A dark evening, and the sound of a car outside.
I had been lying in bed, trying to get some sleep, when the door opened and someone came right in.
*Thud—*
"Hey, I Suhan! Wake up!"
The guy who entered my room was Gim Hayun, both a friend and family to me.
For whatever reason, the moment he came in, he grabbed me and started forcing me awake.
"It's not even eight o'clock yet. Why are you already asleep! Hurry up and get up, you!"
With no other choice, I rubbed my sleepy eyes and sat up, and Hayun took my hand and dragged me out of the room.
I asked in a hoarse voice if something serious had happened, but Hayun just insisted it was urgent and pulled me toward the living room.
And the moment I opened the door to the living room, the other kids who had been waiting for me set off party poppers and wished me a happy birthday.
"...Is it my birthday today?"
"Hey, do you even know what month and day it is today?"
When I checked the date, I realized that it was indeed my birthday.
"Soohan, you have to accept your birthday wishes. You're seventeen now."
With a warm smile, she pushed a cake with candles toward me, and looking at those candles, I fell into a brief recollection of the past.
For some reason, most of my memories wouldn't surface, but I, abandoned by my parents, had grown up in an orphanage, enduring all sorts of bullying and violence there.
Then one night, unable to bear it any longer, I secretly slipped out of the orphanage and wandered from place to place until I happened to meet the teacher and came to this shelter.
*Whew.*
Finishing that brief recollection, I blew out the flames, and the sound of my friends' applause filled the air.
We had definitely been awkward when we first met, but now we looked after one another.
Living under the same roof, we were no different from family.
"Happy birthday. It's already been six years since I met you."
Hayun is a guy with an eternally cheerful disposition. He has great stamina and exercises often, and whenever he's bored, he pesters me to play games with him.
"Hey, by the way, what's going on with your ability?"
A superhuman appears in only one out of ten thousand people. I was born a superhuman, yet I still couldn't use my ability.
"When the hell is your power going to manifest? I'm dying of curiosity wondering what you'll be able to do."
Superhumans generally begin manifesting their powers and become able to use their abilities around the age of seven or eight.
But even now, at seventeen, my manifestation hadn't occurred, and to this day, I had no idea what power I held.
To describe my current situation, it was the so-called "incomplete superhuman." An incomplete superhuman refers to someone who is unable to freely control their ability, or someone whose power manifests late, like me.
"Well, at least your body's sturdy, so that's a relief. Superhumans are all ridiculously strong, after all."
If there was one advantage, it was that my physical abilities were far superior to those of ordinary people.
"Soohan, let's arm-wrestle."
"Again? I think this is like the tenth time."
"I have to keep challenging you until I win."
He looked confident, claiming he'd been working hard on his arms, but I could already see the obvious outcome.
"Ready... Start!"
*Hup...!*
At the starting signal, Hayun poured every ounce of muscle into a single burst of strength, but my arm didn't budge even slightly, as if it had been fixed in place.
*Krrgh...!!!*
If I didn't control my strength, a terrible accident could occur and his bones might fracture, so I started naturally tilting my arm while keeping it within a range that wouldn't hurt him.
Of course, Hayun tried to endure with an expression that said he would never give up, but eventually the back of his hand touched the ground.
"Agh... I still can't win even after working out. As expected, beating a superhuman is impossible."
And so I enjoyed the rest of the birthday party, savoring a moment of happiness after so long.
As bedtime gradually drew near, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought.
When on earth would my power manifest, and what would its true nature be? For now, the reality was that I simply didn't know.
***
The next day. Dazzling sunlight streamed through the window.
"Mmm... Is it morning? The time... Ah, it's already noon."
Having overslept yet again, I headed to the kitchen to eat my first meal of the day.
Just as I was wondering what to eat, I found a carefully prepared meal and a note on the table.
[Soohan, I set out some food for you, so don't just fill up on cereal. Eat properly.]
"Minjeong."
The one who had prepared the food for me was a friend of the opposite sex named Seo Minjeong.
Her cooking skills were so outstanding that even the teacher praised her, and on the rare days when Minjeong donned an apron, we would all sit at the table and quietly wait for her dishes.
She simply followed recipes she found on the internet, yet the food on the plates was always the very essence of perfection, as if prepared by a hotel chef or a veteran cook.
"Phew~ That hit the spot. She must have been busy heading to school in the morning. I'll have to make sure to thank her tonight."
After that hearty breakfast, I cleaned up neatly afterward, and as usual, I rolled up my sleeves to cover for the teacher and began doing household chores.
"That brat Gim Hayun, how many times have I told him to stop leaving his socks inside out..."
I turned the socks right side out and tossed them into the washing machine, started the laundry, opened all the windows, and began vacuuming.
*Vrooooom—*
This place was one of the shelters affiliated with the Cheongmyeong Foundation, and seven teenagers including me lived here.
It was a place managed solely by Teacher Jeong Harim, so it wasn't very large in scale, but to us, it was a precious nest.
*Thud—*
"Huh? Siu, why aren't you at school?"
I wondered if he wasn't feeling well, or if he had overslept like me, but Siu answered that he was off today because it was the school's founding anniversary.
"I see, that's nice."
By the time I finished cleaning, the clock had already struck eleven.
To catch up with what was happening in the world, I immediately turned on the TV and watched the news.
"Yesterday afternoon, a monster the size of a freight truck appeared in ○○ District, ○○ Neighborhood."
"Fortunately, the Tigers quickly mobilized to suppress it and prevented major damage, but the trend of recent appearances appears to be increasing."
