January 1st — One Hundred and Eight
The entire plaza washed white under a pressure that made my ears ring.
It wasn't my first time seeing it, but even so, this moment always made my nerves frayed.
The light gradually faded, and the people began to come into view.
A rough sweep told me there were around six hundred of them.
"Wow. Halved again, just like clockwork."
Jaehyuk said it to the Dimensional Gate with the tone of a man who'd called it from the start.
The reactions of the freshly summoned were immediate.
Crying, screaming, dozens of languages tangling together in one chaotic knot.
And the way people handled their arrival was just as varied.
There was one who'd apparently been summoned mid-shower, clutching himself for cover. Another squinted and gawked around in a daze. Someone kept asking the person next to them what the hell was going on.
And then there were those who, it seemed, had already figured something out — quietly scanning their surroundings, murmuring at the empty air.
"Status. Status, open. Status window, status window!"
The one shouting for his status window in Korean waved his hand frantically at nothing, and slowly, his expression began to freeze over.
And then, inevitably, came the others.
"Why won't this thing turn on?"
"Is anyone's phone working?"
All over the plaza, people gripped their phones and stabbed at their screens. No matter how they tapped the display, no matter how long they held down the power button, the result was the same.
Not a single electronic device so much as flickered to life.
"Alright, everyone, line up!"
The guild representatives stationed around the plaza began calling out simultaneously, each in their own language.
Banners unfurled for every language group, and with the practiced movements of years of experience, they began herding people into order.
"Korean speakers, over here, please!"
Jaehyuk stood beside me and shouted along. His voice was nearly double the volume of mine.
At the sound of their own language, the Koreans perked up and, one by one, with dazed expressions, began drifting toward the Baekho guild area.
Two. Four. Six—
They kept coming.
Kept.
Coming.
Jaehyuk's chatter beside me gradually died off, and then he said in a low voice, "What the fuck is this."
I was thinking something similar.
I counted them precisely.
One hundred and eight.
Out of last year's 1,250 from the Dimensional Gate, only about twenty had been Korean. So why, with this year's numbers already cut in half, were there over a hundred Koreans?
We're screwed.
I'd braced for ten at best, twenty if we were lucky. This was too many by an order of magnitude.
Just as I was considering putting in a support request to the guild, Jaehyuk spoke up beside me.
"Hey, let's wrap this up fast and hand them off to Yerin at the guild. Look at this — neither of us even has time to go file a support request."
"Ha… shit. What is even happening."
At any rate, nobody could explain the Dimensional Gate, so hunting for a reason was pointless.
While Jaehyuk frantically gathered the rookies, I stood back and observed the crowd.
The ones collapsed on the ground sobbing wouldn't last long.
Neither would the ones still stumbling around, not yet oriented to reality.
Years of watching rookies had honed that instinct until it was almost never wrong.
But this time, there was one face that felt strangely off.
Right in the middle of the knot of Koreans clustered in the Baekho area stood a Black man — dark-skinned, powerfully built, unmistakably not Korean by any stretch — planted there, simply waiting.
He stood out alone among the Koreans around him, impossible to miss even if you tried.
And yet the man himself seemed entirely unbothered, standing there with an expression that said so what?
As far as I could tell, he'd just come to the wrong place.
Jaehyuk leaned in close to my ear and whispered carefully, "Hey… did he get lost or something?"
"Leave him for now. Don't judge by appearances."
"Fair enough. We'll find out soon enough anyway."
With that, Jaehyuk slid smoothly a step to the side and shifted his gaze elsewhere.
Picking scan-worthy targets out of a crowd of 108 took him less than ten seconds. It always did.
"Hey, look at that right bre—"
"Jaehyuk. You little shit, I swear. In the middle of all this?"
"Yeah, yeah. Working, working."
Just then, a man in a military uniform pushed through the crowd and stopped in front of us.
"Private Lee Hansu, sir. Phones don't work here?"
Ah. A private — lucky timing, this one.
Kids conscripted early often ended up arriving late in their service window instead.
To fall asleep the night before your discharge, dreaming of stepping back into civilian life, and wake up in another world —
The ones like that usually ended up exactly like the kid over there, sitting on the ground, staring blankly into space, utterly lost.
