Watching From the Gaps

The white ash drifted like snow.

"…"

A stillness as if even the air had stopped. Her tangled brown hair fluttered messily. The girl in the school uniform, Yoon Ga-eul, looked around. The familiar sight of ruins greeted her.

Yoon Ga-eul checked her outstretched hands. Both were glowing with a rainbow light. Her face flushed with panic as she quickly patted down her body.

"…What the hell?"

Just moments ago, she had been in the classroom, attending a lecture. Yoon Ga-eul frantically surveyed her surroundings. A space utterly silent, devoid of any sign of life. A place where destruction had arrived. It was a landscape she had seen countless times as she traveled through the fragments of worlds.

But something was wrong. Until now, Yoon Ga-eul had only seen these fragments when she fell asleep on her bed. She had never experienced it while dozing off or taking a short nap at school. So then…

'Why am I here?'

A side effect of her ability? A new power? Or perhaps her control over the ability had slipped? Every possibility that came to mind was the worst-case scenario. Cold sweat broke out. Eventually, Yoon Ga-eul slapped her cheeks with both hands. The sharp sting helped her regain her focus.

'…Calm down. Think.'

Yoon Ga-eul pulled out the necklace hidden under her shirt. Attached to it was a white shard and a name tag with "HYS" written on it.

Yoon Ga-eul clenched the shard tightly. A few black tendrils of light coiled around the white shard like snakes. It was a fragment she had brought out from the eroded dungeon.

A fragment shard from the body of a golem in a suddenly reconstructed eroded dungeon. It was the first time she had found a shard in reality, not in a dream. Normally, she would have reported it to Jung Bin immediately upon acquiring it, but Jung Bin had lost consciousness after suffering severe injuries while protecting them… Yoon Ga-eul bit her lip awkwardly.

'I've ended up not saying anything until now… I'm really sorry.'

The only difference between then and now was this shard. Perhaps the cause of this situation and the hint to escape this place lay in the shard.

'Staying here any longer could be dangerous.'

The place she had been was her school. She couldn't let her friends get caught up in something strange. Yoon Ga-eul took a deep breath and squeezed the shard in her hand. The shard was enveloped in a radiant light like mother-of-pearl. And in the next moment,

KKIEEKKK!

Something pure white shot up from the ground and enveloped her whole body.

"Ahh!"

Yoon Ga-eul screamed as she stumbled backward. The white ash, piled like snow, hungrily devoured the sound of her footsteps. The white substance was tightening around her body. She began to suffocate. Yoon Ga-eul tightly shut her eyes and opened her mouth wide.

"Help…!"

It was then.

A cold hand gripped Yoon Ga-eul's neck. Damn it, I'm going to die like this. Yoon Ga-eul gritted her teeth. But instead, she found it easier to breathe. As she slowly opened her blurry eyes, she saw something black standing before her, starkly out of place in this world of pure white ruins.

Yoon Ga-eul strained to move her eyes. The thing gripping her neck was an eerily black hand. Not just the hand, but the wrist connected to it— everything was pitch black. The white substance that had risen from the ground now whimpered as if it had never been there.

'It' spoke.

—Look at me.

"…"

—Look at me.

"…"

—Yoon Ga-eul.

"Yoon Ga-eul!!"

Crash! The sound of something breaking echoed loudly. Yoon Ga-eul gasped for breath as she quickly sat up. She was back in the familiar classroom. With a dazed expression, Yoon Ga-eul looked around. Her friend, Da-yeon, was staring at her with a startled face.

"What happened… Are you mad?"

"Huh? What?"

"Are you mad because I yelled in your ear?"

"Yelled? You yelled?"

"What… You dropped your study book."

Ah. Yoon Ga-eul, still in a daze, picked up the fallen [Complete Study Guide for CSAT] from the floor. The crashing sound must have been from the book and her pencil case falling. Da-yeon asked with a worried look.

"You've been acting weird lately. Is something wrong?"

"Huh? No… nothing's wrong."

"Is it something you can't tell your friend?"

"No, really, it's nothing. I'm fine."

"Then why do you keep… You know your eyes have been looking a bit strange lately, right?"

Da-yeon mumbled with a frown.

"Sometimes, you look at us like you're seeing a dead person."

"What are you talking about…"

Yoon Ga-eul brushed off the comment and looked around.

There was no one else in the classroom except for the two of them. She glanced at the clock. It was already ten minutes past lunchtime. Normally, they would have rushed to the cafeteria as soon as the bell rang!

Yoon Ga-eul tidied her fallen hair and asked.

"Why are you still here? Aren't you going to eat?"

Da-yeon sighed and propped her chin on her hand.

"You were lying there like someone who'd taken some bad drugs, so where would I go? And today's lunch menu wasn't great anyway. The teachers have been cracking down on deliveries… Min-ji and Su-yeong went to the snack shop, but they'll be back soon."

"Why just those two?"

"They lost at rock-paper-scissors."

Just then, the front door of the classroom swung open. Two girls, their arms full of drinks and snacks, grumbled as they walked in.

"Everyone must be thinking the same thing. The snack shop was so packed, it was crazy."

"The pizza bread was already gone."

Da-yeon looked impressed.

"Are you guys hunters? That was fast."

