Anomaly (2)
Lee Haneul blinked a few times, then braced a trembling hand against the wall and slowly rose to her feet.
"...Yeah. You're right. We should head back."
As she said it, she glanced around — and when her eyes landed on the goblin corpse with its skull split open, her face went a shade paler and she squeezed her eyes shut.
Well. This much is good enough.
Having hope — and being able to believe in it — was a good thing.
Thinking that, I looked at Lee Haneul's face for a moment.
"...Sunglasses. Mask. You gonna take those off?"
"Ah, th-these?"
Flustered, Lee Haneul fumbled at her face for a second, then froze the moment her fingers found the sunglasses and mask.
"W-well... If I take them off, I think I might... have a panic attack...?"
Ah, damn.
Is this a landmine? Feels like it'll blow if I poke it wrong.
After a brief deliberation, I decided to ask for just one thing.
"Just the sunglasses... Take those off. It's night. Wearing them only narrows your vision more."
I didn't know the full story, and it didn't seem like the kind of thing worth digging into. If the point was to hide her face, a mask alone was plenty at this hour of night.
"I-I'll try... Okay."
Lee Haneul slowly removed the sunglasses and stuffed them into her pocket.
Good. Let's get moving again.
Together, we set off toward home.
The path back — even with the threat of monsters blanketing it — stirred a strange nostalgia in me.
Buildings of red brick, moss wedged into the cracks, flyers weathered by wind and rain. The narrow alleys and crude, steep stairways looked as if they hadn't changed in the three years I'd been gone.
"...."
When I first came up to Seoul, how did I end up here again?
I couldn't remember clearly, but back then I'd wanted to run away from something. Maybe I'd believed that living in Seoul would change things.
Then I'd stumbled onto a roguelike called Mortal's Ascension, fallen hard for the philosophy and charm packed into it, and thrown myself into it like a maniac. I think I spent entire days off doing nothing but that roguelike.
What was so great about that cramped little grid-map world that I got so obsessed...
I'd shudder at the thought now that I'd become a woman, but back then that game had been part of my world.
Of course, that didn't mean I'd ever wanted to meet a world that had changed like this.
"You said three years, right? When it first started. Was it like this back then too?"
Looking at the empty streets devoid of people, the bloodstains still lingering on walls and pavement, I asked Lee Haneul.
"...Yes. No — actually, it was worse. Back then the gate management system wasn't set up yet, so Gate Breaks happened all the time."
"You used to it?"
"Not really. And I don't want to be, either."
"Why?"
"Well..."
Lee Haneul stopped walking for a moment and looked at me.
"The city goes dead quiet. Like a ghost town."
"Ah."
"I... prefer noise over silence. At least then it feels like people are actually living here."
"Yeah, I think I get what you mean."
When you're alone, surrounded by hundreds of monsters with nothing to do but kill them, you start craving someone to talk to. Of course she probably hadn't been through the exact same thing — but close enough, maybe?
Mulling that over as we walked, we eventually reached the entrance to the villa.
Aside from the three goblins we'd already run into, anything else had either been dealt with in advance or simply bypassed — nothing that posed a real threat.
The problem is...
If monsters are prowling the corridors inside the villa.
I took a short breath and closed my eyes. They say the human brain gets eighty percent of its information from sight — so to use this, I needed to shut that out.
Telepathy
The moment my eyes closed, the world went black. Countless white horizontal and vertical lines crossed through the darkness, forming a coordinate grid, and from where I stood, the cilia of my mind stretched outward like threads of yarn.
I limited the range to the villa. The cilia packed the interior dense under my will, and every time they brushed a mind, a faint connection formed between us.
Human, human... another human here, usually one or two per unit...
It felt like X-raying a 3D model. I combed through the villa meticulously, eliminating every possibility of a hidden threat.
"...Nothing."
"Huh? Did you do something?"
"I was checking for enemies inside the villa. There aren't any. We should be fine... just walking in."
Only after confirming there were no hidden threats did Lee Haneul and I quietly walk into the villa together.
And only after unlocking the door lock and stepping inside did she finally let out the breath she'd been holding.
"Haaaaah..."
The moment Lee Haneul kicked off her shoes at the entryway, she slumped against one wall, her legs giving out as she crumpled into a heap on the floor.
I stood in the entryway watching her for a moment, then asked:
"Hey, mind if I take a shower?"
