Ten Years of Nightmares, One Bowl of Gukbap
First-Generation Hunters.
Known by another name: the very first Awakened.
When the first Gate tore open, there were people standing close by—people who awakened to a special power, a power that let them stand against the monsters. But it was never a lucky ticket, nothing to celebrate. To be near a Gate was to stand at the very front of the line to be devoured.
A disaster no one had imagined. An invasion no one had prepared for. Naturally, no countermeasures existed; naturally, not even the army or the police could respond right away—and so the tragedies piled up by the dozen. And even if they had responded on the spot, what exactly does anyone do against monsters set loose inside a city? In the end, the first Awakened were simply the people thrown unarmed into the middle of that pandemonium.
Even now, ten years later, neither the exact conditions of an "awakening" nor any surefire way to test for the aptitude has ever been explained. The theories grew desperate enough that people seriously debated whether "extreme circumstances" played a role— because for most First-Generation Hunters, those extreme circumstances were precisely where they lost something precious.
One such First-Generation Hunter: Cheon Se-ah.
A perfectly ordinary high school girl, Cheon Se-ah awakened in a brush with death mid-evacuation and came into her power. Of the landmark battles of the Gate crisis's early days—the ones that earned their place in the modern history textbooks—she sat out fewer than she fought in.
And so, through the First Generation's struggle, the age of "disaster" came to an end, and the era of "rebuilding" began. She became a hero alongside her comrades, and today she is what the world calls a "successful hunter," holding wealth and power enough to want for nothing.
A position anyone would envy.
A person anyone would long to be.
And yet, even so—
Cheon Se-ah dreams the nightmare again tonight.
"Se-ah."
Her brother. Cheon Yujin.
People say brothers and sisters never get along, but to Cheon Se-ah that had only ever been a throwaway joke her friends liked to make.
Three siblings raised in a single-parent home. Her brother was a man who would do anything for his younger siblings. If his own clothes went old and frayed, so be it—the little ones had to have the good ones. If he was stuck on a cheap budget-plan phone, then the latest smartphones belonged to them.
She had loved how gentle and warm he always was. She had loved how he always stood between them and the kids who teased them about having only one parent. Family she could trust and lean on. To Cheon Se-ah, her brother Cheon Yujin wasn't just a brother—he was a father and a mother in one.
"Se-ah, hey..."
That brother. The very brother who, with an awkward, apologetic smile, had peeled his whining little sister off him when she begged him not to enlist—who had spent every leave looking after the family instead of going out and enjoying himself—
stood there in a blood-soaked uniform.
A body torn open, eaten alive.
"Se-ah, why..."
He calls her name, his little sister's name, and turns to look at her—with eyes that seem to ask why she isn't helping.
"Nngh—!"
Cheon Se-ah's eyes flew open, and she flung the covers off her body and hard against the floor.
"Hah... haaah... shiit..." She gulped down ragged breaths, too shaken even to think of wiping the cold sweat from her face.
The pricey duvet, utterly outmatched by strength that had long since left ordinary humanity behind, hung in tatters. Without sparing the half-shredded bedding a glance, she buried her face in her hands.
The nightmare always began with her brother's voice. And it always ended with it, too.
"This dream again..." Cheon Se-ah muttered, self-mocking, and let out a long sigh.
All this time, she had believed he was simply missing—that contact had just been lost for a little while. That if she kept working as a hunter, someday she would find the brother who'd taken shelter in an evacuation center. But right after the worst of the early chaos had passed, the news had come: the company her brother served in—indeed, his entire battalion—had been annihilated, without a single survivor. Ten years on, the nightmare was still running on repeat.
Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt. Her smartwatch lit up, announcing an incoming call.
As befitted one of the most famous hunters in the country, only a handful of people knew her personal number. A call arriving on that line instead of her work number meant one of two things: an old comrade, or an emergency. This time it turned out to be a government emergency contact, and Cheon Se-ah dragged her worn-out hand across the screen to connect.
"Hunter Cheon Se-ah speaking. What is it?"
"Good morning, Hunter Cheon Se-ah. My sincerest apologies for the early hour—we are calling regarding a 'Returnee.'"
An emergency call, and yet the voice on the other end sounded distinctly unhurried. A Returnee, huh. Had some new one come home and started kicking up a riot, the way they all had over there in the other world?
Anything involving Returnees put her on edge whether she liked it or not. Especially for a First-Generation Hunter. Remembering the long, tangled history between her generation and the Returnees, Cheon Se-ah let out a deep sigh.
