Chapter 1

[1] Babe, You Haven’t Found Some Other Bitch While I Was Gone, Have You?

[The Late Jeong Sia / August 25, 2000–August 25, 2023]

Exactly one year ago today, she suddenly passed away.

It happened just six months after she graduated from the Hunter Academy and became a licensed hunter.

She had already lost her family in a gate break back in high school. I’d thought surely nothing worse could happen to her.

Who could have known her life would end so senselessly on her birthday?

“It’s already been a year since you left my side, Sia.”

Today, on both her birthday and the anniversary of her death, I visited Sia’s grave.

In one hand, I carried tteokbokki, her favorite food when she was alive.

“I still can’t believe you’re gone, my beautiful Sia.”

Jeong Sia.

She was my beloved girlfriend, the only one in the world for me.

That day, we had promised to celebrate her birthday over dinner at a nice restaurant once her field training was over.

Then a terrible accident happened inside the gate.

Gates were inherently dangerous places where you never knew what might happen, but who could have expected such a horrific inferno to be waiting inside a D-rank gate?

The terrible accident left three people injured and one dead.

And that one person who died just had to be my Sia.

‘What if I’d been a little stronger?’

Ever since Sia died, that thought hadn’t left my mind for even a moment.

If I’d been just a little stronger, if I’d moved just a little faster, could I have saved her?

‘If only that trait had manifested…’

By every measure, I was just an ordinary D-rank swordsman-class hunter.

With one exception.

[??? (EX)
Skill Description: ???]

The problem was that I had no idea what this skill was, let alone how to use it.

I didn’t even know whether it was passive or active.

But what if I had known what it was?

What if I’d been able to use it, even a little?

Would Sia still have died such a pointless death?

‘What’s the use of thinking about that now?’

A skill I had never used, one that had failed to protect the person I loved.

I was better off living as though it didn’t exist.

Setting aside the pointless what-ifs that kept strangling me, I took out my phone and slowly swiped through the photos I had taken with Sia.

Each photo brought its memories vividly back to life.

Sia, who had boldly confessed her feelings for me without caring what anyone else thought.

My Sia, whose smile was more beautiful than anyone else’s.

My Sia, who said my arms were so warm that she never wanted to leave them, not even for a moment.

My beloved Sia, who had been my reason for living.

As I began recalling our time together, I felt my eyes grow hot.

We had loved each other so fiercely that we couldn’t imagine living apart. Why had we been forced to part like this?

Holding back my tears, I poured some of the clear rice wine I’d brought with the tteokbokki into a cup and set it before her grave.

I placed her favorite tteokbokki beside it.

The spicy aroma brought me back once again to the day she died.

“Sia, let’s go out for something delicious tonight. What do you want?”

“Hmm… Tteokbokki! Let’s get loads of add-ons!”

“Tteokbokki? Come on, it’s your birthday. Let’s have something nicer. I told you, it’s my treat!”

“You don’t feel like tteokbokki? But that’s what I want.”

If I’d known she would leave me so soon…

I should have eaten tteokbokki with her at least one more time instead of grumbling about always having the same thing.

Thinking back on it brought another wave of regret.

I sprinkled the rice wine over her grave, then poured another cup and drank it.

“Sia, you don’t mind if I get a little drunk today, do you?”

But just as I emptied the cup and was about to refill it—

Rrrrrumble.

The ground suddenly began to shake, accompanied by a deafening roar.

Then the air split open, and a small rift began to form.

‘A gate break!’

There was no mistaking it. These were the warning signs of a gate break.

As the rift grew larger, my mind raced.

Why did this have to happen on the anniversary of Sia’s death, of all days—and right where she was buried?

I knew what a gate break was, but this was the first time I had witnessed one firsthand.

Faced with something I had never experienced before, I froze.

‘I have to do something.’

I needed to report it to the Hunter Agency, then find some way to buy time and keep the damage from spreading, even if I had to do it alone.

The moment I raised my phone to take action—

The gate began to writhe, and something emerged.

Naturally, I assumed it was a monster and hurried to draw my weapon from my subspace storage… but the moment I saw what it was, I faltered.

A young woman with exotic features who looked about my age.

To my astonishment, the unidentified creature that had emerged from the gate was a woman.

But she was certainly no ordinary woman.

Her red hair resembled a sacred flame, and her ruby-like eyes could hardly have belonged to a human.

And that wasn’t all.

Her skin was as flawless as white jade, and her delicate features were beautiful enough to warrant calling her a goddess.

Even her clothing seemed otherworldly, which only strengthened that impression.

‘No. I can’t let appearances fool me.’

She might be some previously unreported monster that took the form of a human woman.

I couldn’t let my guard down.

Even if there was no one else nearby, I had to prepare for the worst.

Until I knew what she was, I needed to be cautious.

My first priority was to determine whether she was friendly toward humanity or hostile.

I was carefully drawing my weapon, but the woman was looking elsewhere, as though she couldn’t care less about it.

Specifically, at the tteokbokki and gimbap beside Sia’s grave, and the birthday present I had never been able to give her, still wrapped a year later.

After examining them, the woman turned her gaze toward me.

Looking at my face was one thing, but why was she interested in the tteokbokki?

The truly strange part, however, was something else.

“Babe?”

Despite looking so foreign that I never would have guessed she was Korean, she addressed me affectionately in perfectly pronounced Korean.

Babe?

Did she just call me babe?

Just as the question of who—or what—she was rose to my lips—

“Minjun, it’s me. Your girlfriend, Jeong Sia.”

What?

“Babe, I spent two thousand years holed up in my lair, researching nothing but interdimensional travel magic so I could see you again. I didn’t go out to play even once! I did good, right? Really good, right?”

Two thousand years? A lair? Interdimensional travel magic?

The woman claiming to be my dead girlfriend was rattling off things I couldn’t make sense of.

“But babe, you haven’t found some other bitch while I was gone, have you?”