SOUTH KOREA

2030

10 YEARS AFTER GATES BEGAN APPEARING ON EARTH

Old houses. Shitty roads. Barren trees. A stench hung in the air that any hunter would recognize—the scent of gate miasma. Many had probably opened here, out in the sticks. Few had been closed.

The sign marking that a town still existed here was covered with dry, feral dungeon vines and rusted halfway to illegibility.

Crunnnch.

A black sedan’s wheels ground against rough pavement as it pulled to the side of the road, sending a crack of sound through the stillness of the countryside village it had just arrived in.

A woman in a navy suit stepped out—tall, rigid, tired. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and surveyed her surroundings.

The place they’d arrived at was listed as a town, but it was much smaller than that in reality. It was dead quiet. Not a speck of life was visible around, though she could tell people were in the houses. Probably waiting to see who the stranger was, peeking through their curtains.

The hum of the car disappeared as it was shut off. The driver, a man also in a suit, stepped out.

“No welcoming party?” he asked, sarcastic.

“I can’t believe people still live out here,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. “I can smell the feral monsters in the woods.”

“Only the most stubborn old-timers still stick it out this far from the city,” he remarked. “Crops don't even grow right anymore with the miasma around. I bet their grandkids pester them to leave all the time.”

She looked back towards the few houses she could see. Invasive dungeon vines were claiming their walls and roofs, though shriveled up from the winter cold. Most people avoided anything to do with gates, but they had no choice but to let them grow out here, where help was hard to find.

“Well, let’s just get this over with.”

She approached the nearest house, stepping over cracks in the pavement and overgrown bushes.

She knocked on the door. The sound rang out clearly in the eerily silent air. And then, finally, the rustle of shuffling footsteps came from the other end.

The wooden door creaked open slowly. A little head of black hair peeked out. It was a woman, maybe in her mid-forties. Plain, harmless, forgettable. Their eyes met, and the suited visitor smiled politely.

“Hi, I’m Lee Jihyo from the Hunter Bureau,” she said, taking her badge out and holding it up. “I’m here on an inquiry. I have a few questions.”

There was a slight pause, and then the door opened wider.

“…I’m Jang Yeojin,” the woman inside answered. “How can I help you?”

“It’s nothing much,” Jihyo replied, tucking her badge back into her suit. “Does Lim Hyunsoo live around here?”

“Lim Hyunsoo…?”

Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall it.

“I don't think I remember someone by that name.”

There was a light creak from the street. Jihyo glanced over, catching the eye of the person in the next house over—now also peeking out from a crack in their front door.

“Do you know Lim Hyunsoo?” she asked, smiling.

The second villager, an elderly man, jumped slightly when he was caught, then pushed his door all the way open and stepped out.

“Lim Hyunsoo?” he repeated.

“Yes, Lim Hyunsoo,” Jihyo affirmed, getting tired of saying it. “Male, 42 years old, unemployed from what we have in our records.”

“Hmm…”

He buried his chin in his hand as he thought.

“Ah, I think I remember,” he finally replied.

Jihyo inwardly cheered. They had already wasted enough time driving out here. She was swamped with other work that needed to be finished back at the Bureau.

“There was a fella called that,” he said. “Drank a whole lot and stayed away from everyone. Must be why you don’t remember him, Yeojin.”

“Where is he now?” Jihyo interrupted, impatience rising.

The old man shook his head.

“He’s not here anymore,” he said.

“Well where did he go?” she prodded, already mentally scheduling how much more of her time she’d have to spend on this wild goose chase.

“He passed.”

She froze in place.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Drank himself to his grave,” he said. “None of us knew his family, so we just buried him up there and hoped they’d come around.”

He pointed towards the mountains that rose above the horizon past the village, their normally lush surface frosted over in a layer of white. There was an ominous coldness to them. He glanced at Jihyo.

“Are you perhaps…?”

“No,” she replied resolutely. “I have no personal connection to Mr. Lim. I’m from the Hunter Bureau.”

The old man’s eyes widened.

“What’s the Hunter Bureau doing here?” he asked. “Is another gate going to—”

“No, no. You’re not in danger. For now.”

Jihyo turned around. She locked eyes with the driver, then looked towards the back door she’d left open.

“Kid,” she called curtly.

For a second: silence. And then a low rustling.

Two legs emerged from the darkness of the inside of the vehicle, and soon a young boy hopped out onto the cracked road.

Yeojin’s eyes widened. He barely looked old enough to be in elementary school. And more concerning than that was the state he was in.

Scratches and bruises littered his arms and legs, his injuries bandaged up but clearly still in the process of healing. He was thin too, worryingly so. And when he glanced up at her, there was something terribly cold and flat about his grey eyes. It was like he wasn't even registering what was going on around him—just going along with the Hunter Bureau’s people because they happened to be the ones handling him for now. Like most of him was still somewhere else.

“This is Lim Suho,” Jihyo said, gesturing towards him. “A gate broke in his neighborhood and his parents were caught up in it.”

Yeojin glanced at her.

“Are they…”

“Yes. May they rest in peace.”

The wrinkles around Yeojin’s eyes deepened with sadness. Such a small child, an orphan already. But that was how it was these days. Monsters didn't take pity on anyone, big or small.

“Since orphan relocation is part of the Hunter Bureau’s responsibility, we’ve been searching for living relatives,” Jihyo explained. “The only living one we could find was Lim Hyunsoo, who we believe to be his paternal uncle.”

She rubbed her eyes under her glasses.

