You're Telling Me Korea Is Doomed?
"Korea is falling? Are you serious?"
A photo of myself dressed as a woman had suddenly been shoved right in front of my face.
I wasn't crossdressing in the photo, but makeup was basically the same category of offense. It violated my personal philosophy head-on — the one that says sunscreen is the only cosmetic a man should ever be permitted.
Horrifying.
I dug through the other photos. There were quite a few selfies taken in this room.
The vanity, the bed and desk, the clothes strewn across the floor — everything in the background matched.
So this was whose room, then.
"Another me with a gay personality, huh..."
Ah, let me say this upfront just in case: I am not gay. Never.
This is not some repressed alter ego secretly venting hidden desires somewhere, thank you very much.
"Ah... so he does social media too."
I opened the SNS app and was greeted by quite a spectacle. There he was, clinging arm-in-arm to a woman taller than himself.
The same photo sat in a small frame on the vanity as well.
— Woojini and Mommy
"Woojini, you little brat. The audacity is endless, honestly."
My name is Kang Woojin. Woojini. I wanted to smack him upside the head.
With no outlet for my frustration, I drove my fist into the pillow on the bed.
The pillow wafted the scent of floral perfume. Ugh, seriously.
*
I carefully cracked open the bedroom door. I'd agonized for a long while over what might happen the moment I stepped outside.
Maybe a woman would scream her head off at the sight of an intruder like a knife-wielding burglar.
Or friends might jump out yelling "Surprise!!" with party poppers. Definitely not that one, but still.
What worried me most, above all else, was this:
His mother...
The possibility of meeting this world's version of my mother weighed on me. My own mother had passed away long ago, before I was old enough to remember her.
What kind of person was 'Woojini's' mother? Curiosity stirred in me despite myself.
And 'Woojini' had a sister as well — four years his senior.
Unlike 'Woojini', I was an only child. I'd gained a half-sibling at one point, but the time we'd spent together was extremely short. So I'd always wondered what it would feel like to have a sibling I was actually close to.
There was a period when I played alone in a quiet house after school — a pretty lonely stretch of my life, honestly.
I stepped out into the silent living room. nerves had dried my throat. I wanted a glass of water, but held off — I might need to bolt from this house at any moment.
Was I an intruder here? Or a resident?
I didn't even know whether 'Woojini' and I — 'Kang Woojin' — were considered the same person.
Shoes in hand, I crept forward on tiptoe. All I had to do was slip out the front door.
I gripped the door handle.
That was when a voice came from behind me.
"Hey!"
Gah!
My heart lurched. Busted, immediately.
"What are you doing?"
Kang Yena — I'd confirmed the name on the phone. His older sister, supposedly. She'd abruptly seized my shoulder from behind.
The moment I turned around, I got a shock of an entirely different kind.
"Whoa!"
Incredibly, she wasn't wearing a top. A towel hung around her neck, covering only the borderline regions of her chest.
Her chest was heavy. The towel caught at its lower edge, teasing a generous sliver of that thick curve.
And below a pair of short shorts stretched a pair of long legs. She was about my height. For reference, I'm a solid 175 — she was tall for a woman.
"Hold on. Woojin, did you get taller all of a sudden?"
"Uh, um... clothes, you should..."
"Oh right, don't worry, I'm about to shower anyway. It's not like you've never seen it before."
She showed not a hint of embarrassment.
"Heading to the convenience store or something?"
"N-no, I was..."
I had nothing prepared, so no words came out. Kang Yena began inspecting my body from head to toe.
"Hold on, that sword..."
My stomach dropped. Did I not look exactly like a robber to anyone watching? Being hauled off to a police station right now wouldn't have surprised me at all.
"Don't tell me... you!"
I squeezed my eyes shut. Well, this is how I get reported.
"You went to the Tutorial alone without even telling me?! Are you insane? Why on earth would you go by yourself? I told you to go together!"
She talked, nodded along to herself, and started spinning out her own theories.
"So that's why you got taller. Hmm, looks like you picked up a skill in there. Physical changes can happen with skill acquisition, so don't be too shocked. You're a bit tall for a man now, but still cute."
"...".
I was in no position to confirm or deny.
"You're not going to the Tower anymore, you hear? It's dangerous for you. Got it? Mom will raise hell if she finds out. You still need to get married someday — no scars on that body of yours."
"Uh... yes..."
"Still, a sword came out of it for you. Lucky you."
Kang Yena chuckled. Hmm, maybe my choice wasn't wrong after all.
The Tutorial is a cliché, and when it's a cliché, it's sword over gun...
