Episode 7
Chapter 3: Adaptation (1)
At Yeonghun’s shout, the delinquents gathered at the playground flinched.
There was a killing intent in his words that they could not comprehend.
“Hostiles: five males, three females, one civilian female.”
Yeonghun rolled his eyes, checking the number of delinquents.
None of them looked like they had combat experience, so he wasn’t overly concerned, but this body wasn’t in normal condition either, making an easy victory seem unlikely.
The delinquents looked at one another, at a loss.
They seemed unable to follow the rapidly changing situation.
Huisu, standing beside Yeonghun, was staring at him with wide eyes. Even then, she held fast to her younger sister’s arm.
When the delinquents failed to move, Yeonghun took another step forward.
The blood flowing from Yeonghun’s head was now running past his cheeks and down his neck.
Yeonghun decided to end this quickly. As time passed, the situation grew more unfavorable for him.
“Fuck, look at him getting cocky after landing one lucky hit. I’m gonna take you down and become the leader. What kind of leader gets knocked out by one punch?”
One of them stepped forward. He was a tall, lanky young man with a gloomy face, holding a baseball bat in his hand.
He shouted at the delinquents beside him as he stepped forward.
“Hey, what are you all doing? We gotta take him down together! Hurry up and move!”
At his words, the other men began to move as well. He appeared to be the second-in-command among the delinquents.
But Yeonghun had no intention of standing still to be surrounded. He charged at the shouting man with the baseball bat standing before him.
Startled when Yeonghun charged at him, he swung the bat, but Yeonghun halted his momentum, and the whistled past his nose.
As the bat passed, Yeonghun surged forward, closing the distance.
He tried to reverse the swung bat, but inertia made it difficult to stop a bat once set in motion.
Yeonghun’s fist slammed into his ribs, and breathless, he hunched forward.
Yeonghun drove his knee up into the man’s lowered face. He bounced upward and then collapsed backward. He was down in just two hits.
The bat left his hand and rolled nearby. Yeonghun seized it. Then, out of habit, he brought the bat down on the fallen man’s lower abdomen.
“Urk!”
That was the finish.
It wasn’t a blade, and the sensation was different, but the man wasn’t a contaminated human either, so finishing him off like this seemed appropriate.
The man, struck in the solar plexus by the bat, foamed at the mouth and lost consciousness. He would likely suffer for quite some time.
Yeonghun swung the bat in his hand back and forth and looked at the others.
They all avoided meeting Yeonghun’s gaze. Seeing this, Yeonghun momentarily set aside his plan to take down the rest.
There was no need to escalate matters when he didn’t understand the full situation.
Yeonghun tossed the bat onto the unconscious man and exited the playground. Behind him, people stood blinking.
Huisu watched Yeonghun walk away, speechless.
She couldn’t make sense of what had just happened.
He seemed badly injured, yet he walked away perfectly fine, leaving her unsure of what to say.
But this was their chance. Huisu grabbed her younger sister and slipped through the delinquents. Fortunately, her sister Huiyeong followed along as Huisu pulled her.
The remaining delinquents had no energy to spare for Huisu and Huiyeong. Both their leader and second-in-command had been knocked out. A spring breeze drifted through the delinquents standing there blankly.
***
Yeonghun walked home, puzzled by the part-time worker at the convenience store avoiding his gaze.
His condition wasn’t good, and he was bleeding somewhat, so he figured he needed to treat his wounds and rest.
He cleared his mind of other thoughts and headed home. Fortunately, having walked this path dozens of times through the dimensional connector, finding the house posed no problem.
In the end, Yeonghun managed to enter his home safely. He first searched for a first-aid kit inside.
He remembered seeing one purchased two years ago through the connector. He recalled buying it after joining the company as an office worker and getting injured while learning to operate equipment.
He found the first-aid kit under his desk and took it into the bathroom.
He stripped off his blood-soaked shirt and turned on the bathroom faucet. Then he raised his head and looked into the mirror.
In the mirror stood a large man with a gentle face, covered in blood. Though he had a large frame, his soft flesh was stained red in places.
