January 1st
A pressure that made my ears ring flooded the plaza, and the whole square went white.
It wasn't my first time seeing it, but even so, I felt a pointless knot of tension in that moment.
Then the light settled, and people began to come into view.
A rough count put them at around six hundred.
"Damn. Half again, just like always."
Jae-hyuk said it like he'd known all along, staring at the Dimensional Gate.
The reactions of the newly summoned were immediate. Crying, shouting, dozens of languages tangled together in a single chaotic roar.
Even right after arrival, everyone handled it differently. Someone covering their naked body like they'd been yanked out of a shower. Someone else spinning in place with wide eyes. Someone grabbing the person next to them and asking what the hell was going on.
And then there were the ones who already seemed to have figured something out — quietly scanning their surroundings, muttering at empty air.
"Status. Status, open. Status window, status window!"
The guy chanting in Korean waved his hands through the air for a while, then his face slowly hardened.
And of course, the inevitable ones showed up.
"Why won't this turn on?"
"Anyone got a working phone?"
Everywhere, people clutched their phones and jabbed at the screens. No matter how hard they tapped, no matter how long they held the power button — the result was the same.
Not a single electronic device would turn on.
"Alright, everyone, form up!"
The reception officers from each guild in the plaza started shouting at once, each in their own language. Language banners unfurled, and with the practiced motions of long experience, they began herding people into order.
"Korean speakers, this way!"
Jae-hyuk stood beside me and shouted along. His voice was nearly twice as loud as mine.
At the sound of a familiar language, Koreans started drifting toward the White Tiger Guild zone one by one, still looking dazed.
Two, four, six—
They kept coming.
Kept coming.
Kept coming.
Jae-hyuk went quieter and quieter beside me, then muttered under his breath.
"Holy shit. What the hell."
I was thinking the same thing.
I counted carefully.
One hundred and eight.
Last year, out of the 1,250 people who came through the Dimensional Gate, only about twenty had been Korean. So why, when the total had been cut in half, were there over a hundred Koreans this time?
We're fucked.
I'd expected ten at most, twenty if we got lucky. This was way too many.
I was wondering whether I should put in a support request to the guild right then and there when Jae-hyuk spoke up beside me.
"Hey. Let's just wrap this up fast and hand them off to Ye-rin at the guild. Looking at this, neither of us has time to go request backup."
"Ha… fuck. What even is this."
Either way, given the nature of a Dimensional Gate that no one could explain, hunting for a reason was pointless.
While Jae-hyuk scrambled to gather the rookies, I scanned the zone and observed.
The ones who sat down and cried wouldn't last long. The ones still spinning in circles, unable to get their heads on straight — same story. After years of watching rookies, that gut feeling had almost never been wrong.
But this time, there was a face that felt off.
Right in the middle of the White Tiger Guild zone, where the Koreans had clustered together, stood a Black man with dark skin and a solid build — someone no one would look at and call Korean. He stood out so sharply among the people around him that you couldn't not notice him.
And yet he himself just stood there quietly, like it was no big deal.
No matter how I looked at it, he seemed to have come to the wrong place.
Jae-hyuk leaned in close to my ear and whispered carefully.
"Hey… that guy. Wrong group, right?"
"Leave him for now. Don't judge by looks."
"Yeah, well. We'll find out later."
With that, Jae-hyuk casually drifted sideways and shifted his gaze elsewhere. Out of a hundred and eight people, picking out scannable targets took him less than ten seconds.
"Yo, that one on the right, her chest is—"
"Jae-hyuk. You bastard. Seriously? Right now?"
"Yeah, yeah. Working."
Then a man in a military uniform pushed through the crowd and came up to us.
"Private Lee Han-su. Phones don't work here, sir?"
Ah. A private — lucky kid. The ones who enlisted early often got summoned near the end of their service. Fall asleep thinking you're about to discharge and rejoin society, wake up in another world. Usually those guys ended up like the ones over there — sitting on the ground, staring into empty air like they'd lost everything, not saying a word.
