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Chapter 05
Crunch, crunch.
“Is it good, Mimi?”
Crunch, crunch.
“Sorry dinner’s late. You won’t believe it, but I seriously almost died and came back to life.”
Mimi, who had her nose buried in the food bowl as she ate, lifted her head slightly and looked at me.
Her eyes somehow looked like she didn’t believe me.
“I’m serious. Look at my knee—blood was gushing out.”
Crunch, crunch.
“…Fine. Eat up.”
Using the sound of Mimi eating as background music, I took out the phone that had been in my pocket.
Tap, tap.
Even though I knew that ordinary electronic devices stop working if you fall into a gate, I still poked at it pointlessly once.
As expected, nothing happened.
I tossed the phone far away and picked up my laptop instead.
I immediately logged into Hunter NewTube and the hunter community.
Just as expected, people everywhere were talking about the sudden gates that had occurred a few hours earlier.
After reading a few posts, my mouth fell open.
“Eleven of those stupid gates in Seoul alone…? And they appeared in capitals all over the world? Guess the world’s finally ending.”
As I skimmed through the posts, I spotted one with especially high views and comments. Judging by the nickname, it had been posted by an anonymous member.
[HOT! Looking for the Hero of the Mapo District Gate.]
The Mapo District gate was the one I had fallen into.
With a no way feeling in my chest, I clicked the post.
Did you guys know only ONE person got sucked into the Mapo gate??
I checked other gates and usually at least several thousand people get pulled in.
Mapo only had one casualty, and it’s because of this woman.
(Photo)
She suddenly drifted into the intersection and yelled that a gate was about to appear and told everyone to run.
So I was like wtf? lol and was just gonna pass by, but legit, the gate opened EXACTLY where she told us to run from;; does that even make sense?
And she saved a grandma who was about to cross the crosswalk, then fell into the gate herself instead…
The moment she fell in, gate alarms started going off everywhere, it was insane…… total chills.
With trembling fingers, I kept zooming in on the attached photo.
“Hahaha… that’s me….”
Exactly the clothes I was wearing right now…
That’s me… it’s me….
I quietly clapped a hand over my mouth.
The thing I had feared had happened.
Of course, even if I could turn back time, I would have done the same thing…
Still, having all this attention focused on me was terrifying. I realized I had ruined my perfectly ordinary daily life with my own hands.
On top of that, the post I was reading was racking up views and comments in real time.
└ LOL you predicted a gate? LOL
└ Gate prediction tech hasn’t even been developed yet LOL
└ Passing hunter association employee here. If she really predicted a gate, we HAVE to find her and bring her in;
└ I saw it too, she seriously acted like she knew the exact time the gate would appear
└ She deserves a civic award at least
└ Gate prediction my ass LOL even Ed-hyung can’t do that
└ Anyone else smell burning self-promo here?
“Aaagh…!”
I zoomed the photo to the maximum. Thankfully, because I was wearing a mask and a hat, my face wasn’t exposed.
Still, I couldn’t let my guard down. There had been far too many people at the scene.
If a hunter association employee really found me, what would happen to me?
Would they threaten me, asking how I predicted the gate, and conduct horrific experiments to commercialize the prediction technology…?
“Please, anything but that….”
When I clicked my photo again, a message popped up saying the post had been deleted.
“Phew, thank goodness.”
Thinking the author must have deleted it, I sighed in relief, closed the community window, and checked the news.
“Huh?”
This time, a headline dominating the news tab caught my attention.
It said that Hunter Kang Jinseo had closed all maze-type gates, including the one in Mapo District.
“What on earth happened?”
I knew that Senior Jinseo had entered the same gate as me. His mana flow was so intense that I could recognize it immediately even from far away.
It had been like that since the training institute days. His mana was so hot and massive that whenever he, a first-year senior, merely entered the institute building, my skin would start prickling all over.
But I definitely saw a message telling me I would receive the clear reward… wait a second.
“No—actually, isn’t this better for me?”
Rather than being cursed out by the entire world for scamming them by claiming I awakened with nonexistent stats like sight, hearing, and smell, it was far better for me if it was reported that a senior cleared it.
The post was deleted too—at this point, I just hoped that my very existence would get buried like this. Please…!
“Still, Senior Jinseo is seriously amazing. He closed all ten Seoul gates by himself in that short time?”
“This gate’s structure is such that clearing just one clears them all. Same for other countries.”
“What? I’ve never heard of a gate like tha—.”
Wait a minute.
Who am I talking to…?
Inside the dark shop, an eerie blue light leaked from the laptop.
…and sitting next to me since earlier, a single black cat.
“E—Eeeek!”
Instinctively, I grabbed the nearest vase and aimed it at Mimi—no, at something in the shape of a cat.
