A strange alley.
“Ugh… Did I drink last night? No, right? What’s going on?”
I blinked blankly. The sky is unnecessarily blue.
“… What is that smell?”
A pungent odor pierced my nostrils, making me sit up. I looked around, trying to find the source of the smell, and then it hit me.
“Oh, crap.”
That smell was coming from me? Did I get so hammered last night that I forgot even that?
Suddenly anxious, I started recalling memories.
Name: Lee Seo-jun. Age: twenty-four.
What day was yesterday again? As I thought harder, realization struck.
“When did I start keeping track of the date?”
I quickly gave up and got to my feet. Surprisingly, my body felt light. Definitely not in the condition of someone who drank a lot the night before.
“What the heck.”
Then I noticed my clothes were odd. Did we have clothes like this at home? They looked filthy enough that even if given for free, I wouldn’t want to wear them.
I was slowly starting to realize something was really off. Well, more like acknowledging a fact I had been sensing for a while.
“Wait, seriously…?”
I walked straight into the alley to figure out what was happening. If I had fallen into a novel or a different world, I at least needed to know what was going on.
As I turned the corner, I heard strange sounds.
“Ah, you’re really fierce, huh?”
“Stay still before I carve a hole in your belly!”
“Ahhh…!”
I turned my frozen neck. Damn it, a crime scene was right in front of me. What’s worse is that I locked eyes with those criminals.
“What’s up? Get lost, kid.”
“Uh, okay.”
I quickly lowered my head and stepped back. Fortunately, the criminals seemed to decide to let this poor civilian go without shaking me down.
As I hurried away, clutching my racing heart, I thought, ‘What kind of idiot carries a sword that big?’
The sword was bigger than a person’s forearm. Plus, the clothes those criminals were wearing looked like they belonged to a much earlier era, definitely not modern fashion.
I could easily picture characters from martial arts novels dressing like that.
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If I hadn’t woken up in a drama filming set, it was obvious what my current situation meant.
Whether this was from a novel or some other world, I had fallen somewhere. Given the vibes, it seemed like a martial arts setting. I tried to recall the novels I read, but I’d only read about a hundred of those and couldn’t pinpoint which one it might be.
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Hold on. Is this just a wild dream? Just as I was trying to process that, screams pierced my ears.
— Aaaahhh! Please save me! I beg you!
I froze in my tracks. The shrill cries were gripping my heart like a vice.
“Well, crap.”
How could I possibly take on those guys carrying swords? That’s crazy. Am I really going to risk my life to save someone whose face I don’t even know?
Yeah, that’s insane. It’s craziness…
“Sigh… damn it!”
With shoulders back, I yelled. By now, my feet had moved on their own and, of course, I locked eyes with the criminals again.
Right, a real hero would do this, right? This dream is just a total cluster.
“Kid. Even if I let you go, you just come back around.”
“Are you feeling a bit dizzy or something?”
The two men smirked. Meanwhile, in a desperate act to latch on to something, a woman, half undressed, crawled over and grabbed onto my pant leg.
“Th-this hero…! Please help me… Aaaah!”
Thud!
The woman knocked her face on my knee and fainted. The thugs stared at me, utterly dumbfounded.
“What the heck are you doing?”
“Listen, kid, don’t trust women. If you save them, they’ll stab you in the back.”
Especially if I was fighting and got a knife in my back, that would be a real disaster. There’s no guarantee that woman isn’t with these guys.
I felt a twinge of guilt, but hey, if I apologized afterward, it’d be a win-win.
Having experienced a betrayal like that myself, it made me uneasy to leave the woman behind without checking.
“Wow, so you really are just a total lunatic?”
A guy wielding a sword larger than my forearm stepped forward. I tried to steady my fast-breathing lungs and assumed a stance.
Naturally, I didn’t know any martial arts; it was more like a boxing stance I had seen somewhere before.
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“Man, I’ve seen all sorts of weirdos.”
The thug swung the sword with a flourish. I could see it. That blade was definitely coming down to split me in half.
Everything unfolded in slow motion, and I bizarrely found myself in shock.
Swoosh!
“Uh…?”
But my body wasn’t moving as fast as my brain wanted it to. My belly split open, and guts spilled out.
“W-what…?”
Should I be thankful that my body wasn’t cut in half?
Face suddenly meeting the ground, I convulsed with burning pain coursing through me.
“Ugh…”
It hurts like hell. That singular thought consumed my mind.
It has to be a dream. It definitely should be a dream.
My consciousness wandering in the wrong place snapped in an instant.
*
“…What a messed-up dream.”
An unfamiliar ceiling greeted me. So it really was a dream? I mean, falling into a martial arts world out of nowhere doesn’t make sense.
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I chuckled to myself as I propped myself up.
“Ugh…!!”
Nope, it really hurts like hell. It felt like my stomach was being ripped apart as I rolled on the floor.
“Ugh… what kind of idiot am I?”
“Ugh… What the hell?”
“Don’t you dare do anything reckless. If your wound bursts, you’ll really die this time.”
Raising my blurry vision amidst the pain revealed a small figure looking down at me. A kid looking about twelve or thirteen hovered nearby.
“Ugh… ugh… I thought I was dying…”
I wiped the drool off my face and scanned the kid.
