The Forgotten Past (1)
Ten years is a long stretch of time—long enough for entire landscapes to change.
For some, it is a period to look back on childhood memories. For others, it is a time to reminisce about the prime of their lives. Yet in this girl's memories, there are no childhood stories, no warm recollections of happier days worth revisiting.
Everything was stolen from her ten years ago.
Han Sena grew up in an ordinary Korean household like any other, but she lived happily without lacking for anything. Her young parents, still full of youthful passion, loved each other deeply, and Sena was their beloved daughter.
While her peers were busy attending university or studying abroad, Sena's parents had sacrificed countless opportunities out of love and responsibility to raise her. Thanks to them, she learned to walk and talk early, filling her young mother and father with pride. Her pretty face and spirited personality brought smiles to everyone around her.
"Sena, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"Hmm… I want people to smile when they see me!"
It was a simple wish from a little girl—that others would smile at the sight of her. It suited her perfectly.
But that wish never came true.
"A villain group has attacked downtown F City, slaughtering citizens indiscriminately…"
"Over three hundred dead and more than six hundred injured in the incident today…"
A massive villain terrorist attack struck F City, where Sena's family lived. On the very first day, over three hundred people were killed and nearly six hundred injured. The terror lasted nearly a month before it was suppressed, claiming a total of around twenty thousand casualties.
Hundreds of heroes were deployed to quell the attack, and more than ten of them lost their lives. The Hero Alliance suffered heavy losses as well.
Sena's family could not escape the disaster.
"Sena's mom… take Sena and run somewhere else first."
"What… what are you saying? What about you?!"
"The young men are gathering… We'll hold the village until the heroes arrive. We've decided that all the women, children, and elderly will evacuate."
The sudden nature of the attack left the Hero Alliance struggling to respond. Some villages had to rely on a handful of police officers and soldiers. Sena's village was one such place—heroes had yet to arrive after several days.
The young, able-bodied men banded together to evacuate people to other cities while forming a citizen militia to assist the police and military in defending the village and driving out the villains.
But civilians without a single ability user stood no chance against the villain organization.
"Kill them all—heroes or civilians, it doesn't matter."
"Yes, sir!"
The villain group known as "Enemy" was led by a powerful ability user commanding dozens of armed troops, with dozens more squads organized in the same manner. They never stopped their inhumane slaughter of civilians. Sena's father, who had joined the militia, was gunned down without mercy.
Then the guns turned toward the evacuation vehicles carrying the citizens.
"Hurry! Get on now! They're coming!"
"Just a moment…! My husband hasn't come back yet. Could you wait… just a little longer?"
Sena's mother hesitated, clinging to the faint hope that her husband might return. In that moment of indecision, the villain squad seized the opening and attacked the evacuation convoy.
"Mom?! Mom!!! Get on quickly!! Mom!!!!"
Sena cried out desperately for her mother, who had not yet boarded, but her mother never looked back. She was struck by several bullets right where she stood.
"Mom!!!! No!!!! Don't leave me!!!!"
Sena could not understand her parents. Her father had abandoned her and her mother to leave home, and now her mother had done the same. To the young Sena, who could not comprehend the reality of terrorism and war, nor grasp that parents would sacrifice themselves for their child, it simply looked like abandonment.
Sena and the other citizens managed to evacuate to another city, but Sena was left completely alone after losing both parents. The aftermath of the attack had killed or injured so many that no one remained who could care for the young girl.
"Our friend… her name was Sena, right?"
"…Yes."
The bright smile that once lit up everyone's faces was gone. All that remained was a child in the orphanage staring blankly into the distance with dead eyes.
The orphanage was far too harsh and violent for a delicate girl who had grown up like a flower in a greenhouse. The staff fed the children food not even a dog would eat, and the starving orphans fought daily over every extra spoonful.
In that environment, Sena grew sharp and prickly to survive. It was during this process that her ability, "Poisonic Plant," manifested.
"Ugh… Aaaagh!! It's a monster!!"
As the only ability user in the orphanage, Sena gained absolute power within its social hierarchy. Even the teachers who had tormented and abused her were no exception.
"P-please, spare us. We can't even get a proper night's sleep because of those monstrous brats!"
The orphanage director, fearing Sena's ability, contacted the Hero Alliance and begged them to take the girl, who was now old enough to enter high school.
"To think you were harboring such a talented individual… This will be a great gift for us. Thank you very much."
At the time, the Hero Alliance was actively seeking test subjects for ability-related experiments. An orphan girl with a recently manifested ability and no relatives whatsoever was the perfect specimen from their perspective.
"What do you mean? Suddenly moving me somewhere else from the orphanage?"
"Some kind sponsors have agreed to take you in. You'll be living with them from now on. The facilities are much better than here… and they'll support you wholeheartedly."
"I don't need anything like that… I just want to stay here."
Sena had no desire to leave the orphanage. The memories of her once-harmonious family had long since faded beneath resentment toward her parents and the trauma of the attack. She had grown accustomed to life in the orphanage, and as its sole ability user, her position and authority were firmly established.
"Let go…!!! I said I'm staying here…!!!!"
"Persistent little thing. Even her ability is irritating."
"Please take her away carefully. If we find any other promising candidates, we'll be sure to contact you."
The Alliance had already struck a deal with the director to acquire Sena as a test subject. She was forcibly dragged away to their secret laboratory.
"W-what are you going to do to me? Who are you people?!"
"You don't need to know. You'll lose your memories soon enough and become as docile as a lamb anyway."
With a wild, beast-like temperament and speech, and carrying the trauma of being abandoned by everyone close to her, Sena was subjected to procedures designed to strip away every factor that might interfere with the experiments—all in order to take everything from her.
The faint memories of her early childhood, the memories of surviving fiercely in the orphanage until just days ago, and even the memory of being a girl named Han Sena—everything she had built over seventeen years vanished. It took a year and six months to reduce her to a completely blank slate of a test subject.
Thus, Sena—having even forgotten her own name—began to be called by the test subject identification number "H4301" inside the secret laboratory.
Around the same time Sena became a test subject, there were roughly several dozen others in the facility. All of them were children who had grown up alone without parents or relatives, and every single one possessed an ability.
"Inject them all. It doesn't matter if they die. We can always bring in more test subjects."
The experiments conducted in the laboratory were extremely dangerous and merciless, but if successful, they offered the chance to create incredibly powerful ability-wielding heroes.
In the early stages, the test subjects showed promising results: significantly enhanced physical functions and explosive improvements in ability output. But every dangerous and ruthless experiment has its dark side.
Just one week after the first experiment ended, half the test subjects were dead. Even the survivors suffered severe deterioration in physical condition, rendering the experiment a practical failure.
Of the survivors, two girls were transferred to another secret laboratory under the Alliance's jurisdiction. It was there that the two girls would fatefully meet.