Prologue
I was so dumbfounded the words died in my throat.
I had come back to the South Korea I used to live in, and yet the body I was standing in belonged to a woman.
"Good grief. I'm still like this...?"
The rooftop was empty. In a window I caught my reflection: a short bob of pink hair, pink irises to match. As if that weren't enough, the clothes I had worn as a woman Fighter were gone without a trace. In their place hung a loose white T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Honestly.
I had returned after living as a Fighter in that brutal world they called the Heavenly Realm. Ten long years of it, surviving on nothing but my fists, and the misery of those years was past anything I could put into words. And after all of that, what did I come back to? An ID card. No home. No money. I was well and truly out of options. My entire academic record had been wiped clean along with everything else; I hardly needed to spell out how bad that was.
Even earning a living looked awkward from where I stood. So there I was, under a night sky spread over the rooftop, turning over what I was supposed to do next, when a woman's scream cut through the quiet.
"Wh-what is that?!"
I looked toward the sound and went still. Down in a shadowed alley a woman stood frozen with fear, and a thickly muscled man was closing in on her. Leave her, and something ugly was going to happen. The instant I understood that, I leapt from the roof and called on the technique that let me run through open air, dropping in close to the alley. He had even raised his fist at her. I checked that no one was passing by, snatched up a stone mid-stride, and flung it hard enough to smash the CCTV. Then I set my back to the woman and faced the man.
"The hell? Who said you could stick your nose in? Move, before I—"
I didn't bother with an answer. The moment he drove that raised fist at me, I met it with a fist of my own, barely clenched. Bone cracked in his hand. A heartbeat later he was skipping across the ground like a stone flung over water.
"Hmm. He's still breathing, so it ought to be fine. That was closer than I liked."
The man who had gone flying lay twitching where he'd landed, out cold. Safe enough. A light punch, and it was over. Even in the Heavenly Realm, this fist had been my old faithful, the one specialty I reached for when everything else failed, and with it I could settle nearly anything. Who would have thought the fist I trusted would prove just as useful in peaceful South Korea?
To get us out of there, I gathered up the woman—she looked as though she had fainted—and lifted her in a princess carry. Only then did I really see her. Long silver hair falling in waves. Skin white as polished jade. The Western cast of her face brought the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty to mind for a foolish second.
No. This is not the time to be staring at her face.
Still holding her, I carried her off to an empty lot a good distance away and settled her against a tree.
"Well. This much shouldn't leave any real trouble behind."
I'll say it again: the thug had taken my fist and passed out, so she would be all right. Even if he woke, he wouldn't remember with any clarity what had been done to him. If I'd had my way, I would have treated him to the full course—three hours of unsolicited advice, a thousand slaps across the face, and a week of training under a waterfall.
I was still entertaining that thought when the cold wind seemed to reach her. Focus crept back into her eyes.
"H-huh...? Where am I?"
The woman I had left against the tree came around. Pale eyes, blue as a held stretch of sea, wandered over her surroundings.
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
I kept my voice light. She must have been badly shaken; she couldn't seem to recall what had just happened with any precision. She was surely still dazed. Even so, one martial artist to a stranger, I stepped closer, meaning to leave her with a little advice—some proper backseat coaching—for the next time she had to face a thug like that.