"They don't even power on. So no."
"Then phone calls…?"
"Electronics don't work in the otherworld. Calls are obviously out too."
The young man lowered his phone slowly.
"…I'm sorry, could you say that again?"
"The otherworld."
"This… world, sir?"
"Yes. Once everyone's gathered, I'll explain it all at once, so please listen then."
I waited another ten minutes or so in case any Koreans came in late, but no one else appeared — 108 was the full count.
A glance around told me most of them had caught on by now and were waiting for an explanation, so I cleared my throat lightly and raised my voice in front of the rookies.
"Alright, the place you're all standing right now is—"
"Wait."
A voice cut in from behind.
The man's accent was different somehow — off in a way I couldn't place at first.
It was the one in the brown uniform, standing at an angle behind the crowd.
"Where is here?"
Less a question than a demand for confirmation.
"I was just about to explain—"
"Where is here."
I looked at him for a moment.
He wasn't giving me a single inch to explain.
This many Korean rookies at once was a first for me, too.
Back at the second Dimensional Gate — the one that had spat out the most Koreans after our own cohort — we hadn't been prepared at all, and those people had had to find the Korean guild on their own.
Had I known this many would come, I'd have prepared more. But for now, the only option was to finish fast and get them to the guild.
"My name's Ri Gwangcheol. I was on the Russian front. Have I been taken prisoner?"
Russia. So that was it.
I'd heard from last year's cohort that North Korea had sent troops into the Russia-Ukraine war. This man, apparently, had been one of them.
"…No, you haven't."
"Then where is here. The rear, or enemy lines?"
"Neither."
Ri Gwangcheol's eyes narrowed.
"Are you from North Korea?"
I couldn't see who'd said it.
But at that single remark, I watched several Koreans around Ri Gwangcheol quietly drift a step away from him.
He must have felt it too, because he withdrew his surveying gaze from the plaza and fell silent.
His expression didn't change, but he'd clearly read the room — his shoulders stiffened, just barely.
Everyone here was probably seeing a North Korean for the first time in their lives.
They'd have to get used to it, eventually.
Just then, Jaehyuk sidled up to me.
"Hey, this is getting way too chaotic. Want me to show off a little?"
"I know… way more showed up than we expected. At this rate it won't be done in an hour."
"Right? Give me one shot and—"
"If you step up, something's getting destroyed. We don't have money."
Jaehyuk pouted.
He knew I wasn't wrong.
One swing of his spear would definitely grab everyone's attention — and leave the plaza floor in rubble.
I wasn't about to have rookies catching gravel on day one.
So the answer was something that drew every eye without breaking anything.
Show them something no ordinary human could do.
"Stand still for a sec."
"Huh?"
I rested a hand on Jaehyuk's shoulder and raised my voice toward the still-murmuring rookies.
"Alright, everyone, your attention for just a moment, please."
Half of them were still chatting among themselves.
First day, total chaos — nobody snaps to attention for a stranger.
So I added one more line.
"We have a demonstration from a seasoned instructor, showing you what mana — what you'll all be working with from now on — actually looks like. Everyone, watch closely."
The word mana sparked their curiosity, and eyes began to turn toward us.
That much, at least, everyone would wonder about.
Reinforcement espers like me don't draw the eye. There's nothing flashy about us.
But when my ability — invisible to the eye, invisible in the numbers — flows through my hands and into a comrade's body, the story changes.
In moderation, of course.
Only as much as the body can take.
"Take one lap. Go high."
"…Whoa, it's been a while since—"
The words weren't even out of his mouth before Jaehyuk bent his knees slightly and drove off the ground.
— WHAM
The dirt beneath his foot caved inward, dust exploding in every direction, and the recoil launched Jaehyuk's body straight up.
One leap.
That single jump cleared over ten meters in a breath, rising past the very top of the Dimensional Gate's stone structure.
A hundred heads tilted back in unison, mouths hanging open.
He was moving so fast it was hard to track — a few rookies lost him entirely and only caught up a beat late.
At the apex, Jaehyuk twisted his body.
