No Time for the Past
I swallowed a mouthful of scalding americano and looked at the woman sitting across from me.
Kim Seoyeon.
The long, straight hair I remembered had been cut short into a bob. Dressed in a pink off-shoulder dress and done up to the nines, her beauty was in full bloom. She was the kind of woman any man would turn to look at twice. At twenty-nine, she still looked impossibly young.
Any boyfriend of hers would have walked a little taller, chest puffed with pride.
You're a good guy, but… I'm sorry. I can't keep seeing someone with no future. We're at the age where we should be thinking about marriage.
All my friends are dating and marrying guys who work at big-name companies or run their own businesses, but you… Ugh. Forget it. Let's just stop.
The words she'd spoken when we broke up still circled in my ears. Five years. Long if you called it long, short if you called it short—and that was how it ended. The moment she dumped me, she blocked my number on the spot.
She'd been so ruthless about cutting me off. And now…
"Why did you suddenly want to meet?"
"No reason. I was just passing by and saw your place. Have you been well?"
A girl who lived in Jamsil, just happening to pass through Eunpyeong-gu? She had no job or connection that would bring her out this way.
Have I been well?
Hardly. But something strange was happening. I'd expected my heart to pound, to ache with longing the moment I saw her again. It didn't. Not even a little. My heart was as calm as a paper boat floating on a still lake.
Is this Randolph's influence…?
Even without using a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule, everything I had done as Randolph was etched into me. Maybe that was why this sudden situation barely rattled me at all.
"I've been managing. What about you?"
"Me? Same as always. Work, home, work, home. I'm dying over here."
The usual complaint about the hamster wheel of daily life. But I already knew she hadn't come to see me just because she was bored. I had a pretty good idea of the real reason, too.
Right after we broke up, she'd changed her profile picture to a couple shot with some slick-looking businessman. That photo was gone now. Honestly, it was absurd. She'd traded up, hit a snag, and come crawling back to me. Whether that made her shameless or just meant I still looked like a complete pushover—I wasn't sure.
I really was a pushover, though.
It had been the kind of relationship where I would have cut out my own liver and handed it over if she'd asked. I'd done it because I loved her that much—but I had zero intention of repeating the past with someone who was nothing to me now.
I stayed silent, waiting to see what she'd say. Seoyeon opened her mouth.
"After that whole thing happened the other day, everything went crazy, right? You were the first person I worried about, you know?"
"That whole thing?"
"The Dimension War! The day monsters from another dimension attacked Earth! I honestly thought they were filming a Marvel movie or something."
She meant the day the Giant Mantis appeared. Monsters from Pangenia had shown up in the real world, and people who'd been summoned to Pangenia used Broken Fragments of the Golden Rule to fight them off on Earth. From that day on, the public started calling them Dimension Warriors and praising them to the skies.
Warriors from another dimension. Supposedly possessing modern humans to drive back the monsters. The Dimension Warriors had warned of greater dangers still to come and rocketed to stardom overnight. Surprisingly, almost no one mentioned Pangenia by name.
Well, an attack from another dimension does sound more plausible than a game becoming reality.
An unknown threat pouring in from the void was always going to be more terrifying than a game people already knew turning real.
"You don't seem very interested."
"Can I get up now?"
"…Huh?"
Confusion flickered across Seoyeon's previously relaxed face.
"I've seen your face. That should be enough. We're not exactly the kind of people who sit around making small talk."
I stood up regardless of her reaction. The old me might have clung to her, begged her to meet again. Our five years together had been a relationship with a clear top and bottom, after all. I might have pleaded that I couldn't let it end with regrets still hanging on.
But not anymore. I had a mountain of things to do. I didn't have time to be dragged around by anyone.
"…Is this because of what I said at the end?"
"It's not that. Does your current boyfriend know you're meeting me?"
Did she really think taking down one profile picture would keep me in the dark? The photos on her SNS account were still up. In other words, she was fishing. Testing the waters between me and that other guy. Or maybe she'd fought with her boyfriend and was using me to prop up her fragile ego. Either way, it was the worst possible look.
At my blunt phrasing, Seoyeon's face hardened like stone. She clearly hadn't expected me to say it out loud.
"That's…"
"Ah! Seriously! Stop following me!"
"Hana-ssi, I'm not that bad of a guy, okay?"
At that moment, the café door flew open and a woman burst inside, shouting as she fled. A middle-aged man was right on her heels.
"This is straight-up stalking. I'm calling the police."
"Please! Just meet with me one time!"
"I said no!"
Everyone in the café turned to stare at the pair. I did too—but for a different reason than the rest. Her face looked familiar, like I'd seen it somewhere before.
Where have I…?
In an instant, the man's expression—the stalker's expression—flipped a full hundred and eighty degrees. The pitiful, pleading stalker twisted his face into a snarl and flushed red.
"You fucking bitch, I was being nice—!"
"Ah!"
The stalker grabbed her by the hair. She screamed, and he sneered.
"Would it kill you to just play along a little? Do we really have to do this?"
He'd completely lost his mind to rage. The stalker swept his gaze around the room and bellowed.
"What are you looking at, you bastards?! Is this a show?!"
Everyone who met his eyes looked away.
"Oppa, don't get involved. Things are already tense these days… The police will come."
Seoyeon was right. Someone had probably already called it in. In a few minutes the cops would show up and deal with the stalker. There was no need to stick my neck out and make trouble.
