Pathfinder

Chapter Two

Garam, who had buried her face in the pillow, raised her head and checked the time on the clock. She thought she had only been lying down for a moment, but perhaps due to fatigue, she had lost track of time. The clock was already pointing to twelve o'clock.

It wasn't surprising that the time after work passed by quickly; that wasn't something new that had happened only that day. It was just that she didn't want to get up and go take a shower. Her parents were still in the living room, and things wouldn’t be very comfortable with them around.

After hesitating for a moment, Garam ultimately sat back on the bed. It wasn't like she would die if she didn't shower that day.

A strange sound came at that moment. Well, calling it a "sound" was a bit of an exaggeration. If the night were alive and crying, it might feel something like this. Or if the universe or stars were speaking, it might sound something like this strange noise.

Nothing reached her ears, but she could feel it. It was different from the sound of ringing in the ears; it wasn't an actual sound, but it felt like one.

Garam couldn't see it, but the clock was now precisely pointing to 12:01. Her birthday had just begun.

“What was that sound?”

Garam, feeling a bit frightened, deliberately spoke her words out loud and then hurriedly searched the room. She even checked her phone, thinking it might be a call, but her phone showed the same screen as always, and her computer wasn't turned on. She considered if it might have been a noise from outside, but the soundproof windows were tightly closed.

Moreover, it wasn't a noise from outside. Garam couldn't explain why, but she felt like she knew what the source of this sound was. It was the sound of space warping.

It was more than just a feeling; it was a certainty. She knew it as clearly as if the words “This is the sound of space splitting open” were written before her eyes, readable with absolute precision. It was as if she had gained an additional sense, so sure was her knowledge. In Garam's small room, a gateway to another dimension was opening.

“What's this? Did I just doze off for a moment?”

Garam thought it was a dream or perhaps a problem somewhere in her brain. She deliberately spoke out loud again to regain a sense of reality, but it yielded no results. When she pinched her arm, instead of the vague feeling of a dream, she felt definite pain.

In the meantime, the space had completely opened up. Inside the open gate, all the colors that could exist in the world were swirling. Occasionally, light splashed out like droplets of water, but the inside of the gate seemed endlessly deep. All these things could only be seen by Garam, and she knew that.

The idea of a gate to another dimension opening in her room might sound quite mysterious and thrilling at first, but if it actually happened, most people would feel scared in the face of the unknown situation.

However, Garam wasn't afraid, let alone confused. She only thought that the gate was incredibly beautiful. It truly was beautiful as well as magnificent. Other than that, nothing crossed her mind.

Unconsciously, she gradually walked toward the gate. A moment later, both Garam and the dimensional gate that had swallowed her were gone from her room.

Once through the dimensional gate, Garam immediately found herself facing a night sky where it seemed like the stars would pour down. In the city, one could never see such a starry sky, and even in the countryside, it was becoming increasingly rare those days.

There were so many stars that one could almost call it a sky half-filled with stars. Also, there were three moons, which made it clear that she wasn't on Earth. Well, it would be quite peculiar to think that she had opened a dimensional gate in her room and simply ended up in her backyard, wouldn’t it?

Perhaps due to the presence of the three moons, it wasn't as dark as it should have been at nighttime. Garam, whose night vision wasn't particularly sharp, could still make out her surroundings. Where she stood appeared to be a place that was a mix of a forest and a plain. In the vast, flat terrain, the ankle-high grass was swaying gently, and scattered trees were irregularly rooted. It wasn't quite a forest, but there were too many tall trees to call it a plain.

Garam stood there in awe, gazing at the incredibly beautiful night sky. There were so many stars that she felt she could grab a handful if she reached out her hand. The stars, each having their own unique color, gave Garam, who was born and raised in the city, an indescribable sense of wonder. The vast universe felt close at hand.

Standing beneath that sky, she felt like a tiny, insignificant presence, but she didn't mind it as long as she could live under such a beautiful sky. It was the first time she had ever seen untouched nature since she was born.

