1. I Told You I'm Unawakened!
A cramped one-room apartment with no one in it. I died hugging a pillow, taken without warning by a wave of excruciating pain.
A life with parents who never wanted me and not a single real friend to call my own. I wasn't even particularly sad about it.
If I had one lingering regret... Ah, if I'd known this was coming, I wouldn't have pinched pennies. I should have bought hamburgers until I couldn't eat another bite.
And with that, I closed my eyes.
...Huh? Wait. Didn't I die?
When I opened them again, I was in yet another empty one-room apartment. Two things had changed: my body had shrunk into a tiny little kid, and this room was a good five times larger than the one I'd died in.
Then the memories belonging to this body came flooding into my head. A world where Gates and Towers existed. A child born to A-Rank high wizards, thrown away for the sole crime of being an Unawakened, someone who could not use magic at all. Ashamed of their own child's existence, the parents had walled the kid up in this spacious room, sending a small fortune in support money every month as the price of a quiet life.
Anyone else would have been floored by that story... but to me, it sounded like a dream come true. Without a moment's hesitation, I threw myself down and bowed full-length to the empty wall.
"God, I am overwhelmingly grateful...!"
They must have taken pity on my miserable past life and given me special treatment. The account held nothing but the support payments piled up over the years, and even that was enough to eat hamburgers three meals a day and still have plenty left over.
"Starting today, it's Haembugi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!"
...Huh?
I had tried to say hamburger, but what popped out of my mouth was a cheerfully mangled piece of baby talk instead. No powers, slurred pronunciation, and a frame even smaller than other girls my age. To any outside observer it would have been a total disaster... but none of that mattered to me in the slightest.
I grabbed the smartphone without hesitation and searched for nearby burger joints first.
"Notteria... what a shame. With this much money, Burger King would be no sweat."
I could have slammed down a combo at Burger King, the premium burger joint, every single day and my balance wouldn't have flinched. Unfortunately, Notteria was the only place inside the delivery zone. Whatever. Who cared about the brand? A burger was a burger.
"In that case, double Haembugi it is."
Less than five minutes after I placed the order, my phone buzzed.
"Whoa... that speed is insane!"
And no wonder: every last delivery driver in this world was a space-manipulation Awakener.
"An ability that broken is the lowest rank...?"
Call it teleportation, call it leaping across space in an instant; at the end of the day it was a non-combat skill. You could run from monsters, but you couldn't deal a single point of damage. That was the ceiling for low-rank abilities. In an Awakener's world, lacking combat power meant being the lowest of the low.
Of course, I didn't even have one of those bottom-tier abilities. I was a "perfectly powerless nobody."
"Nom, nom."
Gripping a Haembugi the size of my own face in both tiny hands, I munched away and looked around the room.
"I wonder how much the rent on a place like this runs...?"
That was when I noticed a small cage sitting in the corner. Inside, a tiny hamster had its head tucked down low. Faint memories surfaced: this was the pet the body's previous owner, the original girl, had cherished more than anything.
But strangely, the longer I looked at the little thing, the odder I felt. A tiny body. Round little eyes. For some reason... it looked a lot like me.
Suddenly I was curious.
"What's the average lifespan of a hamster, anyway?"
Haembugi still clamped in my mouth, I pulled up the search bar. As it turned out, not all hamsters were created equal. There were a million different breeds, and their lifespans varied just as widely.
"Doesn't look like a dwarf hamster, at least. Those don't live long..."
I studied the cage carefully, then compared the little one's fur against photo after photo in the related searches.
"A pedigree golden hamster... is this it?"
A breed with a verified bloodline, healthier than your average hamster and longer-lived to boot. Oh... a hamster born with a silver spoon.
I was marveling at that, scrolling down the page, when I nearly dropped the Haembugi right out of my mouth. I double-checked the price listed on the screen.
"Wha...?! What kind of hamster costs 400,000 won?!"
That was a fortune, about a month's rent in my past life. But my astonishment didn't last. As I quietly looked down at the little creature, my gaze turned wistful.
Digging through the memories, I found that the hamster had already been in that cage for three years. And considering a hamster's average lifespan... that meant the time it had left was running short.
Memories of my past life drifted up unbidden. All those days I'd gone without the hamburger I was craving because I couldn't bear to waste the money.
It wouldn't understand a word, but I crouched down in front of the cage and spoke softly anyway.
"Want some? I never, ever share my Haembugi, but..."
I pinched off a tiny piece from the edge of the burger and held it gently up to its nose.
"From now on I can buy as many as I want, so just this once, I'll let you have some."
The hamster seized the scrap of bread in its tiny front paws and started gobbling it down, cheeks bulging like they might burst.
"See? Even hamsters can't resist a Haembugi!"
So there I was, crouched in front of the cage, locking eyes with the hamster and taking turns, a bite for me, a bite for you, when...
Bzzzzt!
My phone rattled with a noisy notification.
"Hm?"
The notification on my screen had come from the largest community in this world: the Awakener Gallery.
Tilting my head, I tapped the alert, and a familiar title caught my eye.
"...No way."
My chewing stopped dead. I rose slowly from my spot and swept my eyes across the cold, empty apartment. There, in the corner of the kitchen, a small pill bottle lay rolling on the frigid floor. An empty bottle of sleeping pills, its cap still open.