Then my eyes met the woman whose hair was still clenched in his fist. Her gaze was desperate, pleading for help.
"Oppa?"
…I couldn't just sit there. Because I'd remembered who she was. The woman who'd tried to save a child the day the Giant Mantis appeared.
"The hell are you?"
"That's enough."
"Some green little punk—what? That's enough? You wanna let go of me?"
I grabbed his shoulder as I spoke, and the stalker's face twisted even further. His eyes blazed like a madman's, pouring out killing intent.
"You smiling?"
But even that killing intent was adorable to me now. Lately I'd crossed the line between life and death more times than I could count. I was the one who'd stood without a shred of fear in places where swords and spears flew and corpses piled high. I'd survived impossible difficulty, and gone further—I'd planted terror in the hearts of soldiers. As if some unarmed stalker flashing his eyes was going to scare me.
I tightened my grip.
"Aaagh!"
The stalker screamed as my hand clamped down on his shoulder. Right now, I felt like I could shatter the joint entirely—even without using a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule.
"Stop! Stop! Argh!"
The stalker thrashed his whole body.
What the hell is with this guy's grip…?!
The stalker trembled from head to toe. He looked scrawny, but once I had him, he couldn't move an inch. It felt like his muscles were tearing and his bones were about to turn to powder. This was not human strength.
"You'll stop?"
"Y-yeah! I'll stop!"
I clicked my tongue softly. Would it have killed him to listen the first time?
"Guh!"
I let go. The stalker lost his balance and crumpled to the floor in a pathetic heap. The woman who'd been watching him bowed her head to me.
"Th-thank you."
"Are you all right?"
"Yes… Ah! Behind you!"
I turned. The man had already flicked open a multi-tool knife and was charging with the blade raised.
"Die!"
But I'd already known. I shifted my body slightly and hooked his ankle as he rushed in.
Thud!
His head slammed into the floor, and he went still—out cold.
It was another five minutes or so after the situation ended before the police finally arrived.
"We'll need you to come down to the station with us."
After a rough look at the scene, the officers moved to take me in—and Kim Hana stepped forward.
"This man only helped me. I'm the one who reported that man for stalking."
"Even so, an assault took place, so you'll need to come to the station for now."
"Assault? He pulled a knife. Are you saying he should have just stood there and watched?"
"We're required to follow procedure."
"…I'm Kim Hana, a reporter with CK Broadcasting. May I ask for your name and badge number?"
She handed over a business card, and only then did the officers' eyes shift into something that looked like pure annoyance. CK was a major network—one of the top five in the country. If a reporter from a place like that wrote even one unflattering line, it could become a matter of their livelihoods.
"Then as a person of interest…"
"As a person of interest, and then I get tangled up for no reason? No thank you. I'm the involved party—I'll go myself and handle it. Don't drag an innocent person into this."
The stalker was the director of a well-known plastic surgery clinic. In a world where expensive lawyers could turn nothing into something, she couldn't risk letting the person who'd helped her take any damage—not even a chance of it.
The officers blinked at Kim Hana's bold stance.
She looks more like an anchor than a reporter…
She's got a spine of steel.
Normally, someone who'd just been through that would be crying or shaking with fear. Instead, Kim Hana was standing up for a man she'd never met. Even for the police, it was an unusual sight.
Then the crowd around her began to stir.
"Isn't that her? The one from YouTube the other day…"
"Yeah. The woman who saved the kid from the monster? I think she was on TV too."
"Didn't she get a commendation?"
"Kim Hana. Same name. It's her!"
The Dimension War—the incident that had lit up YouTube and television not long ago. When monsters from another dimension attacked cities around the world, it wasn't only the Dimension Warriors who rose to fame. Ordinary people who'd acted like warriors anyway. Kim Hana was one of them.
She'd let herself be taken by a monster to save a child, then rushed back into the scene to save the child and the child's mother. The footage hit five million views almost overnight. CK hired her full-time, and she received a civic commendation for her courage.
"…Understood. The complainant can come with us, then."
Causing trouble with someone like her would only blow the story even bigger. The officers had no choice but to follow Kim Hana's lead. Before heading to the station, she pulled out another business card.
"Thank you so much for today. Here's my card."
"It's fine."
"…Ah, is the person with you your girlfriend?"
She asked whether Seoyeon, standing beside me, was my girlfriend. I smiled and shook my head at once.
"Not at all. We're nothing to each other. I just don't have a card of my own."
"Then would you write down your number?"
Kim Hana pulled a pen and a scrap of paper from her bag and held them out. I wrote my number without hesitation—along with the name Park Hyunmyung, not Randolph.
"Park Hyunmyung? Nice name. I'm Kim Hana."
"Yes. I saw it on the card."
"I'll be in touch. If you're free tomorrow, let's grab a coffee. Or a meal—either works. My treat."
"I won't turn that down."
"Great. Then—!"
She bowed once more and left the café with the officers escorting the stalker.
…What a force of nature.
"Whoa, damn. She's a hundred times better in person."
"She could be a celebrity instead of a reporter."
"Kinda gives off a Sullyoon vibe. No wonder she had a stalker."
Listening to the murmurs of admiration, I slowly turned around.
"…"
And there was Kim Seoyeon, her face colder than a midwinter northern wind, quietly staring at me.