“…Hey kid, who are you?”
“What? You don’t even know to be grateful?”
The kid kicked my foot lightly with his toe.
“Ugh…!”
I twisted my body. The pain from what he touched made my head feel as if it were blanking out.
“What the…!”
“What? What?”
“Ow…”
I straightened up groaning. Through the gaping hole in the ceiling, I met the pitch-black night sky.
‘The sky?’
Only then did I realize I was lying in a decrepit house that looked like it would crumble with a single tap.
“…Where is this?”
“My place.”
“Where is your place?”
“Close to where you passed out.”
The kid clicked his tongue.
“Think logically. You think I’d drag you far? I nearly died carrying you this far.”
“…You make a fair point. But you are surprisingly strong for a kid. I guess it wasn’t easy dragging a full-grown man.”
“What? Ugh!”
The kid burst into laughter, then started mocking me.
“A full-grown man? Is there hair on your little friend down there? You don’t look that much older than I am.”
“What? Is that so? What are you, some kind of ancient sage at such a young age?”
I casually inspected my own body. Of course, I wasn’t checking for hair down there; I just wanted to see what nonsense this brat was on about.
“What the…?”
Small. And short.
It wasn’t exactly like a child’s, but there was definitely a size difference from the hands I’d been used to as an adult.
“Seriously? What is this, ‘Detective Conan’ or something?”
Even though my body had shrunk, my brain was left intact! This is totally absurd!
“I don’t know, damn it.”
Life. I guess it’ll work itself out somehow.
*
Yeah, no it didn’t.
About ten days later, I finally stretched my stiff body. My wounds weren’t completely healed, but I could definitely say I was almost there. It was abnormally fast recovery.
How did I even recover?
Sure, skin would heal, but what about my innards? Can you really stick those back in and survive? Don’t people usually die from infection after that?
As I pondered this, I let out a sigh.
“Sigh… I don’t get it. This whole thing of getting younger makes even less sense.”
At my muttering, the kid responded.
“Still saying that? Isn’t it getting dull?”
“No, seriously, I’m not joking about actually getting younger.”
“Your nonsense has reached peak levels.”
“Shut it, Chun-bong.”
“……”
What kind of name is Chun-bong? As I looked at my self-proclaimed savior, he flushed bright red.
“…I should’ve just left you there.”
Chun-bong sighed and grumbled.
“Anyway, don’t do anything reckless and just lie down. That isn’t a wound you get healed in ten days.”
“I’m healed already.”
“Right. It’s a miracle.”
Leaving Chun-bong behind, who was staring at my body, I sank into thought.
‘What’s really miraculous is me being here.’
Through conversations with Chun-bong over the last ten days, I was sure of one thing: This wasn’t a dream. It was a solid reality and I was in the martial arts world.
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‘But here’s the weird part.’
Three days ago, out of boredom, I started poking Chun-bong in the side with my toes and he yelled at me.
“Dude! It’s nearly twelve! Can’t you let me get some sleep!”
What is this? It’s not like I’m hearing some Fireball being cast in volcano sect or something. Twelve? Is he serious? If this were a logically written martial arts novel, they wouldn’t use “twelve” but rather “子時.”
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(TN: 子時 => hours of rat)
“I don’t recall reading any martial arts novels that have that…”
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So, isn’t this not from a novel? Did I just drop into some weird cult of martial arts world?
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“Hey, Lee Seo-jun.”
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what?’ If you’re awake, shouldn’t you be helping out with the food bill?”
Chun-bong waved his finger from a half-collapsed door.
“Come on. I’ll teach you how to survive in the back alleys, dude.”
“By the way, are you really a guy?”
“…You idiot.”
Chun-bong quickly stepped back to cover himself. This misunderstanding was really bad.
“I-I’m not looking!”
“Suspicious!”
“Forget it; let’s just go. It’ll be interesting to see how well you manage.”
*
“Speaking of which, was there anything else at the place I passed out?”
I ask while chomping on some steaming dumplings.
“There wasn’t.”
“Oh, really? That’s unsettling.”
What happened to that woman? I took another bite of dumpling while quietly saying a prayer for her.
“But seriously, there are no meat dumplings?!”
“…Dude, I’m stuffed.”
“This tastes horrible!”
So basically it’s called a dumpling, but there’s nothing inside—just some dough lump.
“Ha! If it’s like that, you should just steal next time. I’ll keep my eyes on the lookout.”
“Should I?”
“What do you mean ‘should I’? Just shut up and eat!”
I got smacked. For a brat, that hit hard. Is this what a martial arts local tastes like?
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“Ugh, when’s my martial arts skill gonna land from the sky? I really need to beat those thugs next time.”
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As I grumbled, stuffing the remaining dumplings into my mouth, Chun-bong stared at me with a blank expression.
“Huh? What?”
“Want me to teach you martial arts?”
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“Cough!”
I coughed out a dumpling that had lodged in my throat. Chun-bong’s cheeks puffed in surprise as I squeezed his face.
“Seriously?!”
“It’s nothing special. It’s just a form of the Three Calamities Sword Technique.”
How a kid from the back alley knows martial arts isn’t the important part. What mattered now was the timing.
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“Thank you, master!”
“Shut up.”