Oppa, You Haven't Gone And Found Some Other Bitch In The Meantime, Have You?

The Late Jeong Sia / 2000.08.25 – 2023.08.25

Exactly one year ago today, she passed away without any warning, barely half a year after graduating from the Hunter Academy and becoming an official Hunter.

She had already lost her family to a Gate Break back in high school, so I’d never imagined a worse misfortune could still be waiting for her. Who could have guessed she would meet such a senseless death on her own birthday?

“It’s already been a whole year since our Sia left Oppa’s side.”¹

Today was both Sia’s birthday and the anniversary of her death, and I had come to visit her grave. In one hand I carried the tteokbokki that had been her favorite food while she was alive.

“I still can’t believe our pretty Sia left me.”

Jeong Sia.

She was my lovely girlfriend, the only one like her in the whole world.

We had promised each other that once her field training was over, we’d celebrate her birthday over dinner at some fancy restaurant. That was the day a major accident happened inside the Gate.

Gates are dangerous by nature, they say, and no one can predict what waits inside, but who would ever have expected such a hellish disaster in a D-Rank Gate? Three people were injured and one died, and of all people, it was our Sia.

What if I’d been just a little stronger?

After Sia died, that thought never once left my head. If I’d been just a bit stronger, if I’d moved just a bit faster, couldn’t I have saved her?

If only that Trait had manifested…

By every measure, I was an ordinary swordsman-type D-Rank Hunter and nothing more.

Except for one thing.

The problem was that I had no idea what this skill even was, or how to use it. I didn’t so much as know whether it was passive or active.

But what if I had known what it was? What if I’d been able to use it, even the smallest bit? Maybe then Sia wouldn’t have died so pointlessly.

What good is any of that now?

I had never used that skill even once, and it had failed to protect the person I loved. Better to live as though a skill like that didn’t exist at all.

Shaking off the pointless what-ifs I kept getting caught up in, I pulled out my phone and slowly flipped through the photos Sia and I had taken together, one by one. Every single photo brought the memories of those days back to life.

Sia, who never worried about how it looked to anyone else, who confessed to me head-on without flinching.

Our Sia, whose smile was more beautiful than anyone else’s in the world.

Our Sia, who said my arms were so warm she never wanted to leave them, not even for a moment.

Our beloved Sia, the reason I lived.

As the memories surfaced, my eyes stung more and more. We’d loved each other so fiercely that neither of us could live without the other, so why did we have to be torn apart like this?

Holding back the tears, I poured the cheongju I’d brought along with the tteokbokki into a cup and set it down in front of Sia’s grave.² Then I laid the tteokbokki she loved beside it.

The spicy smell of tteokbokki carried me back to that day once more, the day Sia left this world.

Sia, let’s go eat something good tonight. What do you feel like?
Ummm… tteokbokki! With a ton of extra noodles!
Tteokbokki? Come on, it’s your birthday — let’s have something nicer than that. Today’s on me, I told you.
Oppa, do you not like tteokbokki? But I want tteokbokki.

If I’d known Sia would leave my side so soon, I wouldn’t have grumbled about eating the same thing as always. I’d have sat down and eaten tteokbokki with her one more time. Remembering it, I was swamped by regret all over again.

I sprinkled the cheongju from the cup over Sia’s grave, then poured another and drank it straight down.

“Sia, you don’t mind if Oppa gets a little drunk today, do you?”

But just as I emptied that cup and went to fill another…

— RRRRUMBLE.

All at once the ground shook, and a roar loud enough to split my eardrums rang out. Then the empty air tore open, and a small rift took shape.

A Gate Break!

There was no mistaking the warning signs. As the rift grew wider and wider, my mind raced. Of all days, on Sia’s death anniversary, and of all places, right where her grave lay?

I knew about Gate Breaks, of course, but I’d never witnessed one with my own eyes. Faced with something I had never been through before, I froze where I stood.

I have to do something.

Report it to the Hunter Bureau, then buy whatever time I could, alone if I had to, so the damage wouldn’t spread.

I had just raised my phone to do exactly that when the Gate began to writhe, and something came out of it.

Certain it had to be a monster, I hurried to pull a weapon out of subspace, but the instant I made out what it actually was, I froze.

A young woman about my own age, with exotic looks.

Astonishingly, the thing that had come out of the Gate was a woman, and no ordinary one.

Her red hair burned like a sacred flame, and those ruby eyes could never have been human. Her skin was white jade, and her features so delicate that calling her a goddess wouldn’t have been a stretch. Her clothes didn’t look like anything from Earth either, which only made the impression stronger.

No. I can’t let her looks fool me.

She might be some unreported monster wearing a human woman’s shape. I couldn’t lower my guard, even with no one else around. Until I knew what she was, I had to stay careful and work out whether she was friend or foe to humankind.

I was carefully drawing my weapon, but her eyes were elsewhere, as if the weapon meant nothing to her. They rested on the tteokbokki and gimbap I’d set beside Sia’s grave, and on the birthday present I’d never been able to give her, still unopened a full year later.

Once she had looked those over, she shifted her gaze to me. I could understand her studying my face, but why was she so interested in that tteokbokki?

The truly strange part, though, was something else.

“Oppa?”

This woman, so exotic-looking that no one would ever take her for Korean, had just called me Oppa, warmly and with flawless pronunciation.

Oppa?
Did she just call me Oppa?

I was on the verge of demanding who the hell she was.

“Minjun-oppa, it’s me, it’s me. Your girlfriend, Jeong Sia.”

…What?

“Oppa, to see you again I spent two thousand years shut up in my lair without once going out to play, studying nothing but dimensional-travel magic. I did well, didn’t I? I did super well, right?”

Two thousand years? A lair? Dimensional-travel magic?

This woman, who had just introduced herself as my dead Sia, was rattling off words that made no sense to me.

“By the way, Oppa — you haven’t gone and found some other bitch in the meantime, have you?”