“Y-you, what are you?!”
“A cat. Mimi.”
“Don’t talk bullshit! What did you do to Mimi?!”
Slurp, lick.
The monster occupying Mimi’s body licked its black, cottony paw and turned its vertically slit yellow pupils toward me.
“‘Miyaaah,’ you said it cried, and that’s the name you gave me, remember?”
Crazy! Why is a mimic (a monster that uses camouflage) here?!
“M-mimic… what was the method to get rid of a mimic again?”
Even though it had been a long time since I graduated from the hunter training institute, I usually remembered things as clearly as if I’d studied them yesterday—but maybe because I was panicking, I couldn’t remember a single thing.
“Do not compare me to something as lowly as a mimic.”
“Then what are you?!”
“I am your benefactor—the one who chose you.”
The mimic shifted its posture and began licking its side this time.
“Who do you think pulled you out of the maze and awakened you? Tsk. It was me.”
“So what, are you saying you’re like my status window or something?”
“You could say that.”
I frowned deeply.
What on earth was I even doing, having a conversation with a mimic?
Just as I was about to shout again for it to stop talking nonsense and get out of Mimi’s body, something suddenly occurred to me.
…the two cat ears attached to the top of the status window.
And the thing claiming to be my status window had the exact same ears.
“…No way.”
Contrary to my belief that something like that was impossible, my mouth moved on its own.
“Can you… prove it?”
Ding—!
^[Title Acquired: Incarnation of Distrust]^
^[Title Acquired: One Who Knows Not Gratitude!]^
Seeing the status window flashing before my eyes, I had no choice but to slowly lower the vase in my hand.
“Then what happened to the real Mimi…?”
Through repeated conversations afterward, I learned that the true identity of the Mimi I had been feeding and doting on all this time was also this thing.
“…It feels like my entire world is being denied, you know?”
“Like I care.”
“Hah… then what is it that you want from me?”
I sat there blankly with a dazed expression, unable to do anything.
The bitterness wouldn’t fade, knowing that the cat I’d grown attached to over several years was actually some unknown existence.
“Tsk.”
“Don’t belittle the heart of a human who lost the only being they were attached to overnight.”
“Fine.”
Only then did Mimi withdraw its cold gaze from me.
“To sum it up, you were searching for a suitable person to give your power to, and I happened to be perfect?”
“Consistent volunteer work, a decent job, a high level of understanding of hunters, and a self-sacrificing mindset, among other things.”
“……”
“Especially the tearful spectacle you put on at that intersection moved my heart.”
“A spectacle? My noble sacrifice—!”
“Anyway, now you just need to use my power to help other people.”
“And if I refuse?”
“As if. You like helping others, don’t you? And you were sad that you couldn’t awaken, weren’t you?”
“I was sad because I couldn’t make money. But I originally hate gates and hunters.”
“Hm?”
“If those gate things never existed, I wouldn’t have become an orphan, I wouldn’t have developed some oversensitivity disorder, and I wouldn’t be suffering from every smell and noise in this world—”
As I fired off words like a machine gun, I suddenly stopped.
“Huh…?”
Because the entire world felt quiet.
The nerve-grating noise of cars speeding past the road in front of the shop, the foul smell from the garbage dump across the street, the blinding light of the streetlamps—none of it felt overwhelming anymore.
Not even when I’d swallowed handfuls of prescribed pills had I ever felt this calm.
I froze in place. The silence enveloping me felt far too unfamiliar.
“It’s the effect of awakening. You know that hunters can freely adjust their sensitive senses, don’t you?”
That strange smile on the cat’s face seemed to say that I wouldn’t be able to reject it.
“If you give up my power, you’ll have to live in that noisy hell again. For the rest of your life.”
“Hell…”
That word was no exaggeration at all.
I had lived while suffering from such severe sensations that it felt like I couldn’t survive even a single day without medication.
“Aren’t the meds expensive too? And as your oversensitivity gets worse, you can’t even keep your shop open for long.”
“……”
“You want to pay back the debt you owe to that person called Nara unni as soon as possible, but after paying for medicine and rent, you have nothing left—you were even muttering about it in your sleep, weren’t you?”
Nothing the cat said was wrong. That was why I couldn’t refute it.
Perhaps thinking that my silence meant I was still hesitating, Mimi continued with something that was more pressure than a threat.
“Oh, I almost forgot something important.”
Shk!
The cat raised its front paw, extended a single claw, and explained.
“One bottle of oil is 100 coins. One massage is 1,000 coins. That’s the income you can earn with your class and skills.”
“…?”
“For reference, 100 coins equals one million won in Korean currency.”
The cat’s expression was clearly saying:
‘You can’t refuse this, right? lol’
