Awakened!... Sort Of...

Once a day, I made a wish. The way you'd buy a lottery ticket every week. Please, let me become an Awakener.

Looking back now, I think I wanted this more desperately than I'd ever wanted to win the lottery. In a world where Gates—passages to other dimensions—could tear open out of thin air and rip a person apart, how much would prize money even matter? The dead can't spend money. Better to have the strength to keep your own body in one piece.

I'm an orphan. It happened a little late, as these things go: both my parents died the year I started middle school, victims of the calamity people called the Great Inundation.

The Great Inundation. The event where monster hordes, having begun massing far to the north in Manchuria, swept down and invaded Korea. From what I've heard, humanity was pushed back in a single wave all the way past the southern reaches of Chungcheong Province. And somehow, in the middle of that great calamity, I survived. Alone.

More than ten years have passed, and I still remember it with perfect clarity: the green eyes that met mine while I crouched in the wreckage, holding my breath. Fortunately, the monster never actually saw me—it just moved on. I don't even want to imagine what would have happened if it had.

Back in elementary school, I read in a children's science book that a person can survive three days without water. I never imagined I'd get to test that fact firsthand. Being rescued in that state was, I honestly believe, a miracle. Say that my own willpower was what kept me alive through days without food and barely a sip of water—fine. But the one who pulled me out was an Awakener who just happened to be passing through.

Embarrassing as it is to admit, that was the day it started: the vague little dream of becoming an Awakener myself. Naturally, it should have stayed a dream. Becoming an Awakener comes down to nothing but pure, blind luck. Awakening manifests in one person out of a thousand—what chance did I ever have? All I could do was whisper the same small prayer inside my head, once a day. Please, let me become an Awakener.

My parents' funeral was held together with the other Great Inundation victims. Crying in front of their two photographs, side by side at the incense altar, didn't last long. Within a week, reality had set in: everything except staying alive and breathing cost money.

I couldn't bring myself to enter an orphanage. To be exact, I ran away on my very first day—because I found a friend there, one I'd lost touch with when their family moved away back in elementary school. I didn't recognize them at first. They'd lost so much weight. Seeing a kid who'd been plump-cheeked only a year before reduced to skin stretched over bone… it was a horrible feeling I still can't put into words. So I ran. I wandered the streets alone and survived however I could.

If any shop still had its doors open, I'd crawl in and offer to help with anything in exchange for food and a little money, and when even that didn't pan out, I lost all shame about grabbing strangers on the sidewalk and begging outright. There was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no help from the state—I refused it. Young and stubborn, that was me. If I get to brag about anything, it's that even in all that, I squirmed my way through without ever once turning to crime.

Somehow the years passed and I became an adult. I scraped together every won I'd hoarded, took out a loan, and put a lump-sum deposit on a place; I said yes to anything that paid. And that was the whole story. I couldn't see a future.

Close my eyes, and there it was—my future, in its entirety. What did I see? Right. Nothing at all.

Even applying for production work out in the countryside, or in the districts hugging the frontier, my résumé got insta-rejected more often than not. On the rare lucky occasion I cleared the paper screen and made it to an interview, all I brought home was condescension, insults, and cold contempt.

"Elementary school graduate… and no experience? Hey. What the hell have you been doing all these years, huh? Honestly."

"Let's see now… both your parents have passed away? I have my doubts someone who never got a proper upbringing can do an honest day's work. What do you think?"

I could see plainly what would become of me if I ever got into a place like that, and I still bowed and scraped, desperate to somehow make the cut. They never gave me so much as a glance, of course.

The walk home from work. My footsteps felt heavier than usual tonight.

"Seriously, can't somebody just awaken me already?"

I snagged the calico cat hiding under a parked car and asked it that.

"For an orphan kid with two dead parents and not a won to his name, I've worked pretty damn hard, you know."

"Even if my luck's been trash my whole life, it's allowed to be good just once, isn't it?"

How much longer was I supposed to keep repeating this life? There was no reward in it. Not one person left in the world whose shoulders I could grab and confess to, Look how your son turned out. And so, in the end, I arrived at that strange conclusion all over again: I'd rather awaken, if nothing else. Because I wanted to help people? No. Because I couldn't find any more value in a life that just got swept wherever every unreasonable storm decided to push it. I wanted to devour life raw for once.

The calico stayed docile in my grip for a moment, then offered a single word of wisdom.

