xxxx, x xx
Tomorrow, at long last, I’m discharged. This fucking army isn’t worth shit.
Anyway, I was worried he wouldn’t pick up, but fortunately, I managed to get in touch with Hyungnim. I thought he might talk nonsense and run off after getting discharged first, or just ignore me, but he remembered our promise. All that time chasing after him and sucking up paid off.
It’ll take time to start from the bottom and climb to a rank where I can handle guns, but that’s fine. As long as I have hope that I’ll be able to do it someday, I can endure.
Where else would I ever get to touch guns if not for something like this? The army? Ha... Even if I put up with this shitty place, how much would I really get to handle a gun? I want to shoot guns, not waste time on useless training.
I still remember my first live-fire drill. I can’t forget it. That blissful sensation.
Haaah... Even as I’m scribbling this, I want to hold a gun in my hands already. I want to try shooting at a person!
When will I be able to? I hope that day comes as soon as possible.
“...Is this bastard insane? He’s saying he wanted to shoot people from the moment he first picked up a gun.”
It was truly the diary of a chilling psychopath. But what chilled Uju more than the contents of the diary was the handwriting. This distinctive, limp scrawl was unmistakably his—Lee Uju’s—handwriting.
But, quite naturally, he had never written anything like this. He had not even been to the army. After the concepts of Gates and Hunters appeared, the average age for men to enlist had long since shifted to twenty-eight.
Hunter Awakenings usually occurred between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, and Hunters were exempt from military service. However, cases of people Awakening even at thirty had belatedly become known from time to time, and more people began to postpone enlistment little by little, until that culture took root.
Uju, too, had not Awakened during his school years, but with a faint hope that he still might, he had not gone to the army even at twenty-three—and he had indeed Awakened.
And yet here was his own handwriting, saying he had gone to the army, that shooting a gun felt so good he wanted to shoot people, and going on about some Hyungnim who had been discharged before him... Judging by the year on the first page, it even looked like he had enlisted at twenty. In other words, he had gone to the army as soon as he left the orphanage.
“Haa...”
Faced with a phenomenon he simply could not understand, he let out a short sigh and decided to keep reading for now.
xxxx, x xx
Three days after joining the organization, I was sent into my first real fight. I could have gotten out of it if I wanted, but I said I’d do it. I did join at the very bottom, but since I came in like a parachute hire through Hyungnim’s connections, they didn’t treat me very well, so I had to show them something.
And fortunately, I succeeded in showing them something. I got hurt, but not badly enough to be hospitalized, and I took down five people by myself. My reputation around here is good.
xxxx, xx xx
A few months have passed since then, but it’s just the same old routine. I’m bored.
xxxx, xx x
Bored.
xxxx, xx xx
Should I just steal a gun and run?
xxxx, x x
I finally shot a gun!!!!
There was a fight between organizations after a long time, and one of the executives got shot first and died, dropping his gun. So I snatched it up and blasted away at everyone! Krrgh...! The sharp recoil against the tiny movement of one finger, the lives of people dropping one after another! It really was the best!
xxxx, x x
They suddenly handed me a gun, and my treatment shot up to that of a semi-executive. Killing everyone with a gun last time must have left quite an impression. For reference, they tested me once more to see if it had been a coincidence. The result, surprisingly, was excellent. I didn’t know it, but it seems I have an innate talent for shooting. Wasn’t there a saying that no one can beat someone who enjoys what they do? Even during the test firing, while it naturally couldn’t compare to shooting people, I still thought shooting a gun felt incredibly good, so maybe that mindset came through.
xxxx, x xx
I was praised for wiping out a hostile organization without major losses thanks to my shooting.
Honestly, I don’t care about that shit. If I did well, they should hand over some money. And a route to buy more guns too. Pistols aren’t bad, but... I really want to use a long, big, hard, magnificent gun that I can shoulder and fire.
Is there no one in Korea selling that kind of thing? Ha... You’d think there’d be at least one psycho stealing and selling military supplies or export goods somewhere.
xxxx, x x
My personal gun collection has grown. Half of it was collected behind the organization’s back, though. Hehe... Just looking at them makes me happy.
xxxx, xx x
The organization collapsed. What do I do now? I ran away with my guns like my life depended on it, but... I don’t want to go back to a life where I can’t shoot guns. Should I join another organization or something?
xxxx, xx xx
When I told the broker this might be the last time because I had no money, he said I might as well try assassinating someone with that gun, so I actually did. It wasn’t particularly difficult. I just attached a suppressor to the pistol I’d brought out and shot from a building rooftop. The fun of it was inversely proportional to the difficulty, though.
