bowed my head deeply, Ellia hesitated for a moment, then extended her arm with the smartwatch.
"...Could we exchange contacts? It'd be nice to stay in touch as we go around together."
[ I'd like that. ]
[ Contact 'Ellia Srade' has been saved. ]
As the synchronized smartwatches touched, the contact was saved with a clear click and notification.
After finally exchanging contacts, she turned away with a parting word that I should absolutely ask for help if anything happened. Until the very end, I felt her gaze laden with worry.
She seems so excessively kind. So much so that I start worrying she might get taken advantage of somewhere down the line.
After sensing Ellia leave my Spatial Perception's range, still a little worried about her, I entered the dormitory.
[ Cadet Lee Ha-yul, authenticated. ]
Dormitory check-in was automated, so I finished it right away. The door opened automatically when I brought the smartwatch near the handle. As I stepped inside, I heard a click followed by what sounded like a ventilation fan starting up.
'...It's hot.'
Since I'd seen that void earlier, the cold sweat was making me feel gross. I should take a shower. I took off my shoes at the entrance, roughly tossed my luggage aside, and headed into the shower room.
I hadn't even properly started yet, and I was already this exhausted. I was worried about tomorrow.
'Agh, hot-hot-hot...! Hrk, ugh...! Gyaaak!'
Because I couldn't distinguish the faucet colors, I ended up having to fetch ice and apply a cold compress. Thanks to that, I experienced the Curse of Silence again today.