"Wh… what the hell is this……!"
The shout left my throat, and then silence settled in.
"……"
I tried to collect myself first.
"……Hoo. Okay. Stay calm. Kim Shin-woo."
With trembling hands, I opened the fridge and poured myself a glass of water.
The cold liquid slid down my throat, and only then did my head begin to clear, little by little.
"……"
Hm? Wait a second…
I set the cup down and looked up, glancing around the room.
The familiar arrangement of furniture. The pattern on the wallpaper. The view through the window.
"This… this is my apartment?"
I'd been inside a dungeon just moments ago. The gate had closed.
And yet I woke up at home.
You might say the location hardly mattered given that my body had changed — but it did matter.
I'd heard of people coming back with altered bodies. I'd never once heard of a dungeon missing person actually making it out.
"……"
The absence below my waist kept nagging at me.
I took a deep breath, then carefully tugged at my waistband and peeked inside.
"……Gone."
Confirmed.
I was a girl now.
The reflection in the mirror looked vaguely criminal, so I quickly looked away.
Taking a proper look at myself — being generous about it — I was a young girl, maybe elementary school age.
Well. I'd gotten younger.
"Haah……"
Getting younger was fine. But why did I have to become a girl on top of it?
"……"
A brief silence.
"……Heh."
A short, involuntary laugh escaped me.
The human heart really is something.
Here I was, having just stood at death's door — alive, back home — and already grumbling about something like this.
So what if I was younger? So what if I was a girl?
It was a hundred, a thousand times better than being dead.
Actually, maybe this was an opportunity.
All that money I'd bled and sweated to save up over the years.
I could finally quit this miserable hunter business and coast through the rest of my life.
"Oh, this is great!"
I hummed to myself and dug through my pockets.
"Hm? No phone. Whatever, I'll just buy a new one."
I flopped down on the sofa, swinging my shortened limbs, and turned on the TV.
The lower field of vision was a bit annoying, but… I'd get used to it soon enough.
Beep—
The screen flickered on, and an announcer's voice filled the room.
[……Just moments ago, the funeral of S-class hunter 'Thunder God' Kim Shin-woo was held in a solemn ceremony. Guild members and countless citizens gathered to see him off on his final journey.]
"Huh?"
Excuse me, I'm right here.
Since I hadn't made it back through the gate, I'd apparently been declared dead.
That much I could understand. But then—
[In accordance with the late hunter Kim Shin-woo's will, his entire estate has been donated to a social welfare foundation. The sum amounts to tens of billions of won…]
……What?
"I — when did I—!"
Oh.
"Aaaaaah……!"
It came back to me.
That time I'd drunkenly bragged to my colleagues: "I've got no family anyway — if I die, just throw everything back into society."
"No, I'm not dead! I'm right here! I'm alive!"
I flailed my stubby arms at the TV screen and yelled at the top of my lungs.
But the world inside the TV remained perfectly calm, broadcasting live as my entire fortune evaporated into thin air.
"Stop it! Hey, you — stop! Don't do it!!!"
My desperate screams echoed uselessly through the empty living room.
The foundation chairman's beaming smile on screen drove a knife straight through my chest.
"Ah… aah……"
My retirement. My comfortable old age……
"Ah… haha……"
Well.
That's that.
Completely, utterly screwed.
***
I sank deep into the soft sofa cushions.
And I stared blankly at the ceiling pattern, killing time for no reason at all.
"Ah… haha…"
A self-mocking laugh slipped out.
"What do I do now?"
I was broke.
Younger, too. And a different gender on top of it.
"……"
I stared into the air with unfocused eyes and murmured quietly.
"Status Window."
A translucent blue panel materialized in the air before me.
User: Kim Shin-a (Kim Shin-woo) | Age: 11
Class: Mage | Level: 1
[ STATS ]
HP: 5 (F) MP: 11 (E)
STR: 3 (F) INT: 3 (F)
DEX: 4 (F) LUK: 3 (F)
Available Points: 0
[ INNATE TRAIT ]
Lightning Magic (Lv.1)
"Wow…"
I'd half-wondered, but this tiny little body was a proper Awakened after all.
The level and stats, though…
"I've turned into a complete scrub."
I spread open my small, fern-like hands and looked at them.
Crackle. Snap—
When I willed it, faint blue sparks leapt from my fingertips.
The ability was still there. Just a little cuter now.
"More importantly… Kim Shin-a? Who decided that name on their own…"
The Status Window had already locked in my name as Kim Shin-a.
The Status Window.
A mysterious privilege granted only to the Awakened.
Through it, you could intuitively track your own growth, invest stat points, and attain a strength that left ordinary humans far behind.
"……"
My trait and class were the same as when I'd first awakened.
The stats were a little disappointing, but given my age there was room to grow over time, and…
If I went back to grinding dungeons, I could probably get as strong as before — maybe stronger.
But.
"Not doing it. Hunter stuff."
Money? Sure, more is better.
I was broke now, but I'd once lived a comfortable, even lavish life.
Still, what I wanted wasn't that grand.
Just a warm back and three decent meals a day. That was all I needed.