"Ha..."
A hollow laugh burst out of me. Sure, this was a world where Gates opened and people died every single day, but even so, wasn't this joke going too far? Because of one internet troll's throwaway comment, a sixteen-year-old kid had actually swallowed the pills. And as a result, here I was, inside the body of the girl who died.
This was no time to be happily stuffing my face with hamburgers. At least in my past life, I'd lived out a full span before I died...
This girl had been drowning in the loneliness of parents who threw her away, and she'd made that post clutching at a rotten rope, desperate, just once, to be acknowledged. She'd left the world at sixteen, before her life had ever had the chance to bloom. It was heartbreaking.
Even if I told people this girl had died, who would believe me? Which meant the only person left to honor her memory... was probably me.
"...What did she like, again?"
I closed my eyes and sifted through the memories left in this body, one by one.
"Banana milk."
It was coming back to me in fragments.
"Chocolate conch bread for the bakery stuff. And snacks... Binz, was it?"
Her favorite foods surfaced one after another, and I got to my feet. I wanted to eat my fill of everything she'd loved, in her place. This body had been hers, after all.
"...I'd say that counts as eating it for her."
Technically I would be the one chewing, but it was this body doing the eating. I was heading for the front door when...
Pit-pat.
A tiny sound came from behind me, and when I turned my head, the hamster was toddling along after me.
"You coming too?"
Instead of answering, it scampered straight up to my feet and began climbing my leg with its little body.
"Uh... uhh?"
In a flash it had scrambled all the way up to my shoulder and settled on top of my head like it had done it a hundred times before. I stared blankly up at it for a moment. Well, technically I craned my neck back as far as it would go, trying to look at it... which, of course, did nothing.
"You want to pay your respects to your old owner too, huh?"
The hamster gave my hair a gentle tug, as if to say yes.
"...Animals really are better than people."
And so I walked out of the apartment with a hamster perched on my head.
The way wasn't hard to find. I stopped by the mart for Ttungba shrimp snacks and Binz, then picked up chocolate conch bread at the bakery as well.
"No matter how I look at it, this world seems perfectly ordinary..."
On the walk home, I kept glancing around.
"There really are Towers and Gates in this world, huh?"
Nobody on the street was dressed any special way. They all just looked like ordinary people heading to and from work. So even ability users couldn't be picked out by appearance alone?
I was mulling that over as I walked when...
Bzzzzt!
A notification chimed from somewhere above my head, sounding just like a smartphone.
A B-Rank Red Gate has appeared within 100 meters of your location.
All personnel D-Rank and below must evacuate the area immediately and move to the nearest Civilian Emergency Shelter.
"Kyaaah!"
People began sprinting toward me from the direction I'd been staring at, one after another.
"Unawakened go in first! Get them inside the shelter first!"
"M-me! I'm Unawakened!"
The woman flashed her Unawakened ID Tag and was ushered straight inside.
"Wow..."
So this was a Gate incident. It had erupted out of an ordinary day, far more mundane than I'd imagined. Even as people screamed and scattered, I stood there watching the whole scene unfold, hamster and all.
Then...
"Radio relay! We've secured an Awakener, D-Rank or higher!"
"...Huh?"
From a distance, someone holding a radio was pointing at me.
"Escort the Awakener over here, quickly!"
"Me?"
I didn't even get the chance to answer. Someone who looked like a police officer hurried over and took hold of both my arms.
"The Gate is that way. We're counting on you."
I must have looked the part because I was standing perfectly still instead of running for my life. And of course, I had left my Unawakened ID Tag sitting at home.
"I'm Unawakened..."
"We'll take care of the Unawakened!"
No, sir. I'm the Unawakened here. I'm the one who needs protecting.
"No, that's what I'm trying to say, I..."
That was when...
Bwooom!
A shriek of friction tore through the air from far away. I turned to look, and saw a dragonfly flying straight toward us.
"...A dragonfly?"
At first it looked like a perfectly ordinary one. But the closer it came, the bigger it grew, with no end in sight.
"...Huh?"
Somewhere along the way, it had become far larger than a grown adult.
"Wh-what is that thing...?"
"Well then, we leave it to you, Awakener!"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
My body had frozen solid, and they had apparently read that as me calmly refusing to flee. Without a thought for escorting me anywhere, the officers bolted for the shelter.
BANG!
Then they locked the door tight behind them.
...
I stared blankly at the shelter.
No. Hold on just a second here?
"I'm Unawakened too, you know..."
"Stop standing there like a fool and get out of the way! Chit!"
BWOOOM!
"Aaack!"
Snapping back to my senses a beat too late, I flung myself aside and barely dodged the dragonfly as it swooped in inches from my face.
"Th-thank you."
I thought someone had saved me and hurried to offer my thanks, but there was no answer. No matter where I looked, there wasn't a trace of another person anywhere.
"...Huh?"
"Focus! It's coming back around! Chit!"
Slowly, I raised my head.
The voice had come from none other than the top of my own head.
"Eeeh?!"
Sitting there was a hamster. Just a hamster.
"You... did you just talk?"
"That is NOT the point right now! Chit!"
I didn't have time to be astonished.
Bwooom!
With a furious thrum of wings, the giant dragonfly came diving at me again.