"Ahchoo!"

Garam, who had been looking up at the sky for a while, snapped out of her reverie when she suddenly sneezed. It seemed her nose was slightly stuffy, which might be due to the beginning of a cold.

Come to think of it, she had entered the door without much thought and was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and no coat. It was fortunate that her pants were long enough that her legs weren't caught in the tall grass. Only then did Garam realize how impulsively she had jumped into that hole, feeling as if she had been possessed by something.

Unconsciously reaching for her phone to call a friend to come and get her, Garam quickly realized how foolish her actions were and let out a chuckle. There was no way to explain this place with three moons in the sky, and obviously, there was no phone signal either.

'Now, is the last thing for me to become a magician?'

Garam recalled a novel she had read recently. Because she had always been too busy trying to fulfill her parents’ expectations, she had never had the chance to read fantasy novels or proper comic books. The world of imagination that Garam had encountered consisted solely of fairy tales and movies she had read and watched for educational purposes growing up.

A friend who worked part-time with her had recommended a fantasy novel to relieve stress when she was feeling too much pressure. It was the first and only fantasy novel she had ever read since she was born.

In that novel, the protagonist is a high school girl. She was struggling with the stress of her final year of high school when she was accidentally summoned by a dragon. She learned powerful magic, saved the world, and lived a successful life without regrets. It was enviable for a brief moment, but Garam thought that it wouldn't be possible for her.

What about her parents, her friends from school, and all the people she had known and grown up with? It might be easy to forget them in a novel, but relationships in the real world weren't that simple.

Despite their arguments, Garam's mother's face came to her mind. She quickly regretted the fact that she had been too harsh with her words.

‘Yeah, I was too harsh. I should apologize when I go back. But how do I go back?'

The protagonist in the novel was summoned by a dragon, but Garam couldn't figure out why she was there.

At that moment, the wind suddenly swept through, tousling Garam's hair. It wasn't freezing, but the wind was cold enough to give her goosebumps. Garam rubbed her goose-bumped arms and looked around to find shelter from the wind and think about what to do next.

The best-case scenario was that everything was just a fantastic dream on a beautiful summer night, and when she woke up, it would all be gone. The next best thing would be for someone to suddenly appear and say that she was not supposed to be there and send her back to where she had come from.

The worst would be that she couldn't go back at all. However, perhaps due to the abundance of stars in the sky, the lack of a sense of reality, or the fact that this fairytale-like situation was too hard to believe, Garam didn't dwell on it too seriously.

'If it doesn't work out, I can always tap my shoes or something.'

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy tapped her silver shoes together, recited that there was no place like home, and then returned.

Garam had left her room in such a hurry that she was only wearing socks, not even bothering with shoes, but it didn’t bother her. She wasn't being serious with the Dorothy thing anyway. Considering the complete lack of realism in that situation and the fact that there was nothing she could do, Garam just hoped to find a place to shield herself from the wind.

The short grass swayed back and forth, bending at the waist with each gust of wind and reflecting the moonlight. It was a scene as beautiful as rippling waves, but this wasn’t what Garam was looking at. About 100 meters away, she could see the light of a fire. Whether it was from a tavern or a wizard's spell, Garam was just glad to see something so bright.

Either way, the person who had built the fire must have enough intelligence to control fire. Perhaps they would know how to get her back home.

Walking on a dirt path with only socks on her feet wasn't very comfortable, but Garam ignored the pebbles that pierced her soles and headed toward the fire. Fortunately, it wasn't a will-o'-the-wisp.

A long shadow cast by the figure of something unknown passed by the bonfire. It was too tall to be considered human, yet it didn't look monstrous. Fortunately, it didn't seem like something out of a nightmare. As the distance between her and the bonfire lessened to almost ten meters, Garam finally realized its true identity.

Pointed ears different from a human's, a tail swaying beneath its buttocks, and its entire body adorned with vibrant black stripes—it was a tiger.