Awakening a Special Ability
***
Inside a certain ordinarily old and cramped one-room apartment.
Han Yu-jin, who had been lying on his bed fiddling with his smartphone, habitually opened his messenger app and came to see the 'Friends with a birthday today' section.
A familiar name was visible.
A girl who was his middle school classmate, his first love, and his unrequited love. She had been incredibly popular because she was so pretty, and he even remembered mustering up the courage to ask her to a movie on graduation day, only to be gently rejected.
"..."
Almost ten years had already passed since then. He had never once tried to contact her, but perhaps she had no reason to change her number, as they were still friends on the messenger app.
A nostalgia for the past made his hand move on its own. As he looked through her profile pictures like that, Han Yu-jin's eyes gradually widened.
They were all just scenes of her living well to a degree that surpassed imagination.
Starting with a photo taken at some luxurious art museum, there was also a photo taken with a large foreign mansion with a swimming pool in the background, and another photo of a birthday party she held for her parents at the only 6-star hotel in the country.
There were quite a few pictures taken at a golf course, a place Han Yu-jin himself would have no connection to his entire life, and even in the photos that seemed to be taken casually, a considerable number of expensive luxury goods were visible.
'I don't think she was originally this rich…?'
Just as he was thinking that, one photo caught his eye. It was a picture taken with some guy, and coincidentally, it was a face he knew.
It was a guy who was a fellow middle school classmate and with whom he had been quite close at the time.
Around the time they were just entering high school, the guy had suddenly awakened a special ability, and as he entered a Hunter academy, they naturally grew distant.
There was an enormous gap between an ordinary citizen and a Hunter who had awakened a special ability.
From income to reputation, it was difficult to list every single difference.
'Looks like they're dating.'
The moment he came to that conclusion.
A strange and uncomfortable feeling, so full it surprised even himself, welled up inside him.
Turning off the smartphone screen and squeezing his eyes shut, Han Yu-jin lay still for quite a long time, doing nothing.
He was busy just trying to identify the true nature of the emotion he was feeling now.
It was probably envy. And it must have been mixed with pity for himself. It might have also included a sense of unfairness towards something that couldn't be specified.
In fact, his high school years had been the most unfortunate period for him. Because it was the time when his perfectly fine family had been ruined.
It was, so to speak, the kind of family history that was sufficiently pitiable but could also be found surprisingly easily.
His father was scammed and the family finances collapsed; his mother, under stress, ran away after a divorce; and he, left all alone, was taken in by relatives where he ate his fill of unwelcome meals until he couldn't stand it anymore, started working part-time, and barely managed to become independent.
As a natural consequence, his once quite excellent academic performance dropped to a merely average level, and he couldn't get into a good university.
Still, with the thought that he needed a degree to get a job, he was trudging through his studies with a student loan, but seeing the current social climate made a college diploma feel like it was practically useless.
On the other hand,
His middle school classmate, who had once played with him as an equal in a similar situation.
It seemed a golden highway in life had unfolded for him, using the tremendous luck of awakening a special ability as a stepping stone.
Dating the girl who had been Han Yu-jin's own first and unrequited love and who had likely been the first or unrequited love of countless other classmates besides him was surely just a fragment of that golden highway.
Of course, the guy would have his own pain and difficulties and would sometimes shed tears…
'While you cry in your luxury car, I'll be crying on my bicycle.'
And no matter how hard he himself pedaled to rush forward, he would never be able to catch up to the speed the guy achieved by lightly pressing the accelerator.
It would surely be a stroke of luck just to be able to see his taillights.
Life was originally unfair.
He thought he knew that fact well, but there were moments like this, once in a while, when it made him feel it anew, as if being stabbed by a knife in a surprise attack. And it was inevitable that he would lose his strength each time.
'I'm sure I wasn't a lesser person than you.'
At least, that was how it was back in their middle school days when they used to hang out and play together.
'If only I could awaken too…'
It had been a dream since he was young, a wish that had only grown stronger with age instead of fading.
But that wish was now little more than a dream.
Statistically speaking, the probability of someone awakening was on the level of winning the lottery, and as one approached the age of thirty, even that low probability decreased sharply.
He was already 25 years old.
There were truly almost no people who had awakened at this age; it was common for most to awaken in their mid-teens. Like his middle school classmate.
If he were to awaken, what kind of ability would be good to awaken?
As Han Yu-jin lay there powerlessly having such delusions, he felt a wave of fatigue wash over him, perhaps from the stress, and immediately prepared for bed. Because of his current emotional state, he didn't want to do his overdue assignments in the slightest.
His mood would probably get a little better after a nap.
Nothing would change, but he would be able to somehow muddle through and live on while finding small bits of happiness.
You couldn't be called an adult if you didn't know how to conform to and resign yourself to the unfairness of reality.
Wasn't our life one where certain things could never be reached, no matter how desperately we wished for them?
Lying down in a straight posture with his idle thoughts, he began to let out even breaths not long after.
It was an ordinary sleep, just like always.
However, what happened along with that sleep was not ordinary at all.
<> <> <>
Han Yu-jin was standing in an unknown place within a pitch-black void.
It was a place where he didn't even know how he was standing, but strangely, he didn't feel uncomfortable at all.
His attention was naturally drawn to the 'door' in front of him.
It was a bizarre door that changed into a thousand different forms every time he tried to perceive it.