Meow—

Right. "What's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the point of telling you any of this…."

The second I set it down, the calico bolted like it was fleeing the scene. And tomorrow it would come right back, mewling for Churus.

The wish I'd always made in the buying-a-lottery-ticket spirit felt more desperate than usual tonight. I hadn't believed in any religion since my parents died, but tonight—just tonight—I wanted to believe. Please. Anyone at all. Let me awaken.

Hoping that the last lottery ticket of my life might finally pay off, I stayed up all night.

I had a nightmare. In it, a Gate opened right on the spot where my body happened to be, and I was gone without even a corpse left behind.

Pure paranoid fantasy, of course. An authority on Gates and monsters had once appeared on TV, brandishing the example of orcas attacking humans: it could absolutely happen in reality, he said—and yet, for some reason, it never does.

"HYAAAK?!"

A nightmare was still a nightmare, though. I woke up shrieking. The smartphone beside my pillow still had its screen on—apparently I'd dozed off with NaTube running, put on to lull me to sleep after a restless night, and never turned it off. Thanks to which the phone was hot enough to catch fire.

I must have left autoplay on while I drifted off; I stared blankly at whatever strange video the NaTube algorithm had chosen for me before my brain finally booted up. The top of the screen read 6:30 in the morning. Waking at this hour with no alarm. And strangely enough, I wasn't the least bit drowsy—my head was crystal clear.

And yet something was off. Something about the room felt… wrong. Strange, yes, but I couldn't put into words what. The feeling wouldn't fade no matter how much I blinked. As if something fundamental had changed.

"…Did that drinkable albumin actually do something?"

The part-time job's owner had sent it as a New Year's gift; I'd procrastinated forever and finally started taking it a week ago. So the effects were kicking in at last, huh.

Without thinking, I moved to sit up—and the blanket was huge. Huge.

It was so odd that the question slipped out loud. "Huh." And saying it made everything stranger still. "Huh?" My voice, too.

Something was wrong. Now that I looked, my fingers were wrong as well—too pale, too slender, and soft as dough when I touched them. Only then did a scene from moments ago, one I'd glossed right over, come back to me. The smartphone screen. The person in that black glass had definitely not been me.

Something had happened to my body. A mirror. I needed a mirror. I shed the blanket—threw it, more like—and sprinted to the mirror, where a girl I had never seen in my life was staring back at me. Her face was painted with naked panic. Well, of course it was. Because the girl was me.

"What is this?"

When I touched my face, the girl in the mirror touched hers. My cheeks were springy as fresh rice cakes. I kneaded away for a while, then suddenly felt so pathetic that I stopped. A dream? No point even wondering—I'd already squished those cheeks half to death. This was definitely reality.

Which meant… had I awakened, of all things? From what I'd gathered lurking on the forums, you didn't need to shout "Status window"—just thinking it should bring it up…

Huh. …So it was real.

I'd truly awakened—the dream I'd clung to for over a decade—and all I felt was dazed. To be fair, I'd never once imagined it would come true like this. And yet, some part of me found it perfectly believable. That's just how the world is: none of the futures you imagine ever show up, and excuses about not being ready get you nowhere. All I could do was accept it. The fact that I had turned into a pink-haired girl so eye-catching it hurt. Oh, and the fact that I was an SSS-rank Assassin, too.

Assassin. Not exactly a pleasant ring to it, honestly. It jumps straight to killing people. Still—SSS-rank. That part felt good. As far as I knew, S was the highest rank in existence, and if you stack three of them, shouldn't that be three times as good? At the very least, it was a rank I—a certified internet-forum addict—had never once heard of.

I'd posted it to the gallery, and the mood was unanimous: everyone treating it as a joke. Fair enough. Even I didn't believe it, and I was the one it had happened to. Hunter ranks topped out at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠S as far as I knew, and here was an SSS. There had to be something tremendous behind it, surely. I was turning that hazy thought over in my head when I spotted the uninvited guest.

A phorid fly. My old and faithful friend. The demon bug that no amount of cleaning could ever banish. Personally, I hated it more than a cockroach.

Why do these things love humans so much? The cursed creatures had this bizarre habit of trying to orbit your face, and this one kept slamming itself straight toward ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mine…!

I swung my hand to knock the incoming insect out of the air—

—and the phorid fly I'd meant to bat away with my palm split cleanly in two.

…I'm sorry, what?