For that much, I didn't need to risk my life as a hunter.
I could work a convenience store, do deliveries — scrape by somehow.
Besides, the Status Window said I was eleven.
Too young to even register as an official hunter.
Well… it wasn't like an eleven-year-old had a whole lot of other options either, but…
Still. Not doing the hunter thing.
Won't. Or rather… can't.
I hate pain. I hate dying even more.
Yeah…
"……"
But seriously, what do I do now?
***
I searched the apartment first.
I couldn't earn money right away, so I'd have to sell something.
I lined up anything that might fetch a price on the living room floor, one by one.
All gear from my hunter days.
But the moment I faced those pieces of equipment, my firm resolve went soft in an instant.
"I… how could I sell these…"
From the worn, battered gear that had carried me through my rock-bottom days, to the high-end equipment that had seen me through my prime.
Every single piece held a memory.
I clutched the gear to my chest like they were my own children.
"How could I sell you guys…"
In the end, I carefully put everything back where it belonged.
"Haah…"
I dropped onto the sofa and let out a long sigh.
I'd thought getting younger would be a good thing, but I hadn't counted on this particular downside.
I couldn't earn money.
Should I check into an orphanage…?
I didn't want to go back to one of those.
Just then.
Beep— Beep— Beep— Ding-dong~
"!!!"
The silence shattered as the front door's lock beeped open.
I froze on the sofa.
Who… who is that?
I swallowed dryly and fixed my eyes on the entryway, tense. The door swung open, and a woman stepped inside.
"Oh…?"
The woman's eyes went wide and she stopped dead.
Same for me.
I couldn't help but stare.
White hair and red eyes that seized your attention immediately.
An exotic face, and between slightly parted lips — the faint glint of sharp fangs, and ears just a touch too long to be human.
And then—
A friend and comrade I'd known since childhood.
The guild master of the guild I'd belonged to until the day I died.
Kim Jang-mi.
"Who… who are you…?"
She opened her mouth carefully.
"……"
I looked at her and fell into thought.
Hm.
This might be bad.
***
"Who… who are you…?"
Her short question drifted through the empty living room.
I swallowed.
The woman in front of me was definitely her.
The Hongryeon Guild.
A guild that had forced its way through a narrow door already barricaded by established giants, and ultimately risen to stand among the top three guilds in the industry.
And the one who had driven that near-miraculous growth — no one could argue it was anyone but her, the guild master.
Those hard years.
"……Shin-woo. Let's become hunters."
The cramped, run-down orphanage backyard. That hand, thrust out stubbornly, covered in dirt.
Back then, Jang-mi had made me a proposal.
Let's become hunters.
After that, the two of us threw ourselves into the hunter world.
Even the little incident on the day we named the guild felt as vivid as yesterday.
"So… you're saying we should go with that for the guild name?"
She stared at the crooked letters I'd scrawled and let out a disbelieving laugh.
"What's wrong with it. We're just filing it with the association as a formality. Once this guild gets a better offer from somewhere else later——"
It was nothing more than a hastily thrown-together guild for legal paperwork.
But not to her.
"No… but what if our guild gets really big someday… we need something that sounds cool."
"Come on, it's not like we're going to——"
She paused for a moment, gazing at the sunset through the window.
That expression on her face.
A loathing of poverty and a fierce, desperate hunger for success, all tangled together in her eyes.
"Are you serious…?"
"I… I'm going to make it. I refuse to live poor."
What had made her into who she was today.
That relentless, ferocious hunger for success.
Seen only up to this point, she'd just be one ordinary acquaintance among many.
But the reason running into her was bad news—
"I'm retiring."
"What…? No…! I'll never allow it! If you're really leaving, you'll have to walk over me first!!!"
She'd wailed and grabbed at my sleeve.
She was one of the main reasons my retirement had kept getting delayed.
"……"
If she found out I was alive…?
I could already see exactly how that would go.
What do I do…?
Silence hung over the living room.
Sniff— sniff—
"……"
She suddenly started sniffing the air and slowly moved toward me.
"Wait… could you be…"
She took one step, then another, closing the distance with an expression of disbelief.
"This… smell… it's definitely Shin-woo's…"
"……!"
Had she figured it out…?
She bared her fangs and opened her mouth carefully.
"Um… hey… little one…"
But what came next wasn't quite what I'd expected.
"Could I… maybe take just one little sip of your blood?"
"……?"
Before I could get a word out, I stood there dumbfounded.
"Hap—"
Prick—
"…!!!"
A sharp sting, and then her warm breath against my skin.
Suck—
"Pahh…"
She pulled her lips from my neck with half-lidded eyes.
"This taste is definitely Shin-woo's… then you're… don't tell me……"
It's over…
She gripped both my shoulders tight.
And with eyes full of certainty, she said it.
"Shin-woo's… daughter?"
My mind went blank.
The part of my brain that had been bracing in terror for exposure simply stopped.
But if I denied this misunderstanding now, her next question would obviously be—
"……"
In the end, I surrendered to instinct and answered in a voice barely above a whisper.
"Y… yes…"
An affirmative.