Five Big Shots Trying to Collar Me?
The woman in the white lab coat lay completely motionless in the middle of the hospital room, as if she were dead. I stood there in stunned silence for a moment before cautiously approaching and crouching beside her. I figured I should at least check whether she was breathing.
I gently lifted the edge of the pure white coat covering her face. The moment her features were revealed, I couldn’t help but gasp inwardly.
Wait… is this world just crawling with stunning women?
The large round glasses were a slight shame, but even accounting for them, her face was breathtakingly beautiful. Between the messy, tangled strands of navy-blue hair that looked like they’d never seen a brush, her features were so perfectly delicate they almost didn’t seem real. I forgot to even brush the dust from her face. I simply stared, lost in admiration, before finally speaking.
“Um… are you all right?”
That was the trigger. The woman, who hadn’t stirred at all, suddenly jolted upright at the sound of my voice. She swept her disheveled hair back roughly and scanned the hospital room. Noticing the three women staring daggers at her, she let out an awkward little “hehe” smile, looking embarrassed. Then she grabbed my shoulder without warning.
“My one and only guardian knight! Kim Sihyuk! Having lost all your memories, you’ve become an unleashed dog with no collar—targeted by a total of five women. That includes me, these three here, and one more who hasn’t shown up yet!”
“……Excuse me?”
A dog with no collar? Was that really the right metaphor? But the woman who had dropped from the ceiling didn’t care about my dumbfounded expression in the slightest. She simply continued.
“They’re all putting on an Oscar-worthy performance because they believe whoever puts a leash on your collar first gets to become your true owner! These girls already knew you had amnesia—they overheard it outside the room!”
“They… already knew?”
It felt like someone had slammed a sledgehammer into the back of my skull. Still reeling, I slowly turned to look at Seo Yura.
“Umm…”
The same woman who had been rubbing her cheek against me with blind devotion only moments ago couldn’t meet my eyes. She quickly looked down at the floor. Chloe Hartfield and Shin Yewon also cleared their throats or turned to stare out the window as if on cue.
So it was all true…?
The realization that every affectionate gesture they’d showered on me had been an act to seize my leash first brought a strange wave of betrayal. Still, there was nothing else particularly unpleasant about it, and right now the most important thing was understanding this insane situation.
I let out a heavy sigh and asked the navy-haired woman still gripping my shoulder.
“First, what’s your name?”
“Choi Ina! I’m twenty-one, a genius S-class Hunter currently dominating both the medical and life sciences fields!”
Choi Ina puffed out her chest and declared it proudly. Hunter. It was one of the words that had been nagging at me since earlier.
“While we’re on the subject, let me ask one more thing. What exactly are Hunters, and what are Gates?”
“Aha! All the basic common sense is gone too? That makes this a little tricky. I wonder what’s left and what’s been completely wiped~”
Choi Ina hummed a little tune, clearly intrigued, before kindly beginning her explanation.
“After the Gates first appeared several hundred years ago, a power called mana came into existence on Earth. Ever since, monsters from countless dimensions have been pouring in nonstop, trying to devour our world. The chosen few undergo Awakening, gain special abilities, earn the qualification of Hunter, and fight those creatures.”
She paused to catch her breath, then continued.
“Just so you know, all of us are currently second-year students at the Academy. We’re training there to obtain official Hunter licenses!”
Academy. Hunter. Gate. Monster. The unreal terms floated through my mind like bubbles. But the one core question I still couldn’t understand was—
“So… why exactly are all of you obsessing over an ordinary guy like me?”
“……!”
Choi Ina’s eyes wavered at my question. She scratched the back of her head, clearly trying to dodge the subject, then shifted her gaze somewhere near the top of my head.
“Um… I think it’d be better if you heard that after you regain your memories, or from whichever owner you end up choosing.”
“Choose an owner… Wait, why do I have to hear it then?”
“Just… because it’d be better for everyone that way?”
It was obviously an evasion meant to smooth over the current situation. Naturally, I wasn’t buying it. I narrowed my eyes, ready to press her, but Choi Ina clapped her hands loudly and changed the subject.
“Anyway! Let’s get out of this stuffy hospital first! Guardian knight! I’ll whip up a medicine that might help restore your memories!”
“…What?”
At Choi Ina’s shameless declaration, all three women froze. The murderous aura that had briefly faded behind their embarrassed eyes came roaring back.
“How dare you try to take someone else’s guardian knight.”
Seo Yura reacted first again. She wedged herself between me and Choi Ina, voice sharp. Her fingertips were trembling slightly—clearly she was trying to cover her embarrassment with anger.
“Exactly! There’s no way I’m leaving my guardian with a suspicious drug fiend like you!”