"It won't even turn on, so of course it doesn't work."
"Then calls…?"
"Electronics don't power on in this world. You can't make calls either, obviously."
The kid slowly lowered his phone.
"…Sorry, I didn't catch that?"
"This world."
"This world, sir…?"
"Yes. Once everyone else is gathered, I'll explain it all at once, so please listen then."
I waited another ten minutes or so in case any late Korean arrivals showed up, but there were no additions. One hundred and eight was the full count.
Looking around, everyone seemed to have more or less caught on and was waiting for an explanation, so I cleared my throat lightly and spoke up in front of the rookies.
"Alright. The place you're standing right now is—"
"Hold."
A voice cut in from behind.
The man who'd asked the question had an accent that was somehow different. He was the one in a brown military uniform standing at an angle toward the back of the crowd.
"Where is this place."
It was less a question than a demand for confirmation.
"I was just about to expla—"
"Where is this place."
I looked at him for a moment. He wasn't giving me any room to explain.
This many Korean rookies was a first for me, too. The second time the Dimensional Gate opened — the previous high for Korean arrivals after our own cohort — we'd been so unprepared that people had to find the Korean guild on their own. If I'd known this many would come, I would have prepared better. As things stood, the only option was to finish as fast as possible and get them to the guild.
"I am Ri Kwang-chol, from the Russian front. Have I been taken prisoner?"
Russian front. Russia.
I'd heard from last year's cohort that North Korea had sent troops into the Russia-Ukraine war. This man must have been one of them.
"…No."
"Then where is this place. Is it the rear, or enemy territory."
"Neither."
Ri Kwang-chol's eyes narrowed.
"Are you North Korean?"
I couldn't see who'd said it. But at that single remark, several of the Koreans nearby quietly took a step back from Ri Kwang-chol.
He seemed to feel it too — he stopped scanning the plaza and closed his mouth. His expression didn't change, but his shoulders stiffened by the smallest degree, as if he'd read the room.
First time seeing a North Korean for most of them, I figured. They'd have to get used to it.
Then Jae-hyuk quietly sidled up beside me.
"Hey, this is getting way too chaotic. Want me to show off a little?"
"Yeah… way more than we expected. At this rate we won't finish in an hour."
"Right? One good hit and—"
"If you step in, something breaks. We don't have the money."
Jae-hyuk pouted. He knew I wasn't wrong. One swing of his spear would definitely grab every eye in the place — but the plaza floor wouldn't survive it. I didn't want the rookies catching stone shrapnel on day one.
So: something that held attention without destroying anything. Show them something an ordinary human couldn't do.
"Just stand still."
"Huh?"
I put a hand on Jae-hyuk's shoulder and raised my voice toward the still-murmuring rookies.
"Alright, everyone, your attention for a moment, please."
Even so, about half of them were still talking among themselves. First day chaos — no way they'd focus on a stranger's words right away.
So I added one more line.
"We will now have a demonstration from a skilled instructor, showing you the kind of mana you will be handling going forward. All eyes forward."
The word mana sparked some curiosity; eyes started turning our way. Of course they were curious about that.
Enhancement-type ability users like me don't stand out. Nothing flashy about it. But when my ability — invisible to the eye, unreadable as a number — flows through my hands into a partner's body, that's when the story changes.
Moderately, of course. Only as much as the body can take.
"Take a lap. High."
"…Damn, it's been a while since—"
He didn't even finish the sentence.
Jae-hyuk bent his knees slightly, then drove off the ground.
— BOOM
The dirt where he'd planted his feet cratered inward, dust exploding outward in every direction. The recoil launched his body straight up.
One jump. That single leap carried him more than ten meters, all the way to the top of the Dimensional Gate's stone structure.
Every rookie's head snapped upward, mouths hanging open. The speed was almost too fast for the eye to track — a few of them lost him and lifted their heads a beat late.