With nothing to plant his feet on, as if he'd kicked off an invisible floor, he changed direction mid-air and folded into a flip.
One rotation, two — and then he dropped from ten meters up. It wasn't a fall. It was closer to a strike from the heavens.
— THUD
The landing.
One knee bent, fingertips touching the ground — a completely unnecessary flourish.
In an actual combat scenario I'd have chewed him out for the wasted motion. But right now, this was exactly what we needed.
"…Was that a person? Just now?"
"Holy shit."
"He went all the way up there."
Every rookie had their mouth open.
The criers, the ones still poking at their phones — even Ri Gwangcheol.
The undercurrent of the murmuring had shifted from panic to awe.
Jaehyuk rose, brushing off his shoulder. "Hey. Was that cool, or what?"
"Cut the crap and sit down already."
"Man, if I'd had my spear, I could've shown these rookies what the Baekho Spear Guy is all about."
We weren't in some martial arts novel, and I had no idea where he'd gotten that ridiculous epithet — but understanding Jaehyuk had always been beyond me.
Instead of dignifying the nonsense with a reply, I turned back to the rookies.
No one was talking now.
"You all just saw it. In time, you'll be capable of things like that too. So I'd ask you to focus while I explain."
The silence was perfect for it.
Truthfully, I wanted to move a crowd this size to the guild as fast as possible. The plaza was chaotic, our traffic crossing paths with other guilds.
But that wasn't in the cards.
These were people yanked from their own world moments ago, without warning or reason. Expecting them to just follow along when they didn't know where this was or who we were? Impossible.
The frightened ones would scatter — and every single one who scattered was a loss for a small guild like Baekho, where every member counted.
So every year, we explained first, here in the plaza.
What this place was, and why we wanted to take them in. Only once they accepted that much would they follow.
The problem was that today, that number was 108.
"Please have a seat on the ground if you can… First, let me introduce ourselves."
I gestured at Jaehyuk beside me.
"This is Choi Jaehyuk, the one who was flying around a moment ago — a combat-type. And I'm Lee Hajun, a support-type. I'm the one who reinforced him so he could fly."
"You've probably already realized it, but the place you're standing is not the world you came from."
An obvious statement — but once it was actually out loud, it carried a different weight.
"Every January 1st, the Dimensional Gate here opens. That's the gate you just came through, and this is the fifth time it's opened. We still know very little about it, but two things are certain: crossing through it grants you an ability — and each year, fewer people come through."
"Abilities?"
One of the seated rookies asked, eyes shining.
"Yes — though there's no skill window or anything like you might be imagining, so you won't know what your ability is right away. It's different for everyone, too. Someone who controls fire. Someone whose body gets stronger. Someone who heals others. It runs the whole gamut. Normally, once you arrive, the guild helps you find your ability within three days."
Gazes flickered here and there.
"Why were we brought here?"
I paused.
The question that always came. And always the hardest one to answer.
"Honestly… we don't know the exact reason ourselves. What we do know is that this world needs espers to hold back its threats, and the espers who cross over from Earth are able to make a living doing it."
"What kind of threats?"
This time it was a girl seated near the center.
She's about two seconds from crying.
"Demon beasts. Easiest to think of them as monsters. They appear all over this world, and without abilities, they're very hard to fight. There are things even the kingdom's army and this world's own mages can't handle — that's why this world needs you."
"So we have to fight?"
"No one will force you. There are people called Settlers who live here without fighting at all."
At my words, the girl in the center relaxed a little.
"But if you're going to live in this world… you'll need money, won't you?"
I made a coin shape with my fingers as I spoke.
"The most efficient way to earn is selling the byproducts of the demon beasts you hunt, or selling magic stones — and for that, joining a guild is practically the only way. The same goes for lifestyle-type espers who become Settlers."
That was the truth of it. Hunting demon beasts here wasn't some grand calling — at the end of the day, it was about making money.
In an otherworld with no discernible purpose, monster-slaying missions were the easiest money espers could make, and since you could feel yourself getting stronger as you worked, the earnings only grew with time.
A guild was simply the structure that organized all of it.