Yeonghun stared blankly at the man in the mirror. It was the face he had always watched secretly through the dimensional connector.
He gazed at the mirror for a moment, then shook his head.
When faced with incomprehensible circumstances, he had to attend to the task at hand first.
He cleaned himself and began treating his wounds. He checked the medicine in the first-aid kit, applied it to the wounds on his head and body, placed gauze on his head, and wrapped it in bandages.
Fortunately, the head wound wasn’t as large as he’d expected. It seemed he wouldn’t need stitches.
After finishing the treatment, Yeonghun checked his physical condition again.
The medicine seemed effective; it probably wouldn’t take too long to return to normal.
A little thought would tell him it was better to go to the hospital for treatment, but still disoriented, he was simply acting on old habits.
He came out of the bathroom, tossed the first-aid kit aside, and sat on the bed. Then he looked around the room.
A kitchen attached to a single room, and a small bathroom beside it—that was the layout of this studio apartment. The room contained one bed, one wardrobe, a desk with a computer, and a bookshelf.
Suddenly, loneliness washed over him.
The reality of being alone in an unfamiliar world truly sank in. The face of Seonhui floated up in his mind.
A spot in his chest began to ache as if a spike had been driven through it. He clenched his fist until his nails drew blood.
He couldn’t allow himself to be consumed by loneliness.
He forcibly pulled himself up from the bed, approached the desk, and turned on the computer.
It looked far more sophisticated than the last computer he’d used, and the monitor was much larger as well.
His own world had been declining in everything except weapons of war for the past eight years. Computers, as they were called, had nearly vanished a few years back as well.
Since he had watched others use it constantly through the dimensional connector, operating it wasn’t much of a problem.
Only, it was awkward that the world he had watched as if in a dream had become reality.
He first connected to the internet and searched the news.
Information was the priority. To determine his next move, he needed to gather information.
Or rather, to dispel the anxiety of having fallen alone into an unfamiliar world, he continued to move habitually.
The news was nothing but ordinary stories.
Stories about conflicts in some corner of the world, dating rumors about singers, the poor economy, IT companies going bankrupt, and some defense contractor growing tremendously were among the headlines.
Yeonghun stared blankly at the news.
Nowhere were there stories about monsters or superhumans. It was an ordinary, peaceful world like his own from ten years ago.
He minimized the browser and looked at the monitor.
There, he saw a drawing program. Without thinking much, he clicked the icon.
A drawing window appeared on the screen.
Yeonghun, who had been quietly staring at the monitor, smiled bitterly and turned off the computer.
It had already been eight years since he last drew anything.
These days he carved in his spare time, but it was merely a diversion.
Rather, the Yeonghun who had lived here might have been living more diligently than him.
In any case, his current self was nothing more than a weary soldier who had fought monsters for nine years. No, perhaps he was only a soldier’s soul.
Yeonghun lay back down on the bed, lost in thought.
He recalled his last memory before awakening in this body. His final memory was of a gun muzzle spewing fire before his eyes.
He had almost certainly been shot and killed.
Yet when he opened his eyes, it was the other world he had watched through the dimensional connector. And he had become this world’s Yeonghun.
“It’s possible I died and came to the underworld, or that I am this world’s Yeonghun with false memories, or perhaps my soul entered this world’s Yeonghun.”
Yeonghun considered other possibilities but could think no further.
He was utterly exhausted from combat, death, and injury.
He first examined the three possibilities that had occurred to him.
The conclusion was singular. Regardless of the circumstances, his current self was Major Gang Yeonghun.
He tried to confirm his identity and ponder further, but he couldn’t manage it. He slowly sank into slumber.
The image of Seonhui passed through his mind once more.
***
Light began to trickle faintly through the window of the semi-basement room.
Yeonghun’s eyes snapped open.
Unfamiliar with the room’s layout, he immediately sat up and grimaced at the pain radiating throughout his body. Thanks to the pain, he remembered what had happened yesterday.