Still, pistols really do have a disappointingly tight effective range. With the money I got this time, I should buy a better gun.
“...”
Uju decided to stop reading. After skimming ahead a little, the rest was nothing but things like what gun he used to kill which target and what gun he bought after earning money. And as he read, something began to feel off, making it impossible to stay still.
The diary clearly said he had made a fortune as a contract killer. But wasn’t it strange for him to be living in a single-room apartment like this?
Was it because the bastard was gun-crazy and invested everything into guns? That made no sense either. In that case, it would mean he had stored all those many guns in this one room, which was physically impossible. Unless there was an entire basement level, that was.
But with a floor storage compartment like that, it did not seem likely there was a basement. And saying he had hollowed out the walls to store them was also dubious, because the rooms next door would find out. As was common with cheap single-room apartments, the walls were thin and soundproofing between rooms was poor. They would be too thin to carve out and store guns in.
“Ah, fuck!”
The moment Uju thought of soundproofing, he became frantic. He remembered the unexpectedly loud sound that had rung out when he fired the gun just now. His memory was vague, but he was certain the bastard next door had been a son of a bitch on par with the landlord. He had probably been studying for the civil service exam or something.
After hearing that gunshot, he would surely be throwing a fit by himself about having his studying interrupted. If Uju did not go and apologize, there was no telling what kind of shit he might pull later.
“Ugh...!”
He hurriedly shoved the diary back in, then fumbled around trying to close the storage compartment, but when he simply could not figure it out, he covered it roughly with a blanket and came out. Then he quietly knocked on the room next door.
Knock, knock.
“...”
Knock, knock.
Uju felt something was strange. He had knocked twice, yet there was no response at all, which was impossible according to his memory.
In his memory, the guy next door was a bastard who acted all self-important about studying, never went out, and raised hell over the slightest noise. Yet it was far too strange that he had not reacted when Uju fired the gun, and now had no reaction even after two knocks.
Creeeak.
Feeling uneasy, Uju quietly opened the door, and it opened very easily.
And there was no one inside the room.
“Holy shit...”
If that had been all, he could have brushed it off with, So that bastard does go out sometimes~ What an idiot, leaving his door unlocked~ But this was not it. Anyone would think something was terribly wrong after seeing the inside of the room, with no desk for studying, no books, and no bedding for sleeping.
There was another peculiar thing as well. It was clearly an empty room with no trace that anyone had lived there, and yet there was not much dust, leaving the impression that someone had continued going in and out of the room.
Curiosity overcame Uju’s sense of eeriness, and he carefully stepped only on the dust-free spots as he slowly entered the room.
And once again, click.
Whirrrr.
With a mechanical sound, a display case rose up from the floor. Inside the long case was a sniper rifle.
“...Motherfuckinggoddamnsonofabitch?!”
After staring at it for a moment in utter disbelief, he spat out every curse imaginable and bolted out of the room. Then he began searching through all the other rooms.
“Rifles, submachine guns, even bombs...!”
The result was exactly as expected... no, it went even further than expected. He had searched thinking there might be one type of gun in each room, but it had surpassed that. Grenades and flashbangs—why on earth would he need things like that for assassinations?
“Ha... hahaha...”
And the fact that no one came out even as he ran noisily around the building meant that Uju seemed to be living here alone. He had wondered where all the money had gone, and it turned out he had bought a cheap building and remodeled it so he could store guns in style.
“What the hell is this...”
Uju clutched his head and sank down onto the floor. This bizarre situation made his head hurt terribly.
He had thought he had returned to the past, but had he actually developed a mental illness that made him believe that? But even if it was mental illness, wasn’t it too strange that he could not do a single thing he had done before? It was also strange that his personality was based on future memories, as if he had become another person.
Or had he really returned to the past, but the past had changed? That was strange in its own way. He did not even know why he had returned to the past, and yet the past before that had completely changed?
“...That’s right, Hunter! Status Window!!”
Only belatedly remembering the Status Window, he shouted. But although, by the date, he should have already Awakened, nothing happened when he shouted for the Status Window. After shouting a few more times, he hurriedly returned to his original room, picked up his phone, opened an internet browser, and searched.
The keywords were Gates, Hunters, guilds, and everything else related to Hunters.
But only things like games and novels appeared in the results. There was not a single thing about real Hunters or Gates.
“...The Gate Incident never happened.”
More than anything, no matter how hard he searched, he could not find anything about the first Gate, the first A-rank Gate, and the first Gate Break—the worst incident in history, which had driven Europe to the brink of collapse. He could find nothing about the Gate Incident.
“A world without Gates and without Hunters...?”
Something was very, very wrong.
Uju barely managed to grasp that truth.