Decades had already passed since superhumans first appeared in the world, and currently, two massive organizations stood in opposition in this country.
One was the Tigers, an organization established in cooperation with the government. The other was Black Lion, a criminal organization responsible for various incidents, accidents, and acts of terror.
The conflict between these two organizations had been ongoing for a long time.
"I should go get groceries soon."
Though ominous news was being delivered through the TV, the mart's sale period was far more important to me.
I checked the memo the teacher had left yesterday, grabbed my bag, got dressed, and went outside.
"Hmm... Is it because I slept too long? My body feels really stiff."
"In that case, why don't I run to the mart and get some exercise too?"
The distance to the mart wasn't particularly far, but I began moving in the manner of a superhuman.
*Tap—*
I kicked off the ground in an instant, scaling the gaps between building walls and climbing onto the roof, then smiled as I took in the cityscape visible at a glance.
"I may not be able to use my ability, but this much is possible."
Orienting myself toward the mart, I gazed at the obstacles I would have to clear.
After checking the route once in my head, I began crossing the rooftops at a speed like the wind.
"It's still fun. This way, there's no time to get bored."
Cutting through the cool breeze, I lightly leaped from rooftop to rooftop, nimbly avoiding power lines and ventilators along the way, vaulting over railings and landing on the ground.
"Success in one go. I used to fall over and over, but now it's perfect."
Thus, I arrived in just four minutes to a destination that would have taken twenty minutes on foot.
I entered the mart, placed every item I needed to buy today into my basket without missing a single one, finished paying, and immediately started heading back home.
"Soohan's back. Good work grocery shopping~"
In the short while I had been out, I ran into the teacher, who had also returned from an outing.
We prepared dinner together ahead of time, chatting about small matters. Then, as school let out, the others returned home one by one, and I nagged Hayun to stop turning his socks inside out.
"Alright, everyone come out and eat~"
Just as that enjoyable dinner was about to begin, alarms suddenly blared from everyone's phones.
*Wheeeeeeeeee—*
*Wheeeeeeeeee—*
At the same time as an evacuation siren rang outside, disaster alerts arrived on our phones.
It was a message urging us to hurry to a nearby evacuation shelter because monsters had appeared in our current area, and we froze at the danger that had struck in an instant.
"Kids! Get dressed! We have to evacuate now!"
While we could have hidden quietly in place, we began heading toward an evacuation shelter that could guarantee our safety.
*Tap-tap-tap-tap—*
But as we evacuated, I found myself questioning whether it was right for me to be doing this.
For an ordinary person, choosing to evacuate would obviously be the correct decision, but for someone with the status of a superhuman to run away without doing anything seemed cowardly.
Even if I couldn't use my ability, I possessed at least enough strength to confront monsters.
I looked at myself and agonized over what the right choice was.
"Huff... huff...! Teacher... it's too hard..."
"Hang in there a little longer, kids... The shelter is right ahead."
Just as we escaped the alley, gasping for breath, I saw something scarlet moving in a swarm in the distance, accompanied by countless footsteps.
*Grrr... Grrr...*
Running in a pack were swarm-type entities.
They had scarlet skin, with eyes protruding irregularly all over their bodies.
Those eyes looked around in all directions, monitoring their surroundings, while sticky black liquid dripped from their mouths.
Their countless shrieks and footsteps made the air tremble, and the moment the dozens of eyes on their bodies turned toward us all at once—
*Grrr.*
—we felt a terror so immense that every sensation in our bodies froze.
"T-Teacher, what do we do...?! They're coming this way...!!"
At this rate, everyone was in danger. I wondered if I should confront them immediately, but my hands wouldn't move due to fear as well.
In the end, at the teacher's instruction to go back into the alley, I started running, but the creatures' cries were drawing closer from behind.
"H-how!! They're chasing us...!!"
"Crap...! They're too fast...!!"
Seeing my friends and the teacher growing more exhausted, I made my decision about what I had to do right now.
I quickly surveyed my surroundings, searching for something that could serve as a weapon, picked up a steel pipe that had fallen on the ground, and stopped in my tracks.
"Soohan...?!"
"You guys go on ahead."
"What...?"
"I'll buy time here. So go to the shelter first."
To my words, the teacher said it was impossible and that we should run together, but I spoke to her with a face filled with firm resolve.
If we ran from here together, we would definitely be caught, and I needed to buy time here for everyone to evacuate safely.
"What are you going to do alone! You can't even use your ability yet!!"
There was no guarantee that I could win fighting those things.
But so that I wouldn't regret my choice, I snapped at everyone.
"I'm still a superhuman! I'll do something somehow, so go, now!!"
In the end, my family turned their backs on my decision and began heading toward the shelter.
"I Suhan! You'd better come back!! Or you'll die by my hand!!"
Hayun's voice gradually faded into the distance, and the monsters' sounds were already right upon me.
*Grrr.*
"Quite a lot of you came. I won't let you past here."
The oppressive pressure transmitted through my body. Though I had never properly fought before, I had to take them down right here.
*Grrr!*
As one monster lunged at me with its claws extended, I dodged the incoming attack, then swung the pipe hard and struck its head.
Its head burst, black liquid flowing out and splattering across my face and clothes, and I began taking them down one by one while avoiding the monsters' attacks as best I could.
*Whack—!*
That was how I dealt with over ten monsters by myself, and my white windbreaker was stained with black blood.
"Huff... huff... I managed somehow..."
"Kyaahhh...!"
"?!"
The moment I was catching my breath, a scream from someone rang out in the distance.
With the thought that I should move instead of wasting time worrying, I began running hurriedly toward the source of the scream.