At the peak, Jae-hyuk twisted his body. There was nothing to push off of in empty air, but he changed direction like he'd kicked an invisible floor, then curled into a ball midair. One spin, two spins — and then he dropped from ten meters up, less falling than plunging.
— THUD
Landing. One knee bent, fingertips touching the ground — a completely unnecessary pose. In a real fight I would have chewed him out for the theatrics, 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 single rookie was staring with their mouths open. The ones who'd been crying, the ones who'd been jabbing at their phones — even Ri Kwang-chol. The texture of the murmuring had shifted toward awe.
Jae-hyuk brushed off his shoulders as he stood up.
"Hey, was that pretty cool?"
"Shut up and sit down already."
"Man, if I'd had my spear, I could've shown the rookies what the White Tiger Spear God looks like."
This wasn't a martial arts novel, and what kind of ridiculous title was that supposed to be — but understanding Jae-hyuk had always been beyond me.
I ignored the nonsense and turned back to the rookies. No one was talking now.
"As you just saw. You'll be capable of things like that eventually, too. So please focus while I explain for a bit."
The quiet was perfect for an explanation. Honestly, I wanted to move a group this big to the guild as fast as possible. The plaza was chaotic, and our paths overlapped with the other guilds. But it wasn't that simple.
These kids had just been dragged here from their own world with no idea why. If you told them to follow you when they didn't even know where they were or who you were, they wouldn't. The scared ones would scatter — and for White Tiger, where every single person counted, that was a real loss.
So every year, we explained first, right there in the plaza. What kind of place this was, and why we wanted to take them. You had to get them to accept at least that much before they'd follow.
The problem today was that the number was one hundred and eight.
"If you can sit, please take a seat on the ground… First, let me introduce ourselves."
I pointed to Jae-hyuk beside me and continued.
"The friend who was just flying around is Choi Jae-hyuk. Combat type. I'm the support type who put the enhancement on him so he could fly. Lee Ha-jun."
"As you've probably already figured out, the place you're standing right now is not the world you lived in."
An obvious statement — but saying it out loud carried a different weight.
"Every year on 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 don't know much ourselves, but two things are certain: pass through that gate and you gain an ability, and every time it opens, fewer people come through."
"An ability?"
One of the seated rookies asked, eyes sparkling.
"Yes. But there's no skill window like you might be imagining, so you won't know what your ability is yet. It varies from person to person, too. People who control fire, people whose bodies get stronger, people who heal others. It's extremely diverse. Usually, we help you find your ability within three days of arriving at the guild."
Eyes shifted uneasily throughout the crowd.
"Why were we brought here?"
I paused for a moment. The question that always came up — and always the hardest one to answer.
"To be honest… even we don't know for certain yet. What we do know is that this world needs ability users to hold back certain threats, and the ability users who come over from Earth make their living that way."
"What kind of threats?"
This time it was a girl sitting near the center. Eyes that looked like they were about to well up.
"Magic beasts. Think of them as monsters. They appear all over this world, and without abilities, they're hard to face. The kingdom's army and even this world's mages can't handle some of them — so they need people like you."
"So we have to fight?"
"Absolutely not forced. There are people here who live without fighting — they're called Settlers."
At that, the girl in the center who'd looked ready to cry relaxed a little.
"But if you're going to live in this world… you'll need money, right?"
I made a coin shape with my fingers as I spoke.
"The most efficient way to earn is by hunting magic beasts and selling the byproducts or magic stones — and to do that, joining a guild is pretty much the only option. Same goes for lifestyle ability users who become Settlers."
That was the truth. In the end, hunting magic beasts here was just a way to make money — not some grand higher purpose. In a world where no one even knew the real goal, the easiest way for ability users to earn was through missions like beast subjugation. And as you did it, you could feel yourself getting stronger, which meant even more money down the line.
Guilds were just organizations for running that system efficiently.
"Abilities are hard to control at first. They go off on their own, shut off on their own — even you can't predict them. So the guild trains you, houses you, feeds you, and connects you to missions. Surviving alone isn't impossible, but… I've never seen it go well."
