“Ooga,” I’d said, meaning it as a joke, but the other party’s expression was not good. Honestly, to me—whose situation was no different from the world collapsing—the party that had entered the Gate like a welcome shower of rain(?) felt like benefactors I couldn’t thank enough even if I paid a fortune. The problem was that they were currently looking at me not as a human, but as a monster.
A five-person party surrounded me, weapons drawn, their faces taut with tension.
It was an incomprehensible situation, but if I just stood there like an idiot, I was going to get attacked. I shouted urgently.
“I’m human!!”
The five flinched. Then one of them shouted at me.
“A doppelgänger?!”
A damn doppelgänger, he said. Usually, a doppelgänger transformed into the appearance of the first person it encountered. But the first person who’d encountered me was the woman who had asked me, “A primitive man?”
“I said I’m human!!”
But none of them seemed to believe me.
“We’ll know once we kill it.”
“What do you mean, kill me! I’m human. Human! I’m telling you, I’m human!”
I shouted desperately to appeal to the people surrounding me. But none of them looked convinced. No, rather, seeing their expressions sink even deeper into the swamp of distrust, I hurriedly plopped down on the ground, got on my knees, raised both arms, and shouted.
“I surrender! I really am human!”
Only then did the five-person party look at me with expressions of confusion. Among them, the woman facing me began to slowly approach, when one of the party members called out.
“Miss Jea, it might be dangerous!”
Miss Jea turned back to look at that party member. Thinking that opening my mouth here might actually have the opposite effect, I stayed silent and made my eyes shine.
Sparkling gaze, fire! Anyway, perhaps sensing my will, Miss Jea slowly approached me, stopped a couple of steps away, and asked.
“Why are you in the Gate? No, how can you be here?”
“I was abandoned! And I’ve barely survived by eating those things!”
I said that while looking at the few Tyrons remaining far off in the distance. I hadn’t been here all that long, but I’d had to hunt Tyrons every time. The reason was nothing special.
It was because the meat of the Tyrons I hunted spoiled far faster than expected, though I didn’t know why. In any case, their freshness went to hell so quickly that one kill was only enough for about one or two meals.
Thanks to that abysmal freshness, I could understand why Tyron meat wasn’t circulating on Earth. Honestly, just as I was looking at the few remaining Tyrons and despairing that I’d soon starve to death, my saviors had appeared.
“Indeed...”
The woman looked around at the Tyron corpses scattered everywhere, then at the piles of hides and bones I had butchered out because I thought it would be a waste. She looked at me with great pity and asked.
“What a relief. You were lucky.”
“I can only thank you!”
Since they were a party no different from benefactors, I spoke boldly.
“You can take all of that. In exchange, just let me pass through to Earth!”
Strictly speaking, I could shove them aside and go to Earth anyway, but I felt that if I did that, things might go badly in all sorts of ways. So I was putting on this little performance. In any case, it was certain that the rosy dawn of my life was descending upon me.
With the tremendous amount of gold, silver, and treasure stored in my collection, and if I made good use of the red Gate, I spread my wings of imagination, thinking I could live in luxury that would put an emperor to shame. Just as I was grinning broadly, one of the other party members who had been watching me closely—the guy who had stopped Miss Jea—hurried over and pulled Miss Jea back.
“Why?”
“His condition is strange!”
At those words, I hurriedly straightened my expression and said, as if to deny it.
“I just got carried away imagining that I could go to Earth. I’m sorry!”
Hearing me, they looked dumbfounded. Yes, this was a feeling that those who had never suffered under the pressure of being trapped and starving to death could not understand.
Moreover, if even the Tyrons hadn’t been here, I would have definitely starved to death long ago. Almost all the plants growing in the Gate were highly poisonous.
If you ate the wrong thing, you’d have three nights and four days of diarrhea, six nights and seven days of lethargy, and by nine nights and ten days you’d be done for.
In other words, you’d simply die neatly after losing all your strength from diarrhea.
“For now... let’s return to Earth.”
At Miss Jea’s words, the other party members looked at me with dissatisfaction, but they, too, seemed to realize that since something unbelievable had become reality, this was no time to keep hunting.
They huddled closer together and muttered among themselves for a while. Then Miss Jea approached me and said.
“We’re returning. Come with us. However, we’ll check your identity first. What are your name and age?”
“Isan, in the bloom of youth at twenty-one!”
At my words, she nodded in understanding, then came a little closer and held out a mirror.
“What is that?”
“For identity verification...”
Miss Jea trailed off and frowned slightly. Yes, the smell coming from me—I hated it too. So with a slightly apologetic expression, I pressed my fingertip to the mirror, then inched backward. Miss Jea said a word.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Miss Jea had caught her own mistake. Yes, I liked how modest she was. And so I watched my benefactor, Miss Jea, leave the Gate alone. As for the remaining party members, they guarded the area around me, looked at the mountain-like piles of Tyron remains, whispered among themselves, and then one woman looked at me and asked.
“Are you really okay with giving all of that to us? There’s quite a lot.”
I actually knew that Tyron bones were used in various fields as well. Along with the hides, they could be considered quite valuable. Since I said I would give them all that enormous quantity of bones, she seemed a little bewildered.
But I spoke sincerely.
“I don’t need them. I’m sick of anything Tyron now.”
The woman nodded, then asked with a curious expression.
“But you must be very strong.”
“...Pardon? Why?”
“To be able to hunt that many alone. I thought it might be because you’re strong.”
