WOSCH 01

Chapter – 01

A crack appeared in the sky. We called it a ‘Gate,’ and unimaginable monsters poured out from within.

People trembled in fear. Guns, tanks, and even the science we had built over hundreds of years were completely useless against those monsters. Cities collapsed, and countless people lost their lives.

And amid that chaos, some people suddenly gained strange powers. They were called ‘Awakened’ or ‘Hunters,’ and they became the only beings capable of defeating the monsters threatening humanity.

At first, naturally, everyone dreamed of awakening.

Maybe I could become a Hunter, too.

But most people were eliminated almost instantly.

However, I, Jeong Haneul (26 years old, unemployed), was lucky enough to awaken!

There was just one small problem with my ability….

“Please give me one red bean and one custard!”

“Yes! Just a moment~!”

It requires…

Infinite labor…

“I’ll have one red bean and two custard ones.”

“The custard ones will take a little while to come out!”

That was the problem.

You might be wondering why I suddenly started talking about bungeoppang while discussing awakening.

Well…

The beginning of this story takes us back about three months.

“This really is the last time….”

I quietly muttered as I looked around the completely empty shop.

Today was the day I was closing down my parents’ precious store, which had stood in the same place for more than thirty years.

“So this is how it ends, just like that.”

I bit my lip as I ran my fingers over the old wooden table, its surface covered in scratches from all the years it had endured.

It had been five years since my parents passed away.

I had struggled on my own all this time, determined to at least protect the shop they had left behind….

‘How can you suddenly tell me to leave?! That’s ridiculous!’

‘It is what it is. Just clear everything out as soon as possible!’

One day, the landlady suddenly showed up at the shop, called me over, and told me to leave because her daughter wanted to open a store here.

“…Just when the regulars in the neighborhood were finally starting to recognize me.”

I had finally begun to get pretty close to matching my mother’s cooking.

Why was the world doing this to me?

Was taking my entire family in a Gate incident not enough?

Now it was taking away the only thing I had left—the shop.

It was so unfair.

I buried my face in my knees and sniffled.

I just wanted to give up on everything.

Just give up on everything….

Then,

“Do you need my help, nya?”

A child’s voice suddenly rang out.

A child had come here at this hour?

And the shop was even closed.

The moment I realized how strange that was, goosebumps rose all over the back of my neck.

“Wh-who are you?”

“If I grant your wish, will you help me, nya?”

No matter how much I looked around, I couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from.

Could it be a ghost?

No way. That was ridiculous.

But then—

FLASH!

Lightning suddenly flashed across the clear sky, and a long shadow appeared on the floor.

I slowly raised my head, following the shadow….

“…A cat?”

Standing there was a huge, chubby calico cat—twice the size of an ordinary cat.

“Don’t you want to get this shop back, nya?”

“…Our shop?”

“If you help this body, I will grant your wish, nya. Then I can make this shop yours again, nya.”

A wish.

I slowly looked around the shop.

The familiar scenery that I had seen constantly since I was a child came into view.

“Can you really… grant my wish?”

“Of course, nya. As long as it isn’t a wish that goes against causality, anything is possible, nya!”

The cat said this while looking at me with a confident expression.

That’s right.

This was the shop my parents had operated continuously since before I was even born.

If only I could get this place back….

“What do I have to help you with?”

“Hm. Now we’re finally getting somewhere, nya. But first, this might sting a little, nya!”

The cat stepped onto a chair, jumped, and smacked me squarely on the forehead with its soft paw.

“Ow!”

I grabbed my forehead after the unexpected attack, but suddenly my vision began spinning.

Ugh! M-my head feels like it’s going to split open.

The dizziness was so terrible that I desperately grabbed onto the table to keep myself from falling and squeezed my eyes shut.

“Now open your eyes and look ahead, nya. Hurry!”

Overcome by its commanding tone, I cautiously lifted my eyelids.

And what appeared before my eyes was….

Congratulations! Jeong Haneul!

You have been chosen by @%@asj@*$@!

Check Rank ⇒

Check Skill ⇒

Go to My Shop ⇒

It was a blue window I had never seen before, yet somehow it felt incredibly familiar.

“Did I… a-awaken? I actually awakened?!”

Rank!

What was my rank?

