The barrel of the gun hovered inches from Evan's face. Above it, Reid's eyes blazed gold, and Sacred Light wreathed his frame like sunrise cresting a ridge. Evan's mouth hung open, unable to form a single word of defense.
"Demon," Reid hissed.
Could Evan have prevented this? Had he been more careful, or had the System not been such a sadistic bastard, things might have gone differently. Then again, with the curse dragging his luck into the abyss, he might never have stood a chance.
Memory pulled him back through the chain of events that had carried him into this strange world.
***
This has to be a dream, Evan thought.
He blinked several times, taking in the spotless ceiling above him. It was far nicer than the one in his apartment, where mold crept across the corners and cobwebs hung beneath a layer of dust. The pristine surface almost made him think he was in a hospital. A glance around proved otherwise.
Evan was lying on a twin-sized bed with warm bedding and a thick, plush pillow. Against one wall sat a desk with an open laptop and a stack of textbooks. Opposite it, a wardrobe stood with its door left slightly ajar, revealing neatly folded clothes inside.
Had he gotten drunk and passed out on the street, only for someone to carry him home and dump him in their kid's bedroom? Impossible. He rarely drank, and he hadn't touched a drop in weeks. The last thing he remembered was reading NovelBins on his phone, wasting time as usual after getting fired from his latest job. Then everything went black, and somehow he had ended up here.
Evan climbed out of bed and shuffled to the mirror. The face in the glass was unmistakably his, yet years younger than the one he knew. His red hair framed black eyes that had lost the dead, exhausted look he'd worn for so long. The gauntness was gone as well. Healthy color warmed his filled-out cheeks, and the dark circles had vanished from beneath his eyes. Years of skipped meals had left his original self thin and frail, but this body carried a modest layer of muscle.
Still half convinced none of this was real, Evan stepped out of the room and found a man in an apron at the stove. He was well over six feet tall, with dark hair, a straight nose, and a defined jaw. His dark gray eyes tilted slightly upward at the corners.
The man glanced up from his cutting board. "Evan? You're awake already? That's rare."
Evan froze, unable to look away from the floating screen that had appeared in front of him.
[Name: Reid Whitfield]
[Age: 25 years old]
[Status: Unawakened]
[Title: The Legendary Demon Hunter, Reincarnator]
His brain rebooted and stalled in a restart loop. What?
None of this could be happening. There was no way he'd suddenly woken up looking seventeen, in someone else's apartment, with a man who knew him and a System window floating before his eyes. Maybe he was hallucinating, or lying in a coma somewhere. Anything made more sense than the one explanation his mind kept landing on.
"Evan?" Reid called. When Evan didn't answer, Reid set the knife down and crossed the room. His hand reached for Evan's shoulder, and that small movement jolted Evan out of his daze.
Evan gave a nervous laugh. "Sorry, I was half asleep! I just had a really weird dream and couldn't tell if I was awake or not!"
"Must have been something strange."
"Very strange! Let me wash up to wake myself up."
Before Reid could say more, Evan hurried into his room and shut himself inside. The moment the latch clicked, he buried his face in the pillow and screamed into it, fists clenched in the fabric as panic caught up with him. He pinched himself again and prayed the sting would pull him out of sleep, yet the pain only anchored him deeper in the nightmare.
If he had been transmigrated, why had he arrived in his own body, still answering to his own name? And then there was the man at the stove, the Legendary Demon Hunter. That title had planted a suspicion in Evan's mind, one he refused to follow any further.
Questions piled on top of each other until a headache began to form. The System screen appeared before him again. This time, instead of displaying Reid's information, it showed his own.
[Name: Evan Whitfield]
[Age: 17 years old]
[Status: Unawakened]
[Title: Transmigrator]
[Status Effect: The Curse of ■■■■■■]
[Skills: -]
The shared surname suggested that Reid and the original Evan were brothers. The age explained the textbooks in the room, and the title "Transmigrator" confirmed what he had been trying not to name. What truly held his attention, however, were two entries: "Unawakened" and "The Curse of ■■■■■■."
Evan knew the term Unawakened well from all the NovelBins and webcomics he had read. It was a common label in action-fantasy stories about hunters and gates, and with a System hovering before him, he half expected to step outside and find a giant gate hanging in the sky.