"Haah. Go ahead."
"Well, you see..."
Cheon Se-ah's face, already twisted with weary irritation, fell open wider and wider as the details came through. It was unbelievable. The kind of story that reached all the way back to the hope she'd thrown away long ago and dragged it home without so much as a knock.
"Th-that is... you're saying his name is Cheon Yujin? And that his little sister's name is Cheon Se-ah?"
"An agent with lie-detection abilities has verified it. And the personal details and family history the returnee provided appear to match yours, Hunter Cheon Se-ah, so..."
That was as far as she listened. Cheon Se-ah, still in whatever light clothes she'd slept in, dove straight out the window.
Was this real? Her brother had been alive all along—and he'd come back a Returnee?
She could feel her reason—the voice sternly warning her that she must never pin her hopes on nothing ever again—being forcibly evicted by the feeling swelling up in her chest.
Cheon Se-ah reached the address she'd been given at a speed that made her old frontline days look like a stroll, and threw the door open.
She could see her brother again.
The family she had leaned on more than anyone in the world—always dependable, always warm—
"But as a big brother, he's third-raaaaate!"
Cheon Se-ah thought.
...Had she perhaps never left the nightmare at all?
"Aversion to other people, panic disorder at a severe level, and memory impairment stemming from escapism. There are others as well... Frankly, there's a great deal of rambling and incoherence, and the patient adamantly refuses examination, so a proper diagnosis is difficult."
"...And?"
"The most serious concern appears to be infantile regression. We're seeing a great many childlike reactions. That is the area that will need the most care and attention from you."
"...Is there more?"
"Physically... hmm, quite weak. Full tests would tell us more, but even the basics show everything—including muscle strength—falling far below girls her age."
After a few more words with the doctor, Cheon Se-ah headed toward her brother waiting in the lobby, doing her best to wipe the darkness from her face.
"S-Se-ah."
A tiny little girl came scurrying up, calling her name. Apart from the crimson of her eyes, the face was strikingly like her own as a child. Standing side by side, people would surely take them for sisters with a bit of an age gap.
The nervous little glances. The fingers squirming together. It was a heartbreaking sight that simply refused to square with the dependable Cheon Yujin of her memory.
Infantile regression... huh.
Cheon Se-ah forcibly swallowed the bitter sigh trying to climb out of her.
At first, seeing this girl, she had assumed there was some mistake. But he reeled off memories only family could know, every little thing about her childhood, without a stumble—there was no question it was him. He rambled himself into knots about what he'd been through before his return, yet hadn't forgotten a single thing about his family, and that alone made her chest ache for no good reason.
The girl's body. The marks of abuse. The state of her mind. Not every Returnee comes home in triumph, armed with terrifying power. Cheon Se-ah had seen cases like this before, in real incidents—and so she made herself sound bright and easy.
"Yep, all done! You must be starving after that long checkup, right, Oppa? Want to go get something to eat?"
A form of address she hadn't put her mouth around in ten years. He was so different from the brother in her memory that the word felt strange on her tongue—but she'd get used to it.
"Eat...?"
"Mm... how about hamburgers? They say Returnees always come home craving fried chicken, burgers, and cola first thing."
"N-no, that's fine. Let's have gukbap—hot soup over rice."
"Gukbap? You want gukbap?"
"Se-ah, you're the one paying... Hamburgers are expensive. For that money you could have a steaming bowl of gukbap... eat till you're nice and full..."
Cheon Yujin spoke with a tone of firm conviction, even as his eyes rolled about and his fingers wriggled. The moment he heard his little sister was footing the bill, he reached for cheap over delicious.
Yep. Her brother was still her brother. This, at least, hadn't changed one bit—and somehow, warmth came pooling into a corner of her chest.
But that was that.
"Oh, come to think of it, you wouldn't know, Oppa. Gukbap's the expensive one these days. Exaggerating a little, two bowls of gukbap cost about the same as a whole fried chicken."
"...What?"
Cheon Yujin froze like a plaster statue.
What thunderbolt out of a clear sky was this? Gukbap... more expensive than hamburgers? That two bowls would cost what a whole chicken cost? What manner of world was this—had the old guesthouse of legend taken to selling rosé tteokbokki in place of somen noodles and bamboo-leaf wine?!
"—GAL!!! This isn't... this isn't the modern age!!!"
Watching her brother dissolve into teary-eyed nonsense, Cheon Se-ah found herself obliged to reevaluate her earlier verdict that her brother was still her brother.