The alarm rang.
Kang Woo-joo did not open his eyes. He reached one hand out from under the covers and felt around for his phone. He swiped the screen to turn off the alarm, then slipped his hand back under the blanket.
7:10 a.m.
One hour until work. Twenty minutes to shower and get dressed, eight minutes to walk to the station, twenty-five minutes on the subway, and seven minutes from the station to the office. Sixty minutes in total. Exact.
Every day, he made the same calculation and reached the same conclusion.
He had to get up.
Kang Woo-joo got up. A two-bedroom apartment measuring twelve pyeong. Small, but neat. There were few belongings, and everything he owned was in its place. Half the books on the small shelf beside the bed were law books, the other half novels. A single monstera plant sat by the window.
It was a room that revealed its owner's personality exactly as it was.
He washed his face with cold water at the sink. A thirty-two-year-old man stared back at him from the mirror. An unremarkable face. He was occasionally told that his eyes looked a little deep-set. He assumed it was simply because he did not get enough sleep.
He took a shirt and slacks from the closet. A navy tie. This was more or less what a third-year law-firm attorney's morning looked like.
When he opened the front door, the November air stabbed into his lungs. Woo-joo turned up his coat collar and walked on. An alley in Mapo-gu. A rift warning sign was posted on the wall of the building across the street.
[An E-rank rift has previously occurred within a 500-meter radius of this area. Access prohibited to non-Awakened individuals.]
Woo-joo walked past the sign. To a non-Awakened person, rifts were something seen on the news. Occasionally, they were an annoyance when roads were closed on the way to work. That was all.
As he descended the stairs to the subway station, two middle-aged men ahead of him walked down the steps, talking.
"Hey, did you see the news about the B-rank rift in Gangnam yesterday? I heard two guilds went at it." "Yeah, but Taegang Guild ended up taking it. I heard the other side had casualties, too." "Come on. That guild got greedy. They don't even have the skill to back it up."
Woo-joo passed through the turnstiles as he listened to them.
They don't even have the skill to back it up.
The words lingered strangely in his mind. He did not know why.
The subway was packed as usual. Woo-joo stood beside the door and looked out the window. There was nothing to see inside the tunnel. Only his own face was reflected in the black glass.
Just then, the woman standing beside him answered a call.
"Yeah, I'm on my way. Uh-huh, it's okay. I'm really okay."
She was not okay.
Woo-joo knew that. Her voice had risen by half a note, and adding really meant she was trying to convince herself, not the person on the other end. The skin beneath her eyes was dark, and her hand was gripping the phone tightly. Not the hand of someone who was okay.
Woo-joo looked away.
It was someone else's problem.
It was someone else's problem, so why could he see it? People's expressions, postures, tones, and gazes. Those things read like letters to Woo-joo. It had been that way since he was young. He knew when a teacher was lying, knew when a friend was angry before they said anything, and could tell that his mother had been crying from behind her smiling face.
Becoming a lawyer had perhaps been the inevitable next step. An eye for reading people. In court, that had become a weapon.
He arrived at the office. The fifteenth floor, with a view of the Han River. Jungyul Law Firm, a mid-sized firm. Woo-joo's desk was by the window, the paperwork neatly arranged.
"Attorney Kang, what's with your face this early in the morning? Were you looking over case files all night again?"
Senior attorney Park Do-hyun said it as he walked by with a cup of coffee. It was a joke. Every morning, he made a habit of tossing out a remark to someone.
"I slept well."
Woo-joo answered briefly and turned on his computer.
The morning passed normally. Reviewing case files, organizing evidence, preparing for client interviews. Two criminal cases overlapped. One involved assault, the other fraud. They were the kind of tasks his hands handled automatically.
Lunchtime. Woo-joo went alone to a gukbap restaurant near the office. One earthenware bowl of soup and a bowl of rice. He was used to eating lunch alone.
The TV mounted on the restaurant wall was broadcasting the news. An advertisement for an Awakened guild played.
[Taegang Guild—the number one rift raid guild in South Korea. We are recruiting A-rank and higher Awakened individuals to join us.]
Woo-joo watched the screen as he spooned up his gukbap.
Awakening.
In this world, the Awakened were special. They raided dungeons inside rifts, killed magical beasts, and protected humanity. S-rank Awakened were more famous than celebrities and richer than chaebol heirs. Recently, Awakened-related legal disputes had surged, and every law firm was moving toward establishing a dedicated department.
Woo-joo was someone who had never awakened. A non-Awakened person. Ninety-seven percent of the population. Part of the ordinary majority.
