Awakening!... But I Won
Awakening... I did it...
Once a day, I made a wish.
Just like buying lottery tickets every week.
That I would awaken.
Thinking about it now, it seems this wish was more fervent than the lottery winning.
In a world where gates, rifts to other dimensions, tore people apart from the sky, how important could lottery winnings be?
When you die, money is money, but it's useless.
It'd be better to have the power to protect just my own body.
I'm an orphan.
It came a bit late.
Both my parents passed away when I was in the first year of middle school.
Because of the disaster called the Great Inundation.
The Great Inundation.
That event where a swarm of monsters that had gathered from the north in Manchuria invaded Korea.
They said it had been pushed back once to the lower parts of Chungcheong Province by the monsters' front line.
In the midst of such a great disaster, I ended up surviving alone.
More than ten years have passed, but I still remember it vividly.
The green eyes that met me as I hid in the rubble.
Fortunately, the monster didn't notice me and just passed by...
If it had noticed, I don't even want to imagine what would have happened.
I read in an elementary school children's science picture book that a person can survive three days without drinking water.
I never imagined that I would actually experience it myself.
Even if I survived without food or proper water, it was my will, but anyway.
The one who rescued me was an awakener who was passing by that place.
Embarrassing as it is, from that day on.
The vague dream of wanting to become an awakener.
Of course, it had to end as a dream.
Awakening is something that can only happen if luck follows you, after all.
That one in a thousand chance awakening, how could I possibly do it?
What I could do was just quietly pray once a day in my heart.
Please let me awaken.
My parents' funeral was held together with other Great Inundation victims.
It was just a moment of grieving while looking at the two photos placed side by side at the memorial altar.
After only a week, I realized the reality.
Everything except living and breathing was gone to money.
I didn't even have the courage to enter the orphanage.
Exactly, on the first day I tried to enter, I ran out.
Because I found the friend I had parted ways with during a school move when I was in elementary school there.
At first, I couldn't recognize him. His skin was too thin.
Seeing the once chubby-cheeked kid reduced to just bones and skin... It was an indescribably horrific feeling.
So I ran away.
I wandered the streets alone and somehow survived.
Whenever any store was open, I would crawl in and offer to work for food and money, and later, when it didn't work out, I even grabbed passersby and begged without hesitation.
There was no help from the country. I refused it.
It was foolish of me at such a young age.
If struggling to survive without touching crime in such a situation is something to be proud of, then so be it.
Somehow, I grew up to be an adult.
I got a lease with the money I scraped together and loans, and did whatever paid, but that's all.
The future didn't show.
Closing my eyes.
That's my future.
What do you see?
Yeah.
Nothing.
No matter how hard I tried, even applying to production jobs in regions bordering local areas or border areas, I kept getting disqualified from the documents.
Even if I luckily passed the documents and went for an interview, all I got was casual talk, insulting words, and coldness.
"Elementary school graduate... no experience? Hey. What the hell did you do all this time until you reached that age? Seriously."
"Let me see... both your parents passed away? I wonder if someone who didn't get proper home education can work properly. What do you think?"
Even though I knew what would happen if I got into such a company, I still groveled to get hired somehow.
But they didn't even look at me.
On the way home.
My steps were unusually heavy today.
"Is there any way you can awaken me a bit?"
I grabbed the three-colored cat that was hiding under the car and said it.
"An orphan with no one else after both parents passed, you've worked hard for this much."
"Even if your luck hasn't been good your whole life, there can be at least one time when it's good."
How long do I have to repeat this life?
There's no meaning in life.
There's no one to grab my shoulders and say "Your son grew up like this."
So, in the end, I came to this strange conclusion that I wanted to awaken at least.
Because I wanted to help others?
No.
Because I couldn't feel any value in a life that gets swept away by unreasonable storms.
I want to live off the land.
The three-colored cat, lifted in my arms, quietly said something.
Meow-
Yeah.
"What would I say to you..."
As soon as I put it down, the cat ran away like it was fleeing.
