First Broadcast
"Mmmnya…"
Here, we have a girl.
A girl wearing nothing but a loose white T-shirt, lazily scratching her flank. Her long hair, spilling down to her waist, stuck out in unruly spikes, and every manner of trash lay strewn across the floor. However you looked at her, she was a layabout—
And yet, in truth, she was once the child of an absolute warlord of the Goryeo dynasty. A superhuman—the first ever to clear the Infinite Corridor, a place no one had believed anyone could conquer.
But right now, she was simply Cheok Wol: a freeloader rotting in the corner of her room.
"Wa… water……."
It had already been three months since she returned to the world she once knew, and Cheok Wol had adapted to it completely. Well, of course she had—unlike the Infinite Corridor, where standing still meant dying, modern society took care of everything so long as you simply existed.
"Ahh, that's the stuff."
Gulping down some tap water straight from the sink, Cheok Wol dragged her listless feet back to bed. She spread herself out flat, luxuriating in the softness—
Beep-beep— beee-riiing.
An unwelcome visitor had arrived.
"Miss Returnee!"
It was Lee Ji-eun. The moment she stepped into Cheok Wol's studio apartment, she clutched her head in both hands.
"I'm sure I cleaned this place before I left last week……!"
"What has you so startled?"
"Everything! Is this how a human being lives?!"
Ji-eun set the plastic bag down on the floor, sighed, and started tidying up around her. Thankfully, Cheok Wol didn't even order delivery food—at worst she'd tossed aside a few clothes and empty snack bags, so all it took was picking things up. Not that the sheer scale of the mess wasn't over the top. After all, not once had Cheok Wol ever put anything back where it belonged.
Five hundred years of life, and not once!
"Why do I even……"
Hit by an existential crisis mid-cleanup, Ji-eun dropped the last piece of clothing into the laundry basket and heaved a sigh. It had been barely three weeks since Cheok Wol arrived. She'd figured that a returnee who didn't cause any real trouble would spare her a great deal of grief—instead, it genuinely felt like raising a child.
At first, it had been simple concern. Anyone could see that Cheok Wol understood nothing of how this world worked, and with a face like hers, she'd be an easy mark for anyone with ill intent.
Besides, as her assigned liaison—every returnee got one dedicated agent—Ji-eun had decided she ought to take responsibility for the day-to-day side of things too, and so she'd come for a household visit.
……Cheok Wol truly knew nothing. It was as if she'd landed on another planet entirely.
The first time she saw a fluorescent light flick on, she asked if it was an immortal……
Explaining that it was, in fact, not one had taken a good few hours. Beyond that, her catalog of eccentricities marched on without pause: smashing a door because she didn't know how the digital lock worked, hauling water up from the sea because she didn't know how to bathe.
What had once been a job requiring an occasional phone call had multiplied severalfold, until Ji-eun reached the point where she could no longer go home after work and rest easy.
"Believer~ Believer~"
Cheok Wol poked just her face out of the covers and looked up at Ji-eun with glittering eyes.
……The reason she could keep enduring, even as her after-hours labor piled up and up.
If only it weren't just for that face……!
Decisively: Cheok Wol was cute. Cute enough that even after Ji-eun stormed off home in disgust, by the next morning she would catch herself worrying about Cheok Wol all over again.
"Did you buy it? Did you buy it?"
"……Yes, I bought it, so there's no need to ask twice. Here—your Pokémon Bread."
"Whoa! It's Monster Bread!"
The moment Ji-eun dumped the mountain of Pokémon bread she'd brought onto the table, Cheok Wol—who had somehow already risen and come bounding over—lit up with pure, unguarded joy.
The single perk of this job was Cheok Wol's cuteness.
"You have labored hard to secure our provisions again today! I bestow upon you my highest praise!"
"……Thank you. But don't even think about eating bread in bed—sit at the table for a moment."
This cannot go on!
Urgency drove Ji-eun to grab Cheok Wol by the scruff of the neck and plant her in a chair. Then she looked at the bed. Meals were apparently always eaten there, because bread crumbs were visible to the naked eye.
She'd deal with that later…
"Hoh? Did the hunt give you trouble? Has the moment finally come for me to step in…! Speak, and tell me where the villains who torment you reside. I shall wring their necks like chickens' and bury the remains this way and that across your front yard!"
"Please don't bury things like that…!"
Watching Cheok Wol tear open the wrapper from both ends and munch away at her Pokémon bread, Ji-eun mused:
A returnee was a returnee, F-rank or not… She really is built different.
Cheok Wol's monstrous strength had a habit of surfacing in the places you'd least expect. Smashing a door lock barehanded had been far from ordinary from the very start. Anyway.
"By the way, is it really all right to live on one slice of bread a day?"
"What? What could possibly be the problem? For this body, going a full week without a morsel was simply daily life."
Gulp—another bread demolished, Cheok Wol blinked.
"At this rate, I am gorging myself every single day?"
……There was no doubt a backstory here that could only be heard through tears. Ji-eun regarded her with a flicker of pity. How much must a girl who knew nothing of the world have suffered in the Corridor? Even if she'd only been on the lower floors, Cheok Wol seemed to have spent quite some time in there.
Surviving must have been sheer misery. Her threshold for happiness had been ground so low that a single scavenged bread could bring her joy.
But that was all the more reason.
"How long do you intend to lie in that bed doing nothing? What am I supposed to do if something happens to me and I can't come by?"