He sat on the bed and looked around. In the still-dark room, the digital clock on the desk displayed the time.
5 AM.
He appeared to have slept for almost eighteen hours.
It had already been about that long since he had occupied this body. But the original owner of this body was nowhere to be found.
As if he had always been the original owner, he could not sense the spirit or soul of this world’s Yeonghun anywhere in this body or mind.
“Did he die?”
When he was last ejected from the dimensional connector, his mind might have collapsed.
But he might be dormant deep within the mind, or perhaps he had pushed out the original owner and taken over.
While lying down, Yeonghun searched for the dimensional power that had once moved deep within his body. But he felt nothing.
As expected, he had become an ordinary person.
He got up and moved his body bit by bit.
His body felt much better than yesterday. The head wound didn’t seem to have reopened either.
*Gurgle.*
A signal of hunger rang out from his stomach as he stretched.
After all, it was only natural to be hungry since he had eaten yesterday morning and hadn’t had a meal since.
Yeonghun smiled bitterly. He had fallen into an unfamiliar world, but in the end, a person still had to live.
He slapped his face with both hands and went to wash up.
It seemed he needed to go out first to eat and exercise. Fortunately, today was Sunday, so he would have enough time to move around.
Yeonghun decided to focus on surviving first. And then he would resolve things one by one.
Since he had somehow survived again, he had to do his utmost to stay alive until he could meet her again.
***
By the time Yeonghun went out after a quick breakfast of instant noodles from home, it was nearly 7 AM.
When he emerged into the alley in workout clothes, wearing a beanie over his bandaged head, only the warm morning sunlight greeted him.
Though there were rarely people here at other times, on Sunday mornings this alley was truly deserted.
Well, when he had watched furtively through the dimensional connector, the original owner had only been sleeping, so he was in no position to judge others.
As Yeonghun walked down the quiet alley, passing the playground where yesterday’s fight had taken place, he frowned upon seeing a man blocking his path.
“Let’s go again! I got distracted yesterday, but a punk like you is no match for me!”
It was the leader of the delinquents who had been knocked out by Yeonghun’s single punch yesterday. He seemed to have come for revenge.
Yeonghun looked around.
Yesterday he had been disoriented and in too much pain to check his surroundings. From what he had experienced through the dimensional connector, he had heard that CCTV was installed everywhere in this world, so he needed to check.
By Yeonghun’s estimation, since this was a gathering spot for delinquents, there was a high probability it was a CCTV blind spot.
And his guess seemed correct. No CCTV was visible in the vicinity.
“Hmph! Running won’t do you any good! If you run, I’ll wait for you tomorrow too. You’ll get caught eventually.”
Yeonghun smiled bitterly at that.
The man seemed to have misunderstood Yeonghun’s looking around. Judging by his words, he seemed like a very simple man.
Then Yeonghun lowered his stance and dashed forward.
Seeing that, the big guy lowered his stance too. In his eyes blazed a fiery determination to not be taken down so easily this time.
Yeonghun lowered his stance even further and reached down to snatch up a large stone lying in the street.
And he hurled it at the big guy!
Startled by the rock flying at his face, the big guy covered his face with both arms, and the stone struck them.
“Ack!”
Enraged by the pain and the sudden attack, the big guy lowered his arms, and there was Yeonghun right in front of him.
Yeonghun, still charging, threw a punch straight into the big guy’s face as he lowered his arms.
Bam!
The fist landed squarely on his face, and the punch, backed by charging momentum and body weight, knocked the big guy flat. Once again out of luck, the big guy’s consciousness fled from Yeonghun’s blow, and he lost consciousness as he collapsed to the ground.
Yeonghun raised his leg toward the collapsed, unconscious man. He intended to finish him off.
But holding his leg raised, he thought for a moment, then lowered the leg he had raised to stomp the man’s face. He changed his mind.
The big guy was the perfect training partner.
He seemed stubborn as well, so it seemed better not to injure him unnecessarily and have him keep coming back.
Yeonghun left the big guy lying on the ground and began jogging slowly down the road.