Chloe stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Seo Yura and shouted. Much denser golden lightning than before sparked and crackled around both her hands.
“Hey, you rat who dropped from the ceiling. Get your hands off my bodyguard right now.”
Shin Yewon clenched a scarred fist. The three women who had been ready to kill each other moments ago suddenly united, directing their full hostility at Choi Ina.
But Choi Ina didn’t even flinch. She simply snorted, pushed her slipping glasses up with her middle finger, and said,
“I get that you all want my exclusive guardian knight—sorry, Sihyuk—but let’s drop the acting, yeah? You’ve already been caught scheming to put a collar on him, so why are you still doing this?”
That single provocative line was the perfect spark.
“This crazy bitch really…!”
“I’m sewing that arrogant mouth shut today!”
“Move. I’ll beat her half to death first.”
Once again the hospital room filled with swirling black mist and golden lightning. Even Shin Yewon took a fighting stance, red energy flickering around her fist.
But at that exact moment—
“I warned you, didn’t I!? All patients, get out right now!”
The nurse who had apparently been eavesdropping burst in with a thunderous roar that shook the entire room. In the end, the four women—who had been glaring and panting at one another—were pushed out of the hospital room by the security team that had been called in.
Wait… why am I getting kicked out too?
After the storm finally passed, I returned alone to the single dormitory the Academy had provided after a long round of negotiations. The four women had stubbornly insisted on taking me to their own homes or territories, but my firm refusal eventually made them back down. They left radiating the clear message that tomorrow the real persuasion—and offensive—would begin at the Academy.
“Haa……”
I collapsed onto the soft dormitory bed and let out a long sigh. Only after being left alone in the quiet room did the tension in my shoulders finally loosen a little. I savored that precious peace for a while, staring blankly at the plain ceiling, slowly replaying everything that had happened today.
I’d woken up without even remembering my own name. Yet four incredibly prominent, beautiful women had fought over who my guardian knight was, nearly destroying the hospital room in the process. Three of them had even fabricated my past with lies just to claim me completely. And apparently there was still one more who hadn’t appeared yet.
On top of that, this world had monsters, and superhumans called Awakened and Hunters walking around like it was normal…
My head is pounding.
It was far too much information for an ordinary brain to process all at once. I absentmindedly rolled the unfamiliar words around in my mouth.
“Hunter… Awakening……”
According to Choi Ina, I was also a student at this Academy and had been training to become a Hunter. That probably meant I possessed some kind of special ability too.
As my thoughts kept branching out uncontrollably, one remark someone had casually tossed out during the argument just before we left the hospital flashed through my mind. The suggestion that if I couldn’t remember, I should check it myself.
At the end they definitely said something about a status window… that I could view my basic information through it, right?
I sat up on the bed again. I was half skeptical, but right now it was the only clue I had about who I was. So I cautiously spoke into the empty air.
“Status window.”
The transparent window floating before my eyes listed grandiose trait names straight out of a comic book—Infinite Trajectory, All-Encompassing Predation. They sounded like they belonged to the strongest being in the world. But when I looked at the actual numbers, I couldn’t help tilting my head.
Is this… strong?
Setting aside the ridiculous negative one luck that was permanently fixed, the stats looked fairly high overall. Strength in particular was 94 out of 100. If I was supposed to be the guardian knight for four—no, five—major figures, I guess I must have been pretty strong.
I decided to accept it for now. Honestly, the ominous phrases in the special notes about the Wolf King’s Wraith and Misfortune bothered me more than the numbers, but figuring out the rest of my hand came first.
I reached carefully toward the hologram. I wanted to tap each trait name for a detailed explanation. But before my fingertip could even touch “Thousand Hands,” a voice drifted down from behind my head—or more precisely, from the dormitory ceiling.
“You really did wake up. I missed you, Sihyuk.”
Every hair on my body stood on end. There had been no presence in the room except mine. I whipped my upper body backward and looked up at the ceiling. The empty air warped, and a figure slid out of nowhere.
Hair the clear sky-blue of a perfect summer day. But unlike that bright, clean color, her eyes were half-lidded and her expression looked incredibly languid. Somehow she felt even more dangerous than Seo Yura.
Yet the woman didn’t seem to care about my reaction at all. She spun lightly in midair, then landed silently on the edge of my bed as naturally as if she were sitting on her own. Completely at ease. Completely confident.
“Sorry~ I was planning to come right away, but I waited a bit because I thought those weird girls might get annoying. Did I do well?”
The unidentified woman tilted her head cutely.
“…….”
For now… the woman in front of me was probably the last one Choi Ina had mentioned. The fifth owner of the collar.