Someone's Watching

Someone was watching me.

Someone, from outside the dream, was watching me.

"……."

I lifted my head again. Everything had returned to the way it was. The part-timer at the counter was scrolling through his phone, the refrigerator motor was humming along exactly as before — the scene was perfectly, seamlessly identical to the moment I'd picked up the burger.

"What the hell."

And yet I could feel it. A hairline crack at the edge of my vision — thinner than a strand of hair, the kind you'd miss if you blinked.

And beyond it, someone was watching me.

"Someone's watching me."

"Gazes?"

I prodded the crack with my finger.

"'Not recommended' just means it's doable, doesn't it."

I set the burger down and gripped the crack with both hands. Something actually caught on my fingertips — fabric? Plastic film? Or maybe an eyelid.

"Will it open?"

I pulled, gently.

And then—

Sriiik.

The world split open.

Basement Level 7, Korean Awakened Management Agency.

Two records floated side by side across the front wall of the observation room.

The first was footage secured near a small rift downtown. A monster had hurled itself at a black-haired girl — and the instant the child said something, it simply vanished from the screen.

The footage cut off there.

On the neighboring display, the field record of the Awakened Crime Investigation Unit was playing. The same girl. An investigator raised a portable measuring device.

A second measurement.

The final result was stranger still.

The field record's timestamp read 13:47:12.

Moments later, black blotches began to spread across the device's screen.

The digits went dark, then the grade and the registration data blacked out after them, until the entire screen had turned pitch black.

"Which makes it hard to write off as mere equipment malfunction."

An analyst advanced the record. On the screen, the investigation team leader spoke.

"Send an identity query to headquarters. Female child, unregistered awakened. Estimated age is—"

Crackle.

Before he could finish, the radio burst to life.

The record stopped. The man seated at the center asked, "The query request log?"

"There is none. It hadn't even been transmitted from the field yet."

"Then who sent that reply?"

"I don't know."

The man stared at the screen for a moment. "Current location?"

The display changed. The girl was crossing a crosswalk; the next CCTV feed showed her passing through an alley.

The screen changed again. A convenience store interior. The black-haired girl stood in front of the hamburger display case.

"We're tracking her in real time. Her current location is confirmed as that store."

Just then, the observation room door opened. Everyone inside rose from their seats.

A white-haired woman walked in. Deep fatigue was settled across a face just past thirty.

Baek Hayeon, S-Rank Awakened — the most powerful long-range observation-type ability user in all of South Korea.

"Director Baek, our apologies for the urgent summons."

"It's quite all right."

Baek Hayeon answered briefly and turned to the screen. "That's the child?"

"Yes."

"Confirmed abilities?"

"We haven't been able to identify anything yet."

Her gaze shifted to the measurement record. "It came out F-rank."

"The equipment did what you just saw immediately afterward, and headquarters' reply was that her grade was indeterminable."

"No registration information either?"

"Nothing in the awakened registry."

Baek Hayeon studied the girl on the screen for a moment. The child was standing at the display case, deliberating between a few different hamburgers.

"Her current location is certain?"

"Yes. We're monitoring her continuously through the convenience store's CCTV."

"Understood."

Only then did Baek Hayeon take the prepared seat. "I will observe her directly."

A location was all she needed. Past walls, past buildings, clear across the city — conditions permitting, she could see thousands of kilometers away.

Baek Hayeon closed her eyes. The instant her eyelids shut, her ability ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠began to stir. She could count the nights of proper sleep she'd had since awakening on one hand — because even when she closed her eyes to fall asleep, her clairvoyance woke on its own, whenever it pleased.

Her vision leapt. Out of the agency in an instant, vaulting roads and buildings in a single bound, arriving at the target coordinates.

The convenience store.

She saw it. The shelves, the part-timer — and a small girl.

"Found her."

Black hair and pale skin, clothes thrown on carelessly. She looked ordinary. So ordinary that it was, in fact, bizarre.

"Can you measure her mana output?"

"One moment."

Baek Hayeon concentrated, narrowing her focus, searching for the trace of mana bleeding off the child — a trace that every living creature gives off, awakened or not. It was something that had to be there.

And yet—

Nothing.

There was no mana. Or rather, it was as if there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were nothing to measure at all….

The kid raised her head.

Baek Hayeon's heart lurched. The child's gaze was pointed exactly at her.

Impossible. Baek Hayeon was in an underground observation room twenty-four kilometers away. Clairvoyance was not a camera; it sent out neither light nor mana-lines. From the observed side, there was no way to even know that one was being watched.

And yet the kid's lips moved.

Someone's watching me.

Baek Hayeon shot to her feet. "Sever the ability!"

"I'm sorry?"

"Right now—"

Sriiik.

A sound. The very center of Baek Hayeon's vision tore open.

"…!"

Not the convenience store. A black void — a place with nothing in it at all. And from its center, two small hands reached up and gripped either side of the torn opening in her sight.

Then pulled it apart.

Like a face peeking out between curtains, the girl gazed at Baek Hayeon through the gap.

"Found you."

Baek Hayeon tried to scream. No voice came out. Run — her body wouldn't move. Open your eyes — but she couldn't tell where her own eyes even were.

In front of her there was only the girl.

Far, far closer than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before.

Small horns, black wings, a tail swaying in slow rhythm — things that had not been in the footage.

And behind them, something else was there.

Out of habit, Baek Hayeon tried to look at it.

She should not have looked. By the time she realized that, it was already too late.

What she had taken for a black void was not a void. It was not the night sky. It was not darkness. It was a fragment of something so vast that no scale could hold it.

It was asleep. At least, that was how it appeared to her.