I'd gotten pretty thoroughly painted in goblin blood, and sitting or lying down like this wasn't exactly an option.
"...Ah, yes! Of course! After everything you did protecting me, that's the least I can—!"
Lee Haneul nodded vigorously in agreement. Then she paused, thought for a second, and asked:
"But... do you have clothes? Or underwear?"
My body froze at that.
Huh? Shit?
I didn't think about that.
I could feel my own expression twisting into something distinctly awkward.
"Aha... I can lend you a change of clothes, but underwear might be a bit... difficult..."
"...I don't need that kind of thing."
Come to think of it — what underwear was I even wearing right now? Between the homelessness, the fighting, and everything else piling up, I'd been too out of it to notice until now.
While Lee Haneul went to her room to grab clothes, I secretly lifted my hoodie and looked down. White tank top, chest bound with bandages, and boxer briefs.
Apparently the clothes I'd worn as a man had come back on my body exactly as they were...
Wait, but the chest bandages? I did that in the dungeon.
No wonder I never thought to check — the sensation was already familiar.
Don't tell me those bastards at the Pantheon threw in a chest bandage as a free service when they sent me back?
Ha, shit. Real generous of you. You absolute assholes.
Shame and rage coexisted in a bizarre cocktail, and I felt my face heat up.
Hearing Lee Haneul's footsteps approaching, I hastily stuffed my blood-soaked outer clothes into a black plastic bag and fled into the bathroom like I was running from something.
I didn't really know why. But I didn't want anyone else seeing this.
But once inside the bathroom, I unconsciously took a deep breath of an unfamiliar scent that tickled the tip of my nose.
And the moment I realized it was the smell of someone else's bathroom —
I cranked the shower to full blast and dumped hot water over my head.
You fucking idiot...
It was an unbearable, bone-deep wave of existential dread.
Still, the hot water did its job.
It was good for scraping off the dried blood clots stuck to my hair and body and scrubbing them clean.
The downside was a slight lightheadedness afterward — but whether that was really from the hot water, I couldn't say, so no comment. Yeah.
"Wow, that looks great on you! Come over here for a sec?"
"Ah, wai— just a second, I..."
Pulled along by Lee Haneul's hand, I found myself in front of a full-length mirror — and staring back was me, wearing her clothes.
Pink track shorts, a white sweatshirt, and even animal-ear slippers. Super casual, comfortable stuff — and for some reason, Lee Haneul's eyes sparkled as she looked at me in them.
What is this. I feel like a dress-up doll.
"...You look pretty happy about this."
"They're clothes I gave you, right? If they look this good, that means my taste is spot-on!"
Well. She's not wrong, technically.
But agreeing with that meant accepting that I looked good as a woman.
It was embarrassing — no, put more strongly, it felt like my skin was about to break out in hives. I didn't hate women, but when the subject was me, it made me deeply uncomfortable.
I only became a woman in the first place because my class was Valkyrie...
I'd just picked a beginner-friendly performance class for a fast clear. How did it end up like this?
I was looking at Lee Haneul with a crumpled expression, and she seemed to find it hilarious — she covered her mouth and started laughing.
"...Pfft, ah, sorry. I'm sorry."
"Be honest. You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
"No, of course not. Ah! Speaking of which — do you know what I found while you were showering?"
A blatant subject change, but I didn't call her on it. When I stepped closer, Haneul held out her phone.
"This Gate Break? It's not just Gangseo-gu. Yangcheon-gu, Guro-gu, Yeongdeungpo-gu, even Mapo-gu — looks like every gate in the surrounding area collapsed all at once."
On the phone screen was a map of Seoul, one corner stained red.
"Fortunately the gates around here were all low-rank, so the monsters that spilled out aren't that strong — but they've spread so widely that containment is taking time."
"Any word on the cause?"
"Hmm, they'll probably start a real investigation once the monsters are cleaned up."
So nothing we can know right now, then.
It was also the kind of problem that would sort itself out with time.
"So... mind if I crash here for the night?"
"Ah, yes! Of course. If anything, I'm the one who owes you huge after today...!"
Okay. Permission granted.
Tomorrow I'll go back to the police station and lean on that returnee adaptation program or whatever it's called to start adjusting to this world again.
Thinking that, I settled onto a decent sofa and closed my eyes —
— only to wake up the next day to officials from the Hunter Association at the door.
Oh, you have got to be fucking—