Yes, that was something anyone would naturally think, and it was a question that had to be asked. So I spoke proudly.
“I’m pretty strong. I was lucky enough to become one of the ‘New Humanity’ here.”
But at my words, the woman tilted her head and said, “New Humanity?” I should have felt something out of place at her reaction, but soon the woman asked me with an indifferent face.
“Then did you enter the Gate as a ‘porter’?”
Porter was an unfamiliar word. Then I recalled that in the early days of the Great Upheaval, the people who followed the New Humanity around to assist them had been called porters. Thinking she was using a rather old-fashioned expression, I nodded.
Because “ants” were, in reality, porters and general laborers. At my words, the party members began to look intrigued.
“The prevailing theory is that porters usually don’t ‘awaken.’ How curious.”
At the words of the guy who kept taking Miss Jea away, I was thinking that the word “awaken” sounded a little unfamiliar, when Miss Jea came back through the Gate with a grave expression and called the party members over. Then they talked among themselves, and seeing them all glance at me, I had a sneaking suspicion that something had gone wrong.
It was intuition. Exactly that. A warning bell rang in my mind, an echo going ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling in my head, telling me to hurry up and run. I quietly began to rise from my seat, but Miss Jea looked at me and asked.
“Isan, who are you?”
“...Pardon?”
“Even when we check your identity, nothing comes up. The same goes for your fingerprint.”
They began to be wary of me again, so I shouted urgently.
“I might have been reported dead! That could be why nothing shows up!”
“No, just in case, I checked the deceased identity records as well, but...”
She trailed off and quietly placed her hand on the hilt of her sword. I was so dizzy, wondering what on earth was going on, that I couldn’t come up with any excuses. Just then, someone came through the Gate.
“Wait a moment!!”
Thinking perhaps things might work out somehow, I watched tensely as the newly appeared person made contact with the five-person party. An argument went back and forth. Then Miss Jea approached me with an expression of incomprehension and said.
“They say that even when they check your identity with a genetic sample, there’s no registration information on who you are. However, since it has been confirmed that you are human... for now, you’ve been permitted entry under temporary residency status, so... let’s go.”
I was on the verge of becoming some strange person with no home and no status. I was dissatisfied, but that didn’t mean I had a reason to refuse. Just as I nodded vigorously and followed Miss Jea, the other party members approached and flinched.
Yes, I understood that I smelled. In the end, no one opened their mouths, and we had to pass through the Gate. The problem was that the moment I crossed the Gate, I sensed something strange.
The scenery was different.
“...Hmm.”
Everyone was dressed like they were in a historical drama set in the Joseon Dynasty, so I wondered if it was some kind of theme. Besides, with the identity checks and all, I thought everyone was really committed to the concept. The problem was that they were all wearing historical-drama-style clothes.
From people walking around in durumagi and gat, to people wearing convenient-looking outfits like modernized hanbok, I thought the variety of clothing was truly something.
Moreover, the architecture visible far away outside the window looked like it had a lot of issues as well, but fortunately, the people passing by were holding phones and busily searching for something.
On top of that, the home appliances had a thoroughly futuristic feel I had never seen before, so I wondered if this was perhaps some kind of event-style “Gate Tunnel” set up in Gyeongju or somewhere like that.
At that moment, a man who seemed to be an employee of the New Humanity Association handed me a card.
“This is a temporary ID. Its expiration date is one month. Within that month, you may obtain a license that allows your domestic identity to be recognized, or if not that, you may obtain asylum, citizenship, permanent residency, and so on.”
“Um, I’m not a foreigner, though?”
“....”
The employee who had been guiding me carefully pulled me aside, creating distance between us and the five-person party, then began to speak.
“From time to time, unknown individuals appear from inside Gates. And most of them say that they are people of the ‘Republic of Korea.’ Is that correct?”
I nodded vigorously. I was indeed a citizen of the “Republic of Korea.” But if he was saying it like this, then why?
In that instant, my mind began to spin fiercely. And as I looked around, I became certain that something was wrong. Watching my expression change from moment to moment, the employee said.
“This is not the nation called the Republic of Korea that you know. This is the ‘Korean Empire.’”
“...Pardon?”
I wondered what I had just heard. Yes, I’d heard the “Korean ___” part correctly. But realizing that the word in the middle was not the one I knew, I soon turned pale and asked a question.
“Then... after Emperor Gojong, how many generations of kings have there been...?”
“The fourth emperor, His Majesty Emperor Hyeonjo, I Sang, is currently on the throne.”
Seeing that the posthumous title had “jo” attached, he seemed to be an emperor of considerable ability. What great deed had he accomplished for “jo” to be attached?
I was curious, but that didn’t mean I had time to obsess over it right now. If this place was the Korean Empire, then the real-life utopia I had dreamed of was as good as gone.
Because it would be a world where scholar-officials and nobles ran rampant. But the strange thing was that he had mentioned citizenship and permanent residency. Just as I was about to ask about that part, Miss Jea approached and asked the employee.
“We’ve handed him over, so can we leave now?”
“Yes, you may leave. I’m only grateful that you took time out of your busy schedule.”
Saying she understood, Miss Jea left me with only the words “It was nice meeting you,” then hurriedly disappeared with her party members. I felt a little regretful, but they were people who had to live their own lives, so I didn’t stop them. Besides, I was already too busy and too overwhelmed trying to overcome the trial that had befallen me...