"You cannot come…? Are you casting off your duty as my Believer……?"
Cheok Wol gazed up at her like an abandoned puppy. Before her heart could soften, Ji-eun turned away. She'd steeled herself before coming here today, after all.
"I'm not quitting. So you, Miss Awakened, please put in some effort to settle into this society."
Cheok Wol made no attempt to hide her disgust.
"I am adapting quite well, I'll have you know."
"How is any of that adapting?! You do nothing but lie around in bed all day!"
"Did you not say so yourself? The basic subsidy provides."
"……You mean, like welfare benefits?"
"Mm."
"That's the bare minimum of support for people who can't provide for themselves. You have two perfectly good legs, Miss Awakened."
"But does it not pay aplenty? With this food alone, I could live for a hundred years!"
The problem was, she probably really could. Ji-eun had assumed she'd roll around for a week, then try her hand at something, but even after three full months, Cheok Wol showed no intention of leaving her bed.
……There were so many more wonderful, exciting things in this world. Ji-eun wanted to be the one to show them to her.
"Then it becomes a burden on everyone else. You're more than capable of standing on your own, yet you'd live entirely off government handouts…"
"After all I have devoted to mankind, you would begrudge me this?"
Cheok Wol drawled it out mid-yawn.
"Well… that's true, but still."
"There, you see. I do understand a Believer's worries. You harbor dreams of world conquest yourself, do you not? With the Great One lolling about in bed all day, you must have many a grievance."
With a little "ucha!" Cheok Wol stretched, then fixed Ji-eun with solemn eyes.
"But fret not. The hour has not yet come. Once this body finishes its analysis of this world…… the day will dawn when I ride my black steed across all the lands. Until then, endure."
Unable to even guess where to begin pushing back, Ji-eun simply cut to the chase.
"I bought streaming equipment. Try doing a stream."
"…What."
"It's the only way you can earn money easily right now. Or… honestly, it might be your true calling."
Ji-eun didn't recommend streaming to just anyone. She had no particular hobby in that direction herself, and it wasn't a field she especially loved.
But—the more she looked at Cheok Wol, the stronger the thought grew. Ah, this rare and precious little creature simply had to be shown to the world.
Above all, Cheok Wol was beautiful without even the barest scrape of makeup. Ji-eun, at least, had never once seen anyone like that in her life.
And wasn't the whole concept(?) genuinely entertaining, too? Going purely by her speech, she was a bonafide manly-man straight out of the olden days. —Words that would send Cheok Wol into convulsions if she ever heard them—
"Hmm… You did press it upon me so, Believer, that I did cast it a glance or two—through this idiot box."
"And? What did you think?"
"Bah. It was pitiful beyond measure; there was no bearing it. You would have me play the court jester?"
"……What on earth did you watch? May I see your phone?"
Scrolling through Cheok Wol's watch history, Ji-eun's eyes went wide. There really was one—exactly one—stream she had watched: the walkthrough broadcast of Lee Si-hyun, the hunter currently reigning at Rank 1.
"No, this person doesn't act like a jester in the slightest…?"
It was rare for high-ranking hunters—the fabled 'Rankers'—to stream at all. Their every movement, every scrap of dungeon-clearing knowledge, was a closely guarded secret.
Yet, curiously, Lee Si-hyun had begun streaming right after that now-legendary interview: 'I want everyone to become strong.' She meant to share the secrets of how she herself had grown strong. ……Not that it mattered much, seeing as her methods were things no one else could even attempt.
"……And of all things, you watched the most hardcore of Hunter Si-hyun's walkthroughs."
Lee Ji-eun pulled up the video from her recent history. Like a cat tracking prey, Cheok Wol's pupils flicked after the screen.
"Catching Cerberus? It's not hard. Grab one head, and have it bite the other head."
……How is anyone supposed to copy that?!
Ji-eun had seen the video before, but even on a rewatch it was absurd. And yet Cheok Wol simply heaved a sigh and said:
"I know not why anyone would trouble themselves with such a roundabout method."
"……Do you know a better way, Miss Returnee?"
"The heads are what make the beast dangerous—so you tear the heads off. How much harm can they do, biting at one another?"
And the critiques rolled on.
"Her footwork itself is wretched from the start. Far too linear. At this rate she would flounder long before the thirtieth floor… eeng eeng."
What on earth is "eeng eeng"?
No, setting that aside—
The highest floor of the Corridor Lee Si-hyun had actually cleared was the 34th. Even now, far stronger than she'd been back then, Si-hyun would still answer any question about the Corridor with the same line: 'Honestly, clearing Floor 34 was a miracle in itself.'
And above all—
"She does not even know how to wield her ki, it seems. Her output strangles itself. Does this child have no master?"
……Cheok Wol, arms crossed in solemn judgment, was cute enough to bite. Under ordinary circumstances, the sane response to some upstart slandering Korea's top hunter without knowing the first thing about her would be to criticize them first and ask questions later.
But this was Cheok Wol—who looked, beyond any argument, far younger than Lee Si-hyun, and who addressed a Rank 1 hunter as "this child"—
In a word:
"Miss Returnee."
"Mm?"
"You said you wanted an enormous teddy bear, didn't you?"
"Mm-hm!"
"Keep saying things like you just did, and I'll buy you one. ……On a six-month installment plan."
This one worked every time—
Eyes gleaming, Lee Ji-eun pressed a single button on her smartphone. The button that would start the stream.