About a month had passed since Eunha entered the training camp.

Beneath the low-hanging clouds, on that day, Eunha did not stop training until the scarecrow was completely destroyed.

“You’ve worked hard.”

It was Trainer Gyeoncheol, who had been there for who knows how long, speaking from behind. It seemed like he knew that Eunha had continued her training until this hour.

Gyeoncheol glanced at the pitiful scarecrow that had turned into ashes.

“The Army Colonel will probably complain again.”

Contrary to his tree-like tone, he casually tossed a slightly bruised apple toward Eunha. Eunha, reflexively catching it and staring at the apple, picked up, he smiled and said,

“Didn’t you go hungry for dinner?”

Only now did Eunha realize that the sun had set. Lifting her chin to look at the sky, she noticed a multitude of stars, a sight not visible in Seoul.

“……Thank you.”

Eunha, bowing her head briefly, took a bite of the apple. The moderately sweet and crisp texture filled her dry mouth.

“How is it?”

“It’s sweet and delicious.”

“Yeah, right?”

Gyeoncheol chuckled. Following suit, Eunha took another bite of the ripe apple.

Side by side, sitting down without anyone uttering a word, the two of them gazed at the night sky for a very long time.

Suddenly, Gyeoncheol shifted his gaze to the side. Observing Eunha’s hand, which held a partially eaten apple, he could see that even at a glance, it was covered in wounds. The continuous training had left her hands increasingly damaged, to the extent that her healing abilities couldn’t keep up.

Looking at her battered hand, Gyeoncheol sighed mixed with concern.

“With that hand, you can’t even properly hold chopsticks.”

“…….,”

Eunha casually glanced at her own hand and then instinctively hid it behind her, along with the apple stem.

“There must be a reason for training so rigorously. Even after finishing training here, you’ll have to repeatedly engage in life-threatening battles, whether you like it or not.”

“If I leave this place, I won’t be the only one at risk.”

She intended to complete all the preparation she could here. She no longer wanted to witness someone dying in front of her eyes.

“Still, you need to take care of your body. It’s our duty. September 1997, the day the world changed. We survived, didn’t we?”

“…….,”

Eunha didn’t respond, quietly lowering her eyelashes. In the moist soil untouched by any humidity, nameless insects were burrowing.

September 1997.

How could Eunha forget the nightmare of that time?

Recalling the unforgettable memories, Eunha slowly rose from her seat.

“There’s really no time to be like this.”

Now, she had the ‘power’ to kill those guys. So, she would sharpen that power to deal with them─.

“On that day, I also mentioned losing a daughter.”

Suddenly, Gyeoncheol’s voice came from behind.

“…….,”

Eunha stood upright in her place.
A dry wind swept through the two. Their hair fluttered in the same direction.

From his front pocket, he took out a cigarette pack and placed a thick cigarette in his mouth.

Chik.

With the sound of lighting the cigarette, he opened his mouth again.

“My house collapsed, and a sinister whirlwind appeared. My daughter, who was lying in the living room reading a book, was sucked in, right before my eyes.”

It was like water being sucked down a drain. Woncheol murmured quietly.

Witnessing the sight of his young daughter being engulfed by the gate, he bravely threw himself towards the whirlwind, risking his life.

There, he encountered a demon-like monster wielding a scythe and, on the verge of death, suddenly awakened through the system window that appeared before his eyes.

“Thanks to that, I could save my life. But in the end, I couldn’t save my daughter.” He added with a bitter smile.

Later, shocked by her daughter’s death, his wife, after suffering silently for a while, eventually took her own life. He, the only remaining family member, fell into alcohol addiction, ignoring his son.

“I thought my life ended there. I believed it couldn’t get any worse than that.”

Eunha felt the same way.

Her mother’s sudden death, losing her home, family, and even her dreams in an instant. No one reached out to help Eunha.

“I thought it might be better to just fight monsters and die with a pierced stomach than to live like this.”

Woncheol, who had shared his story until then, lifted his head.

“But one day, my son came with a crumpled career hope book.”

The high school he attended was indefinitely closed, and even remote classes were impossible. The career hope book his son brought was distributed at the school just before the nightmare began.

“He said he wanted to become a firefighter. He wanted to be a hero who rescues people in danger, that was my brother’s dream, so I told him I would fulfill it for him.”

On the day of the disaster, unlike Woncheol, who awakened quickly, his son was a non-awakened. Since a non-awakened couldn’t become a hunter, he hoped to become a firefighter and rescue people when peace returned.

“That young lad is better than me.”