It would probably beg for more treats tomorrow.
The wish I made with the mindset of buying lottery tickets today was even more fervent.
After my parents passed, I don't believe in any religion, but I feel like I want to believe today.
Please, anyone.
Awaken me a bit.
While hoping that today's life lottery would be the last one won, I tossed and turned in bed.
I had a nightmare.
It was a dream where a gate appeared at the coordinates where my body was, and I disappeared without leaving a corpse.
It was just a delusion.
There was a scholar with authority on gates and monsters who appeared on TV explaining with examples of orcas attacking humans.
It was actually possible, but for some reason, it didn't happen.
"Hiyak?!"
But the fact is, it's a scary dream.
I woke up screaming.
The smartphone next to the pillow still had the screen on.
It seemed I fell asleep without turning it off after setting an alarm to sleep earlier than NaverTV because I couldn't sleep due to tossing and turning.
Thanks to that, the smartphone was hot like it was on fire.
Hello~ Today, I'm going to answer the viewers' questions while touching a liquid monster!
I stared blankly at the strange video the NaverTV algorithm was playing on its own after I accidentally left the auto-play on, then snapped out of it.
When I looked at the top of the smartphone screen, it was 6:30 in the morning.
Waking up at this hour without an alarm was strange.
I wasn't sleepy at all, yet my mind was clear.
But something felt off.
There was something... a sense of wrongness about the view from my house.
Something was strange, but I couldn't put it into words.
The feeling of wrongness didn't disappear even after blinking.
It felt like something fundamental had changed.
"...Did the albumin I was taking have an effect?"
I had been taking the supplement the boss at the part-time job gave me as a New Year gift, putting it off and putting it off until a week ago.
Finally, the effect was showing.
Just as I was about to sit up without thinking, the blanket felt thick.
Way too thick.
I muttered in surprise.
"Huh."
And then it got even stranger.
"Huh?"
My voice sounded off too.
Something was wrong.
Now that I looked, my fingers were strange too.
They were too white and slender. When I touched them, they were soft.
It was only then that I suddenly recalled the scene I had just passed.
The smartphone screen.
The person inside the black screen clearly wasn't me.
Something had happened to my body.
A mirror. I had to see the mirror.
I threw off the blanket and rushed to the mirror, and there was a girl staring back at me.
The girl's face was full of panic.
Of course she would be.
The girl was... me.
"What is this?"
When I touched my face, the girl in the mirror did the same.
My cheeks were soft like mochi.
I stopped, suddenly feeling pathetic for playing with them.
It had to be a dream, no need to doubt it.
I had already played with my cheeks like a madman.
This was clearly reality.
So had I awakened?
From what I had seen while scrolling communities, the status window appeared just by thinking about it...
...It was real.
I had actually become the awakening I had dreamed of, but I was just dazed.
After all, I never imagined it would happen like this.
But at the same time, I felt like I could accept it.
The world was like that from the start.
The excuse that no future I imagined would come and I wasn't prepared yet didn't work.
I just had to accept it.
The fact that I had become an overly noticeable pink-haired girl.
Ah, and an SSS-rank assassin too.
Assassin.
It wasn't a good impression. Honestly.
Just thinking about killing people made me think of that right away.
But being SSS-rank felt good.
S-rank was the highest rank I knew existed, and if there were three of them, wouldn't that mean three times as good?
At least it was a rank I had never heard of as an internet community addict.
In the gallery, everyone was treating it as a joke.
Of course, I, the person involved, couldn't even believe it.
I knew hunter ranks went up to S-rank, but SSS-rank?
There must be something really amazing about it.
While vaguely thinking about it, a flea appeared.
My old friend, the flea.
That devil's bug that doesn't disappear no matter how hard I clean.
Personally, I hate it more than cockroaches.
Why does this bug like people so much? It has a strange habit of flying around my face, so it keeps bumping into my face...!
To swat the flying bug, I waved my hand—
The flea I was going to swat with my palm split in half.
...What?