"Abilities are hard to control at first. They flare up without warning, cut out without warning — you can't predict them yourself. That's why the guild trains you, houses you, feeds you, and connects you to missions. Going it alone isn't impossible… but I've yet to see a case where it worked out."
"Can we go back?"
That question came every year.
The heaviest one.
"As of now, we haven't found a way."
Someone sucked in a breath.
What about our parents?
Can't we at least tell our families?
What happens to us?
I don't know. How would I know? I want to know too.
Same answer every time — and still, every time, I had to say it fresh.
We were about halfway through the explanation when I felt something familiar from one side of the crowd.
That hard-to-describe sensation of spotting someone you know.
I shifted my gaze, and there she was — a woman sitting at the edge of the group.
Even with everyone dropped into a strange world and out of their minds, several of the young men near her kept sneaking glances her way. That was the kind of face she had.
I stopped mid-explanation and looked at her twice.
Once because she looked familiar.
And once more because the fact that I'd looked twice felt strange in itself.
Did I look again just because of how she looked? No. That wasn't it.
Where did I know her from?
Then our eyes met.
The woman tilted her head slightly, and her lips moved — just barely.
No sound. Only the shape of the words.
'…Teacher?'
A beat late, I recognized her.
Lee Seoyun.
The scrawny middle school third-year I'd tutored for a short while.
Back then she'd been quiet, and her face was the kind you'd forget in any crowd. The type who'd agonize forever over a problem she didn't know and then proudly hand in the wrong answer.
That little kid was already twenty-one.
But the face in my memory definitely wasn't this — she'd changed so much I had to wonder if it was really the same person.
They say people change when they go to college… maybe it's actually true.
Flawless features, and seriously tall.
And she hadn't just grown taller.
Summoning up the memory of that scrawny kid and comparing it to the woman in front of me, the tight knit sweater clinging to her figure with her collarbone on full display left me genuinely unsure where to put my eyes.
I coughed dryly and swept my gaze back over the rookies as a whole.
The orientation came first. The greetings could wait.
While I carried on with the explanation, the rookies — tired of listening — began plopping down in twos and threes, murmuring among themselves. The barrage of questions died down, and the mood loosened into something like a chaotic break time.
Seizing the gap, Jaehyuk pressed in close.
"Hey, hey, hey. Did you see?"
"…See what."
"The edge of the crowd. That face. That body. Dude, she's insane. I've made my pick for this cohort."
I could hear him swallowing from where I stood.
"Wearing an outfit like that over a chest like that — isn't that basically cheating?"
The paper between my fingers crumpled slightly.
"Jaehyuk… do your job. I said do your job. Is reporting your picks to me part of the job?"
"I am working! Rookie scouting, remember? Look, I've seen how many rookies over four years, and I have never seen one like her. I'm getting a word in with her today, no matter what."
Jaehyuk stared at her, completely undisguised.
"'Rookie scouting,' he says. Is this guy actually insane?"
"Helping rookies adjust is our job, isn't it? I'll take very good care of her, day and night."
"Jaehyuk."
"What."
"Should I pump some more mana into you and send you berserk again? This time without a landing."
Jaehyuk went quiet for a moment, then grinned. "Oh? What's this. You jealous? You've got Yerin, remember."
"Does that look like jealousy to you?"
"Right, of course not. Wouldn't be like you."
Jaehyuk leaned his head toward Seoyun again, raking his eyes up and down her body, murmuring with a pleased smirk. "Anyway, I've decided on her. You've got a girlfriend, so help me out, yeah?"
I didn't answer.
I had no intention of telling Jaehyuk that Seoyun had been my tutoring student.
If he found out we were acquainted, he'd latch on demanding an introduction — obviously.
I had no real grounds to refuse, and drawing a line over nothing would only breed misunderstanding.
Above all, who knew where that big-mouthed bastard would run his mouth about it? If it reached Yerin's ears wrong… even thinking about it was exhausting.
So I decided to keep it to myself.
Once assignments were done, I'd at least go say hello. That much was enough.
But one thing was certain.
Jaehyuk looking at Seoyun with those eyes — I did not like it. Not one bit.