"Can we go back?"
This question came every year. The heaviest one of all.
"As of now, we haven't found anything either."
Someone swallowed hard.
What about my parents. Can I at least let my family know. What happens to us from here.
I don't know. How would I know. I want to know too.
Same answer every time — and still, every time, it had to be said fresh.
About halfway through the explanation, I felt a familiar atmosphere from one side of the group. That hard-to-describe sensation of spotting someone you know.
I shifted my gaze, and there was a woman sitting at the edge of the crowd. Even in the middle of being dropped into a strange place with everyone half out of their minds, a few of the guys standing near her kept glancing her way — the kind of face that pulled eyes whether you wanted it to or not.
I looked twice mid-explanation. Once because she looked familiar. And once more because the fact that I'd looked twice felt a little strange.
Was it just the looks? No.
Where had I seen her?
Then our eyes met.
She tilted her head slightly and moved her lips, just a little. No sound — only the shape of the words.
…Teacher?
I recognized her a beat late.
Lee Seo-yoon.
The middle school third-year kid I'd briefly tutored. Back then she'd been quiet, with the kind of ordinary face you could see anywhere. The type who'd stare at a problem she didn't know for a long time, then proudly hand in the wrong answer.
That little kid was already twenty-one.
But the face in my memory definitely hadn't been like this. She looked so different now I almost wondered if it was the same person.
People said women changed when they went to college… was that actually true?
Flawless features, and she was fairly tall. And it wasn't just her height that had grown. Comparing the little kid in my memory to the woman in front of me — the fitted knit top that showed her cleavage made it hard to know where to put my eyes.
I cleared my throat and turned my gaze back to the rookies as a whole. Guidance came first right now. The reunion could wait.
As I kept going with the explanation, the rookies who'd gotten tired of listening started sitting down in twos and threes, murmuring among themselves. The barrage of questions broke for a moment, and the atmosphere settled into something like a restless intermission.
Jae-hyuk didn't miss the opening — he pressed right up beside me.
"Hey hey hey. Did you see?"
"…See what."
"The edge. That face, that body — damn. She's insane. I've already picked my target for this cohort."
I could hear him swallow from right next to me.
"And that outfit on a chest like that is basically half-naked, right?"
The paper in my hand crumpled slightly at the edges.
"Jae-hyuk… I said do your job. Do your job. Is reporting your picks to me the job?"
"I am working — rookie scouting duty? Anyway, I've seen how many rookies over four years, and I've never seen one like her. Damn. I've got to get at least one conversation in today somehow."
Jae-hyuk stared at her openly.
"Rookie scouting duty, my ass. Are you actually insane?"
"Helping rookies adjust is our job, right? Gotta take real good care of them, day and night."
"Jae-hyuk."
"What."
"Want me to pump you full of mana again and send you berserk? This time you won't stick the landing."
Jae-hyuk shut his mouth for a second, then grinned.
"Oh? What's this. Jealous? You've got Ye-rin."
"This looks like jealousy to you?"
"Yeah, fair. No way you'd be."
Jae-hyuk craned his neck toward Seo-yoon again, looking her up and down with open satisfaction as he muttered.
"Anyway, I'm set on her. You've got a girlfriend, so help a guy out, yeah?"
I didn't answer.
I had no intention of telling Jae-hyuk that Seo-yoon had been my tutoring student. The second he knew we were acquainted, he'd latch on even harder demanding an introduction. I didn't have a clean reason to refuse, and drawing a line would only create misunderstandings. More than anything, there was no telling where or how this loudmouth would go blabbing about it. If it reached Ye-rin's ears in some weird way… just thinking about it was exhausting.
So I decided to keep it to myself. Once the assignments were done, I could at least say a quick hello. That would be enough.
But one thing was clear.
The way Jae-hyuk was looking at Seo-yoon with those eyes — I really didn't like it.