I hurriedly pressed ‘Check Rank.’

And then I was devastated.

“F-rank…?”

I had awakened, but I was the weakest of the weak—someone practically no different from an ordinary person!

Besides,

“Wait. This is strange.”

I glared at the translucent blue window floating before me.

‘Chosen by @%@asj@*$@’…?

Had the letters always looked corrupted like this?

As I stared suspiciously at the window, the cat beside me spoke in a bored tone.

“You awakened after being chosen by this body, nya. Of course you wouldn’t be the same as other humans.”

“You’re the one who awakened me?”

“That’s right. You said you wanted to help this body, didn’t you, nya?”

When did I ever say I would help you?

I had only asked what I needed to help with!

I stared at the cat in disbelief.

“You said you needed power! And you awakened me as an F-rank!”

“This body doesn’t need some grandiose power, nya. What you have to do is deliver ‘blessings’ to humans, nya.”

“Blessings? What, like a baptism?”

The cat looked at me as though I were hopelessly stupid before beginning its explanation.

To summarize, a blessing meant its own power, and I simply had to create a medium capable of containing that blessing and then deliver it to people.

“So what’s the medium?”

“Food, nya.”

“Food? Food as in the stuff I know? The kind you eat with your mouth?”

“What else would it be, nya?”

No, I knew what food was….

It was just weird!

Who delivers blessings through food?

Would the blessing really be transmitted just by eating it?

I was grumbling when a thought suddenly occurred to me, and I immediately shut my mouth.

Come to think of it, I no longer had a shop where I could make food.

“By the way, I don’t have a shop anymore. Where am I supposed to make the food?”

“Hmph. Do you think this body wouldn’t have prepared even that, nya?”

“You prepared a place? Where?”

The confident-looking cat told me to look at the status window.

Status window?

Could it be this?

I stared at the suspicious phrase sparkling at the bottom.

“…Go to My Shop?”

The moment I unconsciously muttered those words, my vision wavered, and the ground beneath my feet suddenly dropped away.

“Waaaaaaaah!!!!!!”

And when I opened my eyes, I found myself on a street I had never seen before.

There was no one around, and only a few streetlights were dimly illuminating the area.

After barely regaining my senses, I quickly turned my head from side to side and looked around.

Other than the huge building across the street, there wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy.

“There’s nothing around here. How am I supposed to run a business here?”

The most important thing in business was location.

The second most important thing was the business item itself.

You needed to be near a subway station, or at the very least have a school or workplace nearby if you wanted any chance of running a successful business.

Yet, astonishingly, there was absolutely nothing here.

Even the building across the street was….

“Isn’t that the Hunter Management Bureau? You want me to make food here? Absolutely not.”

I crossed my arms into an X and firmly shook my head.

The Awakened—in other words, Hunters—had a serious problem.

As a side effect of awakening, they had difficulty tasting food.

And apparently, the higher their rank, the more severe it became.

Giving food to people who couldn’t even taste it?

That was practically the definition of nonsense.

“Let’s go somewhere else. I know an incredible location. If I opened a shop there, it would be an instant hit.”

“Somewhere else? It absolutely has to be here, nya.”

“This place is guaranteed to fail! You said I have to give them blessings or whatever, didn’t you?”

The cat firmly shook its head, insisting that this was the optimal location.

It was clear that it had absolutely no intention of compromising.

“I’m telling you, don’t blame me if this place goes completely bankrupt.”

Blessings or whatever….

Maybe the cat would come to its senses once it realized there were absolutely no customers.

I gave up trying to persuade it and looked around.

Come to think of it, I had arrived here by saying ‘Go to My Shop,’ but I couldn’t see anything that could actually be called a shop.

“But where’s the shop? There’s nothing here.”

“Look over there, nya.”

The cat stretched out its front paw and pointed across the street.

Only then did I notice something tightly covered by a tarp on the other side of the road.

“This is the shop?”

I cautiously approached it.

What I saw was a rotten little street stall that looked like it might collapse if I so much as poked it.

The crude green tarp had faded badly, and the wooden boards on the outside were half broken.

“…We call this trash, not a shop.”

“Trash?! That’s too harsh, nya!”

The harsh part wasn’t what I had said.

It was the condition of the shop itself.

Would this thing even pass a hygiene inspection…?