Chapter 1 — You Haven't Found Some Other Girl While I Was Gone, Have You?
Chapter 1 — You Haven't Found Some Other Girl While I Was Gone, Have You?
Translation: GodTL
In memory of Jung Sia — 2000.08.25–2023.08.25
A year ago today, Sia died. No warning. No final goodbye. Six months after graduating from the Hunter Academy and becoming a full-fledged Hunter, she vanished from my life in a single day. She had already lost her family to a Gate break in high school. I had thought fate had taken enough from her. I was wrong. On her own birthday, it took her too.
"It's already been a year since you left me, Sia."
On the anniversary of her death—which was also her birthday—I went to Sia's grave carrying her favorite tteokbokki.
"I still can't believe my beautiful Sia is gone."
Jung Sia. She was my beloved girlfriend, the only one for me in this world.
The day we were supposed to celebrate her birthday over dinner at a nice restaurant, disaster struck inside the Gate where she was training. Gates were dangerous; every Hunter knew that. But a catastrophic blaze inside an ordinary D-rank Gate? No one had imagined it—not until the flames were already out of control.
Three people survived with injuries. One person didn't. That one person was Sia.
What if I'd been stronger?
That question had dug itself into me over the past year and refused to leave. If I'd been a little stronger, a little faster—if I'd had even one more card to play—could I have reached her before it was too late?
If only that ability had awakened when I needed it...
By every measure, I was just an ordinary D-rank Hunter of the swordsman class. Except for one thing.
Unknown Skill — EX rank
Skill description: unavailable.
The problem was that I had no idea what the skill was or how to use it. I didn't even know whether it was passive or active.
If I'd understood that skill—if I'd been able to use even a fraction of an EX-rank ability when it mattered—maybe Sia's grave wouldn't have been in front of me now.
What good does thinking about it do now?
A skill I'd never used, one that hadn't protected the person I loved. I was better off living as if a skill like that didn't exist.
I forced the useless what-ifs back down and took out my phone. As I scrolled slowly through the photos I'd taken with Sia, one memory after another rose so vividly that, for a moment, the cemetery around me seemed to disappear.
Sia, who'd confessed her feelings to me without caring what anyone else thought, always so direct. My Sia, whose smile was more beautiful than anyone else's in the world. My Sia, who said it was so warm in my arms and never wanted to leave them. My beloved Sia, who'd been my reason for living.
As I recalled our time together, I felt my eyes growing hot. We'd loved each other so fiercely that we couldn't live without one another. Why had we been forced apart like this?
Holding back the tears threatening to spill, I poured a cup of clear rice wine I'd brought with the tteokbokki and placed it before Sia's grave. I set down her favorite tteokbokki beside it. Its spicy aroma brought back the day she'd died.
"Sia, let's go out for something good tonight. What do you want to eat?"
"Hmm... Tteokbokki! Let's add loads of extras!"
"Tteokbokki? Come on, it's your birthday. Let's have something nicer. I'm buying, remember?"
"You don't really like tteokbokki? But that's what I want to eat."
If I'd known Sia would leave me so soon, I wouldn't have grumbled about eating the same thing we always did. I would have shared tteokbokki with her one more time. Remembering it brought another wave of regret.
I poured the cup of rice wine over Sia's grave, then filled it again and drank.
"Sia, it's okay if I get a little drunk today, isn't it?"
But just as I emptied the cup and went to refill it...
A deep tremor rolled through the ground.
The ground suddenly began to shake, and a deafening roar rang out. Then the air split open, and a small rift began to form.
A Gate break!
These were unmistakably the warning signs of a Gate break. As the rift grew, my mind raced. Of all days, it had to happen on the anniversary of Sia's death—and right where she was buried?
I knew what a Gate break was, but this was my first time seeing one for myself. Faced with something I'd never experienced before, I went still.
I have to do something.
I needed to report it to the Hunter Association, then buy time on my own somehow to keep the damage from spreading. But the moment I raised my phone to take action, the Gate began to writhe, and something emerged from it.
Certain it was a monster, I hurried to pull my weapon from my Subspace... but as soon as I saw what it was, I stopped short.
A young woman with an exotic appearance, seemingly about my age. Astonishingly, the unidentified being that had come out of the Gate was a woman. But she was anything but ordinary.
Her red hair resembled a sacred flame, and her ruby-like eyes hardly looked human. And that wasn't all. Her skin was white as jade, her features delicate, and she was beautiful enough to be called a goddess. Her clothes didn't appear to be from Earth, either, making the impression all the stronger.
No. Don't let her looks fool you.
She might be an unreported monster that looked like a human woman. I couldn't let my guard down. Even if no one else was around, I had to prepare for the worst. Until I knew what she was, I needed to be careful. The first thing to find out was whether she was friendly toward humanity or hostile.
I was cautiously drawing my weapon, but she was looking elsewhere as if she couldn't care less about it. At the tteokbokki and gimbap beside Sia's grave—and the birthday present I'd never given her, still unopened after a year.
After examining them, the woman turned her gaze on me. I could understand her looking at my face, but why was she interested in the tteokbokki? The truly strange thing, though, was something else.
"Babe?"
Despite looking so foreign that I couldn't imagine she was Korean, she called me "babe" with perfect pronunciation, as if we were close. Babe? She'd called me babe? I was on the verge of demanding to know what she was when she spoke again.
"Min-jun, it's me. Sia. Your girlfriend, Jung Sia."
... What?
"To see you again, I spent two thousand years shut up in my lair studying dimensional travel magic. I didn't even go out to play once. I did good, right? Really good?"
Two thousand years? A lair? Dimensional travel magic? The woman claiming to be the dead Sia was throwing words at me I couldn't make sense of.
"But babe, you haven't found some other bitch while I was gone, have you?"