[The Late Jeong Sia / 2000.08.25. - 2023.08.25.]
Exactly 1 year ago today, she had suddenly passed away.
It happened barely half a year after she graduated from the Hunter Academy and became an official Hunter.
She had already lost her family to a Gate Break back in high school, so I'd thought nothing worse could possibly happen to her.
No one could have known she would meet such a senseless death on her own birthday.
"It's already been a whole year since my Sia left oppa's side."
On Sia's birthday, which was also the anniversary of her death, I came to visit her grave.
In one hand I held tteokbokki, the food she had loved most in life.
"I still can't believe my pretty Sia is gone."
Jeong Sia.
She had been my lovely girlfriend, the one and only in the whole world.
On the day we had promised to celebrate her birthday over dinner at a nice restaurant as soon as her field training was over.
A major accident broke out inside the Gate.
Gates were dangerous places by nature, where no one could tell what might happen inside, but no one could have foreseen such a horrific inferno lying in wait in a D-rank Gate.
That terrible accident left 3 injured and 1 dead.
And the sole fatality of that accident, of all people, was my Sia.
'What if I had been a little stronger?'
Ever since Sia died, that thought hadn't left my head for even a moment.
If I had been just a little stronger, if I had moved just a little faster, maybe I could have saved her life.
'If only that trait had manifested.......'
In every respect, I was nothing more than an ordinary swordsman-type D-rank Hunter.
Except for one thing.
[???(EX)
Skill Description : ???]
The problem was that I didn't know what this skill actually was, or even how to use it.
I didn't even know something as basic as whether it was a passive or an active skill.
But if only I had known what this skill really was.
If only I had been able to use it, even a little.
Then maybe Sia wouldn't have died so senselessly.
'Not that any of it matters now.'
A skill I had never once used, and one that had failed to protect the person I loved.
Better to live as though a skill like that didn't exist.
Setting aside for a moment the meaningless what-ifs that kept binding me, I took out my phone and slowly flipped through the photos Sia and I had taken together, one by one.
With every single photo, the memories of that moment came back vividly.
Sia, the girl who went straight for what she wanted, who had confessed to me boldly without caring what anyone thought.
My Sia, whose smile was more beautiful than anyone else's in the world.
My Sia, who always said my arms were so warm that she never wanted to leave them for a second.
My beloved Sia, who had been my reason for living.
As I began to recall my memories of Sia when she was alive, I could feel the corners of my eyes growing hotter and hotter.
We had loved each other so fiercely that we couldn't live without each other, so why did we have to be torn apart like this?
Holding back the tears that kept pouring out, I filled a cup with the rice wine I had brought along with the tteokbokki and set it in front of Sia's grave.
I set down the tteokbokki she loved beside it, too.
The spicy smell of the tteokbokki brought back the day Sia left this world.
'Sia, let's go eat something good tonight. What do you want?'
'Hmm....... Tteokbokki! Let's get it with loads of extra noodles!'
'Tteokbokki? Aw, come on, it's your birthday. Let's eat something better than that. I told you I'm paying today, didn't I?'
'You don't like tteokbokki, oppa? But I want tteokbokki.'
If only I had known Sia would leave my side so soon.
Instead of grumbling that we were eating the same old thing again, I should have eaten tteokbokki with her one more time.
Thinking back on it, regret washed over me all over again.
I sprinkled the rice wine in the cup over Sia's grave, then poured another and drank it straight down.
"Sia, it's okay if oppa gets a little drunk today, right?"
But then, just as I emptied one cup and went to fill another.
RUMBLE—.
Without warning, the ground began to shake, and a deafening roar began to ring out.
Soon the air itself split apart, and a small rift began to form.
'A Gate Break!'
Anyone could see this was the precursor to a Gate Break.
The wider the rift grew, the faster my mind began to race.
Of all days, on Sia's death anniversary, and right where her grave is, this is happening?
I knew about the phenomenon called a Gate Break, but this was the first time I had ever witnessed one with my own eyes.
Faced with a situation I had never experienced, I froze right where I stood.
'I have to do something.'
I had to report it to the Hunter Agency, and then somehow buy time on my own so the damage wouldn't spread.
Just as I raised my phone to do something about it.
The Gate began to writhe, and something came out of it.
Naturally assuming it was a monster, I hurried to draw my weapon from my subspace... but the moment I saw what it actually was, I could only freeze.
A young woman with exotic features, who looked to be about my age.
Astonishingly, the unidentified creature that had emerged from the Gate was none other than a woman.
But she was by no means an ordinary woman.
Her red hair resembled a sacred flame, and her ruby-like eyes could not possibly belong to a human.
And that wasn't all.
Her skin was like white jade, and her features were so delicately formed that she could have been called a goddess without exaggeration.
Her clothes didn't look like they came from Earth either, which only made the impression stronger.
'No. I can't let her looks fool me.'
She might be a monster in the shape of a human woman, one that hadn't been reported yet.
I couldn't let my guard down.
Even if there was no one else around, I had to be ready for the worst.
Since I didn't know what that woman was, I had to be careful for now.
The first priority was to figure out whether she was friendly or hostile to us humans.
I was carefully drawing my weapon, but the woman kept her gaze elsewhere, as if weapons didn't matter to her in the least.
To be precise, on the tteokbokki and gimbap I had set beside Sia's grave, and on the birthday present I had never managed to give her, still in its wrapping after a year.
After looking them over, the woman turned her gaze to me this time.
Looking at my face was one thing, but why was she so interested in the tteokbokki?
But the truly strange thing was something else.
"Oppa?"
With looks far too exotic for anyone to take her for Korean, she called me "oppa," warmly, with perfect pronunciation.
Oppa?
She's calling me oppa?
Just as the question of what on earth she was rose all the way up my throat.
"Min-jun oppa, it's me, me. Your girlfriend, Jeong Sia."
......What?
"Oppa, to see you again, I spent two thousand years shut up in my lair researching nothing but dimensional transfer magic, without going on a single sojourn. I did good, right? I did so good, right?"
Two thousand years? A lair? Dimensional transfer magic?
The woman who had introduced herself as the dead Sia rattled off words I couldn't make sense of.
"But oppa, you haven't gotten yourself another bitch in the meantime, have you?"