An enormous form whose beginning and end could not be told apart lay sunk in perfect stillness, eyes closed. And the child before her was nothing more than a small figure floating above it — as if something had deliberately borrowed a human shape, so that people could recognize it, so that people would not go mad from seeing it.

"Why are you looking?"

The kid asked. Baek Hayeon's lips trembled.

"……."

"Do I know you?"

She shook her head. Barely.

The kid tilted her head. "Then why watch in secret?"

There was no anger in the question. If anything, it was pure, unclouded curiosity.

That was far more terrifying.

"I… I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"I observed you… without permission."

"Oh."

The kid seemed to think it over for a moment, then said, "Then don't do it."

"Yes."

"From now on."

"Yes."

It ended far too easily. Baek Hayeon felt relief wash over her — genuine relief, so profound that it felt as though her life had just been spared.

Then the kid's expression suddenly brightened a little.

"You really are sorry."

"…Pardon?"

"Never mind. I'll let it slide this time."

The instant she spoke, Baek Hayeon's clairvoyance was severed. She opened her eyes.

The observation room.

Baek Hayeon said nothing for a long while.

"Director Baek."

Someone called to her carefully. "Are you all right?"

She did not answer. She stared at the main screen. On it, the black-haired girl still stood there, utterly unconcerned.

"That thing is not an awakened."

The observation room went silent.

"…Pardon?"

Baek Hayeon said it again. "It must not be classified as an awakened."

"Then what is it?"

She couldn't answer right away. She had no idea what to call the thing she had seen.

"I don't know."

That day, the agency added a provisional classification that had never existed before.

Anomaly No. 0.

The Sleeping Girl.

"How fascinating."

I was back in the convenience store. When I let go, the crack I'd pulled open sealed itself shut.

"So I can see through places like that, huh."

When someone was watching me, I could follow their gaze backward, upstream to its source. It seemed more useful than I'd expected — I could catch people spying on me, and someday, maybe, I'd be able to reach even farther.

Except something about this felt off. That woman earlier had been absolutely terrified. All I did was tell her not to do it.

"Am I really that scary?"

I looked at my reflection in the glass door. Small. Cute. Squishy. And the horns and wings were hidden right now, too.

"Not scary at all."

Maybe she was startled because I looked back into her? Well. Fair enough, I suppose.

Just then, a faint sense of fullness settled over me.

"So this counts too?"

And here I'd thought only gratitude, praise, and affection worked. Additional text appeared on the status window.

"Apologies count as positive?"

I thought about it for a moment. Someone who'd wronged me feeling genuinely sorry — and then I feel good. Yeah, that tracked.

"Right, that works."

A very good feature indeed.

Instead of the burger I'd set down earlier, I picked up a different one — the pricier kind, with two patties and two slices of cheese, a special collaboration with a famous brand.

The Bomb Double Burger.

I had three hundred thousand won to my name now; there was no reason to keep eating the cheap stuff.

I set it on the counter. The part-timer glanced at me as he scanned the barcode.

"That one's spicy."

"That's fine."

"It's really spicy."

"I handle spicy food just fine."

"This is way too much for a kid…. Do your parents actually let you eat this stuff?"

"I live apart from my parents."

"……."

He gave me a strange look. Once the payment went through, he popped the hamburger into the microwave for me.

Ding.

I took the warmed-up burger and was heading for the door when the part-timer called out.

"Hey, hold on."

"Yes?"

He fished a small banana milk out of the refrigerator and handed it over. "Have this one too. On the house."

"Why?"

"So you don't start bawling about how spicy it is."

"I'm not gonna cry."

"Still."

I looked at the banana milk. Then at the part-timer.

"This is really free?"

"Yep."

"Why are you giving it to me?"

He answered, as if it were too much trouble to explain. "It's just… a kid running around by herself, making lunch out of a single hamburger — I don't know. It bugs me, that's all."

Ding.

I accepted the banana milk. "Thank you."

I gave a small bow, head dipped. A tiny, unremarkable kindness — and yet it made me happy.

The part-timer smirked. "Well, aren't you polite."

Ding.

"Ah."

My whole body stiffened at the completely unexpected compliment. I looked up at him. "What did you just say?"

"Huh?"

"Say it again. The part about me being polite."

"…Why?"

The sincerity was gone. And naturally, so was the energy — nothing flowed in this time. What a waste.

So it really can't be forced after all.

"N-never mind, forget it."

"What's with you all of a sudden?"

I sipped my banana milk all the way out of the store.

Today had been a good haul. Praise, gratitude, headpats — I'd gotten money, and even free banana milk on top.

"Life's not so bad."

I sat down on a bench at a park nearby and tore open the burger wrapper. One bite.

"…That's spicy."

It really, truly was. I'd have been in serious trouble without that banana milk.

As I sat there sipping it, the part-timer's words from earlier came back to me.

Parents.

"Ah."

Come to think of it — if I was ten now, how exactly did my parents remember me? The question gnawed at me all of a sudden, so I pulled out my phone and called Mom.

A few rings, and then the familiar voice. "Hello?"

"Mom."

"Mm. What is it?"

"Just felt like calling."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Everything okay?"

"Yep."

Totally, boringly normal. I took another bite of the hamburger and asked, "Mom."

"Mm."

"How old am I?"

"Out of nowhere? You're ten, aren't you."

"Right."

So that side of things had changed too. I thought for a moment.

"How long have I been living on my own here?"

"Four, five years now?"

"……."

I stopped chewing.

Ten years old. Four years living alone.

"Mom."

"What?"

"So I moved out when I was six?"

The other end of the line went quiet.

"…Huh. I suppose you did?"