So this was one of those gate-based worlds, but which one? He had read so many that he could no longer keep their plots straight. Yet none of that mattered as much as the curse glaring back at him.
Who had cursed him, and was the censored name connected to his transmigration? Plenty of protagonists had wretched lives before being swept off to another world, but millions of miserable people walked the earth. He had spent his old life scraping by, no more remarkable than anyone else. He was no obvious "chosen one," so why him?
Evan closed his eyes for a moment. Freaking out would change nothing, and he needed to adapt to whatever came next. He drew in several slow breaths until his racing heart steadied, then faced the System again.
"Inventory," Evan said, testing whether any of the usual features would answer.
The window stayed fixed on his information.
"Bag?"
Nothing.
"Map?"
Silence.
"Quest?"
The screen did not so much as flicker.
"Are you useless?" Evan muttered.
This time, the System responded.
[╭∩╮(￣ヘ￣)╭∩╮]
His eye twitched. "You bastard," he growled, his voice straining against the effort to stay quiet. "So you're one of those sentient Systems, huh? Why did you kidnap me? Let me go back!"
The System kept the same obscene gesture on display.
"I'm serious! I'm not protagonist material! I can't do this!"
His protests did nothing to move it, and the window winked shut.
Knock, knock.
"Evan? Are you okay in there?" Reid asked.
Evan stiffened. "It's nothing! I just stubbed my toe!"
"…Okay. Breakfast will be ready in half an hour, so don't sleep in again."
"Got it!"
Evan dragged a hand down his face and headed for the shower, hoping the cold water would scour the fog from his skull. Icy water ran down his shoulders, stealing the breath from his lungs as it bit into his skin. He forced himself to remain beneath the stream, then turned his thoughts toward the good. The other Evan had lived far better than he ever had, with a comfortable home and a brother who cared for him. Only the fate of their parents remained a mystery. So maybe being transmigrated into this world wasn't so bad after all?
After drying off, he pulled on a hoodie and a pair of loose pants. The cloth was thick and impossibly soft, a comfort his skin hadn't known after years of cheap clothes. A phone rested on the desk, an unfamiliar logo stamped across its back. He didn't recognize the company, and that was another proof that this wasn't the Earth he knew.
He combed through the phone for anything that might explain the original Evan's life. The gallery overflowed with photos of him and Reid together, at restaurant tables and in random selfies, and they looked close in every one.
That could be a problem, since he had no memory that belonged to this body. If the original Evan had other habits, mannerisms, or preferences, Reid would eventually notice that something was off.
Further down, he found an old family photo. A red-haired woman posed beside a dark-haired man in glasses, with a much younger Evan between them. Reid, then a teenager, grinned at the camera next to him.
They looked like a happy family, yet none of the recent photos included their parents. Perhaps they had died, or perhaps something else had happened. Well… that was two fewer people he had to fool.
More knocks sounded from the other side of the door.
"Breakfast is ready!" Reid called.
"Coming!" Evan slipped the phone into his pocket and opened the door. Steam curled from two bowls of egg and tomato noodles, which sat beside a plate of golden scallion pancakes and two glasses of soy milk. The rich scent of sesame oil and simmered tomatoes set his stomach rumbling.
"Smells good," Evan said as he took a seat.
"Hungry?"
"You have no idea." Evan took his first bite and stopped chewing. The noodles were soft and springy, swimming in a light broth that balanced sweet against savory. He was already twirling a second bite onto his chopsticks before he had swallowed the first.
"Slow down. I'm pretty sure you ate plenty last night."
"I'm a growing teen," Evan mumbled around his food.
Reid sighed. "Don't talk with your mouth full. Anyway, you've finished your homework, right? I hope you weren't up all night chatting with your friends."
"I did!" Whether that was true was another matter, but the notebooks lying open on the desk suggested the original Evan had already finished everything.
The brothers kept talking as they finished breakfast. Between sips of soy milk, Evan studied Reid, the so-called Legendary Demon Hunter. Fiction was full of demon hunters, but only one had ever stood out to him, the hero of the story he had been reading right before he woke in this new world.
Reuel.
The protagonist of Chronicles of a Demon Hunter.