Just when he thought it was a stone gate with a medieval Western feel, the next moment it would change into a wooden door with an ancient Eastern feel, and as he tried to form an impression of that, a very unfamiliar style of door made of glass and jewels would appear.
Moving like someone possessed by something, the moment Han Yu-jin laid a hand on it, the endlessly changing door fixed into a single form and vibrated faintly.
A deep, resonant hum…!
The form that became fixed along with the echoing resonance was none other than a modern emergency exit fire door.
The letters that floated up on the surface of that rusty fire door with a silver glint were, chillingly, 'Earth After the Apocalypse'.
Still like a man possessed, he opened that door and stepped inside. Immediately after he had taken a few more steps forward.
"…Huk!"
Coming to his senses with a start as if waking from a sleep, he looked behind him.
He should have certainly come through a door, but all that was visible was empty space.
And the scene that unfolded behind it was the sight of a desolate city that looked as if it had been abandoned for over several decades, with no sign of human presence at all.
"..."
For a good while, he stood still without being able to say anything.
It was because just maintaining his composure in this sudden and surreal situation was overwhelming enough.
'Is this a dream?'
To verify the first thought that came to his mind, he tried pinching the back of his hand, but he felt a vivid pain.
The sense of reality that touched his skin was so clear that it was impossible to be mistaken.
Pulling himself together as his body slowly began to tremble, he looked around his surroundings.
Everywhere he looked, there was only the sight of a city that seemed to have been abandoned for at least several decades.
Abandoned cars were strewn about on the roadside, and buildings were cracked or collapsed in various places.
Every single windowpane was shattered, and all the metal was rusted.
Strangely, not even a single common weed could be seen, making it seem as if all life had been annihilated.
As Han Yu-jin instinctively flinched from the goosebumps that rose at the blowing wind, he suddenly realized he was in the loungewear he usually enjoyed wearing.
He was certain he hadn't been in this attire when he fell asleep, and he had no memory of changing clothes either.
'Did I black out?'
The only things that immediately came to mind were the memory of falling asleep in his one-room apartment bed and the memory of a pitch-black space where a strange door had existed.
'Wait…'
The moment he once again recalled that he had arrived here through that door, his body trembled. It was a slightly different kind of trembling than before.
'Did I awaken, by any chance?'
A special ability could explain the current situation to some extent. No, it wasn't just that it could explain it; no other hypothesis came to mind.
However, there were quite a few problems with getting unconditionally happy about it.
'Earth After the Apocalypse.'
Those were clearly the letters that had floated on the door's surface right before he entered this place.
If this desolate city was truly the Earth of a future that had met its end, the problem he needed to investigate with the highest priority was how to return to the time and space where he had originally lived.
Han Yu-jin circled around the spot where the door he passed through should have been.
But as expected, all he could see was empty air.
To make matters worse, as if it were time for the sun to set, the already gloomy sky began to grow darker, and strangely, the temperature dropped sharply, causing his breath to fog up.
'The change of seasons?'
But no matter if it was the change of seasons, a temperature change of this level was abnormal.
A fear of how much colder it would get when it became completely night naturally arose.
And the thought that came with it was how this Earth, which could be the future or a parallel world, had come to meet its end.
'This isn't a topic I should be absorbed in right now.'
First, it seemed he had to find a way to preserve his body temperature.
After looking around his surroundings once more, he began to move in earnest to get some clothes from inside a building.
When he had been moving at a fast pace for a few minutes like that.
Suddenly, a ruined jewelry store came into view.
But the items inside were laid out in the glass display cases with almost no disarray, as if the world were still perfectly fine.
Despite the situation, his footsteps came to a halt on their own.
After hesitating for a moment, thinking it would only be a delay of a few minutes, he squeezed his body through the gap in the glass door that was more than half broken off.
'How much is all of this…?'
Looking at the gold trinkets that filled the inside of the glass display case, Han Yu-jin had many thoughts.
They were shallow but diverse thoughts, from thoughts about the price to thoughts about why these things remained so intact.
It seemed that war or a plague was not the reason for the apocalypse. If it had been that type of apocalypse, these gold trinkets could not have remained in this spot right now.
If so, what kind of apocalypse must it have been for these gold trinkets to be preserved like this, untouched by anyone's hands?
"…Hmm."
After thinking a little more, he examined the structure of the glass display case here and there, soon figured out how to open it, and took out the contents as they came into his hands.
As he put on several gold necklaces, wore a few gold bracelets on each arm, put gold rings on all ten fingers, and stuffed his loungewear pockets full of gold trinkets, he felt his heart pound and a heat rise within him despite the low temperature.
'For now, I'll just take this much, and let's look for clothes again.'
Now, all he had to do was somehow endure the cold and find a way back. The haul he had just obtained was enough to make his life blossom, and if he could visit this apocalyptic world again, he could continue his exploration and become rich.
He could see the possibility of seizing the 'economic freedom' he had dreamed of even in his sleep.
It was at that very moment.
A small but strange sound was heard.
The moment his head, which had moved on its own, turned towards a corner of the jewelry store, he witnessed a jet-black hand lunging at him without a sound.
With a sickening crunch-!
Along with the gruesome sound of something tearing and breaking, his consciousness blurred before the intense pain could even set in.
The sight visible to his one remaining eye was the bright red blood and bits of flesh scattering in mid-air, and the form of a black silhouette that had clearly attacked him.
With that scene as his last, his vision went black.
-You have died.
Then, mysterious silver letters floated up in the infinite darkness.
-Please select your reward.