“Though it seems like he, too, is no longer a possibility.”

She set her glasses back into place and looked over at the old man.

“Do you really not know any of Lim Hyunsoo’s relatives?”

He shook his head.

“If we did, we would've sent him home instead of putting him on the mountain.”

She sighed in exasperation.

“If that’s the case, then we’re out of options.”

“Are we taking him back?” the driver yelled from the car.

“Yes, there’s nothing here.”

She turned to go.

Then stopped.

…

She looked down.

A hand had grabbed the edge of her sleeve.

She glanced over at Jang Yeojin with an eyebrow raised.

“Do you need something?” she asked.

The woman was frozen for a second, as if she hadn't even realized she had moved. She quickly withdrew her hand.

“Wh-where are you going?” she replied.

“To Seoul,” Jihyo answered. “Since Suho has no relatives, he’ll have to go to a state orphanage now.”

Yeojin’s eyes widened. The old man shook his head gravely and sighed. Orphanages had become common after the invasion began, and the state-run ones were trustworthy enough. But no one wanted to send a child there. And that child especially.

He was still staring at them, calmly observing the exchange with those eyes that echoed with absolutely no feeling—not even able to comprehend that his future was being decided on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere.

“An orphanage…” she muttered.

As if possessed, she took one step towards him.

Then another.

Finally, she crouched down in front of the silent child.

“…Suho?” she called cautiously, her voice barely coming out, her breath leaving clouds in the cold winter air.

He stared at her, eyes traveling across her face, but not responding.

“I’m Jang Yeojin,” she said. “You can call me Auntie Jang.”

She gestured towards the elderly man still standing by his door.

“That’s Grandpa Oh.”

Grandpa Oh waved. The child remained quiet. But this time, at least he nodded.

“You’re Suho, right?”

Another nod.

“What do you think about our little town?”

Suho tilted his head, a bit confused. Yeojin laughed quietly to herself. Certainly, even a child could see that there wasn’t much here.

“It might not be the big city, but it’s not too bad, right?”

Suho was quiet for a moment. And then he nodded.

She stood back up and turned to Jihyo.

“Is adoption possible?” she asked.

Jihyo’s eyes widened. She glanced between the two of them, then over at the driver. A silent conversation seemed to pass between them.

“…It isn’t impossible,” she finally responded. “There’s some extra paperwork, since you’re someone who’s not blood related. But it’s allowed.”

A bit of energy seemed to come into her voice again, finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

“In fact, I could probably streamline it, since we know already that Suho has no living relatives. Are you interested?”

Yeojin hesitated for a moment. She glanced over towards Grandpa Oh. He squinted at them, then sighed.

Slowly, he shuffled his way over.

“No one in the village is going to reject a child in need,” he mumbled, stopping beside them. “Right?”

A chorus of suspicious creaks rang through the street. Yeojin looked up, and across all of the old houses in the village, eyes were peering through cracks in their doors and windows at them.

“Right?!” the old man repeated.

The eavesdroppers finally mustered up the courage to respond.

“R-right!”

“We can do it.”

“Anything’s better than an orphanage…”

Mumbles and shouts of agreement came from here and there. Nobody spoke up against it.

He turned to Jihyo and nodded.

“We’ll take him.”

Jihyo smiled wide.

“What magnanimous people,” she replied. “Well then, that settles the matter. One moment.”

She ducked into the car and emerged with a touch screen tablet in hand.

“Hold on… okay.”

She shoved it into Yeojin’s hands.

“To confirm that he’s changed hands, sign here, here, and here, please.”

“Pardon? Now?”

“Well, yes, if you want guardianship,” she said. “Otherwise, he has to come back with us, since he’ll still legally be the Bureau’s responsibility.”

She pushed up her glasses.

“To the orphanage.”

Yeojin’s grip on the tablet tightened.

“I’ll sign,” she said.

“That’s great.”

She looked down at the screen and used her finger to sign in a designated spot. But in the next one, a wrinkled finger reached in and filled it in.

She glanced up at Grandpa Oh. He just nodded calmly.

“We adopt him together. Our village. They all agreed. You hear me?!”

“Yeah!”

“Of course!”

“We can handle one kid better than the government.”

Words of encouragement echoed all around. Yeojin stared for a moment, then smiled softly, crow’s feet crinkling.

“Okay,” she agreed. “All of us.”

The moment the last of the spaces had been completed, the tablet was immediately snatched out of her hands.

Jihyo checked it over, then smiled politely and bowed.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now then, I’ll handle processing this and make sure it goes through smoothly. Your village now has temporary legal guardianship of Lim Suho.”

She nudged Suho lightly with her knee. He took a step forward, bumping into Yeojin’s leg.

“I’ll send word once the guardianship is made permanent,” she said, turning back towards the car.

She locked eyes with the driver.

“Let’s go.”

He nodded, and they both got back inside. Without a word, the door was slammed coldly shut, and in another second, the sedan sped down the road and out of sight.

Yeojin was frozen for a moment, still processing what they’d just done. Then she looked down at Suho.

Suho looked up at her.

He bowed politely. It was robotic. A look of pity crossed her face.

For a second, there was only silence as usual. And then—

“Hello, Auntie.”

Her eyes widened as his voice finally came out. It was calm, rather monotone, but not as empty as his gaze had been. Like he was still trying, somewhere in there.

She smiled softly.

“Hello, Suho.”

She leaned down and took his little hands in hers, his fingertips cold from the winter air.

“Let’s go inside and get you warmed up.”