And yet.
Sometimes, very rarely, Woo-joo felt something strange.
When he saw a rift warning sign. When dungeon footage appeared on the news. When he watched an Awakened person use an ability. Something stirred deep in his chest. A sensation that felt familiar, almost nostalgic, and impossible to explain.
Woo-joo ignored the sensation. Ignoring it had become a habit.
In the afternoon, they reviewed a case in the conference room. A fraud case. There were three victims, and the suspect denied everything. Senior attorney Park Do-hyun put up a screen and began explaining.
"The suspect's attorney submitted new evidence. Apparently, it's CCTV footage supporting the suspect's alibi."
The team watched the footage.
"The timestamp matches, and so does the location." "This is going to be tough if this holds up." "But it conflicts with the victim's statement."
Woo-joo watched the video silently. Once. Twice. On the third viewing, he stopped it.
Something was wrong.
The suspect's gait in the footage. In the scene where he entered the convenience store, he pushed the door open with his right hand. But that differed from the suspect's habitual behavior recorded in the files. In every previous CCTV recording, he had always opened doors with his left hand. Then there was the angle of the figure's shoulders. The suspect's right shoulder drooped slightly, but the figure in the footage had balanced shoulders.
Woo-joo opened his mouth.
"The person in this footage isn't the suspect."
The conference room fell silent.
"The gait is different. So is the hand used to push the door and the line of the shoulders. It's clear when you compare it to the previous footage. Someone else was dressed in the same clothes."
Park Do-hyun looked at Woo-joo.
"...What evidence do you have?"
"Compare the points at thirty-seven seconds and one minute twelve seconds. Then compare them against the convenience store CCTV submitted last month. The difference in gait is unmistakable."
A brief silence passed. Park Do-hyun replayed the footage. Thirty-seven seconds. One minute twelve seconds. Then the previous recording.
"...Damn, he's right."
Park Do-hyun shook his head.
"Attorney Kang, how do you even notice things like this?"
"I just see it."
That was what Woo-joo said. In reality, it was not something he simply saw. The figure's build, habits, and subtle movement patterns in the footage—all of it read as one complete picture. Who this person was, what they were hiding, and how far they had prepared.
But if he explained all that in detail, people would think he was strange. So he said he just saw it.
A week later, video analysis confirmed that the suspect and the person in the footage were different people. The opposing attorney was disciplined for submitting forged evidence.
No one told Woo-joo he was impressive. Park Do-hyun said, "You've got a good eye," and the team members were already buried in the next case.
Woo-joo did not care. It had always been that way. No one knew when he was right, and no one knew when he was wrong. That was simply how things were.
Quitting time. 8:17 p.m.
He took the subway home. He opened the front door and turned on the light. He hung up his coat, loosened his tie, and took a beer from the refrigerator.
He sat on the couch and opened the beer. The room was quiet. The only sounds were the refrigerator humming and cars passing outside the window.
His phone rang. It was his mother.
"Woo-joo, you're coming this weekend, right?" "Yes, I'll be there." "Your dad bought galbi. The kind you like." "Okay." "Have you eaten?" "I'm about to." "Don't eat ramen. Have a proper meal." "Okay."
He ended the call. It had been brief. But Woo-joo knew. His mother's voice had been half a note higher than usual. Something had happened between her and his father. Not a major fight, just a minor argument. If he went home that weekend, they would probably be smiling as though nothing had happened.
Woo-joo took a sip of beer and looked out the window. Lights were turning on one by one in the apartment building across the street. There were people in those apartments. They were eating, watching television, and talking with someone.
Woo-joo had people like that, too. His parents. A few college friends he contacted occasionally. The people at the office. It wasn't as if he had no one.
And yet.
This time alone was the most comfortable. Time when he did not have to read anyone's emotions. Time when he did not have to see anyone's lies. He had concluded that he was comfortable this way, and he was satisfied with that conclusion.
Really?
Woo-joo set down the beer can.
Sometimes, moments like this came over him. Moments when his chest grew heavy for no reason. As if he had stopped just before calling someone's name, or withdrawn his hand just as he reached out. As if he missed something he could not remember.
Whenever such a moment came, Woo-joo thought:
I'm just tired.
He thought the same thing today. He finished his beer, turned off the lights, and pulled the covers over himself.
He closed his eyes.
In the darkness, for the briefest moment, something passed through his mind.
Light. No, a rift. No, something deeper than that. As if someone were calling out to him from within darkness with no visible end.
Woo-joo fell asleep.
He did not dream. Probably.