"Yeah~ I'm going to take the hunter exam and join the Pado Guild."

"I'm going to join HB Guild. Oh, Yoon Ga-eul is up?"

"Are you okay? You were sleeping like the dead. Good thing it was during the homeroom period."

Min-ji, who had been observing Yoon Ga-eul's face, handed her a bag of bread. It was the hamburger bread Yoon Ga-eul often ate. Wisps of white steam rose from the small tear in the bag. Yoon Ga-eul smiled as she took the bread. It was warm.

She wasn't even sure if she was smiling properly. Judging by her friends' unchanged expressions, she could only guess that she was. She forced her stiff mouth to move.

"Thanks."

"Come on, you need to put more feeling into it when you say thanks."

"Leave her alone, she's not feeling well."

"Shouldn't you go to the nurse's office?"

"What's the next class?"

"No idea."

"Do you even know anything?"

Her friends' friendly chatter, the sound of laughter, and the gentle breeze seeping through the slightly open window. Yoon Ga-eul let out a silent sigh of relief. She then carefully tore open the warm bread bag.

It was at that moment.

"…But Ga-eul."

"Yeah?"

Yoon Ga-eul looked up. Su-yeong was staring at her with a strange expression.

"What's that on your arm under your sleeve?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, there's a strange mark…"

"…"

Yoon Ga-eul hurriedly rolled up the sleeve of her school shirt.

A red mark, as if something had bound her wrist, was visible.

Thud.

Ah!

Cold sweat trickled down her face.

'No.'

The familiar scene in front of her was starting to blur. The classroom and her friends' faces began to shift into shades of green, orange, blue, red, yellow, and white. Her friends' faces split into many. Two, four, eight, sixteen…

The bread she held slipped from her hands and fell to the ground.

Her friends, with 108 heads, tilted their heads. The 256 mouths asked.

"…?"

"…"

The overlapping voices couldn't convey any clear meaning, turning into a mumbling noise. Cold sweat streamed down her face, and her stomach churned. Her chest felt tight. Yoon Ga-eul clamped a hand over her mouth.

'I feel like I'm going to be sick…'

With a grinding sound, the hand gripping the desk crushed its edge. The "Study Guide" and her pencil case spilled to the floor.

Yoon Ga-eul staggered as she stood up. The countless shattered pieces of a mirror reflected her distorted image. Her friends were so fragmented that she could no longer recognize them.

A sound, like a scream, echoed in her ears. Everything in her sight shone brilliantly like a kaleidoscope. The world spun around her.

Yoon Ga-eul clutched her head with both hands. Ahhh, it felt as if she was screaming.

Her next memory was…

***

"She's gone."

A hand in a white glove set a small magnifying glass down on the tray. A boy holding the tray quickly shuffled away. The owner of the hand, Nam Woo-jin, crossed his arms and sighed. The person standing behind him, Jung Bin, cautiously asked.

"Gone? What do you mean? Is she unconscious?"

Yoon Ga-eul lay silently on the operating table in Nam Woo-jin's research lab in the Seowon Guild. The girl in the school uniform was unconscious, even though she had no visible injuries. Her rolled-up sleeves revealed red marks on both arms as if something had bound them.

Her chest rose and fell slightly as she breathed, revealing a glimpse of the necklace she was wearing. The fragment attached to the necklace was an ordinary white color. After a moment of silence, Nam Woo-jin suddenly asked,

"What was her condition when you first found her? Has she been acting strange lately?"

Jung Bin sighed, pulled out a notebook from the inner pocket of his suit jacket, and began reading from it.

"When I arrived at the school after receiving a call from her homeroom teacher, she was already lying in the nurse's office. I spoke with Yoon Ga-eul's friends, and they said she had been sleeping like the dead all day, and only woke up during lunchtime, screamed suddenly, and then collapsed. Recently…"

"…"

"Well, they said she's been a bit strange. Sometimes she'd look startled when she saw her friends. According to them, it was almost like…"

Jung Bin's expression darkened.

"Like she suddenly saw a dead person…"

Nam Woo-jin, who had been staring intently at Yoon Ga-eul's pale face, asked another question.

"When this girl sees the fragments, does she normally… pass out like this?"

"No. I've observed her before, and she usually just appears to be in a deep sleep."

"Then it's almost certain…"

Nam Woo-jin suddenly turned around, his white coat fluttering as he did so. He dragged his crocs across the floor as he moved towards the corner of the lab. Jung Bin watched him closely and asked,

"Could she have been attacked mentally?"

"No. It's something entirely different."

Nam Woo-jin cut him off firmly and yanked away a white cloth covering something. What was revealed looked similar to a globe, but instead of a map of the world, there was a softly glowing, mother-of-pearl-like mass of light.

Nam Woo-jin reached out to the mass. His eyes, burned white, gleamed brightly.

"I know this well, considering I ended up like this from observing the world's rift."

"…"

"My soul was dragged into another world. Though I have no idea what happened…"

Jung Bin's mouth slightly opened in shock.

"In that case…"

"Considering Yoon Ga-eul has been seeing fragments of a destroyed world…"

Nam Woo-jin, peering into the mass of light, muttered in a chilling tone,

"She must have been dragged into that destroyed world."