"You won't have to climb anymore anyway. Who's going to hand a man a sword? I'd say you picked well."
"Sorry?"
"Hm?"
A brief silence. I'd asked something stupid, but she sounded like she hadn't misspoken at all.
"Swords... aren't strong in the Tower?"
"Strong? Not... really? Guns are better, no? Common sense. The gun is humanity's greatest portable weapon, after all."
"Huh."
Is that... actually true?
My world had just collapsed around me.
*
Leaving Kang Yena to her shower, I decided to make a quick run to the convenience store. I left the sword at home.
"Grab some ice cream on your way back!"
The moment I stepped out the door, the unfamiliar scenery left me bewildered. It was definitely Korea, and yet... a street I'd never seen before.
I pulled out my phone and opened the map. I could search for nearby convenience stores.
For ice cream, I picked whatever looked tasty. Seriously, malatang-flavored ice cream? You have to dodge the traps.
At the register, a female part-timer went wide-eyed staring at my face.
...?
But the checkout wrapped up quickly enough. I was using Kang Yena's card, after all.
Just then, a broadcast caught on the convenience store TV.
"Whoa, Korea's done for."
The part-timer muttered.
Hmm. So Korea really is finished.
Hold on. What is that news?
Trudging back home, I found Kang Yena lounging on the living room couch in light clothes, toweling her hair dry.
"Oh, Woojin. Come here. Did you see the news?"
"Uh... the one about Korea being doomed?"
"Yeah, that one. Huge turning point, huge. They didn't have malatang flavor, huh?"
"You actually eat that?"
"Kidding, kidding. Who'd eat that?"
She bit into her ice cream and kept going.
"Now that you're technically a hunter, don't you dare go wandering into the Tower. Listen up. The problem right now is that the hunters who've climbed to the upper floors aren't producing results."
"Why is that a problem?"
"We need to earn Coins from the Tower, but Coins drain out constantly just from existing. If we stop paying them, the monsters come crawling out. At that point, it wouldn't even be strange for the country to collapse outright. Our economy lives on exports, and those get cut off."
The fall of Korea. A horrifying thing just to imagine.
Those goblin-like things I'd seen in the Tutorial spilling out to torment the Korean people.
Life was already a grind standing still — if monsters piled on top of that, things would get truly miserable.
"Can I earn those Coins too?"
"You can. But don't. This isn't something delicate boys like you should step up for. It's work for strong women who've done their military service."
"Yesss..."
Kang Yena's values seemed somehow off. Wasn't dangerous work supposed to be the man's job?
I decided to keep my mouth shut — arguing back risked exposing that I wasn't the old 'Woojini'.
"If Woojin gets hurt, Mom's heart will shatter."
"Yes, ma'am."
I took a moment to organize my thoughts.
No matter how I looked at it, I arrived at one conclusion: this place was... not the Korea I knew.
"Anyway, since you went to the Tutorial, you know you can check your status window now, right?"
"My status window?"
Just like the cliché dictates.
"Check it for fun. Spread your palm and quietly call up 'status window' in your head."
Status window.
A window materialized above my palm like a hologram.
One level up gave me five stat points.
The fact that Intelligence hadn't grown bothered me. So getting smarter wasn't part of the deal.
I also learned that I couldn't allocate stats however I pleased — they seemed to rise on a fixed schedule.
And there's a skill I've never seen before.
The unique skill, Introspection. I'd never received it in the Tutorial, yet there it sat, squatting in its slot as if it had always belonged.
Kang Yena couldn't contain her curiosity and fidgeted.
"Well? How is it?"
"Uh, I've got two skills."
"Two? Wow, you talent-hogging freak."
"Is that... a big deal?"
"Most people survive their whole lives on the single skill they got as their first Tutorial reward. You woke up already carrying a second — a classic talent-hogging freak. Not that men care about that sort of thing."
I'd started with two from the very beginning. Having one more than everyone else — maybe that really was impressive.
"And with skills, the shorter the name, the better. It means most of the related techniques and perks are packed inside it in condensed form. That's a bona fide jackpot. Not killing two birds with one stone — killing ten."
Mine are two syllables each. Ohh...
Introspection. Swordsmanship. Each written proudly in exactly two characters.
I had no gut feeling for what Introspection did, but Swordsmanship apparently encompassed most things related to the sword.
"Press on it to read the detailed description. So? What are they?"
"Introspection, and Swordsmanship. Those two."
"Whoa...!"
Kang Yena pounced on me, brimming with excitement.
"Amazing! 'Amazing' undersells it since it's a sword, but either way — amazing!"
Ahh, her chest, her chest. It's so soft...