Chapter Text
Jinwoo wakes up in a bathtub covered in blood.
He lets the new set of memories slowly trickle in, it’s only twenty-odd years of a single human life, short, insignificant. His eyes roll in their sockets as he looks at his surroundings, as he takes the place in. The white tiles, the white ceiling, shelves with fluffy cream towels, the odd succulent, the many lit candles with dancing flames. There’s nothing he can do but wait. Wait for the memories to assimilate, wait for his magic to trickle in and fix the damage done by the body dying...by the body being dead.
Still...it’s boring, the memories currently trickling in are mere flashes of childhood memories. A day at the park, the first day of school, a bike ride, first kiss. Regular memories filled with featureless faces whose names have been long forgotten. He twitches his fingers, forces the magic down the veins of his arms, wills it to fix, to return control, to force the muscle to move. He slowly lifts it as feeling returns, as control returns. He lifts the hand so he can inspect it, feels cold air move over the muscle in a way it distinctly shouldn’t, in a way that makes even him uncomfortable.
Ah...
The whole arm is covered in crusted old blood, the visible skin is ghostly white, pale, and utterly colorless, translucent almost. There’s no blood left, not in the arm and not in the rest of his body. His eyes follow the line of the giant wound running along his inner forearm. It’s deep, running all the way from his elbow down to his wrist, nicking the bone with how deep it is. He watches as his magic knits skin and muscle back together, thin invisible threads closing the wound slowly and neatly. As bone and then skin smooth out.
There’s not even a scar left once it’s done.
He turns his attention to his other forearm. The wound there is just as deep, just as long, but not as neat. The hand that did it had no fine motor control and shook as it was done, it’s the second wound. He lowers the hand as his magic starts to knit it back together, feels the threads pulling. He leans back, lets his head fall back against the edge of the bathtub, watches the shadows move across the ceiling for only a moment before closing his eyes with a sigh.
What a mess.
He focuses on the memories as his magic pushes the body back to life, as it fixes what is broken, as it creates new blood, and as it pushes his heart into beating again.
Go Ki.
That is the body’s name, Go Ki. He cannot stop a smile from pulling at his lips. Ki... one who has risen. He wonders which Ruler considers themselves a comedian. And a Go, nonetheless. His smile falls as he lets out a world-weary sigh.
That... complicates things.
Go Ki is Go Gunhee’s granddaughter, his only living family... it is just the two of them left. Her grandmother was one of the first people to fall into an Eternal Slumber, back before they knew what they were dealing with, back before they realized it wasn’t a simple coma, back before they could keep them alive.
The whole family had watched the woman slowly waste away, all helpless to stop it.
The rest of her family became hunters, from B to A rank. Gunhee... grandfather being the only exception, being one of the strongest hunters around. Parents, three older brothers, an aunt, and an older cousin. All of them die one by one during raids and dungeon breaks.
Ki was only eleven when it became just her and Gunhee, when their family became just two, old enough to understand the severity of her loss, too young to do anything about it, to fight it in any way. She was so much younger than all her siblings. A full ten years between her and her youngest older brother. And when she turned seventeen, she herself awoke as a hunter... a lowly E rank healer, barely stronger than Jinwoo himself had been in the beginning. A full 23 on the magic scale. A snort escapes him, more than twice what Jinwoo had been.
She’d still wanted to go into dungeons, to follow in her family’s footsteps... and from what Jinwoo is remembering she’d wanted her end to be the same as well, had hoped for it even. She only had a measly eleven seconds of healing, but in a dungeon that would be the difference between life and death. She saw it as the perfect way to go, the perfect daydream. She had it all planned out.
A C rank dungeon, a D would have sufficed, but a C preferably. She’d go in with a group, stick to the center, and waste six seconds on healing the party as they traveled to the boss. The party leader would take a fatal wound while fighting the boss and she’d give her last five seconds to save his life, running to his fallen form despite everyone’s protests. And just as she’d finish healing the would-be fatal wound the boss would turn to them and swing an axe, she always imagined it to be an axe, and she’d curl protectively over the party leader, taking the blow. Saving him but dying in the process.
Dying a hero’s death, dying in a way that would make her family proud, but dying nonetheless.
That was the goal in the end.
The rest of it was just her preferred flavor. The story she liked best.
But Gunhee hadn’t allowed that, he’d watched over and guarded Ki like he was a dragon and she a kidnapped princess. If he could he’d have had her warped up in blankets and bubble wrap in the corner of his office at all times. Safe, under his eye, and away from all danger. He guarded her with the possessives of a man who held the last drop of water in the world within his palm.
Ki never entered a dungeon.
No matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard she protested, no matter how loudly she demanded.
And so, with Gunhee working more and more to keep the country safe, to keep his granddaughter safe, with him having less and less time for her, she was left to her own devices. A hunter forbidden from entering a dungeon, a healer for only eleven seconds, a young woman with no higher education and no need to work. She was left alone and adrift in the world with no goal, no purpose. Her only dream out of her grasp.
So she’d turned to vices.
It started with partying and drinking and then quickly spiraled to other drugs, harder drugs, to driving too fast and pulling daredevil stunts. With her being a hunter and with her eleven seconds there was next to no chance of her dying of an overdose and nothing short of a fatal blow would kill her.
Jinwoo’s breath stutters as a memory makes itself known.
This wasn’t the first time.
The first time she’d backed out, healed herself just in time, just before she could bleed out. Eleven seconds... just enough time to save a life, to pull it from the brink.
He opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling, watching the shadows move, both normal and his.
After that, she cleaned her act somewhat, tried to pursue things outside of drugs and alcohol, and partying. Tried to find meaning. She even met someone, Myung Insu, a charming young guy who just started his law career. She went sober for him and not long after he proposed. It had been enough.
Her life was looking up. They were making plans, an apartment, a wedding, a dog, a family.
She was happy. She was content. She was no longer lonely.
And then it all came crashing down around her.
Insu had kept her together, kept her from falling apart, from self-destructing.
And then... he found out she was a hunter and broke off their engagement.
Immediately she crashed, falling back to the worst of her old habits, sinking even deeper than before, and this... this was the result. She’d stumbled home, drugs just leaving her system, crashing from her high, when she decided, she didn’t want to deal with it anymore.
She’d taken the most expensive bottle of wine she had on hand. She lit all the candles she had in the bathroom, giving herself time to think about it, to decide, to commit fully, spending her eleven seconds slowly purging the wine.
Light a candle, take a drink, spend a second.
She hadn’t backed out this time, hadn’t given herself the option to.
And that is where Jinwoo came in.
A little over two hours after her death his magic had trickled in and taken over, his consciousness following shortly after.
He leans further back and lets out a sight, feels his shadows moving with it... waiting.
What a mess indeed.